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Techtite's TV Reviews! |
"Certainly not a bad premise, and Laura Prepon in a drama is cool to see. We just don't see this series lasting long." ---from the review
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October Road
Some folks say you can never go home again. Whether that's good news or bad, depends all on your home town. If your home town was fun, it's best to be home for the holidays. If your home town was, say, October Road, you'd probably leave skid marks and never look back. Yet the hero of this new drama left October Road, only to come back after ten years, and stick around. The trouble is: we're rather puzzled as to why. The full story goes like this: Nick (Bryan Greenberg) had a seemingly good small town life, when he left town for some reason. He never looked back. Ten years later, he's made big bucks writing a novel which might as well have been titled Small Town Life Totally Sucks. As the series opens; he is asked to return to his hometown for a college lecture...only to fall in love with his hometown again, and decide to stay. So basically you have a guy who hated his home town enough to stay away for ten years, and even wrote a book about how much it sucks, and now wants to stay there anyway. Yikes, dude; inconsistent, much?
It's not even like Nick was going to waltz into Hannah's life, fatherhood or not. For reasons only the scriptwriters understand at this point: Hannah's now living with town scumbag, Ray (Warren Christie), whose two jerk sons throw food at Sam at the dinner table, while Ray pretends what they did was okay. To add injury to insult: Hannah was okay with it too. Why? To hear Hannah tell him later, Ray's been "amazing." I may have a dirty mind, though time out, please. How is this poster boy for birth control "amazing," hmm? This guy has a pitiable brain, with pitiable looks, pitiable father skills, and sub moronic lummoxes as sons. You tell me how this guy could be called "amazing" by the town slut...er, Hannah.
The bigger problem is the dialogue. Sure, it's not like Joe Average Taxpayer in going to recite from Ulysses every morning. He's not about to sound like a mental case, either. "If you can't deliver the bacon, bring them a pig" says one character. In the same episode, Hannah pleas to Nick: "don't upset the apple cart." What apple cart? Apparently, Sweetie thinks her life is an apple cart. Egads...though not half as ignorant as the local college dean's, "What makes you think you can teach [a writing class]...and don't tell me it's because you wrote a popular novel!" Yet how about poor Tom Berenger (as Nick's dad), who is given lines like: "Just because you are an idiot doesn't mean you have to act like one!" It's not like this show is a disaster. We've seen disasters before; most notably Life as We Know It, where the lead character got his mom's attention by snapping her bra strap. That was garbage. This show has some good potential, ,mostly because of likeable, talented stars. Yet in the end, let's just say: it takes a rather foolish series to describe its own "hero" so horribly, within the series itself. As described by the college dean, Nick's story is "The epic struggle of a coward who left his home, wrote a book about the friends and family who he abandoned, for reasons unknown, and now is afraid to face his own life." Maybe someday, the writers for this show can explain exactly why the story of this "coward" is so important to keep watching. Unfortunately, that time is not now.
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Burnout
Near
Miss
Small
Crater
Large
Crater
Deep
Impact
Okay, so there is one reason
for Nick to have returned: his high school sweetheart, Hannah (Laura Prepon). 
That's
the problem with any "Road": you
have a 50/50 chance of driving the wrong way. Similarly: for every
direction this Road takes that is good, there's one equally
bad direction. While
I love the story of a lovable loser adapting to sudden fatherhood, I
could do without the story of Nick's dorky friend having an affair with
his chubby friend's wife. Similarly: while I thought it was cute when Nick's outdoor-phobic friend falls for
the local pizza delivery girl, I could do without the aforementioned
scenes involving Ray, who frankly, should probably be written off the
show. I also like Aubrey (Odette Yustman), the college girl with an eye
for Nick, who creates a very attractive love triangle. Then again; I
could do without Janet, the resident local bartender, who we're apparently
supposed to feel is like America Ferrerra
from Ugly Betty, yet comes off more like Rosie O'Donnell from
The View. Her best line from the series so far: "The past is like a pimple
on prom night." Whatever, girl.
Then there's Nick's
(ex) best friend, Eddie (Geoff Stults). Eddie is supposedly infuriated
by what Nick wrote about him in his book...though not because Eddie even
read it. He saw the movie. Okay; so the show wants Eddie to appear to be
not-so-bright. Yet how far is "too far," before
every scene of Eddie's looks like a cartoon? Example: Eddie wants to sleep with Aubrey, as
"revenge" against Nick. His method: "The talking raccoon story." It's
implied that Eddie has tried this method
before, to rousing success: tell a girl there's a talking raccoon in his
backyard, then when he makes a silly raccoon voice in the shed, she laughs so hard she'll supposedly
swoon, and sleep with him. Let me tell you; I've seen some pretty inane rubbish on TV,
and this story took the cake. In fact; it took the whole bakery.