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• Sunday, July 22, 2007 03:03 PM

  John from 'Doesn't Make Any F$%*ing Sense'-innatti

  Thanks for coming around, H.H. The TV lady at the New Yorker put the choke-slam on JFC over a month ago; for a while, I thought your 'Deadwood'-inspired crush on David Milch was interfering with your judgment.

  'John From Cincinnatti' is an embarrassment to all involved. Such a disappointment. I enjoy being proven wrong, but I just don't see it happening. Rebecca DeMornay's shrieking, shivering Cissy is one of the sadder examples of overacting in recent memory. The usually dependable Bruce Greenwood is utterly unlikable as the whiny, narcissistic Mitch. Brian Van Holt--whose previous career high point was a bit part in 'S.W.A.T.'--is just out of his league. Garrett Dillahunt is utterly wasted in a role that makes no sense. The only reason to cast a real-life surfer who can't act like the girl who plays Kai would be if she ever, you know, was seen SURFING on the show, but so far we just get some of the most amateurish line-reading since O. J. Simpson in 'The Naked Gun.' The coked-up poetry major dialogue worked in 'Deadwood' because it was a period piece, but in 'John' it reveals the hand of a writer who has gotten too used to getting his ass kissed. Look at Milch in his interviews and his little clips for HBO, smugly quoting Henry James and rambling on about 'God' and 'urgency'. Are we sure he hasn't fallen off the wagon, or that the toll the years of snorting up foot-long rails of coke and dropping more acid than a VW bus full of Deadheads hasn't left him too impaired to see how bad his show is, or to rein in his hubris? I'd feel sorry for him if he weren't getting rich off of this shit. I do feel sorry for the execs at HBO, who put all of their apples in the wrong cart. Golden child of Richard Yates and Robert Penn Warren, indeed. JFC just seems like a big acid flashback from his lost-weekend phase. I never thought I'd actually look forward to the end of the hour so I could watch Jeremy Piven and Kevin Dillon mugging on 'Entourage.'

  There are only two good things about John From Cincinnatti: Grayson Fletcher--he can't act his way out of a paper bag, but he's a beautiful kid, effortlessly charming and a delight to watch in the water or on his skateboard with that cool spiked helmet--and the theme song, 'Johnny Appleseed,' from the late, great Joe Strummer and his post-Clash/pre-heart failure band, the Mescaleros. May his magnificent soul rest in peace, and may his family get the royalty checks.

  P.S.--Jim Beaver, if you're reading this: you were awesome as Ellsworth, my favorite 'Deadwood' character (besides the obvious choice of Al Swearengen). Sorry to have to rip on your new show, but maybe it'll get shit-canned and y'all can go ahead and make that 'Deadwood' finale.

  —Anonymous
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