At the start of this series I thought it was very insightful, a bit different, and did a good job with the pacing so that things never get stale and there is always something coherent that is going on but after I have made it to the last episode that has, as of yet, been released, I gotta say that it kind of looks like they don't really know where to go with the overall story and they have started to put a bunch of dreaded "filler" into the theme of each episode as well.
Just in case you can't read between the lines here; when I say "filler" I mean stuff that doesn't really have anything to do with what the main plot point is and is just thrown in there to waste time to fill up a certain number of pre-defined minutes that each episode needs to be.
This is a problem that is unique to series, since with films, most of the time, they have an issue with having TOO MUCH material and have to cut it back to make it ONLY 90 minutes.
So without giving too much away, the overall story here is that "Coop", who is played wonderfully by Jon Hamm, is having a bad string of luck as he is let go from his job and suspects he was set up to take the fall so that the evil corporate overlords could steal all of his monetary rewards from working there. During his time in that job he was actually a thief of sorts doing hedge-fund management. I met a guy that did that for a living and they seriously live it up and their world is very protected and not just anyone can do that job. It is the position of ultimate nepotism and while the series doesn't address that a great deal, it does touch base on it and how pretentious and money-filled it is.
once out of the job and having been burned as far as all of his professional contacts are concerned, he has to keep up a facade of wealth and power while not having any incoming money. One day at a party after talking with a financial advisor he steals a collector's watch from a friend's house and turns it into very quick cash.
This is the entire basis for the show. It is showing that extremely wealthy people have things of immense value but don't even appreciate them to the point that they don't even know they are missing.
That's fair enough and a fun little thing to ruminate on in today's society as the gap between the haves and the have nots seems to grow wider and wider. "Coop" is a guy that has been on both sides of the gap and doesn't feel at all bad about what he is doing because he too has lived that way before.
Now let's get to how the series started to really falter as the season goes on
Lately I have been looking at metacritic for review scores because IMDB and RT are too easily infiltrated and almost anything made by Apple, Amazon, or Disney ends up having outstanding ratings even if the show is complete shit.
I believe that the 61 out of 100 is exactly where this show belongs. Here's why:
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The main character just keeps easily gaining access to rich people's homes under the auspices of "they don't watch their shit." This obviously would not be the case in today's world as it seems that nearly everyone has CCTV. I have CCTV and so does basically everyone else I know.
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Although this starts out as a one-man-army, so to speak, Coop keeps on bringing more and more people in on his heist plans, even if they don't really bring anything of benefit to the table. Then, these additional characters have their own little side stories that just take away from the main character "Coop" and this is where the "filler" is. At many points I contemplated skipping large portions of the story involving the housekeeper turned heistmaster, Elena.
Also, and this is something that just irritates me about any series or film, is that the plot of most of the episodes revolves around insane circumstantial situations in order for the plot to move. I'm not going to spoil what these are but trust me, you'll know it when you see it.
So while at first I said that this one was a real winner I think that even if the season does wrap up with something absolutely amazing happening that I am still going to give this one around a 6/10 because I just can't get on board with any series that takes what honestly could be 3-4 episodes worth of material and then drags it out to I think there is going to be 9 episodes by the time season 1 wraps up.
They rely very heavily on Hamm portraying the same boss-like persona that he had in Mad Men as Don Draper and that is good at first, but overall it just kind of seems like he is being typecast and has no versatility. Maybe that actually is the case with Hamm because I have seen him in a couple of roles that were not "high level executive in a business setting" and he seemed out of place there.
I noticed that the ratings for the episodes continues to decrease over time, with the first one nearly at 90% and drops about 10% each episode moving forward. The latest one that I have seen, which was episode 7, didn't even crack 40/100.
Oh and one last thing that I will admit is affecting my opinion overall is that the intro is too long and has one of the most annoying theme songs I have ever heard in any series ever.
