The main character isn’t very likeable, but yet he is because he’s a con man. He’s conning you, the viewer, into liking him while also being a nasty guy who steals an entire town’s money and tries to maintain another sham he apparently wishes wasn’t one.
I haven’t watched stuff like Breaking Bad, but I know what that show’s about enough to say this show definitely takes influence from that one. I can’t say I was entertained, but I was certainly fascinated by the double life and there were a lot of surprises that I didn’t see coming.
I don’t know if I’d say he’s conning us, we see moments where he’s by himself and presumably not behind any kind of mask. It’s more like he really became the nice guy con character he was pretending to be and decided to make it as real as possible. I did NOT expect him to save his former life at the last second, I just assumed the tension would be from all those people trying to track him down.
Though the two wives will eventually introduce some real pathos.
The main character isn’t likable and his dopey optimism that he can lead two lives based on lies is even more detestable than if he just wanted to be a full on con man. There were multiple scenes that just dragged on and on and on. They over did the whole “character silently reflecting, let’s play a hip indie song that sort of relates to his mood” thing that House used to do once per episode. I think there were like 2 or 3 of these sequences and they also dragged on and on.
I’ll grant that they did a decent job of building up the main character, of showing his two lives and why they both make him happy. I actually feel more sympathetic to all the people he’s screwing with his cons. Even Jon Voight’s slightly even oil man.
I don’t care if it’s the best premiere of the season. Like most of the new shows I’ll wait to make sure it isn’t being canceled after three episodes. If the ratings go up (which I have no control over) I’ll start watching in October.
I’d watch it if it was on FX or AMC, I trust them to give me a full season.
I’d heard the buzz in other threads and checked it out.
I do not see the appeal that some have lauded. And AV Club is out of its mind.
Middling fair at best. Midland is generic suburb #3. Houston was a near vacant floor of an office building (and Houston has plenty of those).
Apparently, we’re supposed to root for the bigamist. I like David Keith, but he seems to have been given a 2-dimensional (maybe 1.5) character whose life plan was to use his son indefinitely, in cons, in the same field (oil and gas) - in the same state!
I’m not even going to give the next episodes of this show a chance.
I think the Studio 60 pilot was worth watching even though that show completely went to shit an episode later. If that is the case here, I don’t think it detracts from the accomplishment that the pilot is.
Had I not just watched Memento, I’d give this a shot tonight. It’s downloaded, but I’m (for the moment) all tied up in non-linear narrative.
EDIT: I watched it, and it’s bloody brilliant. In the UK my statistics can’t count, so I can’t really help save it, but I’m going to keep watching and retweet to #savelonestar as much as possible.
Saw the pilot and it was OK. It probably read better as a script. Clearly they wanted something along the lines of The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Deadwood et al but what they ended up with felt closer to Dallas with JR and Bobby merged into the same character. It all had a very lightweght, soapy feel.
One problem was the casting. Most of the actors lacked weight or presence – while the two women in the protagonist’s life were clearly supposed to represent the sweet Betty Yin of domestic life and the tart Veronica Yang of money and power, in practice they felt like a couple of interchangeable hot models from a casting book. And the main character seemed affable and earnest … not like a guy pretending to be affable and earnest, mind you, but like a kid at the freshman mixer. (I suspect he was originally written to be older and then cast younger.) The only one with any gravitas was Jon Voight’s curmudgeon patriarch, and frankly if Jon Voight is the best actor in your show you’re not going to be beating out HBO and AMC at the Emmys.
The other major problem is that they bent over backward to try to make the protagonist likable, giving him his not-very-believable “But I really just want to help them!” change of heart at the end. Here’s a newsflash: we watch shows like The Sopranos not because the characters are nice but because we find them fascinating. The guy here doesn’t come across as fascinating, he comes across as merely short-sighted and naive.
Still, it’s an interesting idea for a show, and I can see how it could be done well … just not on Fox.
Stick a fork in it. Monday’s ratings were 21-percent lower than last week’s dismal ratings, and, even worst, the show lost 50-percent of its viewers by the half-hour mark.
That last stat is telling: People aren’t liking what they’re watching.
