‘Here and Now’ is neither here nor there
Here and Now is as bland and confusing as its title suggests.
The new HBO drama (Sunday, 9 ET/ PT, eEEE) is about a Portland, Ore.area family with a mix of adopted and biological children of different races, whose lives are upended when one of them starts having hallucinations. But it also might be a mystic story about how we’re all connected in spite of ethnicity and distance, and how we can solve the world’s problems with love. Or maybe it’s a fatalistic and sex-filled version of This Is Us or The Fosters that argues we’re all doomed.
Mostly, Here and Now is a pedantic, tortuous mess that’s a waste of its great cast and its creator, Alan Ball, ( Six Feet Under and True Blood) But his new series doesn’t come close to capturing their cleverness.
The show follows Audrey (Holly Hunter), a former therapist, and Greg (Tim Robbins), a philosophy professor, with three adoptive children from Vietnam, Liberia and Colombia: Duc (Raymond Lee), a life coach; Ashley (Jerrika Hinton), who runs a retail website; and Ramon (Daniel Zovatto), a student who starts seeing “11:11” everywhere.
The family also includes Kristen (Sosie Bacon), Audrey and Alan’s biological teenage daughter, who’s having a sexual awakening.
The sprawling cast leads to scenes that ricochet among unrelated story lines, and the writers and actors can’t make the characters sympathetic.
And while the characters are hard to parse, the plot is littered with holes and inexplicable twists. Its biggest problem is Ramon, who might be a schizophrenic, or may have some magical connection to others.
Worse, the series is weighed down by its own self-importance, wading into hot-button topics with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The writers unsuccessfully try to ascribe capital-M meaning to philosophical debates. One character refuses to follow GPS, meant to represent taking control of your life, rejecting technology, or something. Mostly it’s just dull.
Here and Now’s sloppiness feels like the result of an ambitious but ill-advised big swing on the part of Ball, who seems to be trying to create a big, socially relevant series that says something about, well, the here and now. It doesn’t end up saying anything at all.