Halfway via Netflix’s No Good Deed, Lydia Morgan (Lisa Kudrow), a former live performance pianist now embroiled within the insanity of attempting to promote her home, displays on a repetitively heightened scenario, sighs and says, “I’m so sorry and I can’t imagine that is occurring once more.”
I Can’t Believe This Is Happening Again might have been title for Liz Feldman‘s Dead to Me, a murky comedy about feminine friendship and homicide that managed to take a tenuously skinny premise and elongate it over three seasons by advantage of untamed and typically illogical pivots, plus the actually distinctive work from stars Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini. It was an exhaustingly paced present and, by its collection finale, it put you thru an emotional ringer as nicely. But for those who had the persistence for Feldman’s dogged strategy, it was rewarding.
No Good Deed
The Bottom Line
Strong performances carry a collection overly happy with its personal cleverness.
Airdate: Thursday, Dec. 12 (Netflix)
Cast: Ray Romano, Lisa Kudrow, Linda Cardellini, Luke Wilson, Teyonah Parris, O-T Fagbenle, Abbi Jacobson, Poppy Liu, Denis Leary
Creator: Liz Feldman
That makes No Good Deed extra appropriately titled I Can’t Believe This Is Happening Again, Too. Although it makes an attempt a relentlessness that makes Dead to Me look as leisurely as Somebody Somewhere, the eight-episode collection performs very very similar to a companion piece — one which reenforces a Liz Feldman model through which gratuitously withheld secrets and techniques and jarringly abrupt twists are as a lot a bit of the comedian rhythms as eye-gouging as soon as was for the Three Stooges.
Like Dead to Me, No Good Deed is way too happy with its personal storytelling cleverness for its personal good. When every part is supposed to be stunning, it’s unimaginable for something to be stunning.
But additionally like Dead to Me, No Good Deed makes use of the dramatic underpinnings of its central scenario to provide juicy, emotionally diversified materials to a solid of actors making probably the most out of each predictably outrageous zig and zag. Get previous the contrivances, and the comedy has some perceptive observations about the way in which grief and secrets and techniques can coloration a relationship, plus some very trenchant commentary in regards to the sorry state of the Los Angeles actual property market.
Lydia is married to Ray Romano‘s Paul, they usually’re promoting their Nineteen Twenties Spanish-style home in Los Feliz. The abode, which doubled as Paul’s childhood house, was the place they raised their very own youngsters, and it’s crammed with reminiscences each completely happy and really unhappy.
The property is listed with excitable realtor Greg (Matt Rogers), who goals of a fast sale and a hefty fee. There’s a wholesome marketplace for it, composed completely of {couples} harboring probably relationship-crushing secrets and techniques.
Leslie (Abbi Jacobson) and Sarah (Poppy Liu), an legal professional and a health care provider respectively, are on the lookout for a spot to develop their life collectively after a number of failed rounds of IVF. Carla (Teyonah Parris) and Dennis (O-T Fagbenle) have recognized one another for less than a yr however are all of a sudden married and anticipating a baby, they usually want a spot which will have room for his devoted mom (Anna Marie Horsford’s Denise). Former cleaning soap star JD (Luke Wilson) and his vivacious and determined trophy spouse Margo (Linda Cardellini) reside throughout the road they usually’re eyeing the home as nicely, although she doesn’t know the way dire his profession scenario is and he doesn’t know that she’s having an affair.
The above is info gleaned pretty early within the premiere — no spoilers of observe. To inform you what No Good Deed is definitely about, although, I’d have to provide away info revealed by the tip of that first chapter (no later), so skip the subsequent paragraph if you wish to be wholly unspoiled.
The important early spoiler is that Paul and Lydia are nonetheless roiled with grief from the homicide of their teenage son three years earlier. In the home. So far because the world is aware of, it was an unsolved crime tied to a string of latest break-ins within the neighborhood. Only Paul, Lydia and Paul’s ne’er-do-well brother Mikey (Denis Leary) know in any other case. Soon — “instantly,” actually — Paul and Lydia are going to should reopen the case and reopen the injuries, as they and each different couple be taught invaluable classes in regards to the significance of honesty and never committing homicide to a wholesome relationship.
So it’s half whodunnit, and half whoboughtit. I’d personally have known as it A Murder of Escrow, however No Good Deed isn’t terrible both, as a result of the present is (once more like Dead to Me) in regards to the ugly steps that good individuals are typically prepared to take in an effort to keep alive or to get a turnkey home with a citrus backyard, decorative arches and purloined crime scene proof in East Los Angeles.
No Good Deed is each mysterious, kinda, and zany — like if You’re the Worst, House Hunters and Alfred Hitchcock had a child. There’s abrupt violence, individuals getting back from the useless, wacky misunderstandings, full-on breakdowns and loads of hypothesis about how a lot over-asking it takes to get a homicide home on this financial system.
It’s all pushed alongside by the aggressive musical rating from Siddhartha Khosla (Only Murders within the Building, Elsbeth), who has made “zany thriller” into his personal private model, and by the aggressive path from Silver Tree and (for 2 midseason episodes) Feldman, who prowl the central residence like they know each darkish nook and each undocumented eccentricity in its ground plan. In a number of trademark POV pictures, they even take us into the plumbing and electrical wiring.
Not all the items are created equal. The thriller is the present’s weak hyperlink, insofar because it takes a very long time to resolve what really must be solved. Too lots of the revelations defy even rudimentary logic and there isn’t sufficient efficient suspense to spackle over the plot holes. The decision is unsatisfying, however not in a “perhaps issues will get set straight in a second season” means. After the finale, there’s maybe one plot thread that continues to be open-ended, and I wouldn’t assume it’d be sufficient to justify one other season. Yet Netflix isn’t calling it a “restricted collection,” which is what it looks like.
What is absolutely satisfying is the tormented pressure in Paul and Lydia’s marriage and the way in which their distance performs out via the performances by Kudrow and Romano. Feldman had an ideal solid in Dead to Me and, as soon as once more, her leads have been expertly chosen. Kudrow and Romano have constructed their post-sitcom-supernova careers on enjoying characters who’ve been determined for thus lengthy that their desperation defines them.
Paul and Lydia are estranged however fully co-dependent, and I spent a lot of the premiere questioning if the largest twist was going to be that they have been ghosts haunting a property they actually can’t depart. Instead, they’re shells of individuals haunting a property they will’t bear to depart, and Romano’s hangdog weariness and Kudrow’s breaking-point fragility are each put to good use. They want one another, however typically they should damage one another. When the 2 characters have it out, all the stars’ TV-honed slick, comedian professionalism offers strategy to uncooked, uncovered nerves.
Of the 2, Kudrow is the standout due to how good she is with the remainder of the solid. Romano has one very humorous, very implausible, very a lot forgotten subplot with Rogers. But Kudrow will get to have hilarious scenes with Cardellini, going full bore all through, and a few good materials with Leary, who isn’t miscast a lot as his character is perplexingly underwritten, and with Chloe East because the couple’s daughter.
There’s good materials within the secondary storylines with every of the potential consumers, however their materials quantities to a whole lot of little curveballs and only a few huge payoffs, contributing extra to the general chaos than something actually cathartic.
The Leslie/Sarah storyline comes closest to feeling prefer it could possibly be self-contained, since Jacobson and Liu have romantic heat they usually push the thriller alongside helpfully. Cardellini and Wilson don’t must have chemistry, since their marriage is a catastrophe (and their very own dwelling is an costly modernist nightmare), so they only get variety of laughs — him with laconic Los Angeles/Hollywood satire and her with a personality whose sexual appetites border on predatory. Although each Parris and Fagbenle are wonderful, neither has a personality with an outlined sufficient voice to provide their relationship the nuance it wants to suit into this puzzle.
No Good Deed might be best to get pleasure from between episodes three and 6. The bold-faced twists are entertainingly ludicrous, the dialogue crackles and there’s sufficient unstated nervousness and resignation in Kudrow and Romano’s efficiency to maintain every part grounded.
By the closing chapters, as No Good Deed realizes it must tie issues collectively, even the characters appear to acknowledge the silliness.
As Wilson’s JD places it, “Oh Lord. The revelations hold coming. And not the nice sort.” I are inclined to agree and never in the way in which he meant it — although it’s unimaginable to be bored and exhausting to not be amused alongside the way in which.
