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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I've been a big fan of Milch's earlier work, and I tried for several episodes to get into John from Cincinnati, but there's a thin line between quirky and tedious, and John crossed it for me way too many times. The biggest problem is the John character himself, whose repeated catch phrases are so obnoxiously "precious" it feels like being nudged hard in the ribs over and over again by someone saying "look at how quirky this is" until you start wishing the log lady from "Twin Peaks" would show up and club John to death with her log.
Whatever, the show has its fans, and I hope y'all are able to keep the show alive for more than one season, because I have a feeling you're looking at yet another in an increasingly long line of recent shows where HBO pulls out and leaves fans in the lurch (so best to be ready to concoct your own stories about what everything means on the show and what happens in the end).
If anything, the HBO show John from Cincinnati most reminds me of is not Carnivale nor Deadwood, but K-Street (anyone remember that? Don't all raise your hands at once, now). Like JFC, K-Street similarly had a high pedigree, coming from folks like Steven Soderbergh; it was ambitious and-- increasingly as the show went on-- it attempted to be self-consciously quirky (wait, now who the hell was Elliot Gould supposed to be? etc.). Like JFC, it mixed non-actors with respected acting vets. Problem was, it was a muddle from episode one, and even a lot of viewers who wanted to like the show gave up on it after one too many confusing plot points and botched comedic scenes. After its first season, HBO quietly put K-Street to sleep.
Coincidentally, at least one of K-Street's actors, John Slattery, is now on AMC's "Mad Men," so, buck up, t.v. fans, there's hope after all, in that at least once actors are salvaged from the wreck of a failed show, they can wind up in something much better. Maybe after JFC gets cancelled, Ed O'Neill can finally get the darker, complex role we all know he's a good enough to play, instead of one where he's way-too-whimsically befuddled and talking to a bird.
Check the HBO message boards for JFC. The last episode that so mystified you has thousands of intelligent, well thought out posts. Dissecting with reason, and rationale explanations, the whole speech. Read some of those dissections and you'll sit there, shaking your head and saying; "Duh, why the hell didn't I see that, it makes so much sense." Of course, if you're already belittling the show, you haven't been paying attention, so it won't make sense, which is a shame. Nearly everyone who saw the episode last week was affected, including some raging atheists who had been watching the show simply to get fodder to flip shit at everyone else.
Some of the most poignant posts on there are from the atheists themselves... Grudgingly admitting that they damned sure weren't going to believe in god or anything, but there was something about the show, and about that last episode that inexplicably moved them to tears.
I am moved to tears by the show... And chilled beyond belief (In a thrilling, goosebumpy way) during the last episode when it appeared that all the elements were moving into place.
Sometimes you just can't be an elitist. Sometimes you just have to trust the abilities of a master storyteller to move you; gently, lurching, smoothly, violently if need be, into the story, into that world, let go, and believe.
Man, I cannot agree with you enough about "John from Cincinnati." As pissed as I was at the cancellation of Deadwood, and now with word from HBO that the two two-hour wrap-up movies' chances of happening are "50-50," it would be easy to take it all out on "John."
But this show *so* doesn't need any pretense for calling it a sorry mess. Apparently I didn't stick with it as long as you did. I gave it four solid episodes. I'm all for letting David Milch's genius hit the screen unrestrained, but in this case I think someone should've sat him down and said, "um, David, you realize this story isn't really going anywhere, right?" And if he said he was making some kind of artistic statement that life is chaos, well, that's all well and good, but it doesn't necessarily make good television, you know?
Why was Milch in such a rush to stop making Deadwood and start down this road? Perhaps it's an HBO lie, blaming it on Milch... Either way, as bad as "John from Cincinnati" is, I hope it is also forever laden with the tag, "the show that they killed Deadwood for." They should take this thing out back and slit its throat, then get on with the Deadwood movies.
I'm waiting for Endora to make an appearance.
The admen are the heroes....just like "Bewitched".
I find "Mad Men" heavy handed. All the period stuff comes off like a sledgehammer to swat a fly. I grew up in the era, many of the people depicted in the show would have been friends with my parents. My mother smoked through all her pregnancies, my parents drank, the cars had no seat belts and we didn't wear helmets on our bikes when we rode unsupervised to the local variety store.
I'm one of "those people" who writes "that stuff," someone who knows how the magician is supposed to pull the rabbit out of the hat right, and "Mad Men" pulls the rabbit out perfectly - it's like sitting close enough to the stage to see the magician do his work if he's not good, and not spotting a thing. I liked "Mad Men" so much that when I finished watching the first broadcast of the show I sat through the rebroadcast just to watch everything in detail be done so beautifully.
Here's something interesting all the rest of you didn't know: "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," the pilot episode, was the script that got Matt Weiner his job on "The Sopranos."
I think the best comment I've heard about the show comes from a friend of mine who spent a career in advertising, starting as an artist at J.Walter Thompson in May, 1960 (he was the guy who was Draper's partner doing the artwork who asked "do we drink before the meeting or after?"). His comment: "It was real."
Your comment that the show should be required viewing for those who think feminism wasn't about anything important os absolutely right.
I love it when something lives up to my hopes rather than down to my expectations, as this does and JFC doesn't.
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