Previewing Catch-22

At the Hulu upfronts, George Clooney joked about how this was the first upfronts he has attended in twenty-five years and tells a story about being backstage with Jennifer Aniston wondering if their shows were any good. Yeah, things turned out well for ER and Friends. After ER, Clooney went on to be the biggest movie star in a while when movies stars just did not do television. Why take up three-fourth of the year for a tenth of the paycheck?

But with the proliferation of different outlets who play with episode counts so you are not stuck doing a role for twenty two episodes, television is becoming easier to get a pet project down than some small scale movie. In the one for them, one for me format, the one for me is slowly turning into limited series. Reece Witherspoon is even now juggling three different shows on three different outlets. The first, Big Little Lies, just landed one of the biggest film stars alive, Meryl Streep to join the cast.

So it is the perfect time for Clooney to finally return to the small screen. His pet project is an adaptation of the dark war comedy Catch-22. But here is the thing, though George Clooney is the face of the show, the guy who did the presentation at the upfronts, and will likely do the talk show rounds, Clooney is not really the star of the show. He is not even in all of the six episodes, though he is a producer and directed a pair of episodes. Same goes for two other well-known television actors Kyle Chandler and Hugh Laurie. And though Clooney has been away from television for a while, he still kept each episode runtime at a brisk, network like forty to forty-five minutes.

Those three big name stars all play upper management in the air force, but the story of Catch-22 belongs to the airmen that doing the actual flying. Unfortunately the show falters when the fail to cast anyone as charismatic as those three elder statesmen. Even half way through the series, it is hard to distinguish most of the younger characters aside from the main POV character. It probably does not help that our military service was pretty racist and sexist during World War II so we are stuck with a very white male, undistinguishable cast. There is only one woman who does not spend most her time on screen in various stages of undress, and that nurse is one of the more memorable characters because of it.

There is also an issue with tone. Clooney and Laurie are hamming it up while Chandler just tweaks his Coach Taylor-ness up to eleven which is just humorous itself. But the lead guy acts like he is in a serious war movie and does not seem to know what to do when someone makes a joke around him. It is not until he has a groin injury does he do or say anything that makes me laugh. In the end, Catch-22 comes off like a Bob Hope movie if a Bob Hope movie had nudity, foul language, and graphic deaths. Well, also a very large-budgeted Bob Hope movie. The show was beautifully shot in Italy which almost makes it worth a look.

Christopher Abbott (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot) plays the lead airman who is trying his best to end his tour no many how many times his commanders raise his missions. There are attempts to get a medical, desertion, and even doing multiple missions a day in the hope he can complete them all before the number is raised. It is weird that Clooney just disappears for half the series considering how much of an antagonist he is to Abbott at the beginning, and really the show comes alive when he goes full ham during his scenes. Catch-22 is decent, but it is hard not to come away thinking how much better it could have been with some more tweaks to the casting and writing.

All episodes of Catch-22 are available to stream on Hulu starting tomorrow.