Two and One Season Wonders — a short review
Sometimes a tv show will only last a season, or two, and these shows tend to fall between the cracks of our consciousness (to mix a metaphor). But shorter does not mean less meaningful; in fact it can suggest the opposite. A short run can suggest that the show in question was too thinky, too avant-garde, or too political for the suits to handle. Audiences need more time for shows like these, and cutting them off before they have had a chance to reach and grow an audience is really a loss for everyone.
Such is the case, in my opinion, with two incredibly powerful shows that streamed recently. I would love to see people take a look at both of these remarkable stories, because I think they are brilliant and unusually thought-provoking.
Lodge 49 aired for two seasons right before the COVID shut down, and what a remarkable series it is. Lodge is magical realist comic story about people living in Long Beach California, although the focus is on a down-and-out young surfer and his down-and-out-sister. Dud — whose name riffs on both the Dude of The Big Lebowski (whom he resembles), and the word “dud” (meaning “loser”) — enters a curious lodge and gains entry to a space that is part social club, part secret society, (like the Masons), part modern day Knights Templar, and part I don’t know what. The result is a completely kooky, charming, sad, hilariously moving series about quests for a pay check, healing, poetry publication, a job that doesn’t suck, secret scrolls and more. One of my favorite lines from the show: “Poetry is a lot like Plumbing: it’s all who you know.” Wacky and somehow deep, Lodge 49 riffs on the Thomas Pynchon novel Lot 49 and is completely memorable. You can just relax into its charming strangeness and follow along.
Kindred is the one season only adaptation of Octavia Butler’s pioneering speculative fiction novel, which features a Black heroine who time travels by accident to the antebellum South. This is a MUST watch, in my opinion, because the writing and direction take a brilliant and subtle approach to the material, and the actors are fabulous in it.
People that I talked to were afraid to watch Kindred because they were worried that the show would be so horribly violent they wouldn’t be able to get through it. Well, guess what? It’s a very restrained drama. The brilliance of the series lies in its ability to make the world of the South completely recognizable and mundane. Therein lies its horror. There are no over-the-top theatrics here, just what happens when 21st century people get transported back to the past, where the enslavement of people is everyday. That doesn’t mean the show is boring — to the contrary, it’s riveting.
It’s a series that makes viewers think about how enslavement worked and how individual people responded to its power structure. And it makes us think about how systemic racism changes how we talk and how we act right now in the present.
One of the creepiest subplots in the series occurs when Dana, the heroine, accidentally brings a casual lover, whom she has just met, back in time with her. Although he is a clueless guy with a drinking problem, and has no idea how to behave in the world he’s been thrust into, Kevin is simply accepted by the plantation owners, for the mere fact of being white. On the other hand, Dana does know how to act in this terrible world. What does that tell you about how far we’ve come as a society?
The acting is fantastic, and the characters are poignant and complicated. In fact the show is so incredible, I can’t help but wonder if Kindred got cancelled because it was too thoughtful, and because it chose to use a quiet, subtle approach to the violent and horrifying subject matter. And this approach got audiences thinking in ways that were challenging. As for Lodge 49, this goofy story asks serious questions about what we’re working for and why. Don’t quests for meaning matter still in the 21st Century? Don’t out of work people get to dream? That’s also an uncomfortable question.
I think you should check these shows out. Both watchable on Hulu.
