High Desert

It is a very nice watch and very fast paced not stuck in supergeneric dialogues and plottwists yada yada. It just has a nice offbeat'ish flow and it flows well.

Patricia Arqueutte really nails this role, which surpsided me. I was a but skeptical at first, but when you catch your depressed semi-cynical self laughing about her ways of personifying the character than you just have to give it up.

Sadly they chose to go a bit less offbeat/weird as it could be, with some safe commercial mainstream ingredients in it, and some generic acting from others. If that was different it could have been even great. But I dig it.

This and White House Plumbers kind of share some of the same quirkiness, and I'm down for it.

Also, I'm a sucker for the desert town scenery.

When I first heard about this show I was excited, it had a good premise and cast. So what went wrong? Ultimately, I think the problem is Jay Roach. Who I often like, don't get me wrong, but his direction is too silly. I'd have rather watched this premise taken seriously, at least to SOME extent, but it's just an outright farce. (e.g. I'm currently watching a man dance to Brittney Spears while his accomplice, a heavyset woman, beats up a cop off camera.) I was rooting for Patricia Arquette, Matt Dillon, Brad Garrett, and Bernadette Peters, I really wanted to like it, but it's just not very good. I'll keep watching, maybe it'll surprise me, but I doubt it.

Read some reviews and had caught the tail end of an Arquette interview making the rounds promoting this, so gave it a go.

Myself and the lady liked it some, abd make the point of at least doing 5 or 6 before jumping off, or we wouldn't have finished Ozark or even Better Call Saul...so we stick to that streaming mantra.

We just got bored with it, we were all caught up into week 6 and just felt like it was spinning it's tires. Looked at each other with the week 7 epi ready to fire and decided we just were into it. Very well cast, but disjointed writing just weighs it down and couldn't see ourselves watching another season (if it went that route), let alone another episode. It's just drags...and not sure any of the characters matter.

I approached this show with poor expectations. Just to let myself be entertained for twenty minutes. Indeed, at first sight this looked like one of those low-budget internet TV series for a young generation suffering from low attention spam.

What I actually encountered is absolutely brilliant and delightful. Fresh, provocative, sparkling, funny and very original.

Quite obviously, something like this could only work with a very solid cast and I must confess I have always appreciated Arquette's talent, but this is another dimension all together. The entire thread, in its minimalism, rests on her shoulder and she leads wonderfully with a consistent support from her fellow colleagues.

The cherry on the cake for an irregular but very interesting career. I expect she should receive some sort of award for this. She deserves it.

The opening of episode one was a great hook. Pulled me in and had me interested...

But...

After that point, there wasn't any real "storytelling". There were a bunch of scenes strung together to hopefully make some sort of story.. but no ACTUAL storyline or overall plot.

No clue where it was going.. often bored by how it was getting there.

Sure some moments were humorous and Arquette does a great job with the role.. but.. it's meandering.. wandering.. seeking to find a reason. There is not clear plot.. no expectation for anything that's been foreshadowed.. no mystery to solve... no outcome to hope for... no future.

With about 5 minutes left in episode 4 I bailed.. bored to tears.. never to look back.

Why doesn't anyone focus on good storytelling any more??? It would appear most newer productions either want to make a puzzle out of any overall plot.. or just avoid any overall plot altogether. This series was the latter.

If I can't see any light at the end of the tunnel... it's a trap... not a tunnel. This.. this is a trap.