Am I Being Unreasonable Review: A show you probably never heard of is really quite good
Am I Being Unreasonable Review: A show you probably never heard of is really quite good
Hulu's comedy thriller about one woman's quest to move on after an unspeakable tragedy is full of uncomfortable truths and ride-or-die friendship forming.
Note: You can read this prior to watching S1 of Am I Being Unreasonable? as no key spoilers are shared.
The Allure of a crass British Comedian
Daisy May Cooper, star of Hulu’s Am I Being Unreasonable? and our latest British comedic import, is bawdy and shockingly in-your-face with her working class humor. She’s at times hard to watch and yet you can’t stop watching her, because every time she opens her mouth she’s unapologetically direct and funny. Incidentally, May is also the author of a NY Times best-selling autobiography which details her journey from rural poverty and her rise to fame.
Notably, what drew me to Cooper is her realism. She is raw and funny and while her vulgarity is not always on par with my humor jam, there is something magnetic about how she interacts with those around her, whether it’s her somewhat toxic, definitely dysfunctional relationship with a best friend in Rain Dogs (Poldark’s Jack Farthing) or how she navigates her trust of a new mom friend, Jen (Selin Hizli) in Am I Being Unreasonable?
When Beth Met Daisy
The first time I happened upon her acting was in HBO Max’s Rain Dogs, a show that came up on my “For You” carousel for at least 2 months before, I, in a moment of weakness or openness (half glass full), ventured to watch it. What compelled me to continue viewing the show well into the second episode was Cooper’s performance.
Cooper plays Costello Jones, a dedicated, impoverished single mom to a very precocious girl, Iris (Fleur Tashjian). They are living on the fringes of society, from hand to mouth, in subsidized housing, as Jones is trying desperately to be a writer, but can’t seem to catch a break or get out of her own way long enough to make this a reality. Of course, she has some pretty big challenges in the way as it’s hard for her to get a legit job. I didn’t get past the second episode though. Some other show came into my orbit and that was that.
A bit of entropy in your day
Rain Dogs is also the name of a Tom Waits album and a term meant to be a metaphor for lost human beings, people in pain with no sense of direction, according to Waits. Real uplifting stuff. Literally, it conjures up a visual of drunk people in alley ways. So don’t be too surprised I didn’t stick around, even though it kinda falls in line with the type of BEVP fare I go for.
Tragedy begets tragedy
In The Collected Regrets of Clover, by Mikki Brammer, and a book I’m currently reading, the main character is a death doula who is well acquainted with transporting dying people through their final moments on Earth and comments upon the grief she feels for her grandfather, early on in the novel:
Even though I spent my days looking death in the face, I still couldn’t seem to accept that his absence from my life was permanent.
Grief plays tricks on you that way - a familiar whiff of cologne or a potential sighting of your person in a crowd, and all the knots you’ve tied inside yourself to manage the pain of losing them suddenly unravel.
Am I Being Unreasonable? takes this theme and spins variation upon variation upon it. The opening scene shows Nic (Daisy May Cooper) and a fun-loving, if not rather immature man-child, who may be a friend, but he may also be more than a friend, waiting for a train out in the snow together. We later find out that this man’s name is Alex and they are having an affair. I’m not giving away much as we learn about the affair fairly early on in the first season which is comprised of 6, 33-minute episodes and is available via Hulu.
The rapport at the train stop is light and easy. Nic and Alex exchange quick-witted, playful jabs and engage in some silliness that feels a tad immature for middle-age adults, but I can suspend disbelief here as it’s unclear if this relationship is in its Honeymoon phase or what their deal is. What I can say without a doubt is that only someone in love with Alex or incredibly inebriated could find it funny when Alex urinates outside in public, drawing an X with his pee and then proudly explains in painstaking detail to Nic, who listens attentively, how he was able to arrive at the fait accompli. Regardless, the two are laughing and enjoying one another’s company. Within a minute, things get much darker.
As the train approaches, the two of them linger, not wanting to leave the other. Nic is leaving on the train and Alex is staying behind. Aboard the train, she pulls him in for a peck as the doors are closing with Alex waiting on the platform, dangerously close. Alex’s coat gets stuck in the doorway. Nic, in shock, tries to open the door, but to no avail. And with that, the camera pans to Nic’s terror-stricken face, as the train starts to move, dragging poor Alex along with it, and well, while we don’t see Alex’s demise, we assume it happened and we’ve been spared.
The show spends a fair amount of time visualizing Nic’s guilt over Alex’s death. Alex, himself, is not really a fixture in the first few episodes but his death is always felt via flashbacks. There’s shame and unspoken truths that cast a shadow on Nic’s day to day and get in the way of her relationships with both with her husband, Dan (Dustin Demri-Burns) and with her son, Ollie (played by Lenny Rush).
But…Who the heck is Alex?
The humdrum life… and Mr. Miaowgi
In present day, Nic is a stay-at-home mom, living in a beautiful home with Dan and Ollie. We don’t know where in the timeline her current life is compared to the Alex train story, but assume Alex and train are the past. Husband and kid are the present. Nic drinks too much, she sees people that aren’t really there in abrupt and jarring flashes that are reoccurring. At first, the flashbacks and hallucinations are intermittent and sparse, but with Nic’s mental decline, as the series progresses, and as a certain date approaches, they almost take over the show at a frenzied pace and this is something that needs to be rectified in season 2, given that the show has been greenlit for a second season.
Nic doesn’t have any friends and her arch nemesis neighbor, Lucy (Karla Chrome), a seemingly snobby and “mean” mom, who never offers Ollie a ride to school even though they leave at the same time for school and don’t have a car, we later learn has her positive attributes too. So when Nic comes across new mom Jen (Selin Hizli), single mother to a boy Ollie’s age, you may as well be hearing Doja Cat & Saweetie’s Best Friend in the background playing. It’s like the skies have opened up and they bond, with Nic accepting Jen into the fold, after Jen says about Lucy, “She’s a bit of a cunt.” She knows that Jen can keep it real with her and this cements their bond.
Nic and Dan’s son, Ollie, has dwarfism, which is normalized in the show in a refreshingly positive and inclusive way. Ollie is presented as a clever and funny kid who uses his smarts to get what he needs. At some point he comments, “Mom I’m too much like you” to which Nic says, “Yeah that’s not good.”
Some of the best scenes in the show, are the ones in which Ollie, an aspiring horror film director, recruits his mom and dad for his films and they go along with it for hours on end. A scene in which his grandma gets him Duplo legos for his birthday, which for those of you unfamiliar with this model of legos, they are for preschoolers, is especially funny because Nic’s response is so incredibly annoyed. Because Ollie is short, he’s also 3-4 year olds? Ollie’s put out because he wants money. Neither of them are taking grandma’s bat-shitty ways and her lack of awareness too seriously.
A key subplot of the show is the disappearance of the family’s cat, Mr. Miaowgi, and Nic putting up signs all over town to find him. When he’s finally found (cue yet another shocker twist), Nic has to then take down the 50 missing cat posters and Ollie seems less than enthused by his reappearance which Nic finds peculiar. Still, Mr. Miaowgi (ode to The Karate Kid) is such a perfect cat name.
A shocker twist
Without giving away too much of the storyline, the ending has a shocker and there are some admissions throughout the show that leave really only character really sympathetic, or maybe 2. Jen is one of them. Jen readily accepts Nic and calls her “magnificent” in a way that only a best friend can, but Nic is suspicious of her, and rightfully so. I didn’t expect to get so much from this show, but I binged the entire season in one evening and a morning.
Things the show gets right
Jen and Nic’s friendship - It’s not exactly our other Jen and Judy’s friendship (Dead to Me) but it’s filled with understanding, compassion and acceptance.
Mundane relationship conversations between spouses - So even though Dan and Nic are supposedly in a “dead end” marriage or a “in a rut,” I found their conversations about really most everything to be entertaining. There’s the signature British unaffectedness and sarcasm and an underlying warmth that works.
Ollie’s 9-going on-40 - Some kids are just born 40-year-olds and Ollie is a good example of a kid, wise beyond his years.
Lucy’s comedy - Lucy is a great foil for Nic. She’s the person who’s easy to dislike, only there’s more to her than just that, and the interactions between her and Nic are hilarious.
Things the show needs to say “bye” to
Flashbacks and Hallucinations - Be gone. In all shows, flashbacks should be used very briefly to help explain a character’s backstory and then never more.
Alex’s wife, Suzie - Maybe she can be brought back in a rare flashback in S2, just to help explain what happened to her so we can all move on.
Looking for other shows that do friendship well?
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel - Take your pick. Lenny & Midge? Susie and Midge?
Dead to Me - Jen and Judy
Shrill - Annie and Fran
- explores Keeley and Rebecca’s friendship
This sounds right up my alley. I don’t know if you have Roku, but there’s a show on The Roku Channel called Slip that is excellent. And I had thought about watching Rain Dogs but like I said in my recent TV comedy post, I am craving less dark fare right now. Though I probably will watch that eventually.