John from Cinci Part II

*Spoiler Alert

John from Cincinnati has taken a gigantic step forward out of the cold and into my heart with its fantastic second episode. Yes, I phrased the previous sentence that way to sound like a huge pussy on purpose.

My buddy's girlfriend... Wait, that's kinda rude of me. She's a buddy too. Chauvinistic of me to refer to her only in terms of her boyfriend, no? But I digress, she was crazy enough to characterize the show as "stupid", citing specifically the "predictable" manner in which the episode ended. To each his OR HER own, but I couldn't agree less. How could anyone anticipate a comatose kid being awoken seemingly by the kiss of a bird?

Much of what makes the mystical aspects of this show - the levitating, John's mysterious origin and purpose, and the aforementioned ending of the second episode to name a few - so engaging is its stark contrast with the fabric of Deadwood. John is armed with the same nuanced dialogue and poetic soliloquy's of its predecessor, but the show's hook seems largely an anti-existential search for meaning, rather than a brutally honest case study of the nature of early capitalistic enterprise during the gold rush. Having been such a fan of Deadwood, I anticipated nothing short of Seany's demise. Who knows? Maybe that's still to come. He's obviously not out of the woods yet.

This show has so many voids aching to be addressed...in a good way: Why is Al Bundy's character so crazy? From his career as a cop? What is his relationship to the family? Did he first meet Sean after having been involved to some degree with Butchy because of his drug problems and subsequent run ins with the law? Where's Butchy's wife, Sean's mother? Dead? Will Butchy overcome his demons and become an active participant in his son's life? And in his own? What's going on with the bipolar motel owner who won Megamillions? He's expressed interest in learning how to surf. Presumably, he'll trade surfing lessons for allowing Butchy to remain squatting in his motel? Where do the matriarch and patriarch of the family go from here? Grandpa essentially requested that Sean be unplugged. Grandma vehemently refused to let this happen. And now there's a glimmer of hope for Sean which makes grandpa's sentiments all the more egregious.

All of this stuff lurks in John's shadow, the show's namesake, and the mystery of his purpose and origins. Is he really from Cincinnati? Will he become somewhat of a Christ figure? Will they ever fully explain who he is or where he came from? I think we've only just begun to see the impact he'll have on the lives of these other people. When he said, "the end is near" I thought he may have been foreshadowing tragedy. Perhaps he was referring to a new beginning?