There are some actors that elevate whatever project they are in. Giancarlo Esposito is one of them. Sure, he won wide acclaim as Gus Fring, first on Breaking Bad, then on Better Call Saul. But he was playing memorable characters for years before that, most notably in a number of Spike Lee films. In a new AMC series, Esposito is the most watchable part of an otherwise generic crime drama.
PARISH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: The skyline of New Orleans. Then we see a funeral parade, and a voice says, “Over… and over… people keep backing me into a corner, and it’s got to stop. I’m tired of being a passenger in my own life.”
The Gist: A bright red Porsche SUV speeds through the streets. A police car pulls it over, with reports of a robbery blaring on the radio. When they approach the car, guns drawn, the driver of the Porsche, Gracián “Gray” Parish (Giancarlo Esposito), puts his wallet and license on the dashboard and puts up his hands. Then he decides to step on the gas and speed off. A chase ensues through narrow streets. Via some pretty slick driving, he manages to lose the cops, and opens up the trunk to take out what’s in the back.
Seven days earlier, Gray wakes up next to his wife Rose (Paula Malcomson), shaves and makes lunch for his teenage daughter Makayla (Arica Himmel). He’s getting dressed up a bit to find out if the loan he applied for to keep his taxi company afloat has been approved. When he goes out to his Cadillac, he’s fastidious about every fingerprint and crusty bit on the car.
The loan gets turned down, which just adds to his problems. Business is down, and he’s drowning financially. He’s shocked when Rose has a Realtor list the house, but she tells him that they’re close to defaulting on their mortgage. Coming up is a birthday for his son Maddox (Caleb Baumann), the first one since Maddox was murdered the year before.
He’s surprised when Colin (Skeet Ulrich) old friend from his criminal past, hides in the back of the Caddy as a way of saying hello. The two of them reminisce, but Colin is there because he needs Gray’s help. He blew a pickup for a Zimbabwean gangster Shepherd Tongai, nicknamed The Horse (Zackary Momo), and has vowed to make it right with Gray’s help. At first he turns Colin down, saying he’s not in the life anymore. But as he contemplates Maddox’s murder and his financial situation, he changes his mind.
Colin takes him to meet The Horse, but is first introduced to his flashier brother Zenzo (Ivan Mbakop). When Gray insists on meeting the boss, The Horse is impressed with Gray’s reputation, discretion and loyalty.
Gray insists to Colin that he’s out after this, because he wants to concentrate on reconnecting with Makayla. He also insists on breaking the safe where the package is during the day on the weekend, using someone who owes Horse a favor to open the safe instead of Colin cracking it.
Things go somewhat smoothly until the executive who Horse recruits to open the safe has to call a partner for the new code. That alerts the cops, forcing Gray to improvise, which is why he ditches the junker car he was driving for the bright red Porsche. Because of this improvisation, things get complicated during the rendezvous with Horse, but the gangster is impressed with Gray’s skills; despite objections from his crew and Gray’s desire to get out of the life, Horse wants to add Gray to the fold.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The “one last job and I’m out” trope has been used so many times it’s hard to pinpoint one series that feels similar to Parish, which is based on the British series The Driver (Danny Brocklehurst, who wrote that series, developed this series with Sunu Gonera). So we’ll just mention that we haven’t seen New Orleans used as well in a series since David Simon’s HBO series Treme.
Our Take:
If Gray Parish was played by anyone besides Giancarlo Esposito, we’d likely dismiss Parish as a pretty standard-grade crime drama. But we readily admit that we’re in the tank for Esposito, even before his amazingly restrained turn as Gus Fring on both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. While Gray wears his feelings more on his sleeve than Fring did, you can see the rage and sadness bubbling just underneath the surface in Esposito’s performance as Gray.
Gray’s great skill, and why he ends up being so valuable to Horse, is that he can stay calm and collected when things go sideways, and he’s always thinking three moves ahead of what is goin on in front of him. That ability is contrasted with the hotheaded and impulsive Colin (by the way, Ulrich somehow looks unrecognizable in this role. Maybe it’s because we haven’t seen him in a while). As the series goes along, it’ll be interesting to see Gray fight sinking deeper into Horse’s crime world.
Still, we felt we needed more from the first episode. Yes, Gray is still reeling from his son’s death, to the point where he seems further disconnected from his family than he was before Maddox’s death. But the only thing we know is that Maddox was killed by someone. We’re not sure if it was at the hands of some random criminal or if Maddox somehow got caught up in a situation he couldn’t get out of. In the first episode, Makayla tells her dad that he’s making her brother’s death into being “all about you,” which adds to her feelings of disconnection from him. There’s something about Maddox’s death that’s prompting Gray to take this risky job; it’s not just about the money. But we’re only left to guess what that is.
There’s potential for the other characters in Parish to deepen; Horse looks like he might be more than a one-dimensional gangster-boss-type character. But all indications are that the rest of the characters are going to be pretty generic. We’re especially disappointed that Malcomson is essentially playing the same loyal wife character that she played in Ray Donovan, albeit with a more generic “American working class” accent and not the exaggerated Bostonian honk she had in that show.
Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: We see the rage in Gray’s face as he realizes that he won’t be able to get out of Horse’s employ, no matter what he does.
Sleeper Star: We hope Arica Himmel gets more to do as Makayla than being just the “teenage daughter who feels neglected.” We liked what she did with limited material in the first episode.
Most Pilot-y Line: “Everybody’s homeless; everybody’s homeless in this damn city,” Gray mutters to himself after an unhoused person comes up to him while he’s waiting for Colin to grab the package.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Parish is a rather generic crime drama with shallowly-sketched characters. But Esposito makes it watchable, purely because we love seeing how he portrays his character’s barely-controlled rage.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
