The Lowdown

FX/Hulu trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE9bq37W3Qo

I was mesmerized for about half an hour, and then...

We'd been unable to find a satisfying series. Well, we watched "The Empress," which is an interesting Netflix show about the Habsburg dynasty and the magical Empress Elisabeth married to the young Emperor Franz... I was trying to remember some of the facts from Modern European History, the AP course I took in high school, but the teacher was boring and so was the book and after applying to college...I can't say that I took it seriously.

"The Empress" was intriguing, although not fast-paced. If you're looking for a lot of dialogue, this is not your show. But the sets were utterly amazing! And the history...the details may be fiction, but basically it's all true.

Then we tried the highly recommended Mexican series "The Dead Girls" on Netflix and for the first fifteen minutes it mesmerized me even more than "The Lowdown," but then...it had a tone problem. Was this a gritty series or a farce? We haven't watched further to find out.

But the settings of both "The Dead Girls" and "The Lowdown" are similar in that they're off the beaten path. "The Dead Girls"...I love these shows outside the city in Mexico and South America. The streets may not be paved, there may be an outdoor food stand/restaurant on the corner, it's extremely visceral. As for "The Lowdown"...it's set in the outskirts of Tulsa...that's right, "livin' on Tulsa time." And the makers of this show are aware of Tulsa's musical history, the first episode ended with Leon Russell's "Stranger in a Strange Land."

So...

What we've got here is Ethan Hawke as a self-styled "truthstorian"...

Other than the images, which were so rich in hi-def, this was the other element that drew me in, because I know people like this. In that if you enter their lives into a ledger, there's not much to show, but they're far from stupid and they truly believe in their ideas and their future. I mean everybody need a code to survive, a belief in a path forward, otherwise you're just sitting somnambulantly on the couch watching television.

You come to Los Angeles to make it. It's different from New York City in that there's no admission fee, no criteria, no C.V. needed to play. You could have dropped out of college for all people care. This is not finance requiring a college degree, L.A. is the land of hustlers, and some make it, most don't, and then there are others that manage to keep their heads above water in the business, and the business is entertainment.

On the way up everybody's got a story. Usually puffed-up. They're selling themselves, their ideas. And most of them are full of sh*t, but that doesn't mean they don't tell a good story.

And if you live in the hinterlands, where there's no delineated game, you make up your own...with your own playing field and rules. That is what Ethan Hawke is doing as Lee Raybon. He's all about divining the truth and laying it down, meanwhile running a rare bookstore that never seems to make a sale. Oh, he's got an ex and a kid, and the kid, "Francis," is fantastic...an early teen with just enough savvy not to have the wool pulled over her eyes, she's paying attention, she wants to participate, she wants to be involved.

As for her mother, Samantha...she's had to learn the score, had to learn that as good a tale as Lee tells, he's not to be trusted, and his dreams are just that, dreams. Samantha is not a femme fatale, but a survivor.

As for Jeanne Tripplehorn as Betty Jo... I thought she was out of action for a while, I certainly hadn't seen her, but I checked online and she's been acting...this is no longer the seventies when you're aware of and have probably seen everything an actor has done.

And Tripplehorn leans into the plot. And this is where "The Lowdown" starts to falter. Because the plot is somewhat traditional. Good vs. bad, righteous vs. evil. If only a more innovative plot could have been devised.

So, as you watch you realize every episode has a formula. Ethan/Lee pokes his nose where it shouldn't be and ends up in deep trouble, which he escapes from in the end. It becomes predictable and ultimately laughable. The jeopardy, the tension...you're just wondering how Ethan/Lee is going to be saved, not whether he will be.

And as real as some of the characters are, others are so two-dimensional as to be cartoons. The two ex-cons providing security for the bookstore...nobody is this dumb, even dumb people.

The images are fantastic, and so is Hawke. Until...he gets himself in these situations. He's got a lot of personality, which he trades on...the educated loser, but then he starts playing too broad with the stupid comedy and...

We only pulled up "The Lowdown" because we couldn't find another full series to watch. My policy is binge only, I refuse to be subjected to the week by week dribble... what, are we living in the 1980s? Is this "L.A. Law"? Or "thirtysomething"?

Then again, I was thinking about "thirtysomething" while watching "The Lowdown," because in that eighties show the tone was consistent. Striving baby boomers, dealing with relationships, marriage, children, careers... "thirtysomething" felt real. The more "The Lowdown" plays out, the less real it appears.

Will we watch the ensuing episodes?

We would have if they were all available now, but this show is not good enough to have me yearning to see them, to see what happens, which is clear anyway...ETHAN HAWKE/LEE RAYBON TRIUMPHS! It's as predictable as a sitcom. Whereas remember when Gary died in "thirtysomething"? There was no way you could see that coming.

So, "The Lowdown" has the elements, it's just the way they're put together that is unsatisfying. It's got interesting characters, but their interaction is so predictable...

Yes, this is FX, and they get kudos for producing higher brow fare, but "The Lowdown" could be higher, but it's not. When you strip away the images and the character actors you've got a retread plot, and what fun is that?


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