AppleTV seems to be the go-to streaming service for TV shows and limited series now. For a while HBO held that glory but the emergence of streaming led to Netflix briefly having the honor. But the executives there decide it was best to cancel shows people liked.
Now, it’s cyclical. I still think HBO Max is going overboard with their TV shows and the overall arrogance and pretentiousness of each program’s excellence, but it seems AppleTV has become nothing more than a streaming service for TV programs. Most of the movies that drop on the network are rarely memorable. Even Netflix still hits one out of the park every now and again.
If you ever need evidence that lightning never strikes twice, you need to look at Smoke which reunites Taron Egerton, Greg Kinnear and Denis Lehane in a crime series that’s based on a true story. Although I’d argue that “based” is a very, very loose term. Even Law & Order with its “ripped from the headlines” episodes are more from real life than this series which is outrageously stretched to nine episodes.
The series is based on the Firebug podcast which was based on the crimes committed by John Leonard Orr, who was an arson investigator in the Los Angeles area who committed arsons himself in the 1980s and early 1990s before he was arrested and convicted. The only similarities with Smoke is there is an arson investigator, Dave Gudsen (Egerton), who was committing arson himself.
No spoilers needed as this is revealed in the second episode. Unfortunately the revelation never amounts to anything as Egerton spends the next seven episodes mugging and overacting. The location has been moved from L.A. to the Pacific Northwest so they can film in British Columbia and take advantage of the film/TV tax credits. The movie is set in the fictional Umberland. I’m not kidding. Lehane, a well-respected writer and novelist, actually named a major city fucking Umberland.
So, it’s apparent, the series is nothing more than to show how out of hand limited series or miniseries are becoming in the TV medium. There used to be a time in which were well in a better regard, which I think was due to having the constraints of network TV limiting the run time. As a writer, Lehane should know have heard the phrase “Kill Your Darlings” which means you have to cut the fluff out of your works as well as cutting out good material that just doesn’t work with the story.
Even when Stephen King wrote those overlong miniseries Rose Red and Storm of the Century, you felt like there was going to be some payoff in the end. And HBO already did this story back in 2002 with the TV movie Point of Origin and is was just under 90 minutes with credits included. And it focused more on the real story of Orr than this show does. The casting of John Leguizamo in both that TV movie and this show.
Also in the cast is Jurnee Smollett as Det. Michelle Calderone, with the Columbia Metro Police, It’s never made clear where Umberland or Columbia are. They seem to exist within the same jurisdiction. Calderone has been assigned to work with Gudsen because she was having sex with her boss, Capt. Steve Burke (Rafe Spall), so he demoted her when their relationship went sour. She’s also a survivor of a fatal apartment complex fire her mother started when she was a kid. Her mother has been in prison and up for parole. Yet, very little is done with this except to create a subplot that goes nowhere except to give Michelle a back story that isn’t needed.
Kinnear is Commander Harvey Englehart with the Umberland , who we learn is corrupt as we learn he has been cooking the books to put money away to buy a lake house. This only is revealed in the eighth episode and it’s quickly forgotten. This series feels like it was written by the worse creative writing class in the world. Dave isn’t the only person who is committing arson. The other arsonist is Freddy Fasano (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine) is the fry cook at some chicken restaurant where he is constantly berated and treated badly by his colleagues.
The character of Freddy is where I really started to give up on taking this series seriously. Mwine plays Freddy as someone who has spent two or three days wide awake and needs sleep. Since he is the only other black actor in the main cast, it borders on being very racists as very little is known about Freddy except that he basically has no social life. But seriously, if you saw someone like him out in public, you probably wouldn’t speak to him. I think the writers, directors and Mwine were trying to show how Freddy has a mental illness but I’m reminded of how Maddie Ziegler portrayed an autistic person in Music as someone who just smiles a lot with her upper teeth stuck out.
Speaking of Leguizamo, he is probably the only good thing about the series as he read the script and rolled his eyes, thus ad-libbing most of his lines. He plays Ezra Esposito, a former Columbia police detective who was forced to retire. He also worked with Dave and knows just how fucking nuts he is. And Anna Clumsky get rest assured that Inventing Anna series wasn’t the most outrageous series she was in as she plays an ATF agent who was an English major so she can critique a book Dave wanted to write.
Yes, the real life Orr did try to write a book inspired by his own arsons and work. But at the point in which the series brought in a ball-busting bitch of a literary agent I realized that Lehane and the rest are more or less trolling AppleTV. It’s just another reason why I only have a subscription to this streaming service every now and again so I can watch what everyone is talking about and then save $9.99 a month.
Watch Black Bird instead. It’s better and shorter.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 