‘The Son’ tells epic tale of Texas to mixed results
When we first meet Eli McCullough (Jacob Lofland) in the new AMC drama “The Son,” he’s a young teen in 1849 South Texas when a Comanche raiding party kills his mother and sister. He and his brother are then taken as slaves by the tribe.
Eli is learning about his captors, who are led by Toshaway (Zahn McClarnon, a standout in the second season of “Fargo”). Unlike his brother, he has survived by doing what he needs to do — even if it’s humiliating — which gives you some insight into who he is. He is a survivor, and the Indians teach him their ways despite thinking he’s an “idiot.” Some of this skirts around stereotyping, but the series seems to have taken pains trying not to be so.
In the second thread of the 10-episode show, it’s 1915, and a grizzled Eli (Pierce Brosnan) — “born on the same day as the Republic of Texas” — has become a big-time rancher. But he’s facing financial problems; so he’s holding a lavish party to induce oildrilling investors.
As they are welcomed into the house, old and nowpeaceful Comanches sit on chairs on the porch.
“Our esteemed guests deserve a little authenticity,” he reasons without an ounce of irony.
The series is based on the Pulitzer Prize-nominated epic novel of the same name by Philipp Meyer. While “The Son” sports sprawling ambitions, the series awkwardly trods over familiar territories.
The main part of the series focuses on the 1915 segment, during which there is the Bandit War involving a group of Mexican rebels who wanted to drive Anglo-Americans out of South Texas, hoping to annex the area. The McCullough spread abuts the ranch of Pedro Garcia (Carlos Bardem), the patriarch of a large Mexican-American family. His son-in-law has sympathies for those south of the Rio Grande, and Pedro is caught between the rebels and Eli’s ambition.
To complicate matters, his daughter Maria (Paola Nuñez) once had a thing with Pete (Henry Garrett), Eli’s son, who is married to Sally (Jess Weixler).
By the time he’s a bearded 69-year-old, Eli — known as The Colonel — has taken what he has needed from the Comanche culture and his own to carve out his empire. In one moment, he fantasizes scalping a businessman who has crossed him, and that seems more stereotypical than the scenes with the Native Americans.
It would be easy to nitpick “The Son” — from Lee Shipman and Brian McGreevy, who created Netflix’s “Hemlock Grove.” It’s hard to say what “authenticity” Eli and the series is offering. Meyer reportedly researched the book heavily, but the series has more of the glossy look of a big Texas TV series than a grittiest to it.
That’s not the problem with the show, nor is anyone’s Texas accent, a problem critics like to seize on. (Since I never sounded like where I grew up, it’s amusing when people who aren’t experts think they are.)
What “The Son” could use is more focus and drama. It meanders around moral questions.
“We all have choices,” Pete reflects, but it’s not much more than a passing thought.
The characters seem programmed to tell a conventional tale with little drive or complexity. No one, including Brosnan, is given enough to do. At its worst, it borders on melodrama. A bloody shootout in Episode 5 manages to be both gripping and clichéd.
The former James Bond has the presence for the role, but it will take more than the six episodes available for review to begin to care about his story or that of the rest of characters.