Previewing Public Morals

2015 is the year network and basic cable channels have started to throw everything against the wall to combat the Netflix watch whenever you want format. NBC made big waves by releasing every episode of Aquarius to Hulu, On Demand, iTunes and the like (for limited time). Apparently this was successful for NBC to renew the show for a second season after breaking NBC.com streaming records. Of course weeks later the show was resigned to the Saturday burn off slot so it will be interesting t see how NBC releases season two... if at all. NBC's sister station USA also got creative with the release of season two of Playing House by releasing the next episode On Demand the night after the previous episode airs on the cable channel (sure Showtime has released episodes a week before for the last couple seasons of another David Duchovny vehicle Californication). FX also did something interesting recently to fight the lax standards and practices of streaming sites by uploading "Explicit" versions of episodes of Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll On Demand the day after the for basic cable version aired through to my best guess you just hear an extra F-bomb or two per episode and does not show the amount of skin you see on Netflix originals (there is an explicit version of Aquarius floating around but as for now it has just aired in foreign markets and now words when us more prudish Americans can see it).

TNT is getting into the experiment this summer with a different type of release for its sixties crime drama, Public Morals. After tonight's premiere, they are going to put the first four episodes On Demand for people to binge watch. Of the four new ways to release a show I mentioned so far in this post, the Public Morals release is the worst way to watch as a viewer. I always find it bad form to complain about receiving screener for television shows, but this complain is relevant to how TNT is releasing Public Moral. Really my biggest complain when it comes to screeners is that when a network makes available multiple episodes available to watch it is harder to get back into the show weeks, or months later when new to me episodes start to air. What makes this decision even more head scratching is that if someone were to take TNT up on its offer to watch the first four episodes this week, the first new episode not On Demand does not air until September 22, right dab in the middle of the network premiere week. This just seems like horrible planning in my view. And I have seen those first four episodes and there is really no big event or plot twist in episode four that made me go, "oh my goodness, I cannot wait until episode five." Really , if you decide to watch Public Morals, I highly recommend to just watch it week to week (which is how I ended up watching Aquarius passing on binge on it all in a month's time). And for those that prefer binge watching, you might as well just wait until the end of the season instead of watching four now and the last six sometime in November.

Of course how to watch Public Morals is completely moot if it is not worth watching at all. The show takes place in 1960's New York (Red Hook specifically) with Ed Burns, who also created the show, as a cop assigned with dealing with making the city look nicer by riding it of prostitutes and gamblers. Okay, the Public Morals division does not really get rid of these activities, they just make sure they happen in the shadows and get their cut of the take. The balance is threatened when some gets wacked at the end of the first episode. For those hoping for a good murder mystery, sorry, the viewers will know who did it by the middle of episode two even if most everyone on the show is still investigating the murder through episode four.

Also working with Burns is his partner Michael Rappaport (The War at Home), Wass Stevens (Brooklyn's Finest) Ruben Santiago-Hudson (American Gangster) is the Lieutenant. There are also a bunch of twentysomethings on both sides of the law that just seem to blend into each other which may be the only reason to binge the first four episodes as it is easier to tell all those characters apart then having to try to remember who is who after waiting a week. As for the fairer sex, Katrina Bowden (Sex Drive (Unrated)) is one of the girls the cops bust who has an, um, interesting Brooklyn accent on the show (which randomly goes away about halfway through the season). Lyndon Smith (she was Drew's more fun college girlfriend on Parenthood) is one of the around the way girls in Red Hook who can play on both sides of the tracks. There is also Burns's wife who may be the greatest trophy wife on television since Betty Draper (but a lot less icy) played by Elizabeth Masucci (TNT's press lists her main credit as The Americans which I did not recognize her from; after some googling, it turns out she just dubbed "prostitute" in a first season episode so this is really her first recognizable role, but I will say her accent is much better than most on the show).

The show also has an impressive list of guest stars including Timothy Hutton as Burns's gangster uncle who's son chose to take after his cousin not his father. Hutton's boss is Brian Dennehy who also has children problem, Brian's comes in the form of Neil McDonough (the resemblance is uncanny). Kevin Corrigan (it is weird that both male leads of Grounded for Life have gone on to be strong dramatic character actors) is also part of the organization. Also hanging around is Robert Knepper who like Burns and McDonough starred in last year's TNT period cop show Mob City. I will say I have enjoyed Public Morals more so far.

But the thing is, the show does not pick up until the fifth episode when it becomes perfectly clear that the whole season is building towards an epic turf war following the death in tonight's episode. The longer the season progresses the harder it is for the people in charge and the police, who profit from the more salacious activities stay in certain areas and the more entertaining and interesting the show gets. This war spill over from the street and really says a lot about class in the sixties much better than the similarly themed sixties cop show Aquarius. It does help that the other show is spread out in the sprawling Los Angeles while this one is a more compressed area of Red Hook where one small spark could take out an entire city block.

If TNT really wanted to experiment with nontraditional roll outs, they really should have included the fifth episode which the version I looked ready for broadcast (which is not always the case with screeners, it was always weird watching Raylan Givens "drive" down a country road with only green screens in the background). It seemed like TNT wanted to release enough episode to get people hooked but not enough that they would not come back to come back to watch live when those episodes are done. But still, I recommend just watching week to week because I really do not see this experiment working well for either TNT or the viewers who choose to watch the four episodes all this week.

Public Morals airs Tuesdays at 10:00 on TNT. You can download Public Morals on iTunes.