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Last week, I told you how great HBO's eight-part crime drama "The Night Of" is. I positively gushed, using words like "exceptional," "gripping" and "enthralling."

I take none of that back. But there is one thing about the series that has me scratching my head.

In the first episode, we met Naz Khan (Riz Ahmed), a nice young man — the son of Pakistani immigrants — who met a young woman, did drugs with her, had sex with her, passed out and woke up to discover she had been brutally murdered.

She'd been stabbed more than 20 times. And there was, not surprisingly, blood everywhere. We were shown how it spurted up and got on a lampshade, for example.

But it didn't get all over Naz. If he savagely stabbed her over and over again, wouldn't there be a lot of blood on his clothes? Doesn't the fact that there isn't mean he couldn't be the killer? But that's not even mentioned when Naz is arrested. It's not mentioned in the first seven episodes. (Critics haven't seen the eighth and final installment.)

The cops did take Naz's clothes before he met lawyer Jack Stone (John Turturro), so maybe this will play into the finale.

Maybe what I'm really puzzled about is how anyone who saw the premiere could question Naz's innocence — as a number of reviews did. Unless the people making the show screwed up REALLY badly, which seems unlikely.

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'Vice Principals' should be expelled • I am not a fan of Danny McBride's work. Hated his HBO comedy "Eastbound & Down." And, while there was a lot that was funny in the 2013 movie "This Is the End," every time McBride appeared onscreen the comedy ground to a halt.

So maybe it's not a surprise that McBride's new HBO comedy, "Vice Principals" (Sunday, 11 p.m.), left me cold. And bored.

The premise actually gave me hope. When a longtime high-school principal (guest star Bill Murray) unexpectedly retires, vice principals Neal Gamby (McBride) and Lee Russell (Walton Goggins) do battle to succeed him. But they both lose when the school board brings in a woman from another state. So Neal and Lee team up to undermine her.

McBride is the creator/writer/executive producer and sometime director of "Vice Principals," and his character is at the center of the show. And Neal Gamby is a horrible human being — bitter about his divorce, obnoxious, arrogant, vulgar and prone to sexism and racism.

Yeah, this leans on "jokes" that are sexist and racist.

Crude comedy can be funny, but this is lots of crude and almost nothing in the way of comedy.

Repeatedly dropping f-bombs doesn't make "Vice Principals" anything but lame. Neal and Lee are childish idiots, sure, but they're not amusing.

The only really good news about "Vice Principals" is that McBride promises it's 18 episodes and done.

Scott D. Pierce covers TV for The Salt Lake Tribune. Email him at spierce@sltrib.com; follow him on Twitter @ScottDPierce.