With a show called Luck, it’s hard not to think about the concept while watching. As the series moved into its second episode this week, it struck me that most of these characters seem to be making their own luck (both good and bad), and perhaps that’s what the show is trying to say. Or, perhaps the show isn’t going for anything quite as grandiose as that at all.
In any case, we reconnected with all the characters from the pilot, and yes, there are still many of them. It felt like there was a lot more Ace in this episode, and I have a feeling that it is going to continue that way throughout the series. With Hoffman on board, and the increasingly interesting relationship between Ace and Gus (Dennis Farina, who is no slouch himself), it’s not a surprise that more attention is going to be focused in this direction. This week we got to see more of Ace’s revenge plan as he started putting some parts in motion with the casino plan and race track buy out. I’m very curious to find out how this morphs into a set up to get his enemies.
The four gamblers that we met in the pilot continue to be front and center as well. It’s clear to me that Marcus is hiding something. Out of the four of them, he is clearly the most paranoid about drawing the attention of the media and the IRS. What is he hiding, and what is in his laundry bag? Jerry seems to know the answer, but he’s making his own problems at the poker tables. As we saw in this episode, though, sometimes luck can bail you out on the river. Something tells me that Jerry’s luck isn’t going to last forever. He seems like the self-destructive type, and I’m keeping an eye on him.
Poor Renzo, he was just trying to get into the horse ownership game, hit some good fortune by putting in a claim on a great horse (that Escalante was trying to hide) and then got beat out in the lottery. Escalante strikes me as a dangerous guy (at the very least he has proven to have a short temper); I think Renzo may have dodged a bullet there. Not dodging a bullet was Lonnie, who ran into a bit of trouble with the two ladies that he was running an insurance scam with. Looks like Marcus was right — the real scam was the ladies taking out a life policy on Lonnie. He narrowly escaped their attack, but how long does he have before they hunt him down?
It was nice for a huge Deadwood fan like myself to see a few more familiar faces in this second episode. With W. Earl Brown‘s Mulligan winning the claim on Escalante’s horse, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him on Milch’s new show, and I’m glad.
One of the things that has impressed me most about this show so far has been the cinematography. The shots that the show has been able to present of the action mid race is nothing short of stunning. I think a lot of the credit has to go to Michael Mann, who set a lot of the style for the series in the direction of the pilot. It can’t be cheap to get all of those shots right in the action on the track, between the horses, and over the shoulders of the jockeys. I hope the show can do well enough to keep up the high production value. In following recent tradition, HBO has already renewed Luck for a second season after only the first episode, so things may be looking good in that arena.
How are you feeling about HBO’s latest drama?
Clacked by Bob Degon
on Feb 05, 2012 @ 22:00 EST5EDT
