SEX&DRUGS&ROCK&ROLL: Thursday 10PM on FX
Previously… on SEX&DRUGS&ROCK&ROLL: Johnny Rock (series creator Denis Leary) is seemingly on the last legs of a music career that never quite made him the star he expected to be, when he makes two discoveries: he has an adult daughter Gigi (Elizabeth Gillies) he never knew about, and Gigi is a hell of a singer. Even better, she has $200K in her pocket and the desire to record with her father and his old band The Heathens. Johnny has to convince estranged lead guitarist Flash (John Corbett) to rejoin him, drummer Bam Bam (Robert Kelly) and bassist Rehab (John Alex), but by the end of the pilot, they were a dysfunctional unit once again.
Episode 2: The second episode of a series is awfully early to be called pivotal, but tonight’s half hour, written by Leary and directed by Michael Blieden, went to the heart of what this show’s tone and outlook on life are going to be. It was clear in the pilot that the arc of Sex&Drugs will be concerned with the potential redemption of Johnny Rock, now that he has a daughter and a promising comeback in his grasp, but the question was just how affirmational it was planning to be. Episode 2’s major change from the pilot was the loss of one of Johnny’s simultaneous girlfriends, which seemed to argue for a more middle-class morality to the series, and then the major storyline revolved around the orders of Gigi, Johnny’s agent Ira (Josh Pais) and the rest of the band that Johnny sober up and do his songwriting without the help of chemicals.
Since this is a Denis Leary project, Johnny wasn’t going to go gently into that sober night, and despite the pleas of his daughter and bandmates, he spent much of the half-hour raging at the idea of a rocker without drugs, and launching sometimes hilarious bile at any number of sober musicians, from Morrissey to post-1978 Bowie to Radiohead (listening to their songs, he noted, made him feel like he was failing his SATs). But still–if the episode ended with Johnny having a creative breakthrough while sober, that would lay out the agenda for where Sex&Drugs was planning to go.
Happily for the show if not the character, it didn’t play out that way. Johnny wrote a song, all right, and he delivered its mournful verse with clear eyes and a steady hand–but it was so blandly singer/songwriter-ish that everyone scurried to find him some drugs ASAP. (There was the remaining suggestion that he might forego coke.) A socially responsible Johnny Rock would be an unexciting proposition, and Leary seems to be well aware of that.
In general, although the episode was probably uncharacteristic in having only one plotline and just a few talk-heavy scenes, it did a good job of establishing who these characters are and how they’re going to interact. Some of the motifs, like Johnny’s disgust at the idea of Flash bedding his daughter, are likely to age quickly and should be disposed of one way or another before long, and the whole enterprise still has the feel of Rescue Me bleached of its darker moments, but Sex&Drugs seems to have a handle on its identity and that’s a hopeful sign. The ratings for the premiere were solid, and especially considering that FX disposed of The Comedians in short order today, the odds are strong that Sex&Drugs will have an extended chance to get its songs heard, barring a viewership collapse.
ORIGINAL VERDICT: If Nothing Else Is On…
PILOT + 1: Not the Freshest Song, But It’s Got a Hook
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