I Love Dick

This was an instant favorite of mine. It is well written, raw, gorgeous, melancholy, painful, ugly, and so unique. I was so happy to see that the rest of the season was finally released! Then was shocked to see the rating here. I don't think majority Americans appreciate truth or abstractions of things.

During the pilot it becomes immediately apparent that there is not a single redeemable quality in any of the characters. The male protagonist is a sorry caricature of middle age stagnation. The story begins with him but shifts to his wife as the storyteller. His wife starts complaining about everything as soon as the camera hits her, the food, the accommodations, the town, the people...and on and on. Characters are introduced, seem interesting but then their story arcs just end with no clear resolution or even unclear resolution. The story is an endless series of wine gatherings and classes about "art?" I honestly did not believe vapid people still existed like this, I am surprised Andy Warhol was not exhumed to round out the cast. The characters are the stereotypical New Yorkers, roaming around the desert wearing blue blazers and ladder strap sandals...."oh look at us we are sophisticates because we drink wine." I was hoping for so much more.

Being a big fan of Jill Soloway's Tranparent, it seemed worthwhile to check out her failed pilot, I Love Dick. It was not worthwhile. At all.

In I Love Dick, a couple moves to a small town of writers headed over by Kevin Bacon as someone who is billed as cool and charismatic but who actually just seems like a pretentious jerk (charismatic jerks can also be found in Transparent - Soloway seems to be intrigued by them).

The wife becomes instantly fascinated by Bacon, even after he goes on a mansplaining rant denigrating everything she's ever done.

You can't feel sorry for her, because she's an awful person. As is her husband. Really, this is just a show about awful people. When midwest Republicans talk about New York liberal elites, I think they are imagining people like these horrible people.

Ugh.

This film tells the story of a married woman who goes with her husband to a small town for an artistic conference. They have troubles in their marriage, and the cracks widen as she meets a charismatic man in the conference.

There must be something seriously missing in the "I Love Dick" that I watched. The 32 minutes of footage does not show what the plot summary says - I did not get how "both" of them fall for the same professor. I only see how she falls for him, and there is no second person falling for the professor. Either way, the story is not so interesting. It is more like a housewife fantasy, only that it is boring and fails to connect with viewers. The only good scenes are Kevin Bacon's flirtatious gazes at the camera, and the final scene which looks rather artistic. However, these fleeting scenes are not enough to make me interested in this film, or the potential future series.

This review is based on the whole series, not just the pilot as so many of the other reviews are.

Get past the Pilot, it is probably the worst episode of the series and it will put a lot of people off.

If you can get past the Pilot, be prepared for a weird and wacky ride, it takes a bit of watching, but each episode is less than 30 minutes and I think it was worth it.

The important characters, and there is more than one or three like the inaccurate plot points out, are reasonably well fleshed out and each has a story.

Let me just say this is not a story about a man and a woman falling in love with the same man and leave it there. Work it out for yourself.

There is lots of full frontal nudity, both male and female, but it is not over the top in my opinion and fits with the story.

Some would say the series is very artsy, but I found it not so. It was just a story about people.

I liked it and recommend it.

7/10