Get Shorty (season 1, 2017) = Finished

Hey, so Chris O'Dowd from The IT Crowd and Ray Romano from everything Ray Romano has been in star in an adaptation of the comedic John Travolta crime movie that transforms the premise into a mix of Breaking Bad and The Producers that is utterly compelling melodramatic madness.

I came across it late last year by accident. I thought I'd watch one episode just to see what was going on, give it a thumbs down, and go to sleep. Instead, I binged the show for the next week, despite finals being right around the corner.

There's a lot of vectors I love this show for, despite the prestige television issue of "We get to show a boob once per episode so, so help me, we will show a boob." I love the soda-sticky visual style. I love the sidekick's moustache that refuses to leave the 60s. I love the self-aware eye it casts towards the sad realities of Hollywood, like the dream of every waiter to become a screenwriter. Most of all, I love how Get Shorty makes its characters utterly predictable.

I thought you always want characters to feel unpredictable and alive.
This changed my mind.

See, people in this world are assembled pretty transparently. Each person has a few basic traits (let's say 3-6) that define who they are on a fundamental level. These traits do not change. Once you meet someone, you either know who they are, or are given just enough traits to be able to begin to predict their behavior in cathartic and terrifying ways. You always know that when X character encounters Y situation, they will either act like Z, or you will learn something new about them that gives you a new frame of reference for future actions. And since the characters operate off of rules, the world evokes surprise by throwing curveballs at them, forcing them to improvise and allowing us to see their traits play off of each other to dire effect.

In other words: you can see the train a'coming, and it is delicious.

So, when a haughty acting teacher demoralizes Chris O'Dowd's daughter, you munch your popcorn, knowing full well that Chris will attempt to destroy that man's life, and the teacher's secret base of insecurity will cause him to fold like a chair at Wrestlemania. Stuck-up writer refusing to make necessary changes to the script? Cue the pragmatic Mormon sidekick with a temper, who gets into an argument with the writer, snaps the man's pinky off, and asks him naive questions about showbiz while he frantically pecks at the keyboard with his pinky in a nearby bag of ice.

This isn't cliched storytelling - it's narrative design. A structural loop that is utterly addicting, and makes Get Shorty one of the most compulsive crime shows in years.

Ray Romano romances a Nevada crime boss.

No one is talking about this.

Yeah, I can't quite believe it either.