The road to \u201cDemascus\u201d \u2014 premiering Thursday on Tubi \u2014 runs through AMC, which had commissioned the series and then, though a six-episode season was completed, declined to air it. Not being privy to any boardroom discussions or the thoughts of executives and accountants, I won\u2019t claim to know why that was \u2014 most everything these days is a calculation instead of a gamble. But simply as regards its quality, AMC was wrong and Tubi is right.<\/p>\n
Created by playwright Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm (\u201cHooded: Or Being Black for Dummies\u201d), it sits alongside some of the most interesting series of the last several years \u2014 comedies from Black creators that mess with form and time and space and reality \u2014 \u201cI\u2019m a Virgo,\u201d<\/a> \u201cGovernment Cheese,\u201d<\/a> \u201cThe Vince Staples Show\u201d<\/a> and \u201cAtlanta\u201d<\/a> and the cartoons \u201cLazor Wulf\u201d<\/a> and \u201cOh My God … Yes!\u201d<\/a> Perhaps if one already feels outside the system, there\u2019s less temptation to play it safe. It\u2019s not necessarily a recipe for success in the show-business terms, but it can produce good results.<\/p>\n Demascus (Okieriete Onaodowan), 33, is entering his \u201cJesus year, my year to be a martyr, and I\u2019ve chosen this to be my martyrdom.\u201d That martyrdom is therapy, he tells Dr. Bonnetville (Janet Hubert), as the series begins in a jungle \u2014 though this turns out to be a Holodeck projection. We\u2019re in a version of 2023 \u2014 the year the series was first set to air \u2014 in which self-driving cars fill the road and a voice-activated assistant (here called Shekinah, played by Brie Eley) is everywhere, setting the stage for the series\u2019 science-fictional central conceit.<\/p>\n \u201cNobody knows me. My one dominant quality is I\u2019m unknowable,\u201d Demascus tells her. \u201cI can be anybody or nobody. \u2026 That\u2019s a good quality for a Black man to have, right?\u201d But does he know himself?<\/p>\n Bonnetville suggests that Demascus might be a candidate for DIRT (Digital Immersive Reality Therapy), an experimental psychological virtual alternate reality rig that \u201cfollows the path of your conscious and subconscious impulses, allowing you to visit alternate visions of yourself, but only as a voyeur. \u2026 Attempting to take control of a narrative can permanently corrupt your primary reality.\u201d (Of course he will do just that.) But just what reality is primary is something the series purposely confuses and doesn\u2019t quite settle or really needs to. The gizmo is an excuse for episodes and parts of episodes set in various contexts that work both as short stories and pieces of a bigger puzzle, and as a bonus allows the main cast to try on different roles \u2014 in repertory, if you will.<\/p>\n In what may or may not be his primary reality, Demascus is a graphic artist employed by the government \u2014 he\u2019s working on a campaign to encourage Black participation in the space program \u2014 which makes for some office-based satire. He has a best friend, Redd (Caleb Eberhardt), a District of Columbia public defender, who will reappear in other forms (in one episode, \u201cThanksgiving,\u201d they\u2019re a couple); an uncle, Forty (Martin Lawrence), now dissolute, now respectable; and, in some scenarios, a sister, Shaena (Brittany Adebumola). He\u2019s slowly losing interest in his \u201calgorithmically compatible\u201d girlfriend, Budhi (Sasha Hutchings), and becoming interested in Naomi (Shakira Ja\u2019nai Paye), who appears variously as an artist, a nun and a nurse in a psychiatric ward. There\u2019s a tentative pan-dimensional love story between them, the sort of thing that could easily be overdone, but is just \u2026 nice.<\/p>\n The series itself takes different forms \u2014 a relationship reality show, a \u201csad Thanksgiving\u201d domestic comedy, a setting out of \u201cOne Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest.\u201d Notwithstanding a change of hair or profession, Demascus remains more or less himself as shapes shift around him \u2014 the protagonist, basically a good guy, a little buttoned-up, a little insecure. He\u2019s surrounded by more colorful, unpredictable characters, more acted upon than acting and dealing with the same issues from scenario to scenario. \u201cThere are rules and I know some of them and there are rules that I don\u2019t know and they\u2019re just ever-changing,\u201d he tells Dr. Bonnetville.<\/p>\n According to press materials, the show explores the \u201cgulf between Black male perspectives\u201d and as with any culturally specific work, it may play to an audience that shares those specifics. But like all good art, it doesn\u2019t limit its meanings to the artist\u2019s statement. \u201cDemascus\u201d isn\u2019t parochial or polemical; the emotional beats are accessible to any moderately sensitive human. And there\u2019s pure pleasure to be found in the writing, which is sharp and smart and natural; the direction, which shapes and is shaped by the evolving material without getting in its way; and uniformly marvelous performances.<\/p>\n I finished the sixth episode, titled \u201cSeason Two Prequel\u201d (following the penultimate episode, \u201cPenultimate\u201d), wanting more, though that possibility, given the series\u2019 previous wandering in the wilderness, seems an open question. A line of dialogue hearkens back to the beginning in a way that might be thought of as closure, as a circle closes without going anywhere, and yet things are not the same. An ending you can take as a beginning, as with any fairy tale or romantic comedy, it\u2019s a beautifully managed moment, as J. Cole\u2019s \u201cLove Yourz\u201d \u2014 \u201cNo such thing as a life that\u2019s better than yours\u201d and \u201cIt\u2019s beauty in the struggle\u201d \u2014 makes its complementary points on the soundtrack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The road to \u201cDemascus\u201d \u2014 premiering Thursday on Tubi \u2014 runs through AMC, which had commissioned the series…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":126221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[7026,1582,276,1144,77518,77520,3404,77522,77523,77519,77521,2961,224,5337,27751,23410,6166,783,44599,17823],"class_list":{"0":"post-126220","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-black","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-comedy","12":"tag-demascus","13":"tag-dr-bonnetville","14":"tag-episode","15":"tag-form","16":"tag-government-cheese","17":"tag-graphic-artist","18":"tag-jesus-year","19":"tag-la","20":"tag-los-angeles","21":"tag-losangeles","22":"tag-reality","23":"tag-scenario","24":"tag-series","25":"tag-space","26":"tag-thanksgiving","27":"tag-thing"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114987282217551078","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}