No, this doesn't have anything to do with shifting baselines, but I watched all ten episodes of HBO's "John from Cincinnati," which culminated last night and ... all I can say is pretty much, "whaaaaaaat?" I was a fan of the show because of the surf setting and because it was shot in Imperial Beach with our friends at Wildcoast playing a major role as advisors on the local conservation issues (none of which seemed to make it into the film).
My opinion of the show started low (couldn't follow the first episode), then went up when I re-watched the first episode (a surf buddy explained the concept to me in simple terms -- it was a story of a massively dysfunctional family/community into which is introduced an element of structure, the mysterious John Monad from ... somewhere, probably not Cincinnati in the end), then stayed up for a while as I got into the quirky characters, and the show hit a few great moments of synthesis at the end of a couple of episodes where they all felt like one big happy dysfunctional group, but then began to sink as I got tired of a few annoying characters (Rebecca Demornay was just angry and tiresome) and didn't get enough of the best characters (Brian Van Holt as Butchie Yost who was great when they let him occasionally hit his stride).
And then finally, last night's "finale" ended in a blur of confusion and nonsense.
Maybe if I watch it all again I'll have a better opinion. But then who's got time for that. In a show like this you spend much of the time trying to decide, "The director knows what he's doing -- no, wait, he doesn't know what he's doing -- no, wait, he does, no, he doesn't." I'm afraid I was forced to end on a "no, he doesn't" conclusion.
Which again, has nothing to do with shifting baselines, unless it does and I just missed that part.
John (of Cincinnati) confidently paddles himself off into nonsensical oblivion.
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