Jon, through no fault of Livingston’s, is just an enigmatic barrel of platitudes. The same is true with how Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why and Katherine Langford found a way, in the first season at least, to make Hannah into more than just the girl who killed herself. However, and this may be where A Million Little Pieces really falls apart, This Is Us treated Jack as a real person before treating him like a dead person. To give the show some credit, the mystery playing out mirrors the uncertainty experienced by the main characters, so this isn’t a This Is Us-style manipulation of the audience by withholding details that the characters onscreen already know. Suicide is often a baffling mystery to loved ones left behind, but rather than being content with that mystery, there’s something more literal going on in A Million Little Things and it isn’t the least bit interesting. Finally, Jon’s widow, Delilah (Stephanie Szostak), is left picking up the pieces, while parenting daughter Sophie (Lizzy Greene) and son Theo (Tristan Byon). Eddie, a thwarted rock star, is having an affair and looking for a way to end things with his work-obsessed wife, Katherine (Grace Park). Gary is in remission from breast cancer and embarking on what he thinks will be a fling with a fellow cancer survivor (Allison Miller), which we know won’t just be a fling because Miller is a cast regular and she’s great (and formerly starred on NBC’s Go On, a better show about grief). Rome, a commercial director with cinematic dreams, has his own emotional problems he can’t reveal to his wife, Regina (Christina Moses). Inconvenient for him, mighty helpful for them. The surviving friends, grief-stricken, still have their own issues, which Jon’s death may force them to confront. This comes as a shock to Jon’s buddies and fellow Boston Bruins season ticket holders Eddie (David Giuntoli), Rome (Romany Malco) and Gary (James Roday). The series opens with Jon ( Ron Livingston) completing a business deal in his office and, apropos of nothing we see, stepping off the balcony to his death. And while I even more highly doubt that Nash, who boasts a comedy-heavy résumé, intended for A Million Little Things to be a show primarily about death, that’s the sentiment that comes through most strongly after three episodes sent to critics.Ī very good cast and a steady vein of humor keep A Million Little Things watchable, while the fetishizing of death and a failure to generate consistent complementary emotions keep it from rising above a well-intentioned slog, a derivative Thirtysomething Reasons Why. Nash wrote his new ABC drama, A Million Little Things, as an attempt to capitalize on the success of This Is Us, but I don’t doubt that ABC saw the allure of chasing the pot of golden Kleenex at the end of the rainbow, because if there’s one thing network TV is good at, it’s misinterpreted imitation.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |