A man in Florida was arrested for attacking his daughter, who didn’t want to eat with him, with a pizza. A Florida man dressed as Fred Flintstone stood aside for ‘speeding’ his ‘motorbike’. A Florida man was arrested for assaulting a McDonald’s employee because he wasn’t given a straw. In Florida, the man whose dog stepped on the accelerator was hit by a van. These rather typical headlines from the American press for a long time did not arouse any particular feelings in anyone – as they say, it happens. But then the Internet began to imagine that we are talking about the same complex citizen in all cases. This is how the Florida Man was born – a man in the US state of Florida who acts crazy, crazy and ridiculous, “the worst superhero in the world.”
There were humorous stories about it, jokes were made in the second season of Atlanta, cult rockers (Blue Öyster Cult) released songs. At some point a game appeared: you type “Florida Man” in the search box, add your birthday, and enjoy an incredible crime history. In 2019, the prank finally got out of control and Donald Trump became the “Florida man” who decided to move his main residence from New York to the “Sunshine State”. The satirical program The Daily Show quickly released a browser extension that changed the name of the 45th President of the United States to “Florida man,” a new nickname used by Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama. And in 2022, even the conservative tabloid New York Post, which recently supported Trump, headlined an article about his intentions to run in the next presidential election: “A Florida man has made a statement.”
Now it’s showtime (officially translated as “Florida Man”, so that’s the variant used in the current text, but “Florida Man” is more accurate, of course it’s almost always a man).
We have to admit: “The Florida Man” is perhaps the best film adaptation of network folklore to date. Exactly how the show was made available to Netflix streaming is unknown, but we dare to assume it’s something like: Ozark, but comedy is also in Florida” (imagination completes another meaningful wink). “Ozark” – because its writer Jason Bateman worked here as a producer. Comedy is understandable. As for Florida and the Blink, the series doesn’t seem to take the most obvious and easy route, i.e. it doesn’t add the cases read in the press into a single narrative (as “Roy” invented it, for example). “Atlanta” by Donald Glover). And it gets away from the essence of the meme: Florida is a mysterious land where the daily shaped game was created. Instead of making a comedy about “the world’s worst superhero,” the show’s creator (who is also from Florida) Donald Todd offers his own interpretation of the phenomenon. According to Todd, the Florida Man is the one who understands that nothing lasts forever. A person who prides himself on his independence and does not “live by your laws and therefore – and by any law in general”.
As a result, “The Florida Man” writes about an extremely fascinating little world that exists as in the paradigm of the Coen brothers’ films, where a dark and funny fate reigns. Since literally anything can happen in Florida, it actually happens all the time, occasionally putting sticks in the wheels of the heroes. At the same time, nothing accidental gets into the frame: even the most seemingly insignificant and insignificant detail turns out to be a heavy Chekhov gun. It is necessary to consider that the total number of these weapons would be sufficient for a small revolutionary coup.
Of course, it’s hard to call the show itself revolutionary – we’ve already seen all of that somewhere in one form or another. ex-cop (Edgar Ramirez from The Assassination of Gianni Versace)Losing his job, wife and friends due to his gambling addiction, he is heavily indebted to a dangerous but colorful gangster. (Emory Cohen of “The Place Beyond the Pines” and “OA”), due to his debt, agrees to go looking for the runaway daughter of the same gangster. (Abby Lee from Lovecraft Country). Of course she sleeps with him. Kim fled to the goddamn Florida, her little homeland she never wanted to return to.
However, two conditions come into play here. First off, while The Man from Florida didn’t shine much with originality and sagged a bit mid-season and couldn’t keep up the pace, those involved still did their homework and managed to pull the series together for the whole genre to come together. The gears rotate quite successfully. Secondly, the previous paragraph summed up the events of only half of the first series: then the show takes a rather unexpected direction – and changes the genre palette a bit, going from a suffocating film noir to a heist movie (still suffocating). It is also welcome to gush with twists where the soul may not be caught, but it will be quite difficult to stop laughing.
But what has been sprayed on this Florida of yours is, of course, an open question.