Jason Reitman has directed six
films: Thank You For Smoking, Juno, Up In The Air, Young Adult,
Labor Day, and Men, Women, and Children. All six projects involve characters or
ideas that are just a bit off of the mainstream path. Thank You For Smoking and Up
In The Air follow professionals with jobs that would sicken you if you met
them in the real world- a pro-cigarette lobbyist for the former and a guy whose
job it is to fire people for the latter; Juno
stars a pregnant teenager with her own weird-Millennial-esque lingo who
inadvertently hits on a married man; Charlize Theron’s character is a straight
up miserable, horrible human being in Young
Adult, and the point of the film is that her character should embrace that;
Labor Day follows an agoraphobic who falls
in love with a felon; and there’s all sorts of messed-up in Men, Women, and Children including Judy
Greer’s character who pimps out her high school aged daughter. Yet for all of
the fucked up things Reitman has done, his projects are all grounded in realism.
You’re not looking at a surrealist Tim Burton vehicle; you’re watching
something right outside of your house window. His latest project Casual is no different.
That’s the essence of the show.
Normalcy surrounded by the off traveled path sexuality. The premise of the
show, and the hook Hulu sold the masses, is that Valarie, a middle-aged
psychiatrist, is recently separated and she and her daughter are staying with
her brother while the divorce gets finalized. This is a show showcasing the
former SNLer and talented but always underused Watkins. And the show is that in
a sense. But not really.
At its core, Casual is about the fucked up relation that Valarie and Alex have
with each other. The show is very much a showcase for Watkins as it is for
Tommy Dewey. As the first season unfolds, you get the understanding of why
Valarie and Alex are L.A.’s version of Cersei and Jamie Lannister. Francis
Conroy steps right off of the How I Met
Your Mother set to play the matriarch of the family, and a hornier Feed
Melamed jumps right off the In A World…
shoot to play the patriarch. There’s a very tense Thanksgiving dinner that
occurs towards the end of the first season that explains who and what Valarie
and Alex are thanks to their parents.
This show studies the sexual
exploration of its three main characters, but unlike a garbage and broad
project like Men, Women, and Children,
Casual’s exploration is very specific
to the characters its developing- and much more entertaining as a result. After
seeing her boyfriend cheat on her at a party, Laura starts up an infatuation
with her photography teacher. In the show’s second episode, Valarie picks up a
guy named Neil only after introducing herself. Alex is a stereotypical
Hollywood Lothario; a tech guy who’s doesn’t have to work thanks to a dating
website he’s created, so he sleeps with whomever he’d like to. Yet ultimately,
these characters’ sexual exploits always came back to their relationship with
each other.
For me, the highlight of this
show is Dewey’s Alex Cole. On paper, he seems like a walking cliché. He’s
charming, he’s handsome, he’s rich, and he’s a Ladies Man. But Dewey brings so
much earnest and sweetness to the role that it elevates the character above
what could be formulaic. Ultimately, all Alex wants is to be happy and to
settle down. He doesn’t necessarily want this character the world expects from
him. In a heartbreaking scene, we see that Alex has two different profiles on
his own dating website. One is specifically engineered to get the most matches
so he can sleep with the most women. But then we see the second one, one in
which Alex is completely open and honest. And he hasn’t had a legitimate match
in the two years since his true profile has been active. It shades every action
Alex has done and will do and every interaction he has with another female. I
think it’s an excellent performance and one of the main reasons I’ve been
sucked into the show.
Unfortunately, the show isn’t perfect
and it does have a lot of glaring flaws. For starters, it doesn’t seem to build
upon the pieces it leaves behind. Early on, Alex gets arrested by purchasing
cocaine, which leads to a very funny scene (and one you’ve probably seen in the
trailers), but the show never addresses it since. This semi-lackadaisical
approach also leads to some scenes where the end is written and the writers and
working backwards instead of going where the story naturally takes them. That
leads to some hinky connective tissue in the show. However, those flaws can be
overlooked and are less noticeable when being binge-watched.
Ultimately, I would highly
recommend this show, especially binging through it. I recently purchased Hulu
and ended up binging the entire series in one night. The good parts of the show
outweigh bad- which is pretty much Jason Reitman’s career. No matter how
terrible Labor Day was and how God
awful Men, Women, and Children were,
the greatness of his other four projects far outweigh the negatives. The same
holds true for Casual. Check it out.
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