Vinyl has a hell of a reputation already. Martin Scorsese and Terence Winter shuttered Boardwalk Empire earlier than planned so they could get cracking on this show, and it proudly boasts of the involvement of Mick Jagger. The cast is fantastic, from top to bottom, and HBO has not been shy with its marketing of the show, which has been as aggressive and uncompromising as the show itself plans to be. They even gave the show a two-hour premiere! Game of Thrones doesn’t even get two-hour episodes. So now the million-dollar question: can Vinyl possibly live up to that hype?
Yes and no.
The easiest pitch for this show is that it’s Mad Men in the record industry, but flavored with generous helpings of The Wolf of Wall Street, Scorsese and Winter’s previous collaboration (Bobby Cannavale’s Richie Finestra even snaps “Do I look like a fuckin’ Wall Street man?” at one point, in what I think must be a sly nod). Like Wolf, though, Vinyl is overstuffed, overlong, and more than a little self-indulgent. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing! This is about the record industry in the 1970s, meaning it’s about the most selfish people alive (record executives and rock stars) in what was famously a self-involved decade. A little self-indulgence is a good thing. But it does go a long way, and by the time we hit musical interlude #5 (they serve partly as Richie’s inner monologue, and partly as a kind of Greek chorus) Vinyl starts to hit a point of diminishing returns.
Reading over that last paragraph, it sounds like I didn’t like the show. But I did! Don’t get me wrong, two hours is a long time for a pilot, and the show stuffed so much plot into its runtime that I’m not even going to bother going over all of it. What I like most about the pilot is that it seems like a self-contained movie, replete with flashbacks, downward spirals, and epiphanies, and Bobby Cannavale, a veteran supporting actor who has proven his range by winning Emmys for both Will & Grace and Boardwalk Empire, does a tremendous job in the lead role, which requires him to be in almost every scene.
The cast is tip-top, which should be no surprise given the talent behind the camera. Olivia Wilde doesn’t get a lot of screentime in “Pilot,” but makes the most of her role as Richie’s wife Devon. Ray Romano might be the biggest revelation here; his is a supporting role to be sure, and he’s more or less the comic relief, but he’s clearly having a ball being able to shed his sitcom persona by snorting coke and using “fuck” as freely as he wishes. Andrew “Dice” Clay even has a nice turn as an increasingly obnoxious DJ named Frank “Buck” Rogers.
I think my favorite cast member, besides Cannvale, has to be Ato Essandoh, a relative unknown who had a small part in Django Unchained. Essandoh plays Lester Grimes, who we meet briefly as Richie takes a Stygian limo ride through a hostile part of town (Scorsese is firmly back in Mean Streets territory). In flashbacks, we see that Lester was Richie’s first client, and not only got stuck in a contract singing what he deems “bullshit” dance music, but also receives a beating that, it’s implied, leaves his larynx pretty well useless. The beating is a hard scene to watch, and the mix of intimacy and remove with which Scorsese directs it is as good a reminder as any that the man might stage violence better than any American director, living or dead.
So for a show ostensibly about music, how’s the music? Well, the original music is damn good, but the soundtrack is no slouch either, and almost every second of “Pilot” has some form of music accompanying it. This is not, in any sense, a “quiet” show. Much is made of the transformative power of music, to the point where the episode ends with a building literally collapsing during a show while Richie looks on, euphoric (an obvious visual metaphor, but impressively staged nonetheless).
I only have a few reservations. As of now, Vinyl is so fixated on the idea of SAYING SOMETHING that it’s not saying much – it’s enjoyable, to be sure, but the insight it offers is as fleeting as the cocaine high that almost every character seems to be chasing. In voiceover, Richie tells us, “I earned my right to be hated.” It’s a good line, well-delivered, but it’s the equivalent of Don Draper turning to the camera and saying “Boy, I sure am struggling with my identity right now.”
(Also, there’s a murder subplot that was pretty clumsily introduced, but maybe I feel that way because I’m not a fan of random murder subplots in general, because they tend to overshadow everything else that’s happening. Who cares about Jamie (Juno Temple) going to a punk show when Richie is in a car with a dead body in the trunk?)
It’s unfair to judge shows by their pilots, generally speaking, even if that pilot is two hours long. Maybe it’s best to think of Vinyl’s first episode as the first track on an album – in which case, I definitely want to hear more.
A Few Thoughts
- Donny Osmond being a huge asshole is a great running joke
- “I’m a Jew. You tell us Germans are being diligent, we go to the attic and start a fuckin’ diary.”
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