Source: IMBD
There is a new series recently released on Amazon Prime starting Kal Penn, an actor of Harold & Kumar Go to Whitecastle fame, where each episode touches on a lot of the themes I talk about here at Cash Chronicles. Rather than give an overview of the whole series in one sitting, I would rather tackle the themes a few episodes at a time to give my take on how it was presented, the entertainment factor and what I think could be improved.
Why Kal?
My first thought when I scrolled across new shows on Amazon and saw this was “Why is Kumar the one telling people about the global economy?” When I did my research however, I found out that Kal (Kal is his stage name, his real name is Kalpen Suresh Modi) is not just an actor, but holds an undergraduate degree from UCLA in sociology and was a civil servant after he was already famous, working for the Obama administration in 2009-2010. Kal worked at that time as an associate director of public engagement under Obama, a point which he notes in the show as well. Kal has also served as a visiting lecturer for the Cinema Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania.
So he is no slouch. Although I didn’t study sociology, I know it requires a background in political science, cultural studies and some statistics. According to Wikipedia, he recalls the public engagement prior to Indian independence of his grandparents, which sparked his interest in social and political issues.
So now you know why Kumar is hosting the show, but is he any good? I have to say I appreciate his curiosity, each episode touches on a different topic, sometimes more pop culture inclined and some leaning more towards the nuts and bolts of the economy and global financial system.
Episode 1
Take the first episode called Money Laundering: A How To Guide is an example of showing some of the nuts and bolts of the system. Kal takes a bag of money he claims “fell from the sky” and tries to open a bank account. He quickly learns that you cannot open an account in the US without claiming a source of funds due to the myriad of regulations put in place in the last 40 years in the US to catch money laundering. Along the way he uses cameo appearances by comedic actors such as Joel McHale and Thomas Middleditch to add comic relief to the more bland explanations on the details of anonymous purchases and conflicts of interest.
Thomas Middleditch Source: Wikipedia
Eventually on his quest to find a contact to help him “launder” his cash, he meets up with Humberto J. Aguilar, a former lawyer and launderer who now works with authorities to spot money laundering techniques. At this point Kal embarks on a journey to Cyprus, where the episode deviates into the background of the 2013 financial crisis on the island and the subsequent tightening of restrictions on money laundering there. The episode then rapidly ends with Kal creating a Delaware incorporation and magically being able to finally deposit his cash somewhere.
The rapid ending left me confused and with more questions than I started with. I was left wanting to know more about the details of being able to open a US company and open an account after he had first been denied earlier in the episode. It also left the conclusions he came to feeling fleeting and not deftly researched. Money laundering was blithely pawned off as something that only rich and powerful billionaires can do. I would have much preferred he investigate account openings in Lichtenstein and Guernsey that Aguilar had suggested as opposed to a trip to Cyprus that a bit of research beforehand could have told us was not worth pursuing.
Episode 2
The second episode was a bit more light hearted and dealt with more of the moral societal question which was titled Are Rich People Dicks or Do Dicks Get Rich. The lighter more comedic tone seems to be where Kal is more in his comfort zone in terms of performance.
He starts by visiting a social media celebrity, Justin Ross Lee, who openly flaunts his “asshole” persona to sell things like his “Pretentious Pocket” product which sells pocket squares with names like the Madoff and the Bateman. Lee is clearly an adherent of the being a dick to get Rich mindset as he explains about getting rich: “Quite frankly, you have to be an asshole. The founders of Uber had to realize they were going to piss off a lot of cab drivers.”
Kal then moves on to a bespoke suit shop, where he meets author Jon Ronson, who looks a bit too disheveled to be caught in a bespoke suit shop. Ronson wrote a book called The Psychopath Test and claims that a bespoke suit shop is a psychopath’s natural habitat as many of them enjoy the control and the detail of having fine clothing created for them.
Source: Amazon
Here Ronson reveals an interesting observation from his book, that psychopathic behavior is 4 times more likely to be found in a corporate setting than in the general population. When you think about it, this makes sense, the political scheming and attention to detail required by much of the corporate world suits this profile well. This kind of jovial curiosity is also where Kal is at his best. The open ended cultural themes with comedy interspersed in seems to be where he is at his most comfortable and where he thrives.
Surprisingly, the episode then moves to a breakdown of the benefits of competition in a free market system. A skit about balloon salesmen in a park shows that, although it has the downside of making some terrible people wealthy, capitalism actually benefits society as a whole by empowering consumers.
Later in the episode we are introduced to one of the producers, Adam Davidson, a writer for The New Yorker magazine, where the economics of rent seeking or profit seeking that harms society as a whole is discussed. This may be one of the sources of tension of the show in the first episodes having the more established media producers dictating content to what seems to be a more free wheeling Kal. I can’t say from the outside looking in but it could be one reason for the contrast in style from the first episode.
Overall I liked the flow of the second episode better. The topic had a bit more room for comedic breaks and the economic concepts were a little less dry in their explanations. In the first episode, these took on more of a classroom style, didactic tone while in the second episode they felt more genuinely like comedic skits that inform.
Next Episodes
The next few episodes tackle the role of rubber in the world economy, artificial intelligence and counterfeiting. Hopefully the number of topics that people see that economics can touch on sparks some interest in viewers who will want to find out more.
If not I think the natural curiosity and comedic bent of Penn will still be able to provide entertainment for those that are more novices when it comes to the subject. It definitely is a difficult task to take on academic subjects that often make people snooze and make them entertaining and fun. My hope is also that Amazon will start to see that there is a market for this type of intellectual entertainment and fund similar projects to this one.
The Giant Beast That is The Global Economy can be found now with an Amazon Prime subscription. Visit the links provided on this page to sign up as well as to buy a copy of the book The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson.
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