John From Cincinnati Cancelled
crap!!! hbo has announced that they have cancelled the very good John From Cincinnati after one season. this sucks... not only was it a good show, but it had been getting better as the season has progressed.
this isn't the first time david milch (the brilliant creator of the show) has had a show cancelled by hbo. he was also the man behind Deadwood - at least that show made it through season three
i know they are getting desperate for another big, marquee-type show with the end of The Sopranos and before that Six Feet Under and Sex And the City before that. and with other networks like showtime and fx on their heels with some high-quality programming of their own. however, that doesn't make it all better.
anyway, i guess there isn't much more to say here beyond my disappointment with hbo
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Imperial Beach's cinematic claim to fame is now history. The content and affect was just too weird, even for me. The last line of the show (I think) was John saying, "Mother of God. Cass. Kai" while Kai does an off the lip floater on a decent sized overhead wave. What is that supposed to mean?
And "9-11-14"? What's up with that? A harbinger of Armageddon seven years hence? Or just decent shuffleboard score?
But at least Butchie is off drugs, re-united with his only son and in love with Kai, the manly woman who has always loved him most tenderly, Shaun is reunited with his birth mother and Missy (Shaunie's "Gram") and Butchie are both in a truce with Tina the (ex?)-porno queen whose just come into money (or vice-versa) by hooking up with Linc (her biggest trick yet?), who is retiring wealthy, young and with a modicum of redemption for accepting blame for all the goofy strangeness with Shaun's miracle recovery and later disappearnce as a mere publicity stunt to promote the Yosts and Stinkweed. Mitch is reconciled with Missy who shows a tell-tale glimmer of gratitude, even if the reclusive old gimp tends to hang around the house too much (get it?) At least he came back to stand up to the microphone for her.
In the other rooms at the Snug Harbor motel, Fast Freddy has gifted his Hawaii drug dealing interests to heavily tatted Moana and left the biz without violence. He hasn't hurt his side-kick Polaka in at least three episodes. What exactly does the future hold for a balded, tatted, jowly, middle-aged ex-drug dealer and his goofy, but oddly centered companion? Who knows, but Freddy seems comfortable with the prospect of facing an unknown future ("Let it play out").
Barry from Azusa (which is a made-up name for a real city near LA meaning "everything from A to Z in the USA") is happy because teddy bears aren't keeping him up at night; they are just teddy bears. And the lawyer Dickstein thinks he's won the Lotto with a fiance suddenly in a state of unrelenting sexual rapture. Did Daphne choose DIckstein because of his name?
Ramon (badly stereotyped and underdeveloped as a character) still has a place to cook and with Shaunie moving in with John and Butchie, at the motel, another mouth to feed; another soul to protect. Is he the true "mother" of the show, or what?
Cass I still don't get (mother of God???), but anyway, she sold her video to Stinkweed's new management so maybe now she can afford to get her brows bleached and maybe buy the actress playing her some more acting lessons (raising the deeper question, which of the show's producers did Emily Ross doink to get the part?) .
Bill Jacks has passed through the worst of his grief by walking up the stairs and talking to his "Lo." And of course, Ziggy promptly returns...the last official (and predictable) miracle of the show (besides showing Kai riding by far the biggest wave ridden by any of the characters in the series, that is.)
In my opinion, Ed O'Neill stole the entire series with some classic (and classy) professional acting totally at odds with the intentionally amateur, "playing themselves" portrayals of acting noviates Keala Kennelly and young Greyson Fletcher. Its like a special producer/director was assigned to have at least one real actor shine (O'Neill) playing a real character revealing real human emotion without all the metaphysical gobbledygook. His wife died before him. He misses her, yet still feels connected to Shaunie in the here and now. Nice, nice stuff. The actor is redeemed from what might otherwise have been a life-long public association with his "Shallow Hal"-like character as the dad in "Married With Children." Which now proves what great actor he was in that role.
Not really sure where Dr. Smith went, and don't really care; the hollowest, most pointless character in the mix.
The series is over and I don't really care about that either, because all the show could ever do was ask the big questions and play act some interesting vignettes that leave one thinking about their meaning. Like the heretofore obscure Bob Dylan song used near the end, "A Series of Dreams," waking up to the cancelled show this morning is like waking up from an extra-vivid dream, wondering what all those bizarre dream images really mean.
Mission accomplished.
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