Nostalgic end for Red Oaks
Coming-of-age dramedy ditches the country club for gritty 80s NYC in series send-off, writes Nicole Bitette.
It’s game, set, match for Red Oaks. The coming-of-age Amazon series, which follows a high schooler working as a tennis pro at a New Jersey country club in the 1980s, is getting a totally tubular sendoff.
Red Oaks – starring Craig Roberts, Richard Kind, Paul Reiser, Alexandra Socha, Gina Gershon and Jennifer Grey – premiered on Amazon in 2015.
The dramedy centres on David Myers (Roberts), who started the show working at the Red Oaks country club, but has moved on to follow his dreams of becoming a director in New York City.
Roberts, 26, relates all too well to the struggles his character faces – mainly because he’s been through them himself as a young film-maker.
‘‘I definitely share the frustration of wanting to be a filmmaker and make films because it’s one of the jobs where you tell people you can do it, but there’s no way of proving it unless you have millions of pounds to do something,’’ the British-born actor says.
‘‘I never knew that it would go this far when I read the pilot... I never thought it would go all the way down the rabbit hole of him doing it so I’m very happy that he has,’’ Roberts says. ‘‘It’s very, very cool.’’
At Red Oaks, David befriended the country club’s president, Getty (Reiser) after falling for his daughter, Skye (Rocha). When Season 3 kicks off, Skye is no longer the one by his side – instead, it’s his good pal Wheeler (Oliver Cooper).
Wall Street big shot Getty has traded in his country club membership for a cushy country club-style prison this season after being convicted of insider trading of at the end of Season 2.
‘‘It’s not the roughest of prisons... [It’s a] country club prison, which is right up my alley, so I’m in prison itching to get out but my world is changing,’’ Reiser says.
‘‘Some changes are afoot at the country club and I’m trying to manage from my stay in prison... my world is crumbling under my feet.’’
And David’s dad, played by Kind, has moved on from the split with his wife and David’s mother (Grey) and has both a new girlfriend — and a new career.
The series kicked off 80s nostalgia on streaming TV before Stranger Things and This is Us broke through the market – yet Amazon’s success with other series gave the Steven Soderbergh-produced show a hard time breaking into the mainstream.
Amazon’s breakout hits have included Transparent and The Man in the High Castle, giving Red Oaks little room to shine.
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its loyal followers.
After two seasons, Amazon made the decision to end on a nostalgic chapter.
‘‘I think it was sort of a gift from Amazon to say ‘you know this is a really great show and we’re not going to continue with it anymore but we would like to give some finality to these characters’,’’ Kind says.
Reiser agrees and without giving too much away, says the series has a satisfying end.
‘‘At the same time, if next year there was a ground swell and they said ‘we want more’, you absolutely could pick up and say there’s more story to be told,’’ Reiser says.
Kind adds, ‘‘There is something to be said for leaving them wanting more’’. – TNS
The third and final season of Red Oaks is now available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video.