There Won’t Always Be An Introduction
For the time being, I will still always at the very least check out new fiction series from Showtime (and HBO and maybe Starz). I won’t always check out news, sports news or documentary content.
Where I Saw It
I’m a cord cutter so I saw it on the Showtime app for Apple TV
Nuts & Bolts
For the most part, if you say the star is Kirsten Dunst, I’ll be there for it. I was trying to remember where I first truly noticed Kirsten and when I looked at her IMDB profile I saw that she had been in some movies and tv shows I’ve seen but I guess we all noticed her as the littlest vampire Claudia in Interview With The Vampire, for real in Bring It On and then of course as Mary Jane Watson in Spider-Man. By then, she was an unstoppable force and while On Becoming is a great show, she had a very memorable performance in Fargo Season 2. And she’s blonde and gorgeous and super talented and so forth and so on.
Now To The Meat…
The logline says it all (industry term: when you’re at your pitch meeting for a show and the network executive asks what its all about, your logline should tell the basic premise of the story): In 1992 Central Florida, a minimum-wage water park employee lies, schemes, and cons her way up the ranks of the cultish, multibillion-dollar pyramid scheme that drove her family to ruin.
The keys here are for sure “1992” for the fashion alone, “lies – schemes – cons” well maybe that’s a little rough. Krystal Stubbs (played by Dunst) is a 150% version of almost how I figure any spouse would react when their significant other goes into deep debt trying to make a business work and it just won’t work. In Krystal’s case, it’s her husband Travis (played by Alexander Skarsgård) who makes a memorable early exit. The final key is “cultish”. Personally I’ve always regarded pyramid schemes or multi-level marketing programs the same. After you get/guilt your family into buying a bunch of your candles or cookware and your closest friends buy 1 candle or 1 skillet and your coworkers hear what you have to say and explain how they get their candles from Target. Then who do you sell to?
See though, that’s the great thing about this first season. We see Krystal do whatever it takes to make it work. She starts by making it work within the pyramid and I know its not educational per se, but I learned some stuff. Then she gets to work on her ideas, boosting her entrepreneurial efforts with skills she learned from FAM (the MLM org in the show). Finally Krystal does what we all do – whatever she has to to make it work.
The show has been renewed for a second season which I expect would premiere sometime in Summer 2020.
Grade: B or 86 for this first season. Room to grow and so forth.
