"The Resort" (Peacock) Review

 A married couple (Christine Milioti as Emma, William Jackson Harper as  Noah) is experiencing the blahs on a 10-year-anniversary vacation to a  tropical Mexican resort. William Jackson Harper has only been known to  the world-at-large as the tight-laced hypochondriac ethicist from The  Good Place so it’s a little jarring to see him chilling out in the  tropics with his hair in an — — sorry I’m not well-versed on  African-American hairstyles and not going to try — un-Chidi-like state.

Anywho,  Noah and Emma get shaken out of their rut when Emma discovers an old  cell phone from 15 years through going down the rabbit hole of a local  missing persons case. During one frightful and stormy night (cue the  organ music) 15 years ago, a pair of late adolescents (Skyler Gismodo as  Sam and Nina Bloomgarden as Violet) disappeared during a hurricane.  Careful not to reveal the sequence of events before Emma and Noah (and  the audience) learn them, the series deftly cuts between past and  present as Noah and Emmy chase after the trail of Sam and Violet.

It’s soon revealed that Sam and Violet had a steamy fling, and the  series tries a little hard to posit Sam/Violet (Vam? Siolet?) as younger and hornier doppelgangers to Noah and Emma who not so coincidentally  also met for the first time 15 years ago. Although the series  acknowledges that Noah and Emma are going through a funk, they still  never exhibit much chemistry and are often the least interesting part of  the story except as audience surrogates.
Sam  and Violet, on the other hand, are a fun combination of hormones,  angst, and naiveté. They bounce between a coo coo hotelier who kinda sorta kidnaps them, to an  outdoor farmer’s market to an author (Luis Guzman) with mystical  prophecies and, remarkably, they still manage to stay separated from  their parents for over six episodes and counting.

In the interim, Emma and Noah join forces with Balthasar Frias, a local heir to a powerful family of tailors (this series more than any other needs a larger fan base, just so a  more robust wiki can be created and confusions like “rich family of  tailors” can be sorted out) who’s a delightful brand of kooky on  his own. Frias came to the resort looking for a job of any sort and is  urged by the manager to reinvent himself so he fashions himself a  detective after the novels his father used to read to him as a kid.

It’s  the same character motivation that defines many a film noir protagonist  like J.J. Gittes in Chinatown or Holly Martins in the Third Man who get  caught up in their own myth and are determined to solve the mystery at  any cost. For his part, Frias is still obsessed with this missing  persons case 15 years later, and it seems possible that he’s gotten a  little warped about it with time. He’s the kind of guy who takes the  Dirk Gentley Holistic Detective Agency approach to crime-solving (i.e.  he somehow believes that asking Noah and Emma about their sex life will  somehow provide a clue of a missing cell phone) than standards nuts and  bolts stuff. But what can I say, the show needs a wild card, so away we  go.

Filled with needle drops and time jumps upon time jumps,  the show is certainly ambitious. Whether it follows through, it can be a  little touch-and-go based on the episode, which is why I'll reserve judgment until season's end, but I'm enjoying it so far.

TV Recommendation: Peacock's Killing It

Two broke Floridians, Craig (Craig Robinson) and Jillian (Claudia O’Doherty), team up for a contest to kill an invasive species of snakes. As the season goes on, the plot places its two protagonists within a web of the type of opportunist Floridian characters that originally showed up in Carl Hiassen or Dave Barry novels, and have now become meme-worthy.

Initially, the show seems like a pedestrian odd couple comedy with a standard hook, albeit one a bit squicky (fortunately, the serpentine death blows are mostly off screen). However, there’s a lot to appreciate with this show as the stakes increase.

Like “Superstore” or “Raising Hope”, the show aims to tell a story of the lower class, and does a superb job of translating the disparity between the haves and have-nots to solid comedy. Jillian, for instance, is an uber driver, task rabbit, snake killer, web cam star (she caters to perverts who want to watch her eat exotic foods), and rents out her cab for billboards while also helping control the snake population. In the premiere episode’s go-big-or-go-home comic set piece, Jillian tries to fulfill her Ubering and snake murdering duties at the same time while Craig is her passenger.

We also come to meet Brock (Scott MacArthur), who’s snake hunting is a side hustle to his main dream of getting YouTube famous in a Jackass sort of way.

The basis of crazy Florida stories is people getting creative in how they try to eke out a living, but perhaps there’s a deeper factor at play: These characters are painted into a corner and maybe that inequality is also the Florida way. A cursory look at the landscape when I’m in South Florida (half my family lives there) and my knowledge of the state’s tax structure, indicates a pretty individualistic society where capitalism reigns supreme.

Perhaps, the greatest strength of the series is how well the stars’ screen personas fit the story. Craig Robinson has always had a deadpan weariness that has been best exemplified in Judd Apatow comedies and “The Office” but takes it to the next level here. Despite being a little of a slacker, Daryl was someone to root for because the series splattered moments of the character’s thoughtfulness. This Craig Robinson is someone who you desperately want to give a hug.

The cleverest thing about Jillian is that she’s initially presented as so incompetent at life that she’d be classified by TV Tropes as The Load: A character that doesn’t provide any useful assets to their partners in crime like Carl Showalter in Fargo, Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars, Willie in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Buttercup in the Princess Bride, or Zaphod in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. She’s entirely unfocused on the task at hand and generally has terrible instincts. However, she comes to be a sympathetic character and even a useful person without ever appearing to fundamentally transform. A lot of it has to do with how O’Doherty simply shows us different sides of the same character.