HBO's New Oddity: John from Cincinnati

By the end of its first episode I didn't know what to make of John from Cincinnati, a new HBO drama about three generations of a legendary surfing family and their acquaintances in a small California coastal community. One fellow -- John, the title character and a stranger in town as the series begins -- strolled around speaking warnings and repeating what others were saying. Another guy was diagnosed with brain cancer and suddenly had the ability to levitate. A third watched in amazement as his beloved pet bird Zippy died and then came back to life. I wasn't entertained, but my curiosity was aroused.

By the end of hour two I still didn't know what was going on and was no longer interested in finding out. I think the show lost me when the subject turned to the bowel movements of John and another character. (The other guy had a normal working knowledge of elimination but John needed to be coached as if it were a puzzling new experience.) On a more pleasant note, there was another back-from-the-dead moment involving Zippy, but it was eclipsed by the bowel business.

By the end of hour three, during which John was singularly focused on "boning" one of the female characters and nothing much else happened, I was beyond bored.

For millions of television fans, last summer's catchiest question was "Who is Kyle XY?", a reference to the lead character in the ABC Family series Kyle XY. I doubt that people will be asking the same of John, who looks something like Kyle and is similarly blank, though not as sweet and innocent. While Kyle was grown in a lab (there will be tantalizing new information revealed about his origin next Monday in the second season premiere of that show), John seems to be more a natural creation than a scientific one. Much of the time, John comes off like a character from the small Northwestern title town in the cult classic Twin Peaks. He's mysterious, and he walks around saying things like, "The end is near" or "Mitch Yost should get back in the game." Whatever. Something tells me we may never know who or what John is, and that may be the point.

Mitch Yost, incidentally, is the still youthful and dynamic patriarch of the surfing Yosts, a family of bronzed beach bums. He seems at first blush to be a relatively normal middle aged man, but then he is diagnosed with brain cancer and gains the ability to levitate. It's not in his mind. Other folks see him float, too.

Again, whatever, dude.

Bathed in hazy yellow and orange tones and told at a very leisurely pace, John from Cincinnati has the contemplative look and the feel of some of the great American movies of the early Seventies. But it doesn't seem to be about anything. Not yet, anyway. For now, it is worth attention only because it was co-created and is co-executive produced by David Milch, the NYPD Blue veteran who recently gave us HBO's acclaimed Deadwood. Frankly, the only thing John has in common with Deadwood is its liberal use of profanity, specifically the F-word. Sometimes my mind would seek escape from the complex narrative of Deadwood by counting the cuss words that came out of its characters' mouths. There are F-word games to be played while watching John, as well, though not to escape from the intensity of its plotlines. They're lighter than air, not because they're empty (it's too early to say that), but because, in the series' early episodes, they aren't tied to anything. They simply float, like Mitch Yost.

There is no way to describe this show, which premieres Sunday after the series finale of The Sopranos, without using words like "meditative" or "contemplative" or "challenging" (or "boring"). Beyond that, I'm at a loss for words. Perhaps it's best to let Milch explain what he's getting at here. He appeared (along with co-executive producer and co-creator Kem Nunn) at the January Television Critics Association tour to introduce John. Here are some of his comments from that press session:

Asked about Mitch the floater and Zippy the life-restoring bird, Milch replied, "There are mystical components [to the story]. In terms of what's going on, that's sort of an unfolding question . . . I think that one man's mystical is another man's day-to-day."

In response to a question about the themes running through the show, Milch said, "To my mind reality is a shifting and elusive condition. It redefines itself constantly . . . This is a story that takes place on the margins of things. The attempt to identify the coordinates of reality is itself a kind of problematic and conditional effort. It's changing all the time. Where are we when we sleep? What is our sense of reality at the moment? Science now suggests to us that what has been perceived as matter for a long time is, in fact, energy. That what looks solid, in fact, is constituted in waves. That Einstein's beautiful mathematical equations that depict the nature of reality don't apply at certain levels. I think that's true as well about what constitutes the natural and the supernatural. It depends on what foxhole you're in."

And about the analogy between surfing and faith in the show, Milch explained, "The first thing to say is I don't have the vaguest idea about surfing in terms of having lived the experience. But by the same token, I didn't live in Deadwood in 1876, either. You know, I'm from Buffalo, New York. There's a wonderful parochialism freedom [coming] from [the] rust belt, not huge cities. Freud wrote an essay called "The Narcissism of Perceived Difference". There's a certain narcissism of perceived difference that pertains in the surfing world too, which is, if you don't surf, impossible to understand. We used to say that in Buffalo. "If you're not from Buffalo . . . you really don't get it." You say, "Well, he's from Rochester. What can he know?" As time goes on, you come to realize what seemed to be chasms of difference that cannot be bridged turn out not even to exist."

What all that has to do with birds, boning, bowel movements and levitation, I don't know. What I do know is that John from Cincinnati is not the show HBO needs right now to restore it to the glory it enjoyed in recent years with The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Deadwood and Sex and the City. But who knows? Milch is nothing less than a force of nature. There's no telling where this show is going to go.

Austin Nichols, the actor who portrays John, also appeared (along with co-stars Bruce Greenwood, Rebecca De Mornay and Brian Van Holt) on the TCA panel, and was asked by one critic "how the hell" he plays his bizarre character. "[Milch] turns me around in circles and then sends me off," Nichols replied. "It's mystifying."

Viewers will relate.

Originally posted at Jack Myers MediaVillage.com: Where television fans, industry professionals, and advertisers meet to read and discuss original columns, blogs, reviews, interviews, videos, photos and more. MediaVillage is dedicated to enabling viewers to SoundOff to TV executives and talent, and provide ongoing feedback to TV programmers and advertisers on TV viewers' passions, preferences and emotional connections.