Nary a laugh to be had, but the first half of a pretty jarring little psychodrama. The most striking image of the episode is Clay, bugs crawling across his face, bathed in red light, in a religion-focused show, looking for all the world like the devil. In some ways it's an uneasy marriage in this episode, the loonier parts of the Morel Oral vibe like a suddenly appearing hall of weapons or the cartoonishness of an adorable deer coming up to lick Orel with the raw blackness of Clay's rant against the hell of his life. But there's a contrast between the angelic Orel and soul-blackened Clay here. One is at harmony with his world, embracing the animals and seeming at peace with his environment, and the other restless and cruel, attacking nature and attacking himself in the process.
The only problem is that, true to that uncertain mix, there's a broadness to things like Clay shooting someone's dog or making a tent for his liquor bottles that doesn't quite square with the unnervingly down-to-earth qualities of his self-loathing, vitriolic speech he offers before the cliffhanger where he shoots Orel. The tone is shaky, but there's such a realism, a boldness to Clay's exchange with Orel at the end there that it works as one of those starkly disconcerting pieces of art that gets some of its power from the contrast between the cartoonishness of its setting and typical M.O. with the scarily accurate depiction of the darker side of father-son relationships.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2016-08-02T02:05:38Z
Nary a laugh to be had, but the first half of a pretty jarring little psychodrama. The most striking image of the episode is Clay, bugs crawling across his face, bathed in red light, in a religion-focused show, looking for all the world like the devil. In some ways it's an uneasy marriage in this episode, the loonier parts of the Morel Oral vibe like a suddenly appearing hall of weapons or the cartoonishness of an adorable deer coming up to lick Orel with the raw blackness of Clay's rant against the hell of his life. But there's a contrast between the angelic Orel and soul-blackened Clay here. One is at harmony with his world, embracing the animals and seeming at peace with his environment, and the other restless and cruel, attacking nature and attacking himself in the process.
The only problem is that, true to that uncertain mix, there's a broadness to things like Clay shooting someone's dog or making a tent for his liquor bottles that doesn't quite square with the unnervingly down-to-earth qualities of his self-loathing, vitriolic speech he offers before the cliffhanger where he shoots Orel. The tone is shaky, but there's such a realism, a boldness to Clay's exchange with Orel at the end there that it works as one of those starkly disconcerting pieces of art that gets some of its power from the contrast between the cartoonishness of its setting and typical M.O. with the scarily accurate depiction of the darker side of father-son relationships.