John From Cincinnati: Planet Waves

Then there are the miracles, which are, we might assume, a byproduct of John’s presence. Promotional spots for the series have given one away: After his morning surf, standing by his car, Mitch suddenly begins hovering a few inches above the ground. (He’s convinced he has a brain tumor, to which Butchie jokes after witnessing his dad levitate, “If that’s a tumor, where do I sign up?”) Another oddity is the life-death connection between straw-haired, sweetly dispositioned Shaun and Bill’s pet cockatiel Zippy, which plays out in the second episode in a way I shouldn’t reveal, but certainly suggests that Milch and Nunn are keen on exploring how our modern souls react when presented with evidence of the unexplainable.

The big question, though, is, What will a modern television viewership do when presented with the unexplainable in a weekly series? Lost has become a show all too frustrating in its lack of answers, while prime time’s talk-to-the-dead episodics would much rather view the extranatural as a tool for that dreaded concept “closure” than something willfully confusing, bizarre and open ended. David Milch is not one to indulge in the spiritually goopy or popcorn cosmic: John of Arcadia or The Surf Whisperer. But it appears that, through the prism of a superlatively dysfunctional family trapped in their past and divisive about their future, he and Nunn — an acclaimed painter of crumbling social worlds fringed by surfing’s godlike call to conquer nature — are trying to tap into a recognizably turbulent present, a time in which our relationship to the world and each other is as much a grand fumbling asa straight-and-narrow path. And with three episodes, I can say that so far they do it with surprise, wit (as in those spectacularly inverse-constructed Milchian lines of dialogue), an engaging cast (especially O’Neill, Van Holt, De Mornay and, after episode two, Deadwood alum Garret Dillahunt), plus a shaggy, Altmanesque charm.

One of these is not like the others: Fletcher, Van Holt and Nichols emerge. (Photo by John P. Johnson)

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More About

• Kem Nunn
• David Milch
• Deadwood (TV Show)
• John From Cincinnati
• Rebecca De Mornay

And if John From Cincinnati is about something else, so be it.?

JOHN FROM CINCINNATI | HBO | Premieres Sun., June 10, 10 p.m.; beginning June 17, airs Sun., 9 p.m.