Dopesick - General Discussion

[Melina22]

A couple of years ago a young man I know here jumped off our town's bridge to his death because after multiple stays in rehab, he was so certain he could never overcome his opioid addiction. Naturally everyone who loved him felt so devastated and helpless. So Dopesick held my interest from start to finish. 

The few times I myself was given oxycodone, I found the pills so nauseating that I wondered how people could get addicted. Maybe they stop feeling the nausea after awhile. 

Watching Dopesick reminded me of reading the autobiography a few years ago by Kristen Johnston from Third Rock from the Sun. She graphically describes the opiate addiction that almost killed her. After the chronic abuse caused her intestines to rupture she ended up near death in a London hospital for weeks, and barely survived. It was horrifying. Fortunately she lived and was able to get clean. 

I think what made this show so powerful for me was seeing a kind, smart, good person, Michael Keaton, get reduced to taking his patients' pills and begging for drugs from his visitors in rehab, in a creepy way. Society judges addicts so harshly, and often makes fun of them, like they're less than human. Dopesick showed how the best of us can be totally degraded by addiction, but hopefully we can eventually recover. 

Suboxone seemed to play such a big role in recovery in this show. I'd be curious to know how widely it's used in treating opioid addiction. 

 

 

 

 

[Cinnabon]

2 hours ago, SunnyBeBe said:

I’m astounded that opioids have such an impact on people.  Perhaps, I’m fortunate, but when I take them, it’s as if it doesn’t do much.  I’ve tried them before for out patient surgeries and found little relief.  I’ll be having meniscus surgery soon and dread not having pain pills to help with post operative pain.   The people depicted in this series seemed to get so much pain relief from them.  I still struggle to imagine it.  

They say opioids affect people in different ways. Just like with alcohol, some people just love the way they make them feel and want more and more. I’m like you - I’ve taken them several times after surgeries and they the dull extreme pain, but I don’t like the way I feel when I take them. Ditto for alcohol - I can have a drink or 2 and stop, while alcoholics have a couple drinks and can’t seem to stop there. I’ve had alcohol in my refrigerator for months because I just never felt like drinking it, which is impossible for some. On the other hand, if I have ice cream or dessert in my freezer, I can’t stop myself from eating it all within a day or 2. We all have our drugs of choice that light up our brains’ pleasure centers. 

Edited March 13, 2022 by Cinnabon

[Melina22]

Excellent point, Cinnabon! Not everyone who takes Oxy gets addicted, for the reason you describe. Also, people with past trauma are apparently more likely to get addicted to various substances. It's all very complex and individual. 

If this show helps people to be less judgmental about addiction, that would be good. 

[SunnyBeBe]

I have empathy for those who suffer addiction. I have family members who suffer from cocaine addiction. It almost destroyed their life.  I am encouraged when I read about the success stories or people hardcore addicts like Keith Richards and Jimmy Page.  There is hope. 

Edited March 13, 2022 by SunnyBeBe

[qtpye]

On 11/12/2021 at 12:50 PM, islandgal140 said:

According to the dialogue early ep. 7, there were looking into Oxy for Kids!   Sweet fancy Moses! Is that true?

 

On 11/12/2021 at 1:33 PM, Cinnabon said:

I heard that too! I’m sure they wanted that but thank goodness it never happened.

I so wanted to punch that smug bastard in the face when he asked about children's oxycontin.

On 11/12/2021 at 1:44 PM, Cinnabon said:

They say some people have a predisposition to addiction to opiates, and some don’t. I’m like you - I’ve taken oxycodone and Vicodin several times following major surgeries, and although it does ease the pain, I can either take it or leave it. It doesn’t make me happy or euphoric, I’m just kind of dull. The first time I got Vicodin was after a foot surgery, and I didn’t really like it. I was taking it and going to work, and I noticed that my thinking seemed kind of dull and slow, and I hated that. So I just stopped taking it and took Tylenol instead. Years later, I still had some pills left in the bottle. Fast forward to a few years later and I received some after a gallbladder removal and a hysterectomy. In both cases, I took them for a few days after I returned home, and then happily stopped taking them. My doctors only gave me a small amount also, and I doubt they would have refilled them had I asked. I do consider myself fortunate that I reacted that way, instead of loving how they made me feel! But yes, they do have a place in relieving major pain. As discussed on the show, part of the problem was that they were encouraging doctors to prescribe them for even mild to moderate pain, when that’s absolutely not appropriate.

 

On 3/13/2022 at 1:10 PM, SunnyBeBe said:

I’m astounded that opioids have such an impact on people.  Perhaps, I’m fortunate, but when I take them, it’s as if it doesn’t do much.  I’ve tried them before for out patient surgeries and found little relief.  I’ll be having meniscus surgery soon and dread not having pain pills to help with post operative pain.   The people depicted in this series seemed to get so much pain relief from them.  I still struggle to imagine it.  

 

On 3/13/2022 at 2:25 PM, Melina22 said:

A couple of years ago a young man I know here jumped off our town's bridge to his death because after multiple stays in rehab, he was so certain he could never overcome his opioid addiction. Naturally everyone who loved him felt so devastated and helpless. So Dopesick held my interest from start to finish. 

The few times I myself was given oxycodone, I found the pills so nauseating that I wondered how people could get addicted. Maybe they stop feeling the nausea after awhile. 

Watching Dopesick reminded me of reading the autobiography a few years ago by Kristen Johnston from Third Rock from the Sun. She graphically describes the opiate addiction that almost killed her. After the chronic abuse caused her intestines to rupture she ended up near death in a London hospital for weeks, and barely survived. It was horrifying. Fortunately she lived and was able to get clean. 

I think what made this show so powerful for me was seeing a kind, smart, good person, Michael Keaton, get reduced to taking his patients' pills and begging for drugs from his visitors in rehab, in a creepy way. Society judges addicts so harshly, and often makes fun of them, like they're less than human. Dopesick showed how the best of us can be totally degraded by addiction, but hopefully we can eventually recover. 

Suboxone seemed to play such a big role in recovery in this show. I'd be curious to know how widely it's used in treating opioid addiction. 

 

 

 

 

I am one of those who felt nauseated in the rare times I was prescribed opioids after my surgery. 

This series is amazing. I put it in the same league as a season of The Wire.

I learned that at the end of the day, we are all just playthings of the super wealthy. I probably knew that before but this series confirmed it.

[BusyOctober]

I avoided watching this when it came out because I lost a relative to an opioid overdose in 2008.  It is still hard to think about him. He was a from a well to do family, grew up in a very nice neighborhood, played sports, had friends.  He got hooked on Oxy in the late 90’s thanks to a sports injury. Heroin ended his life. His parents tried several rehabs, and even tried keeping him on 24 hr watch and lock down.  Nothing worked to help him beat it.  He stole from family members, from his employer. Lost his house. His marriage fell apart. All because the opioids made him believe that’s all that mattered. We lost his mom to cancer, and he fell further into the drugs. His childhood “best friend” was an addict too, and they worked together to stay high. The police found him in a parking lot at 3am with a needle in his arm and various paraphernalia around him.  His buddy had been with him and abandoned him in the car when he OD’d.  

I finally watched this, and I am glad I did.  I think it was very well done.  I did cry often when they showed all the addicts getting high, especially the young ones. The young kid in the car especially hard. 

As despicable as the Sacklers are, they are not the only ones to blame in this tragedy.  The pharma reps, the advertisers, the doctors, the bullshit “pain clinics”, and the government agencies all should answer for their complicity.  It is disgusting how greed corrupts some people. 

[poeticlicensed]

Finally got around to watching this. Oy what an epic sh*tshow it was, all driven by money. And so much complicity from Purdue to the FDA to the reps and the drs. I live in Florida and there were pill milks in some towns. The state just settled with Walgreens for a huge amount of money when it was discovered that some Walgreens in small towns were prescribing more opioids than would supply every person in town many times over. 

I actually feel bad for some of the docs who listened to the reps instead of using doing their own research. Most dont have the time to read the literature. Patients need to do due diligence. I read the research literature on every pill I take. But I know I'm in the minority. 

Fortunately or unfortunately, I'm one of those people who gets violently ill with opioid. But I've also had surgery and literally had the dr insist I take the scrip for oxy even if I refuse. My niece has been addicted for the last 20 years. She has been to rehab more times than I can count. When she couldn't get opioids she turned to heroin. She's almost 40 and it has ruined her life. She cannot kick it and relapses often. 

[lovinbob]

This series was so, so good. Michael Keaton is one of my all time favorite actors, and he was wonderful here. The change in his demeanor and countenance when he was sober versus sick--subtle and powerful. 

Kaitlyn Dever and Mare Winningham--brilliant! Sarsgaard was good, but the actor who played Randy Ramseyer, John Hoogenakker, was a favorite. Was a little on the fence about Rosario Dawson, but I think maybe it wasn't the acting that I didn't love--it was the character. I could understand why so many people told her to change her approach—she was a steamroller where maybe a massage would have been more effective. With that said, her passion and concern were 100% appropriate.

Michael Stuhlberg as Dr. Richard -- a bit of a moustache twirling villain. Maybe that's appropriate. His callous green, along with the Phillipa Soo character, were shocking to my naive sensibilities.

And yes, THE WIGS! So terrible!

• Philippa Soo almost looked like they were suggesting the character wore a wig. When she was in the lingerie it reminded me a little of Julia Roberts's prostitute wig in Pretty Woman
• Kathe Sackler actress -- again I wondered if it was part of the character--I thought maybe she was a hasidic jew
• Rosario Dawson
• Sarsgaard (his was the least bad, I think)
• the bald Sackler brother

Why did these characters need wigs? It's not like they were famous--it wouldn't have mattered if their hair wasn't a perfect match to the character.

[ProudMary]

Dopesick has been awarded a Peabody.

https://peabodyawards.com/award-profile/dopesick/

[qtpye]

On 6/7/2022 at 6:20 PM, ProudMary said:

Dopesick has been awarded a Peabody.

https://peabodyawards.com/award-profile/dopesick/

I am so glad.

This series was brilliant and should have gotten more critical acclaim.

[paramitch]

This was incredible, if maddening and painful. Beautiful performances from Sarsgaard, Keaton, Dever, Poulter, Stuhlbarg, and all. I especially loved seeing Sarsgaard play a nice guy (he's so often typecast as a villain), and he was lovely here. I did get a kick out of the fact that he and the always wonderful Michael Stuhlbarg were both perviously in Hulu's fantastic The Looming Tower, where in that one Stuhlbarg was the white knight and Sarsgaard was the villain. But here they switched it up, and I'm sure that was a blast.

Meanwhile, this was tough viewing, but worth it (and very, very accurate). I have addicts in my family, and I've watched people I love spiral all the way down, and some of them haven't been able to recover.

While my brother still struggles with his own addiction, my sister is one of the few who was able to battle her way back (she is amazing), but not before I and my family watched her take the classic oxy journey here taken by poor Betsy. From pain management, into higher and higher tolerances, into abusing the pain meds, knowing which doctors would overprescribe or refill early, into blatant abuse and addiction, into all the local ERs and hospitals not being willing to treat her with any meds at all, even the few times she had legitimate pain because most of the time she was simply drug-seeking. Then watching her spiral into drug dealing in order to keep her habit going, into creating a circle of friends who were all fellow addicts and users, snorting their meds to get a faster high -- then lying, stealing, taking advantage of family members, then heroin and homelessness before prison saved her (she spent a year and a half for heroine use/dealing, got clean, came out and did rehab, and is now 4 years sober).

The show is 100% accurate in everything I personally have witnessed from watching a family member go through addiction (and how pain management is the gateway). I especially appreciated that it showed us so many people of different ages, jobs, pain situations, etc. -- who managed to become addicted. And then heartbreakingly died. One of those was a close family friend just this year (her family had no idea she was even an addict -- she hid it incredibly well, then overdosed one night in front of the television).

The saddest part about my sister's story is that even though she has recovered, almost everyone she knows from her addiction days, as well as (heartbreakingly) from rehab and group later on, has died of a painkiller or heroin overdose. I'm talking dozens of people in 4 years. At one point, it was around one death per week. Just last month, I asked her where her friend Heather was after she got quiet on Facebook, and my sis went silent, then replied that Heather had died a week earlier. It's worse than a war.

On 10/29/2021 at 11:25 PM, Quilt Fairy said:

I found a drug dealer using AA meetings to get clients reminiscent of Jesse in Breaking Bad, although perhaps Breaking Bad got that plotline from the Oxy situation. 

Honestly, both got the plotline from the fact that it happens constantly in real life. My brother, who also struggled with addiction, used to refuse to go back to NA (going to AA instead) because NA meetings were such common buyer-dealer hookups and he got tired of being constantly tempted.

On 11/2/2021 at 7:44 AM, Ohiopirate02 said:

There were a lot of factors that lead to the explosion of opioid prescriptions starting around 2002. I remember seeing drugs that were only ever prescribed in a hospital setting or for end-stage cancer patients being written en masse by pain management doctors. And this happened across multiple states.  Drug reps from one or two manufacturers do not have that much power.  But, it's easier to blame them and say they duped hundreds if not thousands of doctors into thinking somehow Oxycontin was not addicting.  

Both of these things can be true. I definitely agree that opioids were being overprescribed before oxycontin hit the market, beginning as far back as the 1980s. But I would also say that it's pretty factually verifiable that the Sackler money, and the millions they/Purdue Pharma were willing to pour into aggressive marketing, lobbying, and sales, combined with the  FDA-promoted and devastating lie that oxycontin was "less addictive"  and therefore allowable and encouraged for chronic and lower-level pain -- had  apocalyptic effects on amplifying a whole new level of opioid abuse across all social strata.

What I think DopeSick showed effectively was how the Sacklers exacerbated an existing health crisis in America by using almost unlimited funds to corrupt the entire system into enabling its own lies, from beginning to end, both knowing and unknowingly -- from the FDA, to marketing, sales, doctors, hospitals, professional organizations, even educational materials, advocacy, patient groups and pain management groups! That one little tagline the FDA allowed, that addiction was rare, sparked a vast wildfire.

On 11/10/2021 at 2:04 PM, Joan van Snark said:

I have enjoyed the show, but I guess it is sort of necessary in a dramatized, few hours long series, that they greatly exaggerate how fast people can become addicted. It rarely happens after taking the pills for a couple of weeks.  Usually it takes several months of continuous use to become desperately addicted like some of the people portrayed on the show.  And not every user gets to the point where they steal from their parents, prostitutes, breaks into pharmacies, etc.  When they run out they just get sick and deal with it.

I think this POV is dangerously naïve. Sure, many people do not become addicts because they're put on pain management for a few weeks. Sure, many people do not become liars, cheaters and thieves for their addictions.

But many, many others do. Millions do. I have seen it firsthand. Opioids sent my middle-class sister from a happy family and career, over a decade, into homelessness and heroin addiction. Opioid use is so rampant in the U.S., in fact, that it has lowered overall life expectancy in our country for several years in a row.

As far as the show exaggerating, from the National Institute on Drug Abuse:

"Roughly 21 to 29 percent of patients prescribed opioids for chronic pain misuse them. Between 8 and 12 percent of people using an opioid for chronic pain develop an opioid use disorder. An estimated 4 to 6 percent who misuse prescription opioids transition to heroin."

On 11/11/2021 at 9:27 PM, KLJ said:

I wonder if she was considering it sort of like a "last hurrah" before she started going to the clinic with the doc.

Betsy says point-blank to her dealer friend that she may as well make this one a doozy since she's going to the clinic the next day.

On 11/15/2021 at 11:45 AM, Sweet-tea said:

I'm really enjoying this show and am bummed it's about to end. Michael Keaton is the standout here for me. I've never seen him in a role like this. He's done a fabulous job of showing how this humble, kind country doctor changed into a different person as an addict. His face is so expressive. I can see the pain and turmoil he's going through. When he was first asked about his wife, the sadness that passed across his face... I wonder if it was a precursor to his vulnerability to addiction?

I thought Keaton was fantastic in this. I especially thought both he and Dever were superb in their drugged scenes, which are really hard to play realistically, and which I think most actors overdo. Keaton in particular did this kind of double-blink that really got to me because it is exactly what it is like being faced with an addict. They will space out for microseconds and then wake back up, space out, wake up, and it's a very specific thing and hard to describe. Keaton was scarily perfect.

The moment that broke me with Keaton, though, was twofold: When Finnix called Betsy to apologize, then told her he loved her (and it wasn't remotely creepy). And later, his visible panic when he goes to pick up Elizabeth and she isn't answering the door. (I was so glad she was okay!)

On 11/18/2021 at 12:11 PM, SoMuchTV said:

Sister Beth for the win. “You know other nuns. That makes me feel so close to you.”  I had a feeling she wouldn’t go for the “donation”.

When Sister Beth listened quietly to Dr. Art Van Zee and Betsy's mother consider taking Purdue Pharma's payoff and then said: "So you want to take their payoff to shut us all up? you go ahead. But if you do that, I will quit this coalition right here and now because I would rather burn in hell than take a penny of their blood money."

I fricking cheered. Loved Sister Beth. And Meagen Fay was wonderful in the role. FYI, Sister Beth is still helping people in Appalachia struggling with addiction, and her organization has been struggling and is running out of money. Author Beth Macy and others started a GoFundMe to help her here.

On 11/19/2021 at 10:43 AM, BrindaWalsh said:

However, I feel like they missed one critical story arc  here - the perfectly normal, happy teen with everything ahead of them who gets prescribed oxy for a sport injury or some such thing.  So many of the characters in the show who became addicted seemed to have some underlying emotional or mental struggle.  For example, Betsy was struggling with her identity as a lesbian, Dr. Finnix certainly carried himself with a sense of loneliness and we learned early on that he had lost his wife to  cancer.  And while we got glimpses of the perfectly happy "world ahead of them teen," we didn't really see that full story arc which left me with the impression that they inadvertently tied an internal struggle with a proclivity towards addiction when we know that drugs do not discriminate in that way and that's been a big part of the opioid story and how the heroin crisis was different this time around.

I don't really agree that we didn't get a rich enough diversity across social strata here -- I definitely didn't feel like Betsy's drug use was tied to her being a lesbian (which is simply a fact of who she is), we see Dr. Finnix, a a caring small-town doctor, fall into it for reasons that have nothing to do with his grief (which he is managing without addiction of any kind up to that point), and then in the final courtroom scene, one of the parents literally confronts the board with the ashes of her successful high-school son, who had overdosed just before he was off to start a happy life at college. Plus the many heartbreaking working-class people using it to stave off pain to keep their jobs. So I do think the show attempted to show us a wide assortment of situations and users.

Speaking of Betsy, it was horribly, sadly ironic that her parents went from "I'd rather have a dead daughter than a daughter who likes girls!" to "Sorry! We'd totally rather have you alive and liking girls!" -- even to the point of having her girlfriend be present at their intervention for Betsy. Her parents felt like real, believable people to me -- yes, they were bigots, but they did love her, and they grew from their experiences. Seeing Betsy's mother (Mare Winningham was wonderful) apologize to Betsy for her homophobia, and then later become a protester after her death was really powerful.

I've also always loved Ray McKinnon, who plays Betsy's Dad (an Oscar winner, FYI! For me he'll always be the sweet preacher on "Deadwood"), and as with Betsy's mom, it was very moving to see him try to wrestle with the challenges of Betsy's addiction and overdose. His quiet kindness to Dr. Finnix at their last meeting destroyed me.

On 11/21/2021 at 2:10 PM, Sweet-tea said:

i wonder if the country doctor shown in the documentary was the inspiration for Michael Keaton's character. 

Dr. Finnix is a composite of several doctors interviewed for the book and show, but he is also at least partly based on Nashville doctor and addiction specialist Dr. Stephen Lloyd, who became addicted (at one point to up to 100 pills per day) and then recovered to counsel others in recovery.

On 12/29/2021 at 11:50 AM, IndianPaintbrush said:

Philippa Soo's character may have seemed exaggerated, but I have no doubt there are people in the pharmaceutical sales industry that are exactly like her. The greed, the phony sales tactics, the frat party atmosphere...it all seems pretty accurate to me.

I agree. I thought Amber's character was essential, and that Philippa Soo did a wonderful job with her. Yeah, she's evil, but she's an everyday evil, someone who excuses what they do in service to the job. She never had to actually see the effects of what she was doing, unlike Will Poulter's character Billy, whose journey was one of my favorites in the show.

I think we needed that contrast between the two journeys -- between Amber's drive to succeed, obliviously focusing on sales and milestones (ignoring the human cost) -- and Billy's journey from blithely mouthing the Purdue lies, selling death to sweet doctor Finnix and his patients, to his dawning upset at what he had really been a part of. The look of horror on his face when Dr. Finnix asked him if he could get him some more pills really hit me like a hammer.

And I loved it that he stole the tapes but couldn't quite act on them without a push. It felt much more believable to me that he was still something of a pragmatist, afraid to press the red button until Rick and Randy confronted him.

[Colorado David]

On 6/21/2022 at 5:24 PM, paramitch said:

I thought Keaton was fantastic in this. I especially thought both he and Dever were superb in their drugged scenes, which are really hard to play realistically, and which I think most actors overdo. Keaton in particular did this kind of double-blink that really got to me because it is exactly what it is like being faced with an addict. They will space out for microseconds and then wake back up, space out, wake up, and it's a very specific thing and hard to describe. Keaton was scarily perfect.

The moment that broke me with Keaton, though, was twofold: When Finnix called Betsy to apologize, then told her he loved her (and it wasn't remotely creepy). And later, his visible panic when he goes to pick up Elizabeth and she isn't answering the door. (I was so glad she was okay!)

When Sister Beth listened quietly to Dr. Art Van Zee and Betsy's mother consider taking Purdue Pharma's payoff and then said: "So you want to take their payoff to shut us all up? you go ahead. But if you do that, I will quit this coalition right here and now because I would rather burn in hell than take a penny of their blood money."

I fricking cheered. Loved Sister Beth. And Meagen Fay was wonderful in the role. FYI, Sister Beth is still helping people in Appalachia struggling with addiction, and her organization has been struggling and is running out of money. Author Beth Macy and others started a GoFundMe to help her here.

I've also always loved Ray McKinnon, who plays Betsy's Dad (an Oscar winner, FYI! For me he'll always be the sweet preacher on "Deadwood"), and as with Betsy's mom, it was very moving to see him try to wrestle with the challenges of Betsy's addiction and overdose. His quiet kindness to Dr. Finnix at their last meeting destroyed me.

Agree on all these points. I do hope Keaton wins several awards for this, he played the guilt so well and understated, as I imagine a small town country doctor would be.

And thank you for acknowledging McKinnon, I love that guy too (agreed, he's fantastic on Deadwood.) He plays simple yet introspectively emotional very well.

Satisfying binge, this mini-series.  Tells you how messed up a system has to be to have a manufacturer of something potentially LETHAL self-policing without more independent testers/watchdogs in place (and I know it ties to BIG MONEY and political influence - I just wish there was a good solution.)    Any recommendations for what to watch next?

[SoMuchTV]

54 minutes ago, Colorado David said:

Any recommendations for what to watch next?

Hmm, interesting question, since I think Dopesick was the best of the bunch.  Others I've watched recently (fictionalized but based on real cases) include The Dropout, Under the Banner of Heaven, Candy, The Thing About Pam, Pam and Tommy, The Staircase... All of them I'd classify as varying degrees of watchable but not must-see.  Oh - When They See Us.  Not easy to watch but important.  I started on We Crashed and I think one or two others (one about Uber, maybe?), but haven't gotten back to them.  I'll be interested to hear what other recommendations you get. 

[paramitch]

19 hours ago, Colorado David said:

Any recommendations for what to watch next?

Sure!

Some recent bingewatches:

HACKS -- bitter but ends up sweet at the end of each season. Loved it.

BARRY -- brilliant, well-acted, very dark comedy

TED LASSO -- sweet and seriously almost perfect

OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH -- sweet, goofy, violent, madcap, incredibly inclusive, complex and joyful

MARE OF EASTTOWN

Past series recommendations:

HALT AND CATCH FIRE

THE AMERICANS

DEADWOOD

THE TERROR (season 1 is a limited series, full-story fricking masterpiece, but -- very violent, dark, downer)

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT (seasons 1 & 2)

HIS DARK MATERIALS 

BETTER OFF TED

HANNIBAL

PUSHING DAISIES

SENSE8

THE SOPRANOS

GALAVANT

VERONICA MARS

ANGEL

DOCTOR WHO ("NewWho" starting with the Ninth Doctor)

THE GOOD PLACE

PENNY DREADFUL

Can't remember what else. Hope this helps? 

[SoMuchTV]

25 minutes ago, paramitch said:

Sure!

Some recent bingewatches:

HACKS -- bitter but ends up sweet at the end of each season. Loved it.

BARRY -- brilliant, well-acted, very dark comedy

TED LASSO -- sweet and seriously almost perfect

OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH -- sweet, goofy, violent, madcap, incredibly inclusive, complex and joyful

MARE OF EASTTOWN

Past series recommendations:

HALT AND CATCH FIRE

THE AMERICANS

DEADWOOD

THE TERROR (season 1 is a limited series, full-story fricking masterpiece, but -- very violent, dark, downer)

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT (seasons 1 & 2)

HIS DARK MATERIALS 

BETTER OFF TED

HANNIBAL

PUSHING DAISIES

SENSE8

THE SOPRANOS

GALAVANT

VERONICA MARS

ANGEL

DOCTOR WHO ("NewWho" starting with the Ninth Doctor)

THE GOOD PLACE

PENNY DREADFUL

Can't remember what else. Hope this helps? 

Oh yes, I've watched quite a few of those and I concur.  I was going for the "fictionalized true crime" genre but I guess you weren't asking for that specifically.

[Colorado David]

thanks for the suggestions. i have seen a few of those, so it seems we have similar tastes (specifically the Terror and Deadwood, how great were those?)   

I'm a Tom Baker Dr Who devotee, also enjoyed the Pertwee and Davison runs as well. (yep I am that old.)

Starting now with Barry, as everyone seems to love it. I'm not a big Hader fan, but I'll give it a go.

Edited June 27, 2022 by Colorado David
adding Who stuff

[paramitch]

On 6/26/2022 at 12:05 PM, Colorado David said:

thanks for the suggestions. i have seen a few of those, so it seems we have similar tastes (specifically the Terror and Deadwood, how great were those?)   

I'm a Tom Baker Dr Who devotee, also enjoyed the Pertwee and Davison runs as well. (yep I am that old.)

Starting now with Barry, as everyone seems to love it. I'm not a big Hader fan, but I'll give it a go.

You're very welcome!

Yeah, I love DEADWOOD (I'm doing a rewatch at the moment and am on season 3). Just so beautifully written and acted!

I'm interested to see what you think of BARRY -- I hadn't really been a fan of Hader's previously, but holy shit, he blew me away. His performances across all three seasons include some incredibly heartwrenching, dark, funny, moving stuff (sometimes all at once).

[Milburn Stone]

On 12/26/2021 at 3:25 AM, anoninrva said:

Did he, though?  He seemed to be getting cold feet about being upgraded from f-buddies to fulltime employee/boyfriend, but he didn't seem to take any agency on that.  He got fired, didn't sign the NDA, and the next we see him he's with a similar looking but different girl.

Even though the Will Poulter character was somewhat passive, I think he did show agency simply by his refusal to take the severance/NDA deal. $75K was a fair chunk of change to a lot of people back then, and that was a real sacrifice for him, motivated entirely by his actively taking a stand for the sake of his soul. 

[Sweet-tea]

As we thought!

https://www.emmys.com/shows/dopesick

[Kel Varnsen]

I started watching this tonight, since I had been watching a lot of comedy lately and needed a change of pace. And I definitely got it. One episode in and it is so good, especially once I got the hang of the time jumps. 

Although at the end it seemed crazy to me that Michael Keaton was giving tiny Kaitlyn Dever 2 pills a day to take. I was prescribed oxy years ago because I had really bad tendonosis in my shoulder to the point where I couldn't raise my hand above my waist. I had to sleep with a sling on and I was taking it at night, and half a pill knocked me out pretty quickly. So I can't imagine taking two full pills a day and being able to stand.

[Kel Varnsen]

On 11/16/2021 at 1:11 PM, MamaMax said:

Dever broke my heart with her reaction to her Dad putting her pills in the dispos-all. I thought she was going to reach her hand in.  

That scene was crazy how good it was. And I can't believe it took me three episodes to realize that Betsy's dad was Reverend Smith from Deadwood. Thinking back to the episode where Betsy came out though it's funny that her dad is more judgemental than an 1870's preacher.

This show is so good though, I have watched 5 episodes in 3 days.

On 3/12/2022 at 9:22 PM, Melina22 said:

I'm with those who thought the female sales rep was cartoonishly evil. Apart from that, why would a normal, attractive young man be so besotted with someone so truly shallow and nasty? Was she really the best he could do? 

I really don't get that character. She seems to think she is way hotter and way more interesting than she actually is, and everyone else seems to buy it too.

The only thing I didn't really get was why there was the big fight over Richard Sackler becoming the company president. It seems like he was already running the company operations, and some research tells me his father was the president before him I think. So if he wasn't going to be the president who would?

Edited November 17, 2022 by Kel Varnsen