'Mary and Jane' Review: Does Snoop Dogg's New Show Live Up to the Hype?

Mary and Jane is Snoop Dogg's show about two young women, Paige and Jordan, who have started a marijuana delivery business and are looking to be famous pot entrepreneurs. It's had a lot of hype, but is it any good?

Mary and Jane Episode 1 Synopsis

First, a quick synopsis:

In this first episode of season 1, we meet Paige and Jordan.

Paige is the serious and (somewhat) responsible one, while Jordan is, of course, the sex-obsessed devil-may-care one with the crazy schemes.

The two of them have built a business called "Mary and Jane," which offers what they call "mostly legal medical marijuana delivery." Their goal is to get into the "Green 15," a sort of "Fortune 100" for pot startups.

Paige and Jordan go on a delivery to a fancy mansion outside the city, owned by a celebrity, where they spend their time engrossed in witty banter a la Gilmore Girls. After the celebrity's Angelina Jolie-style multicultural menagerie of kids shows up, Jordan stays while Paige goes on another delivery. Paige has just broken up with a famous graffiti artist and DJ, so when she meets a guy on her delivery, she propositions him for rebound sex, which, for some reason, is interrupted by the guy's monkey.

After the sex, the guy offers to pay Paige because he thinks she's a prostitute, causing confusion.

Meanwhile, at the celebrity's house, Jordan -- high at this point -- goes through a labyrinth of doors and finally walks into the bedroom of the celebs; unfortunately, she's so high that they look like a chicken and skeleton.

Here's a clip:

Mary and Jane Review

So what do we think? I guess the best way to describe it is "what the f---- did I just watch?"

We were ready to love this show because we love Snoop Dogg, and we love most MTV comedies.

But we found Mary and Jane to be a tired mix of cliches, pop-culture references, and startup ads played by two actresses that probably should have been cast as extras instead of main characters.

The two main characters, Paige (Jessica Rothe) and Jordan (Scout Durwood), are disappointing at best. Although we never expected a legendary comedy duo like Laverne and Shirley, we expected some sort of chemistry.

Instead we got Max and Caroline from 2 Broke Girls, except without the comedic timing.

Worse, the show tries to give Paige and Jordan quick, witty Gilmore Girls-like dialogue, which they fail at miserably...these two are no Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel.

Aside from the acting, Mary and Jane is extremely disjoint, in a sort of jarring way. Sometimes, we got the feeling that the show was intended to be a caricature of the hipster lifestyle, poking fun at all of the ridiculous elements of 20-something New York life (which we can definitely appreciate).

But at other times, the show appeared to be merely using that lifestyle to pander to millennials -- without commentary.

Mary and Jane seems just as lost when it comes to storytelling technique. At one point, the show starts to use cutscenes like Family Guy. But it drops them as abruptly as it starts, and we're left to wonder if a writer quit and someone else took over the script without reading the first part.

Sadly, unlike Family Guy, the cutscenes are purely gross-out comedy, devoid of intelligence or wit.

As a substitute for Adult Swim shows, Mary and Jane misses the mark as well. If you're high, you're much better off with Tim and Eric reruns than this mess.

But the most annoying aspect of Mary and Jane is the constant promotion. It feels like every ten seconds, one of the characters has to make a random and completely gratuitous pop culture reference.

Saying "Instagram" a half dozen times is not a replacement for actual dialogue -- even though the writers seem to think it is. Without a story, you aren't going to hook millennials simply by mentioning TED Talks or Taylor Swift's posse.

We don't know if the producers of Mary and Jane were paid by startups and celebs to mention their names, but we hope so, given how often this happens.

Now, there were some redeeming qualities of Mary and Jane. First of all, it moved quickly -- we didn't feel like falling asleep once.

Although, given that MTV shows are now 5 minutes of content with 25 minutes of commercials, that doesn't say too much. And we did like the Snoop Dogg music at the end... But that was about it.

So there you have it -- that's our review Mary and Jane. Like every show we review, we'll give it a second chance next week. But we don't have very high hopes.

You can watch the full episode of Mary and Jane on MTV.com.