"John from Cincinnati"

I fear that television at the top-quality end may be moping into a gaudy glacial phase. This time it isn’t the directors who are sprouting magic mushrooms in their heads but series creators, screenwriters who aspire to the popular acclaim and papal authority of David Chase, the brain behind The Sopranos. And who can blame them? Writers skim so little show-business glory that it’s understandable they’d want to spread their firebird wings and dive deep within, given the opportunity. But beware the “self-deceiving chic snobgod of genius,” to quote the late critic Seymour Krim. When David Milch followed up the frontier Aeschylus of Deadwood with a new series for HBO that promised to ride the wild surf into the realm of magic realism, the result was a cult show without a cult called John from Cincinnati, a mélange of toneless non sequiturs, coy evasions, cryptic repetitions, tattooed goons with empty coconut heads, feats of levitation and psychic healing, family discord conducted at full screech (turning Rebecca De Mornay into a shrew—now there’s a negative accomplishment)—a post-millennial Last Year at Marienbad with sand fleas.
--James Wolcott. “Little Big Screen.” Vanity Fair