Peggy’s (Patricia Arquette) everything is fine: a wonderful house, a wonderful husband (Matt Dillon), wonderful son, wonderful mother, wonderful brother and sister. All this idyll destroys the Drug Enforcement Administration’s raid in an instant. As a result, the husband is imprisoned and Peggy is deprived of parental rights (but the son himself does not want to know her). Ten years later, her life leaves much to be desired: working at a small theme park, drug addiction – and now the death of her mother, whom Peggy has taken care of in recent years. In an attempt to stand up (brother and sister threaten to cut off financial support), a woman decides to become a private detective and takes on the case of a local TV presenter’s missing wife, retraining as an enlightened guru. (Rupert Friend).
“Dazed Detective” is originally called “High Desert” – an untranslatable pun that implies both the desolate California area where the case took place and the drugs “arriving.” But the Russian version quite accurately reflects what is happening on the screen: Nancy Fichman, Jennifer Hopp-House, who invented this show and wrote it entirely (both “Sister Jackie”, “Grace and Frankie”)) and Cathy Ford (“Desperate Housewives”) either came close to achieving a very special state of consciousness with all their “responsibility”, or they decided not to wait for their Writers Guild of America colleagues and launched a strike a few years ago.
The series seems to fail in every way taken: a useless comedy, an untenable drama, and a ridiculous detective story. In this, she quite clearly follows in the footsteps of her main character – a woman in her sixties who has had to deal with her mother’s departure, get off drugs, earn a decent income, and also in general, have changed her sixties. fix a pile of backlog problems – and (spoiler) fail on any of its commits (of course all these issues find almost no improvement).
During his 40-year career, Arquette has played everywhere, but looking at him here sometimes hurts. The comedy, in which Jennifer Coolidge from White Lotus seems to have been pushed into its territory, is mostly unadjusted, with two rather touching scenes in the penultimate two episodes highlighting the dramatic component a bit, but overall the artist has nothing on. here to play
The worst part is that somewhere in this desert, somewhere around Rian Johnson’s Pokerface and The Florida Man, a really good show has apparently disappeared. He disappeared, probably because at some point he lost his strong patronage: the pilot was supposed to be directed by Ben Stiller, but in the end he was only engaged in production – and then, apparently, from afar (perhaps due to employment at another company). Apple project TV+ “Separation”, in which Arquette also had a role, but in a smaller role. The director of the first series (as well as others) was replaced by Jay Roach, who directed comedies specifically about Austin Powers and the Faker family.
Watching “Detective High,” you’re all waiting for her to find the right tone at the end of the series and dig a comfortable channel for the crumpled, stumbling plot. This strange feeling – when you don’t understand, it’s already “covered”, not yet “covered” or not “covered” at all, it freezes for all eight episodes. And only after seeing the eighth final credits it becomes clear: no, it’s not fate. All this time we’ve been arrogantly and clumsily trying to cloak a copy of Picasso under the guise of the original. yes you better look “Poker face” With “Florida Man”.