Anyone watching this? I'm on episode 4 and really enjoying this. I didn't even realize Bryan Cranston created it or was in it til I started it. Very well done show!
I started it a few days ago. I'm 3 or 4 episodes in as well. So far it's OK but I'm hoping it gets better because I think it could be pretty decent. Not sure where they'll be able to go after this first storyline plays out.
It was an enjoyable season. They must be signed for at least one more season based on how the finale ended.
1 and a half episodes in. The blonde leading lady is supposed to be the main character's sister-but-not-really, right? It's to be expected that the main character is taken aback by being so close to her, but it was weird when she exhibited the same awkwardness with him. Like there's not supposed to be sexual tension, but there is lol.
The delicate balance from the looking glass involving the real and the fiction is first deeply rooted in our expectations of protagonists and antagonists. In the villain tradition, we rarely see a series focus on two paths crossing and the actual cultivation of evil intentions. This was "Breaking Bad". It redefined the anti-hero not by just blurring the lines of morality as The Sopranos and others did beforehand, but actively developing the juxtaposition of Walter's slow-burn evil turn and Jesse's mental state becoming unhinged and ultimately becoming the only pure and worthy opposition to WW. In any TV series, setting is so important. We want to see the beast in the natural habitat, but it isn't always entertaining. You get a lot of suburban angst build-up in BB. Cereal every morning. Ugly SUV. Capitalist healthcare forcing unthinkable decision-making. Suburban monotony makes the most sense for network television sitcom fodder, so when it replaces dark alleys and boiler room police stations in a gritty crime thriller, that authenticity resonates even more. But the character has to fit the setting in order for the character to resonate. If we don't connect to the characters in their natural habitat, we will never come to understand the underlying struggle. Cheers would not work as a Cocktail Lounge. Friends doesn't work if its about lower-middle class Cubans in Miami. Sure, writing and cast are important too, but who is to say someone other than Jason Alexander wouldn't have been able to pull off a manic alpha male George Costanza? I've seen setting switch ruin a promising show. This is never more evident in Weeds. This is a show with such a great foundation, and a truly unfortunate setting switch which destabilizes the entire nature of the characters relationships with one another and completely ruins what worked so well. The ecosystem shift is ultimately the undoing of several plots. "Sneaky Pete" has 2 fundamental problems. 1.) Cranston doesn't fit his role. His protestant jawbones and clean-cut appearance do a very poor job of conveying "Brutal thug". I'd argue Gary Cole in Pineapple Express does a better job of pulling off the believable WASP criminal kingpin. 2.) The workplace setting of the show creates a strange "buddy-cop" dynamic between Marius and his fake cousin that isn't conducive to the overall pacing of the show. This vignette inside a show is delicate, and too ambitious. It accomplishes the narrative goal of outlining Marius' skills and ties to the criminal underworld but in my opinion it simply doesn't gel. It isnt Taxi. It isnt WKRP in Cincinnati. It's too quickly paced and undeveloped to service as anything but a source of plot noise.
