Previewing The Path

House of Cards was a game changer for streaming sites; it came out a swept most of the major television awards in its first year. Sure there have been shows made for the internet since high speed internet became widespread but before House of Cards they were called webseries that looked cheap and most were under ten minutes. But House of Cards was considered a television series that you did not need a television to watch and soon every streaming site were producing television quality series to get eyeballs to their site. Seriously, Playstation Plus has its own series. Sure, like every boon, there were some high profile bust; Yahoo! Screen who resurrected Community has already folded after a $42 million write down.

Hulu started out as a place to watch last night’s episode that you missed on three of the big four networks (CBS, the ratings leader at the time skipped the partnership because they were crushing everyone else but now has its own standalone streaming site with an internet exclusive Star Trek series coming later this year). They had some of the webseries quality type shows (The Hot Housewives series is fun but it certainly is not winning any awards) but finally started throwing some real money around last year with comedies like the Billy Eichner starring Difficult People and Casual from Oscar Best Director nominee Jason Reitman.

Hulu switches its attention to drama this year with more big names. First up was the J.J. Abrams and Stephen King produced and James Franco starring 11.22.63. Since I have been J.J. adverse since the end of Lost, I was much more interesting in their next big swing at drama The Path created by Jason Katims, executive producer of Friday Night Light and Parenthood, and starring two guys coming off high profile television gigs, Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad) and Hugh Dancy (Hannibal).

I have long called Parenthood the blue state version of Friday Night Lights, if that is true, The Path may be the messed up version of Friday Night Lights. At the heart of all Katims show is family, Friday Night Lights had the Taylors, and in a macro sense Dillon football was a surrogate family. That is the case for The Path, here there is the Lane’s (Paul and Michelle Monahan, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) but their larger family is not football but a cult (though some would argue Texas football is very cult-like) which Dancy is running while the leader is off adding more rungs to their “ladder” which you will quickly equate to other real life cults.

The series starts off after a tornado hits New Hampshire and Dancy has come to help… and recruited and finds a lost soul and drug addict in Emma Greenwald (Mandy Milkovich number 2 on Shameless) whom he brings back to his New York compound. Early on we also meet Sarah Jones (Alcatraz) who is running from someone, exactly who you think, and by the end of the first episode runs into someone you do not expect. Rockmond Dunbar (Terriers) shows up in the second episode as an FBI agent suspicious of the group for descending on the area hit by the tornado. And since this is a Katims show, of course there is a Dillon alumni cameo, this time in the form of Lyla Garrity doing the hippy dancing (she does do more later in the season).

Netflix completely changed the way television is done, from season and episode lengths to even how the shows are consumed, just air dropping an entire season at once. Despite having the advantages of being a streaming site, Hulu wants to be an old school television network. I do appreciate they still release one episode a week (well they did released the first two episodes today, but presumable just one a week after that). It can be annoying asking people which episode of Daredevil they are before you can talk about it. But I wonder if The Path could have benefited from playing around with the format. It still feels like a Showtime show, well if Showtime had commercial breaks (of course you can pay a couple dollars extra for the ad-free version of Hulu). But really the first season of The Path seemed to go on too long with the middle episodes dragging a bit. It is really should have been a six or seven episode season that got stretched into ten because prestige cable shows run ten or twelve episode. And with those middling middle episode, the show may have been better off if you could binge watch it (of course if you wait nine weeks, you will be able to do that). Those minor gripes aside, The Path is the first show worth paying Hulu for.

The Path is currently available on Hulu with the first two episodes now and new episodes every Wednesday.