Dopesick

Given the size of its canvas, Dopesick is a remarkable achievement, which clearly lays out the facts of the slow-burning tragedy, with lots of helpful date reminders, without losing track of the human stories behind it.

At times Dopesick can feel similarly overwhelming. But it also feels important that these stories be told.

The cast is excellent and empathetic, helping ground the series.

Dopesick will certainly be a slow burn in spots. But it deals with a subject whose depth most people aren’t aware of, and the performances are so good that it should keep viewers interested.

It verges at times on hokey melodrama. ... So, yes, I’m disappointed. But I'm recommending Dopesick anyway, because quite honestly I don’t think the show was designed for a viewer like me. ... Hulu has apparently decided that this adaptation of a nonfiction book should resemble a very long movie-of-the-week — but you know, a lot of people like to watch those.

Committed turns from Keaton (always an excellent everyman) and Dever (who goes through the wringer) only get you so far, as Hulu’s valiant endeavor just keeps hammering home a point it made straight from the jump.

Despite powerful performances from Michael Keaton and several of his top-tier co-stars, Dopesick is a frustrating selection of questionable narrative choices and bizarrely bad performances from typically unimpeachable actors. It’s a muddled telling of an urgent story.

Dopesick is pretty well done because they show many angles of the effects from the drug Oxycontin.

(Mauro Lanari) Why a non-linear narrative? Perhaps to distinguish it from "Traffic" (Soderbergh 2000), from the 4th and final excellent season of "Goliath", from the extraordinary "Kill the Messenger" directed in 2014 by the same Michael Cuesta who signed the 3rd and 4th episode of this "Dopesick"? Just to say that on the subject there were already illustrious precedents, but all affected by the similar flaw: the apology of quixoticism, the idea that it is better to win battles by losing the war rather than the opposite. A television miniseries that therefore exalts the "beautiful losers": better than nothing or not? If humans survive only by taking some kind of drug, there must be an explanation.

An interesting show, but take enormous liberties with the truth. For example; it makes a huge deal about OXY commercials never mentioning the name of the drug. The US is one of only two nations that allows direct pharmaceutical advertising. There are two kinds of ads, those that mention the drug, and those that don't. Watch network TV news, any night. The only people who ACTUALLY exist in the mini-series are the Sacklers (who are made to look like literal demons, even though none have ever been convicted of anything) and the two assistant US attorneys in Virginia. EVERYONE else is made up; the DEA official, the doctor played by Michael Keaton, the Purdue detail rep. One of the biggest ironies is that studies from Harvard and Stanford confirm that the addiction rates for people prescribed opioids legitimately ends up being at, or just under 1%. That isn't chopped liver, but it is not what the show portrays. Two years after the show - 25 years after the events in the show, the United States is seeing the worst drug epidemic in its history - and it has nothing to do with ANY pharmaceutical drugs. The issue are bootleg meth and fentanyl, killing a whole magnitude more people. One of the great ironies is that the whole show demonizes Oxycontin but calls out the NAME brand of one of the most promising Medication Assisted Therapy drugs (buprenorphine). Some fact, a lot of fiction.

Had high hopes, but even the excellent Michael Keaton cannot save this boilerplate melodrama that has all the nuance and subtle complexity of a ten megaton bomb. Viewers looking for another "Wire" will be sorely disappointed, Dopesick settles for depressing schmaltz, hammering home repeatedly about the evils of Purdue. As a side note, when making dramas that are "based on a true story", actors should be picked that accurately reflect the ethnicity of the place and time period. For example, if there was a movie about Japanese samurai taking place during the Kamakura period during the 12th century, I would be put off if a bunch of white guys showed up in samurai armor. Dopesick is guilty of altering the ethnicity and gender of characters for the sack of diversity. Female coal miners? Ok...wait there is also a black female lesbian coal miner? Ok.... Now we discover the white federal prosecutor from VA who moved to Appalachia has a black wife and bi-racial children - in 2002. Since the kids seem to be about ten, that would have meant that he ands wife met and fell in love in the late 80's. I grew up in Virginia. Bi-racial couples are uncommon in VA today, but in the 80's and 90's virtually unheard of, at least between white men and black women. It did happen (the Loving's for example) but it was rare, and such discrepancies are off-putting because they pull me out of the illusion the show is attempting to create.

I haven't seen something this poorly written or acted in a while. It does check off all the social justice boxes for diversity and inclusion but that's all it's got going for it. Some scenes are good and the dialogue feels like it was written by a competent person who is humans. Some scenes feel really out of place and the dialogue is so badly written it makes you want wish you were never alive. This is why I don't watch any original programming on Hulu or any of these services. It's so low budget that you are rarely going to get a hit. But that's the point they just want content to say they have content. They don't care if it's good. None of the characters are interesting.