You Should Be Watching: Run on HBO
Run.
I could see the pitfalls of the Jacoby Ellsbury contract coming years before injuries hampered any chance the former Red Sox center fielder had at carving out a place for himself on the pantheon of all-time great Yankees. Maybe it’s just because I was let down, time and again, whenever my beloved Boston baseball team inked a big name free agent. Carl Crawford, Pablo Sandoval, Rusney Castillo. Every offseason, the Red Sox seemed to nab one of the biggest names on the market and, without fail, the names seemed to falter when they actually stepped onto the diamond. Get burned enough times and you start to think that free agents are not all their agents allege them to be.
But then, I started seeing the pattern across sports. Superstars sign for big paydays and immediately let up on the gas pedal. Was Albert Pujols ever an impact player for the Angels? Has Le’Veon Bell moved the needle for Jets? What good did Joakim Noah provide for the Knicks on his $70 million+ deal a couple years ago? This isn’t just a Boston thing. Sometimes, a player is an incredible one on paper. All-Star caliber, maybe even Hall of Fame worthy. But it’s not so simple as inking him and transferring his talents and records to your team. You need chemistry, motivation, inspiration. You need something new. Or else, the best recipes on paper will falter when it comes time to execute.
This is true for sports, but it’s also true of some movies and television shows. Every now and then, a project is announced that seems far too good to be true. The perfect cast, an amazing team behind the scenes, a super cool premise. But then, it just never comes together in the way that it should when considering the pedigree and the pathos.
Like 2020’s Downhill. Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell, two of the all-time great comedic actors, working with Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (#AndAMovie), the team behind beloved indie darlings like The Descendants and The Way, Way Back. It’s drawing on excellent source material and it comes out in February and it’s just kind of “meh.” It’s almost worse to be meh than to be bad. At least if you’re bad, you get remembered. But Downhill just came with a thud. I liked it, but I should have adored it.
The same is true of 2017’s Suburbicon. The cast? Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Oscar Isaac. The director? George Clooney. The writers? The fucking Coen Brothers. And what’s the result? I can’t even remember a single frame of this movie. Jeez. It was perfect on paper, right? What a let down.
At a certain point, you just start to put up walls, you know? Kemba Walker signs with the Celtics and I’m apprehensive. Greta Gerwig signs up to adapt Little Women and I pause. These are two things that have come out exceedingly perfect and yet, I was worried going into them because of how many times I’ve been burned before.
It’s even worse on television. I haven’t trusted a single must-be-good series to actually be good on this side of Vinyl.
So I was worried when it was announced that Mrs. America and Run would be debuting on Hulu and HBO, respectively, on the same week. Two of the most highly anticipated miniseries of 2020 coming at the same time? Surely, they would not both prove to be zeitgeist shows? One of them had to fail.
The thing is, I didn’t want either of them to fail. Not that I ever want something to fail, but my history of recognizing these patterns showed me that only one could prevail.
Run. A miniseries with a premise so perfect you comb your memory for an example of when it had to have been done before. Merritt Wever and Domhnall Gleason play a former couple who agree to drop everything in their lives if they both text “RUN” to one another at any point in the future. From the minds of Vicky Jones, Kate Dennis, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, it’s been long anticipated by any television fan.
Mrs. America. A miniseries about the politics behind passing the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. From Dahvi Waller, Stacey Sher, Anna Boden, and Ryan Fleck, the show’s cast is as stacked with superstars as its soundtrack is. Cate Blanchett, Rose Byrne, Elizabeth Banks, Uzo Aduba, Ari Graynor, Melanie Lynskey, Jeanne Tripplehorn, John Slattery, Tracy Ullman, Margo Martindale, Sarah Paulson, Niecy Nash, James Marsden.
Both shows have basically coated themselves in pollen for the Emmy voter bees and, to my even greater surprise, both shows are extremely good. I am so eager to read and listen to any sort of coverage about both, but there seems to be plenty for Mrs. America (and I’m sure I’ll write about it often in the future with awards season around the corner). Instead, I want to use whatever pull Saoirse Ronan Deserves an Oscar has to advocate for Run as the show that everyone should be watching right now. It’s easily my favorite new show of 2020.
The premise alone is enough to entice a soaring romantic like me, but the pedigree had me completely sold. Fleabag was one of the best shows of 2019 and Gleason and Wever are among the most charismatic working actors today. The two of them have delivered such thought-provoking and funny performances so far. (I can’t wait to see just how many levels Wever can crank it up to.) From the opening scene of the show, when Wever sits in her car and contemplates the text massage, I was hooked. What follows is a story with the same levels of thrill, propulsion, and mystery as something like Collateral. Planes to New York, trains to Chicago, races against the clock in the city, cat and mouse sleuthing around banks and stores and hotels. And we’re only in episode three of a seven set slate!
The electrifying magnetism of a road tip thriller like Collateral or Midnight Run is palpable in Run to the point where it feels like the show would be perfect for binge-watching (an episode has yet to clock in over forty minutes). Yet, it is married by the sweetness and the sexuality percolating behind every guards-up conversation between Wever and Gleason. It’s Collateral meets Before Sunrise. Two characters, with a love that should probably be forbidden and an undeniable chemistry, just hashing it out as adults, wherever their travels may take them. They talk about love and life, but they also talk about regret and shame. It’s a fairy tale grounded by the crushing reality of what they’ve done by running away from their lives; there are other people impacted in fairy tales, too.
It’s a premise that would feel right at home in a “Modern Love” column, but the sensibilities of the show’s production team and writers have really shone through so far. They’re not afraid to grapple with the gravity of what this situation would look like and how it would genuinely unfold. What’s more, episode three has already deposited the pair into their destination city. There’s still four more installments and I have no clue where it could possibly be headed from here. It’s Vicky Jones’ show, but it feels like the undeniable blend of Waller-Bridge’s two biggest TV projects, Killing Eve and Fleabag. That alone should convince everyone to tune into 2020’s most exciting new show, Run.
Run airs Sunday nights on HBO.
Mistress America airs new episodes every Wednesday on Hulu.
And if you want one more new show, check out Briarpatch and watch full episodes on USA’s on demand service. Support Andy Greenwald!
