Summary Judgment: John from Cincinnati

I know this show was on Sunday, but I've been sick and it's taken me a little while to get my thoughts together on it, so back off.

Sunday marked the second episode of John from Cincinnati, which premiered on HBO right after the contentious finale of The Sopranos. When I first saw the series premiere, I wasn't at all sure what to think. It's dense, mystical, mysterious, and at this point nearly incomprehensible. Lemme give you a rundown.

JFC focuses on the Yost family. Bruce Greenwood plays Mitch Yost, the family's patriarch. He was a surfing legend in his own day, but a knee injury sidelined him 20 years before the events of the show take place. His son, Butchie Yost (played by Brian Holt), was a revolutionary surfer in his own right before he was sidelined by his uncontrollable drug addiction. Mitch blames Butchie's downfall on Linc Perry, a ruthless surfing agent played by Luke Perry. Butchie's son, Shaun Yost is an up-and-coming surfer (played by up-and-coming surfer Greyson Fletcher), but Mitch is determined not to let the cutthroat world of professional surfing do to Shaun what it did to Butchie.

Also, Mitch floats a couple of inches in the air occasionally, and there's a bird that can come back from the dead, apparently.

Yeah.

There's a couple of other, less prominent players. Bill, a retired cop and family friend to the Yosts, is played by Ed O'Neill (better known as Al Bundy). The Yost family matriarch, Mitch's wife Cissy, is played by Rebecca DeMornay. As a grandmother. Weird. Luis Guzman and Willie Garson are caretakers of the sleazy motel where Butchie squats.

Then there's the eponymous John, pictured at the top of this post. He appears out of nowhere near the border, with pockets full of exactly as much money as he needs whenever he happens to need it, and each character is so self-involved that they fail to see just how goddamn weird John really is.

That's about as short an explanation as I can give, and it still doesn't really begin to cover everything that happened in the show's first two episodes. And everything that happens in those first two episodes doesn't really begin to cover, well, much of anything.

But I've decided, upon multiple viewings, that I like it. I like it quite a bit, actually. It's inscrutable and maddening at this point, but that brings to mind one of my all-time favorite shows, cancelled too early by HBO: Carnivale. For those who watched Carnivale, did we know anything, really, by the second episode of the series? Shit, no. But we stuck with it and were richly rewarded, until the bastards yanked it from the air.

JFC gives me the same feeling, of a deep and rich mythos lurking just under the surface. I could be dead wrong, and I'll freely admit it if I am. But I really feel that this isn't the type of show you can write off without making the commitment to watch at least 5 or 6 episodes. Maybe even the whole first season.

Damn. Now I wanna go watch Carnivale again.