ART STREIBER
2004; it’s now City Theatre), long before comedy titans Lorne Michaels and Jason Sudeikis agreed to executive produce the show. That’s where Richardson, then an aspiring comedian, took classes from Robinson. Little did they know that they would forge a friendship that would last years and inspire their own TV show. “Tim and mine’s stories are basically the same,” Richardson says in a phone call with the duo. Richardson graduated from the city’s University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy in 2002. Meanwhile, Robinson graduated from high school in the suburbs, from Clarkston High. The two went on to perform at Hamtramck’s Planet Ant Theatre,
and eventually wound up at Chicago’s Second City around the same time. The bromance continued, even after the two found national success. Robinson spent time as a featured cast member and writer on Saturday Night Live, while Richardson joined the cast of Veep as a delightful yet socially awkward White House staffer named Richard, where he worked alongside Julia Louis-Dreyfus — a dream job for most comics. With their own personal success steadily climbing, the two say they wanted to shine the spotlight on their hometown. “I can remember being backstage with Sam before shows in Chicago and just
thinking how cool it would be to have our own TV show and how much we wanted to bring it back to Detroit,” Robinson says. “But that was always [a] pipe dream. Then the actual opportunity came up and we were just like, ‘Shit, let’s do it.’” The show follows Sam Duvet and Tim Cramblin, two ad agency guys that are basically just heightened versions of Richardson and Robinson. In the show, Sam and Tim are best friends, brotherin-laws, and neighbors who do literally everything together. Their ad agency, handed down from Tim’s father, specializes in corny, low-budget yet memorable local TV commercials — inspired by real-life commercials from the Detroit
area in the ’80s and ‘90s, like Mel Farr “your superstar dealer,” Dittrich Furs, and D.O.C.’s “Sexy Specs” campaign. “I mean, how can you not forget some of those commercials?” says Robinson. “They are classics.” “Because we shoot the show in Detroit, some people on our crew were crew members and shot those commercials from back in the day,” adds Richardson. If New York City was the fifth cast member of Sex and the City, the Motor City is the third cast member of Detroiters. In the first season alone you’ll recognize the People Mover, the DIA, London Chop House, and countless more Detroit landmarks. In the show, Sam and Tim drink Vernors religiously, they eat coney dogs for breakfast, and even come up with their own Detroit-themed T-shirt a la “Detroit vs. Everybody” and “Detroit Hustles Harder.” Other situations or references are so Detroit-specific that they’ll likely be missed by people who have never lived here. In one episode in season one, Sam is hilariously mistaken as a prostitute by a high-powered woman modeled after former City Council member Monica Conyers. “We were a little worried that some Detroit-specific jokes were going to go over people’s heads,” Richardson admits. As one example of them toning it down, coney dogs are only referred to simply as “hot dogs” in the show. There’s other Motor City-centric gags, too. Every time Sam or Tim watches the news, former WDIV newscaster Mort Crim shows up to read the fake headlines in his signature baritone. People watching the show anywhere that is not Detroit might just assume that it’s an actor playing a newscaster, but Detroiters know that Crim is a real person and a living legend. That’s what makes watching Detroiters so much fun — we’re in on the joke. And the show can get topical. In one season one episode, Sam and Tim discover while using the bathroom on the vacant floor below them in their office that a super-hip tech company from out of state is taking over the space, with the clichéd attitude that they’re going to “save Detroit” simply by moving there. This causes Sam and Tim to spiral into a gentrification-induced anxiety attack, as they soon realize that their beloved Detroit is being taken over by millennials and rolling peddle bars filled with people from the suburbs. The story arc mirrors the real Detroit, which has changed rapidly in recent years since Dan Gilbert relocated Quicken Loans’ headquarters downtown in 2010. “We really didn’t mean to make an episode like that, but every time that we would come home and visit, something about the city had changed,” Robinson says. “Whether it was a new restaurant or
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| June 20-26, 2018
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