Eastsiders

When Eastsiders hits the sweet spot it's great. Touching, authentic, funny, and sad - all the feels! But in between the splendid highs is a lot of relationship and existential navel gazing. I get it that 20-somethings into the 30-somethings are inclined to wonder out loud a lot about where they've been, where they're going, who they're going with yadayada but this ensemble are way to easily distracted by their own self-importance. Personally, I think the writing and character development improves over the seasons, although I loved the short-format of its early days. It never gets any less unbelievable that everyone in Silverlake knows each other, are hot as anything and have great sex all over the place, but these aren't exactly drawbacks. Traci Lords and Willam Belli playing it for the cheap seats are fabulous. I really like Eastsiders a lot. It's good tv and way overdue in the 21st century.

I think the younger you are (if you're gay) the more this will resonate with you. The writing is uneven, but the starting premise is interesting. It's infidelity but not just simple infidelity. And the production values and photography are both fine.

Overall, the gay characters are better done than the straight characters. The gay characters are more underwritten, e.g., the actors communicated with their faces/bodies a lot, which is a good thing; it wasn't so dialog driven. The straight characters on the other hand seemed overwritten and, frankly, unconvincing.

As the episodes progress, some of the coincidences are a bit much. And the way people relate to each other doesn't always seem real. A lot of the time it does, but a lot of the time it doesn't.

For those of you with a lot more life experience this will be harder to take. For example, the art gallery/art world shown is like somebody's idea of what that world is like, rather than what it's really like. That's true for a lot of things, including some relationships. However, most of the gay hook ups/relationships were plausible to me because, well, been there done that.

Still, I found this very watchable, even though I knew the quality was just above average. But like I say, the younger you are, the more likely you will be to enjoy it.

Finally a series that speaks to a Gay (and general) audience that pretty much ticks all the boxes. It has nuance, humour, heart and soul wrapped in an intelligent script and delivered with expert acting and high production values, to deliver an engaging and touching story that will make most viewers want to watch it all in one sitting. This is everything that its predecessors isn't. It's the series that hits the sparsity of good Gay television choices right out of the ballpark. Eastsiders sets the bar at the level a LGBT audience deserves. Highly recommended! Thank goodness for subscription television! Eastsiders is a stunning example of what channels like Netflix can deliver. I loved this!

Set in what appears to be Silverlake in LA, Eastsiders describes itself as a "dark comedy"...but the writing had nothing worth laughing at. The ACTING on the other hand was in fact laughable in a face-palm kind of way-- an example being one of the leads, John Halbach, obliviously miscast as a straight character...because his boyfriend, the writer and other lead (surprise!) didn't have the courage to say, "oh, honey...no...you don't "do" straight very well". This is one of those projects where all the parts were written as vehicles for these aspiring writer-director-actors to showcase their particular abilities (or lack thereof) to potentially catch someone's eye for future projects (an example being a scene where one particularly bland actor, Matthew McKelligon gets to speak Schweizerdeutsch..to show he can). Luckily, however, this forum did appear to help a certain brilliant and amazing star, Constance Wu (who was the ONLY reason I watched this mess). Although the writing for her is pretty much as predictable and stale as the rest of the characters (all of whom seem to be written in the tone of an ultra-liberal male feminist), she is the only actor who actually carried the scenes and personalized the character to any depth (she is the only one who really stands out as having formal training). In fact, these 4 VERY generous stars are only because of Constance, who I'm hoping will not have this mess come back to haunt her, in what I hope is a very long and successful career.

Season One: 7/10

Themes: Drama, LGBTQ+, Gay Couple, Cheating, Hurt & Relationships.

Review: These characters were honestly all extremely unlikable. They constantly did things that would frustrate me and generally just annoyed me. Sometimes it was also a little hard to understand their thought-process since the editing and writing of this series is done in a way that leaves out a lot of details. Not only are the episodes short, but the dialogue is also not very revealing. I genuinely felt like I was missing certain information and feelings. Nonetheless, though, I did find the lives of these characters interesting and I was pretty emerged into the story. I honestly think this all had the potential to be a lot better if the writing had encompassed more detail.

Top three characters: 1) Thom, 2) Kathy and 3) Ian.