August 28, 2018

Claws: Season 2


Wow, make it four straight posts about female-ensemble dramas. Living my best life over here, folks!

Claws is a show that can only be described as a guilty pleasure. It's a pulpy and occasionally campy TNT melodrama that, in its second season, focused on a turf war between Russian druglords and the Dixie Mafia that centered on a nail salon in Palmetto, Florida. You're more or less guaranteed one totally wall-breaking, format-shifting sequence per episode - a music video, perhaps, or a family courtroom send-up, or a speed-ramped-as-hell action sequence in which a fat old man just beats the living hell out of like, four guys with guns.

It's not quite accurate to say that this thing leans directly into soap opera-absurd arcs and twists - this isn't Jane the Virgin - but Claws isn't afraid to dip a toe, a foot, hell even an entire leg into that proverbial pool. And this thing is Florida as fuck, too - bright colors, breezy beaches, this weird high-class version of the trashiest styles in women's fashion, white trash and alligators and drug fronts everywhere - it's like if Breaking Bad took place in Florida instead of New Mexico. (The vibe, I mean.) Or maybe it's more like if Justified took place there.

You know what I think this show is like? I think it's visually and stylistically like something Ryan Murphy would make, but if it were made with patience and competence and consistency. Does that make sense? Just a fun, dumb, bright show with deep (and deeply human) characters. I'm in for the long haul on this one.

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