Dead Tree Alert II: The Annotated John from Cincinnati

June 8, 2007, by James Poniewozik, time-blog.com

Sean, Butchie and John hit the beach. / HBO photo: John P. Johnson

This week in TIME, I also review John from Cincinnati on HBO (scroll down). Bottom line: don’t get your hopes up.

But even if this David Milch series doesn’t live up to Deadwood, it’s rich and intelligent enough that it isn’t really well-served by “bottom lines” and 200-word reviews. So I thought I’d reprint the review below, annotated with some of the things I had to leave out.

If you have seen the HBO ads, you will be wondering what the deal is with that series about the levitating surfer. After seeing three episodes of John from Cincinnati, a critic can tell you that it is about a levitating surfer. Beyond that, you are on your own.

OK, there’s a bit more I can tell you. There’s also a subplot about a lottery winner buying a shuttered fleabag motel, and a couple plot twists that would be spoilery but, more important, really do nothing to elucidate where this story is going, except that it’s evidently about Something Really Big and Cosmic…. [more]