TV Show
4.4
The Staff
TLDR
Uzo Aduba can do no wrong but the showrunners surely wronged her.
What it's about
The take
Painkiller is a dramatized account of the opioid crisis that details how Purdue Pharmaceuticals manufactured and marketed the highly addictive pain medication OxyContin. Before each episode, the family member of an opioid victim recounts how the drug scarred their lives. Although the intentions seem righteous, the execution begs to differ. The drama leans heavily into crime thriller tropes, overproducing the events to a sensational degree with flat, cookie-cutter characters making it unwatchable at times.
Two episodes in, the theatrics in the production choices feel dismissive of the severity of the opioid crisis, prioritizing eccentricities and a shallow textbook overview.
What stands out
Comments
What stands out about your review, beyond its misnaming of the series title in your first sentence, is that you seem oblivious to the use of satire as a way to explore humanity’s darkest aspects. Whether it be Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” or Michael Radford’s film adaptation of Orwell’s “1984,” or another standout anti-war satire, “Catch-22,” the director invites us to examine the mephistophelian Sackler dynasty through the an exaggerated, darkly comic representation of evil and its doers that breaks the tiresome American movie portrayal of that subject with cardboard characters, labored virtue signaling, and time-worn set pieces.
I understand you are out of your depth here, and I sympathize, but nevertheless I offer this more positive interpretation of the series to your readers as sort of an antidote to your obtuse analysis.
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