Previewing Claws

TNT and USA got on the scripted cable shows train before everyone else. But at the start of the decade every other cable channel got their own shows, some of the channels even carved out a niche in the prestige drama niche like AMC. With dwindling ratings, the originals had to evolve. USA fired the first shot with one of the best shows this decade, Mr. Robot, and TNT has been playing catch up ever since. I did not have much interest in their first attempt Animal Kingdom and the critics were mostly mum on the show. I really enjoyed their next new show Good Behavior, but again it never really caught on much with the critical kingmakers. Then there was Claws which is getting a lot of buzz. And it is well deserved.

What I liked most about Good Behavior is that I did not know where it was going and the few times I thought I knew where it was going, it went somewhere else and I really liked that feeling of uncertainness when on most shows today you know exactly where they are going sometimes within the first five minutes. Claws is like that in a way but when Claws goes in a surprising way, it is more like a soap opera cliffhanger than its prestige counterparts for better or worse (mostly the latter but the big cliffhanger in the third episode has a lot of explaining to do in the next episode).

Claws stars Niecy Nash (Reno 911) as the owner of a nails salon who has a tightknit employee base inkling Judy Reyes (Scrubs), Jenn Lyon (Saint George), and Carrie Preston (Crowded). Karrueche Tran, whose name I have heard before but I thought she was basically famous for being someone(s?) girlfriend who I did not care about, is the newbie who is not fitting in well with the crew. And that is really an understatement.

Oh yeah, and this nail salon is a money laundering front for Dean Norris (Under the Dome) affectionally known as Uncle Daddy by Jack Kesy (The Strain; he was the junkless rock star turned Master), who brings Nash into this operation, and being this is taking place in central Florida I spent most of the first episode wondering if Dean Norris had a couple kids with his sister, hence Uncle Daddy (the relationship becomes clearer in the second episode). And the other kid in the messed up family is Kevin Rankin (Friday Night Lights) who is mostly out of the fray of the business with his wife Lyon (though it is still unclear to me why they have one white child and a black one).

The weakest part of the show is when Nash goes home to her somewhere on the spectrum brother played by Harold Perrineau (Wedding Band), followed by Norris's bayou accent, and I really do not buy the nurse from Scrubs as a gangsta dressing lesbian, but everything else is just firing on all cylinder. And really do not tune in late because the beginning of the episode that I have seen so far are some of the best things I have seen on television recently.

Claws airs Sundays at 9:00 on TNT.