Luck – “Episode Three”

Luck’s first season is nine episodes long. So if we chop that up into thirds, this week’s episode marks the end of the season’s first act. So while the name of the game is still “setting things up” (sounds like a pretty crappy game), don’t expect it to last too much longer. I enjoy a little bit of downtime as much as the next guy, but I’ve got that itch. The one that says the show needs to show someone getting brutally murdered. If for no other reason than to take my mind off of Walter’s soul-crushing depression over what happened to Delphi. That stuff gets me every time.

“People make adjustments.”

At this point in the show, Ace is still working on the fringe of the action, setting up stuff that will come later. But when his parole officer sees Ace in the gym and hears that the hotel has closed it down just for him he says, “People make adjustments.” He couldn’t have been more right. Ace is a person people live in fear of. The best example of this comes when he visits the board of his company that trades stocks and makes Ace money, I guess. As soon as he marches in that room and starts barking orders, you can kind of see everyone’s sphincters instinctively clench, just waiting for him to get the hell out of there. Nathan Israel, the only one of Ace’s lackeys who may turn out to be not much of a lackey at all is the guy he takes notice of. And Ace invites Israel back to his hotel to grill him and ultimately offer him a job. There’s something I really like about the fact that Ace is a mover and a shaker, out in the world doing big things after being locked up for three years. But every time he hooks up with Gus he turns into just another old guy, taking the piss with everyone he comes in contact with. The two of them falling asleep while talking to each other at the end of the day isn’t really doing much to help things.

Serenity Now 

One of the things I love about David Milch is illustrated really well in the opening credits of that great cop drama, NYPD Blue. In the middle of this loud, clanging drum beat, everything gets quiet and we hear these very calming synthesized strings and, I don’t know, an oboe or something. What I’ve always taken from that is that in the middle of all the craziness we’re seeing on screen, there are moments of great beauty, when everything else just kind of falls away. We saw the same thing this week with the four shitbirds, after they buy Mon Gateau from Mulligan. After Turo runs down this laundry list of expenses (it turns out owning a horse costs a lot of money), Renzo asks if they can pet him. Now, I know I’m taking this way overboard, but there’s this sense that walking up to this animal and petting him is some sort of cleansing ritual. Almost like its innocence rubs off in some small way on those who surround it. Even Turo drops his hardass act for a few minutes to watch, and hands them all carrots to feed the horse, telling them all to make sure and keep their hands open when they give them to him. It was a nice moment. But of course, it could never last, and it isn’t long before Marcus is calling everyone an asshole and Jerry’s back at the poker tables, losing money to Chan.

Obligatory Deadwood Reference

It’s only now, six years after Deadwood’s gone off the air, that I realize how truly unique its dialogue was. And six years on, we see that Milch hasn’t completely been able to shake off that voice. In a way, Walter is this show’s Swearengen; the old man who’s given to spontaneous monologuing, either when he’s alone or in front of an audience who can’t really respond to him (just replace the whores with horses (and yes I realize what a cute turn of phrase that was (don’t worry I’m going to kill myself))). This week we hear him rehearsing his pitch to Rosie, asking her to come back to Arcadia to ride Gettin’ Up Morning, after turning her down when she asked after the job in last week’s episode. Then, Walter was all about Ronnie Jenkins riding the horse, but after taking a fall in a race and breaking his collarbone, he’s out and Rosie’s in. Which I suppose is just as well, as we see Ronnie take to DRUGS to deal with the pain.

Men, Amirite?

It’s funny, the things that will humanize a character. Turo Escalante is obviously a mid-level player at the track. He shows deference to people like Ace and Gus, while thumbing his nose at everyone else. But in this week’s episode, we get a a chance to see the man at home. See where he spends his free time. And then we see Jo, the woefully underused vet from the track, and hear Turo utter those four words that really put us inside his head, let us know who he is: “Want to do it?” He’s a person. He wants what I want. It turns out there’s a little bit of Turo in all of us.

Luck – “Episode Two”

Hmm… It may turn out that Luck is a tough nut to crack. The aptly named “Episode Two” was much more concerned with the nuts and bolts of worldbuilding than the pilot. And while there was a race for us to watch, it didn’t have the same emotional umpf as the Pick Six in last week’s premiere. But, I will not be deterred. I’m willing to sit down at the show’s knee and learn… if it’ll let me.

Comin’ Up Aces (Bernstein)

We learned a lot about Dustin Hoffman this week, including why he went to prison and his plans to turn the Santa Anita racetrack into a gambler’s paradise. And if there was anything for me to glom onto, this whole side of things was definitely it. Hopefully you all stuck around to watch the “This Season On Luck…” promo HBO ran after the pilot. When I saw that Mike, whose cocaine Ace was found in possession of and went to jail for, was played by Michael Gambon, I got up and saluted the British flag (or whatever the hell they do there), and ate a steak and kidney pie. During Ace’s little sit-down with Ted Levine, who’ll always be Buffalo Bill to me, we also saw the amount of deference these guys give him. Although, after his shirt-ripping ‘roid rager last week, can we really blame them? Maybe they sense a regime change coming.

Come Again?

What the hell is Turo Escalante saying? I get what he was trying to do with Mon Gateau: trying to drag down people’s expectations by entering him in the claiming race with bandaged ankles. But I’m still trying to figure out how he plays in to the bigger picture. He’s a hardcase, but ultimately comes across as someone who takes his marching orders from people like Ace. He’s a smart guy, but unlike Ace, who you can tell sees the chess board five or six moves down the road, Escalante sometimes takes stupid risks he shouldn’t. He spent years working with Mon Gateau and lost him in the end. I think. I’m still waiting on the subtitles.

The More Things Change…

They were degenerate gamblers before, and they’re degenerate gamblers now. After winning the Pick Six, Marcus, Jerry, Renzo, and Lonnie go right back to doing the same old thing. Staying in dirty hotels and eating in dirty diners. Jerry takes his share of the winnings and starts blowing it at the poker tables. Lonnie almost gets himself killed by two women trying to collect on an insurance policy they had taken out on him. Marcus yells at everyone, stopping occasionally to suck down oxygen. And in the middle of all this, Renzo is going around, looking for ways to keep the band together. His idea is for the four of them to go in as co-buyers on Mon Gateau. Which they ultimately lose to… W. Earl Brown! Well, if you’ve got to lose to someone, might as well be him. Here’s hoping the show finds an excuse to bring him back. Maybe have him call someone “Crop Ear” and cut their throat. Anyway, the gamblers. After Marcus acts like a complete dick and sends everyone running off to their separate corners, we find them all back in the same motel parking lot, scrambling to get a bleeding and broken Lonnie off the ground and into a room. No surprise. People like this are incapable of staying away from each other for too long. You get the feeling that years from now, when Ace and Gus and Turo are long gone, these guys will still be there. Chain-smoking and calling each other assholes.

It’s Marley and Me All Over Again

If Turo’s tomfoolery with Mon Gateau and the mechanics of the claiming race were a little hard to decipher, Nick Nolte’s explanation of what happened to Delphi, the father of Gettin’ Up Morning, how he was killed for a $30 million insurance policy was the complete opposite. Dogs, horses, whatever, this stuff kills me. If I had been waking up, day in and day out, for years on end with that rolling around in my head, I imagine my voice would sound something like his. I was sorry to see that despite her asking, Nolte still passed Rosie over for Ronnie for that spot in the afternoon races. Nolte — I’ll start calling him Walter — talks about what it was like hearing Delphi’s bones breaking, but what about Rosie’s heart?

All of This Has Happened Before, and All of It Will Happen Again

As you may have heard, HBO renewed Luck for a second season two days after the pilot aired. Even though the show’s ratings weren’t stellar, I don’t think this move came as a surprise to anyone. First, great ratings don’t hurt, but they aren’t HBO’s business. It’s all about word-of-mouth and critical acclaim, which the show is getting its fair share of. Second, HBO wants to be in business with Dustin Hoffman and Michael Mann (to say nothing of David Milch). After The Sopranos and Deadwood went away, there was a period in which the network wasn’t doing anything too extraordinary, but now, with shows like Games of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, Luck, and True Blood (which is a ratings-grabber for the network), and all the names those shows bring with them, I think HBO has reclaimed its spot as the go-to place for good drama (sorry, AMC).

Luck – “Pilot”

There invariably comes a time, while watching movies like Rango or playing video games like Battlefield 3 where we say, “They’re almost there.” It’ll only be a few years before we can’t tell the difference between what we’re seeing on the screen and real life. It’ll only be a few years before this sort of media won’t be able to look any better. It’ll be as real and lifelike as it can ever get. To a certain extent, the same applies to TV shows. Despite the ungodly amount of shit we see on our screens, we are living in a sort of golden age when it comes to television.

But unlike computer animated lizards or soldiers blowing each other up, television’s golden age is much farther along. This isn’t only about moving away from your typical procedurals (YES there’s room for both, you bastards) and toward more character-driven shows, but shows that take entire seasons to pay off. Shows that are built more like novels than they are TV shows, sometimes going off on tangents just to give us a better idea of who these people are. And in discovering that, helping us to see beauty and meaning in the mundane, without having to worry about cliffhangers coming every ten minutes to keep us in our seats through the commercial breaks. Shows that are meant to be experienced almost as much as they’re meant to be watched. And despite offerings like Real Sex, G String Divas, and Dane Cook’s Tourgasm, HBO is kind of leading the charge.

Two writers — David Milch and David Simon — broke new ground with these sorts of shows with Deadwood and The Wire, and those shows paved the way for Luck and Treme, but since we’re talking about Luck here, I’ll try and only talk about Luck**.

(**I have a lot of feelings about Treme — a lot of problems, too — that I’ll talk about at another time. But despite my problems with it, it’s the only other show I can think of that approaches what Milch has done with Luck, or at least tries to.)

I suppose there’s a fear out there that Luck, entrenched in the world of horse racing, isn’t going to be accessible to the typical Philistine viewer. And that’s true. There comes a point where all the Pick Six stuff goes over your head and you have to just kind of go with it. Still, I think the show offers enough for everyone to relate to. At its heart — and after only one episode maybe it’s too early to say — I think Luck is a show about people who the world’s passed by. From Dustin Hoffman’s Ace Bernstein, who’s just come off a three-year prison stretch to Nick Nolte as a grizzled (I think I’m the first person to use that word) ex-trainer who’s still trying to live down the death of one of his horses. Those things, coupled with the always-half-empty Santa Anita racetrack lend to this feeling that while there may be better days ahead, the days behind us were pretty damn good, too. And by the time we get to the pilot’s final race, there comes a moment where we can feel the sun on our face, feel the chill in the air and link it to some past memory, something we miss. Even if racing isn’t your thing, I imagine we’ll all have some passing interest in it by the time the first season’s over.

Of course, this show wouldn’t be a fifth of what it is if it weren’t for the people behind it; that perfect storm of David Milch (please be seated), Michael Mann and Dustin Hoffman. There’s not much we can say about Milch that hasn’t been said already. It’s only been a few short years since John from Cincinnati crashed and burned, and Deadwood’s premature death still hurts, so we’re happy to have him back. But in a lot of ways, Michael Mann is the one who brings the show to life. When we come to that final race at the end of the pilot, it’s him who breathes life into something most of us have little to no experience with, making us realize only once it’s all over that we’ve been sitting on the edge of our seats, our hands covering our mouths the entire time. Dustin Hoffman is as good as he’s ever been, but in this first episode, coming out of prison the way he is, he’s still trying to get his feet under him. Right now he’s kind of orbiting the racetrack, trying to work his way back into that world. His best moments are still to come.

There’s a lot going on here, and if you’ve seen the preview for the rest of the season you know that eventually it’s going to get pretty heavy. But, being David Milch and HBO, you also know it’s going to be a slow burn. And because things here in the pilot are only just getting set up, it’s best to watch the show once and enjoy it before you start to analyze things. There’s a lot here that could turn people away, but I think there’s a feeling about this show, and shared experience that could really bring people in.

Author’s note: I make no apologies for being a David Milch apologist. One episode in and I already love this show. My first draft of this review said only: THE BEST, scrawled in crayon on a picture of Dustin Hoffman and a horse. I’ll try and be more objective in the future, but no promises.