Luke Perry as Linc Stark and Bruce Greenwood as Mitch Yost in JOHN FROM CINCINNATI: "His Visit: Day One".
© HBO
Mania Grade: B-
Starring: Bruce Greenwood, Rebecca De Mornay, Ed O'Neil, Luis Guzman
Created By: David Milch
Starring: Bruce Greenwood, Rebecca De Mornay, Ed O'Neil, Luis Guzman
Created By: David Milch
JOHN FROM CINCINNATI: His Visit: Day One
By: Stephen LackeyReview Date: Tuesday, June 12, 2007
I was a big fan of Deadwood, and can’t wait to see the movies that will tie that series up. When I found out the John from Cincinnati was the creation of Milch, I was intrigued. From the ads, I was never able to really figure out what this story was to be about and now after watching the premiere, I still really don’t know. The entire episode is more about character setup than story arc or direction, and in fact there’s at least one character that we see but we don’t learn anything about her in this episode. She does apparently get to do something more than stand around in the next episode based on the previews.
The thing is the cast is huge, and none of the characters appear to be cookie cutter, every actor on the series must be thrilled because all of the characters are complex and offbeat. They feel like characters ripped from classic literature and given a new life and slightly skewed motivations similar to the way the Coen brothers brought characters from classic literature to life in O’ Brother Where Art Thou. Mitch Yost is an ex pro surfer that had to leave the sport early after an injury to his knee. He still surfs, but only in the early morning when no one is around to see. One morning after surfing he passes a man who says “Mitch Yost should get back in the game”. He tells the guy to mind his own business and he keeps walking also passing a shady promoter who wants to sign his grandson as a pro surfer. Yost tells him to go f@#ck himself. He doesn’t think much of it as he rinses himself off standing behind his truck. He glances down and notices that he is levitating. He decides that he has a brain tumor until his drug addicted son also sees him levitating, so the hallucinations theory is quickly blown.
This story centers on the Yost family and what could have been a surfing empire were it not for a series of failures. Mitch blew out his leg, and then his son became addicted to drugs. Mitch’s wife still has hope for her grandson, which she and Mitch has custody of, a 13 year old prodigy. Mitch doesn’t want him involved fearing that he will end up like the rest of them bitter or on drugs. There is quite a bevy of characters backing up the Yosts including Bill (O’Neil), a friend of the family who is also a retired cop. He seems to have some real mental problems and now just stays at home and tends to birds. In one scene, one of his birds is dead and comes back to life when he and the youngest Yost touches it. Luis Guzman plays the caretaker of a run down motel that just got sold to a man who won at the lottery. The only connection to the main story seems to be that the drug addicted Yost has been squatting in one of the rooms.
So, this strange guy John that says that Mitch should get back into the game finds his way among all of these quirky characters. “Some things he knows and some things he doesn’t” but he does always seem to have whatever is needed at any given time in one of his pockets. He’s obviously there to deliver a message to these characters and to help them find there way out of the downward spiral that the Yost family and all the other characters are in. That’s really the entire story that the writers give us in this episode. In the end all of the characters do find their way to being connected with even the guy who buys the motel nearly shooting everyone when he discovers that his squatter is in fact a guy that beat him with a broom when they were in school together.
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