Jeri Jacquin
This week on DVD and Digital from HBO Home Entertainment and
creator Alan Ball is a series that shows us a family dealing with HERE AND NOW.
Audrey Bayer (Holly Hunter) and husband Greg Boatwright (Tim
Robbins) pride themselves on having a very strong family in Portland , Oregon Liberia , Duc (Raymond Lee) from Vietnam , and Ramon (Daniel Zovatto) from Colombia
Greg is a philosophy professor who is badly preparing for
his 60th birthday with an Asian prostitute heads home as the family
prepares for a big party. Ashley, an already busy fashion designer who is
married to Malcolm (Joe Williamson) and raising their young daughter helps and
son Duc is a motivational speaker who seems to be missing something in his
relationship with Greg but wishes Dad a happy birthday anyway.
Audrey is beyond thrilled when Ramon brings his new
boyfriend Henry (Andy Bean) to the party and Kristen is interested in the model
Ashley has brought to the party. All is going well until it’s time for the
speech and Greg lets out his demons. That all comes to an abrupt halt when
Ramon lets out demons of his own!
Greg and Audrey take Ramon to see Dr. Shokrani (Peter
Macdissi), a therapist who is shocked almost immediately at what he has to say.
Telling him of visions of things he knows can’t really be there, Shokrani isn’t
sure how to handle it at first. Audrey, being a former therapist, is
immediately sure that Ramon is suffering from schizophrenia since her brother
Ike (Ted Levine) suffers from the condition.
Wanting her son on medication immediately, it is Ramon that
takes the reigns of his treatment and how he wants to handle it. But the young
man and his doctor think there is something much deeper in what others think is
Ramon’s ‘illness’. After the mess at Greg’s party, Kristen turns to Ashley for
sisterly help and it lands them in jail.
Still reeling from turning 60, Greg is attending an ethic
convention and things get a little sideways during his panel discussion. If the
family didn’t have enough problems, Audrey tries to defend an event at her
school but finds she is the scapegoat. Out on her own and with Greg’s support,
Audrey wants to start an initiative to help kids handle their differences but
they need funding. There only shot is an old friend Steven Benjamin (Trent Garrett) from Berkley
Ashley and Malcolm screw up Haley’s party and turn to the
family who makes them crazy to instead make an awesome birthday for their
daughter. The day is going so well as everyone is getting along and enjoying
each other’s company. Later in the day Ramon has another episode.
Dr. Shokrani doesn’t know how to handle the connection he
feels he has with Ramon and wife Layla (Necar Zadegan) has had just about
enough of it. She suggests that he step away from it all but he isn’t
listening. Heading for a gaming expo that would make his career, Ramon is doing
well until – he isn’t. Rescued by Greg, both parents are frustrated with the
lack of progress helping their son.
Audrey isn’t handling home life any better when she
discovers what Greg has been up to. So much so that she starts flirting with
Benjamin as her silent anger towards Greg has to go someplace. Kristen knows
something is happening at home but she’s got bigger problems when the school
girl bully’s try to pin racist spray painting on her.
Kristen meets Dr. Shokrani’s son Navid (Marwan Salama) and
an interesting relationship as well as a partner-in-crime situation begins to
emerge and his therapist father isn’t happy about it. Especially when the two
push their agenda on some at school who hurt them both.
Continuing to help Ramon, Greg and Audrey begin looking
through their adoption files to see if there is anything they can uncover to
help. What they uncover pushes them both to deal with the naïve way they once
were. Ashley has been offered a great deal which might give her more time with
the family – eventually.
Dr. Shokrani can not seem to grasp what is happening now
with what happened to him as a child. He returns to doing something that Layla
and Navid can no longer stand by and watch happen. Shokrani turns to someone
that even Layla would never see coming.
The visions are becoming regular now and during a family
celebration for Kristen, Ramon is in the backyard tree house with his niece
Haley. Fearing fire, he immediately drops the young girl out of the tree house
causing the family to go on alert. Ramon takes off wanting to be left alone
feeling his family is just to close.
Duc and Dad Greg look for Ramon but end up hashing out their
family laundry in public. Calling out one another on their issues, Duc turns to
Carmen who seems to be the only person that sees who he is and makes very
little judgment about it.
At home, Ramon once again sees something on his computer
that sets his feet on the road with a message to go to the mountain top. When
Greg receives a phone call from Ike, he believes that there is something Ike
knows that can help with Ramon.
All of this leads to something that only Ramon and Ike saw
coming – maybe now they will believe!
Hunter as Audrey is an absolute control freak and with that
being said let me just say I couldn’t be happier to see her on the screen
again. As Audrey she constantly feels the need to control everything about
everyone in order to feel at peace with herself. What she fails to realize is
that that same control is pushing everyone away – including her own husband who
loves her dearly.
Robbins as Greg is a man realizing his own mortality even if
he does try to hide it behind his philosophy degree. He is more laid back than
his wife, clearly, but still struggles to decide what being 60 means for him.
As family and friends begin to worry a little, Greg focuses on his son and
trying to play a more active role in his kids lives. Greg loves his wife, he’s
just stupid is all and I’ve seen enough of that in real life to kind of cut this
character a little slack – only a little though.
Hinton as Ashley is trying to be all things to all people. A
good daughter to her white parents, a good wife to her white husband, a good
Mom to her daughter Haley and a great business woman. The problem is she is
being pulled in all directions which means she isn’t sure who she is or what
she believes about anything. I love this character but there comes a time when
it’s okay to go a little nuts and Ashley needs to do that – just one good blow
out. Williamson as husband Malcolm just wants what is best for his family – and
is more forgiving about some of Ashley’s behavior than most husbands would be.
Lee as Duc thinks he has everyone figured out and makes
observations so cut and dry. He wants to be the best motivational speaker and
encourage others to have a good life. The problem is that the teacher isn’t
following his own advice. Slowly it all begins to shift and he has to deal with
the childhood memories that seem to plague him both mentally and physically.
Zovatto as Ramon has the most complex character (although
they are all pretty complex actually) with his extremely deep love of family
and the new idea that he might be mentally ill. No one seems to believe what he
is telling them and Mom wants to medicate him before he becomes like her
brother Ike. Even boyfriend Henry brings a whole new bag of problems to an
already disturbing situation. I think Ramon handles it all better than everyone
else around him and trust when I say there are people around him that are truly
disturbed!
Bacon as Kristen is the baby in a family of adults and she
thinks they all have it so together. Imagine her surprise when she figures out
that they have the same identity problems as she does. Just because you are a
biological child in a family doesn’t mean it always works in your favor.
Seeking out relationships in different ways, Kristen begins to understand how
the world works and she isn’t thrilled at all.
Macdissi as Dr. Shokrani begins as a therapist who wants to
help Ramon discover what is causing his visions but soon discovers that there
is a wider connection between the two men. This is such a sad character to
watch as he begins to experience a little of what Ramon is going through but
his wife doesn’t really hear what he is trying to explain. There is something
in his childhood that has never truly left Shokrani and its back with a
vengeance.
Zadegan as Layla is a woman who doesn’t like to make waves
but instead live her life as true as she can. Her faith is something that
sustains her even if it is distasteful to her husband Shokrani. She also
accepts her son for who he is and what he believes about himself. Salama as
Navid is exploring who he is but because of his beliefs he must hide just about
every part of who he is. His friendship with Kristen is very important as they
both explore what it is they want.
Levine as Ike takes a whack at trying to explain to Greg
that Ramon isn’t crazy, he just knows something that other people don’t. As he
tries once again to explain it to Greg, he sees something in his
brother-in-laws eyes that says ‘this guy may not be crazy after all!’.
HBO Home Entertainment has an extensive array of
critically-acclaimed and groundbreaking programs found on Bluray, DVD and
Digital HD. They have provided viewers with some of the most amazing programs
with huge fan bases that include the shows True
Blood, Sex and the City, The Sopranos, True Detectives, The Wire, Entourage and Game of Thrones. Launched in 1984, HBO
is world wide in viewed entertainment in more than 70 territories around the
world! For more of what they have to offer please visit www.hbo.com.
The Bluray includes the episodes Eleven Eleven, It’s Coming, If a Deer Shits in the Woods, Hide and Seek,
From Sun Up to Sun Down, Fight Death, Wake, Yes, Dream Logic, and It’s Here.
HBO’s HERE and NOW is a series that just hits the ground
running and does so many twists and turns without ever stopping the running
game. I know I had a big question mark over my head the first two episodes and
then I had to binge watch the rest. There was no way I was going to sleep
without knowing what in the hell was going on with this family.
Oh yes, they have the ‘normal’ family issues of life, love,
family and relationships that are always filled with complications. Then you
add the family dynamic, diversity, potential mental issues, lies, deceptions,
hurt, memories and all the rest along with a bit of perhaps psychic stuff and
boom – you have a snappy series on your hands!
Each one of these characters is deep in the telling and can
not be removed without messing up the house of cards. It is watching some grow
up, some remembering growing up, some dealing with pretending and some just
dealing that makes this show riveting to watch.
Creator Alan Ball is known the film AMERICAN BEAUTY and the
series that will forever be in my heart (and the soundtrack is still in my
player) TRUE BLOOD. Winning award after award for his work, it is clear that he
has the uncanny ability to write scripts about things that dance on the line of
real and strange – both of which I’m absolutely okay with.
So if you are looking to indulge in something that can only
be called a family-hot-mess-of-strange then HERE AND NOW is definitely for you.
The DVD comes with all ten episodes so you can binge like I did and walk away
asking yourself “who do I have to slap around to get more?”
In the end – we are living in a new reality!
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