"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

Monday, November 26, 2018

Dirty John 1.1: Hunter and Hunted



Well, how can you resist watching a series starring Connie Britton and Eric Bana?  Tina and I couldn't, and we were glad.  At least so far as the debut episode, on Bravo last night.

Debra Newall (Britton) has been married four times.  She has two daughters (Ronnie, played by Juno Temple, excellent in Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams) and Terra (played by Julia Garner, who was so good in Ozark) to show for it.  That, and, against all odds, an apparently open, questing heart.

John Meehan (Banner) is some kind of anesthesiologist (maybe a doctor, maybe a nurse, maybe both? not clear).   He's incredibly attentive and apparently caring of Debra.  But there's something not quite right about him.   After a first date in which he jumps in Debra's bed - he leaves when she asks him to get up and go into another, less intimate room with her - he and Debra strike up a relationship.  But he shows up late to an important event, with she dressed to the nines, and he in scrubs.  And neither daughter can stand him.

Nonetheless, she marries him.  And that's where the first episode ends, leaving us certain that some kind of serious no good is going to come from this.  And part of that is what Debra is up to.  Is she in some sense leading John on, for some purpose as yet unrevealed to us?  She seems too smart to be taken in by whatever his game is.  And her siding with John against her daughters doesn't quite add up, either.

There's clearly something evil lurking behind this, and it will be fun to see from whom, and on whom it's inflicted.

 

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