John From Cincinnati

Piggybacking off the wide acclaim of Deadwood the people at HBO allowed David Milch to do another show.

This one was not quite as good in my opinion, but there were certainly a lot of underlying themes happening in this show.

John From Cincinnati is about the Yost family, a family of surfers who were once pretty popular. Mitch Yost (Bruce Greenwood) is the father of the family, and a knee injury knocked him out of surfing for the most part. Butchie Yost (Brian Van Holt) is Mitch's son and an unbelievably popular surfer who flamed out and became hooked on drugs. Shaun Yost (Greyson Fletcher) is Butchie's son who was actually raised by Mitch and Cissy Yost (Rebecca De Mornay) because his father was a drug user and his mother, Tina (Chandra West), was an adult porn star.

As we meet the family they are already torn apart. Cissy is completely strung out and Mitch is trying his hardest to find something of meaning. Then we meet John Monad (Austin Nichols).

The people who meet John believe him to be slow as he is only able to take what he hears and use that in his everyday language. He seems to have no real ability to think or speak on his own. Butchie sort of takes John under his wing.

Linc Stark (Luke Perry) meanwhile is trying to sign Shaun to Stinkweed Surfing, the same guy who signed Butchie years earlier and allowed him to flame out and become addicted to drugs.

There is really far too many things going on in this show to list here. Which is pretty amazing since it only lasted one season and just 10 episodes.

I enjoyed the show, it was confusing yet also made you think to be able to follow everything that was happening. I enjoy shows like that, but I am not sure I even got everything out of the show that it was trying to portray.

This show came on the air just a few years after Deadwood completed. And just like Deadwood it had an abundance of characters. Many of which actually followed Milch over from Deadwood.

Because it was only one season and just 10 episodes I can't give this that good of a grade, but I feel there was way more to come out of everything that was happening that Milch just wasn't able to tell during those 10 episodes. The final episode, however, was sort of like an ending - I am not sure if it was meant to be a season or series finale though.

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