ON EMPTY

 

I remember A Man in Full from the time in the last century when it was the very next Thomas Wolfe book after the super successful The Bonfire of the Vanities. It was good, but it was doomed to disappoint… Vanities, after all, was the book of its time. A Man in Full just wasn’t.

That still does not explain why it took so long to come to the screen. Perhaps it was the unbelievably bad film adaptation of Vanities that came to be known as the greatest bomb in the meteoric career of Tom Hanks, and the film that all but sank the career of actress Melanie Griffith.  Whatever it was, A Man in Full is here now and, perhaps, the nicest thing that can be said for it is that it is a better cinematic adaptation than The Bonfire of the Vanities. But then, little isn’t.

All that said, I am betting you will never guess my biggest disappointment with episode one of this Netflix series (which, for the record, I found to be tedious,  heavy handed, and borderline amateurish). Beyond my feelings about how bad the whole thing was, nothing compared to my reaction at the end of the season opener when, there on the screen, was David Kelley’s credit as writer/producer. I all but gasped aloud. I cannot begin to communicate what little appetite I have for bashing yet another show of Kelley’s.

David Kelley’s career and mine almost overlap and I will pretty much concede that back in the day, his work was every bit as good as mine and some (most?) might even say, “better.” Works from the long ago such as Boston Legal, The Practice, Picket Fences and Ally McBeal were all very solid examples of a talented writer/producer. More recently there has been the so/so Goliath and Big Little Lies, then the very lazy mini-series The Undoing, followed by such mediocre work as The Lincoln Lawyer, Nine Perfect Strangers, and now A Man in Full.

Lately, a reader of these notes might intuit that I am “on his case” for, as I recently wrote, “staying too long at the fair.” Some might surmise (incorrectly) that I have a kind of “jones” for this guy I never had the time or pleasure to meet. It is simply not true.

David E. Kelley was always prolific, capable of pounding out an abundance of material, rapid fire, that was almost always top drawer. But lately? Everything of his I have seen … quite frankly… subpar.

I am not going to go through the litany of mediocre choices made by this once very brilliant writer and would even like to think that had I known in advance that A Man in Full was his, I might have put off the viewing to avoid the appearance of beating a broken drum.

But I did not know, and the focus of my feelings all came down to that “Oh, No” moment when Kelley’s name came on screen at the very end of episode one of A Man in Full. The opening episode was a virtual lesson on how NOT to introduce characters or the situations upon which your entire series will be based.

I forced myself to watch the second episode, finding it improved somewhat (how could it not) but the bad taste from the premiere episode remained. After a break of one or two days I forced myself to sit through episodes three through the bizarre finale in episode six, grateful that someone had thought to cast the almost always wonderful Diane Lane in this limited series while wondering what a great actor like Jeff Daniels could have been thinking as he created what has to be the worst performance of his entire career.

I migrated to Amazon Prime and a series I had heard of but for the longest time had decided to avoid. Turns out, Mr. & Mrs. Smith was a tutorial on how to begin a series. A course David Kelley could once have taught but one he now needs to take as a refresher.

The writing, the casting, the pace of Mr. & Mrs. Smith were all spot on and even though not every episode is a winner, the good will established by Maya Erskine and Donald Glover as the series leads, along with series creators Francesca Sloane and Donald Glover, carries the evening(s). I like this one a lot… even a whole lot better than the movie with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie that started it all two decades ago.

Erskine, whom I have never seen before, is simply a delight and Donald Glover is her perfect foil. A couple of unknown (to me at least) leads with more chemistry than Pitt and Jolie? Who woulda thunk it?

And, better yet, who woulda thunk you could start the summer with such adventures and never need to leave the comfort of your home television screen.

 

 

Barney Rosenzweig