Touring tale is all over the place
“Roadies” wants to be the “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” of the rock music world. Or, if your tastes run to Broadway musicals, the “Chorus Line” of pop.
It is neither, though. It is a sporadically engaging mess that eventually slouches away from your attention span like a puppy caught piddling on the rug.
That last line is meant to evoke the great fictional (I hope) music critic Bryce Newman (guest star Rainn Wilson), who shows up in the third episode of the Showtime series with the apparent purpose of giving creator Cameron Crowe either a mechanism for spoofing his own early career as a rock music writer or a way to take re- venge on every critic who has slammed his work in the past. In the case of “We Bought a Zoo” and “Aloha,” that would be a formidable number.
The concept for the series, premiering Sunday, June 26, is solid and promising: Instead of focusing on rock stars, why not look at the insular, ever-traveling group of people who work behind the scenes, the roadies you may occasionally see as
they move equipment onstage?
The characters are also promising, even if their story lines are lackluster: Bill (Luke Wilson) is a man-child tour manager who is put in charge after a British bean counter named Reg (Rafe Spall) fires the beloved tour veteran Phil (Ron White). Bill has blood pressure and heart issues, certainly caused by years of drugs and booze.
He keeps hitting on women who are far too young for him, but he and production manager Shelli (Carla Gugino) flirtatiously dance around each other all the time. Shelli thinks she can keep her marriage alive by having 10-minute phone sex sessions with her husband several times a week while she’s on the road.
Kelly Ann (Imogen Poots) is a rigger who has a chance to break out of the life of a roadie by going to New York to study film. We never doubt that she’ll find it impossible to leave the “family,” though. Her brother Wes (Colson Baker, a.k.a. Machine Gun Kelly) shows up after getting fired from another tour and somehow secures a spot among the roadies, making primo espresso and watching over a kid who likes to do tricks with a butterfly knife.
Milo (Peter Cambor) affects a British accent that no one believes for a minute. Donna (Keisha Castle-Hughes) is tough as nails and constantly breaking up and getting back together with her girlfriend. Natalie ( Jacqueline Byers) is a groupie obsessed with the lead singer of the tour headliner, the Staton-House Band. She gets caught and thrown out on a regular basis and, just as regularly, manages to get backstage at every stop along the tour.
To summarize, the basic plot elements are: Who will Reg let go to save money? Will Shelli and Bill ever hook up? Will Reg and Kelly Ann get closer? And most of all, will someone please rehire Phil because the minute Ron White leaves in the first episode, almost all the air goes out of the show?
Scott Fitzgerald said that “action is character,” and who would argue with him? Yes, the characters still have to do something, but they have to be fully realized characters, not mere sketches with too much left unfilled in.
The three episodes sent to critics for review are wildly uneven — not just in character and story but also in mood. The first episode is the strongest, perhaps because, as we’re introduced to the characters, we can buy into their potential to hold our attention. The third episode actually contains the high points of the series, but they don’t work together or within the context established by the two previous episodes at all.
For one thing, we are treated — and I mean, truly treated — to a guest appearance by Lindsey Buckingham, who is temporarily joining the tour because they’ve lost their opening act. The tour’s loss is our gain as Buckingham makes sweet sonic love to his acoustic guitar and generally interrupts the confusion of the series with an exquisite mini concert.
And then there’s Bryce Newman. The writing at this point falls back into a classic sitcom from the 1960s. The idea is that Newman has written a scathing review of StatonHouse on his blog … based on a YouTube video. We’re supposed to believe that this would be reason for the tour managers to tremble in their boots. Really? A rock critic has that kind of clout? In what universe?
Anyway, Reg comes up with a scheme to get Newman to retract his broadside by inviting him backstage and pampering his already inflated ego.
Except, ruh-roh, some roadies think that Reg is just being British and is actually telling them to take revenge on Newman. So Wes brews up some special espresso that sends Newman on the trip of a lifetime and has him baring his flabby assets for all the world to see.
By itself, it’s hilarious, just as, by itself, Buckingham’s solo is thrilling. But they don’t work together in the same episode, much less the same show. Is “Roadies” a reality-based dramedy or an absurdist satire? We aren’t sure because Crowe isn’t sure.
The performances are hit-and-miss. The better ones come from supporting players, because we don’t expect them to be all that complicated. Poots, Baker/Kelly and Spall are memorable. Wilson and Gugino are trapped in predictability.
White is terrific as one of those rock world veterans who can cite chapter and verse about any rock show of the past several decades. He makes one brief appearance via cell phone after his character, Phil, is fired, and we can only hope and pray that he’ll be back with the tour soon because, otherwise, there’s just not much to hold our attention.
At times, we look at series based on a specific group of people and think the creator just doesn’t seem to know enough about it. In this case, perhaps the problem is that Crowe, who spent years covering rock music, knows too much about it. That could be the reason he assumes he doesn’t need to flesh out the characters and create a dramatically sound plot to maintain our interest.
If so, he would be wrong.