Every so often, a television series appears that is so unusual, so distinct and with such a deliberately crafted worldview, so unlike anything else that surrounds it in the shifting bars of the channel guides, that it seems like a small miracle that it ever made it on the air in the first place. Lodge 49 is one of those series. It may not be the best show on the air right now (but then again, it may be), and it certainly isn’t for everyone; there might not ever have been a series I’ve recommended so whole-heartedly and often but with such strong qualification that you have to let it happen as it happens and allow yourself to get on its extremely peculiar wavelength. But it’s the show that I most look forward to seeing every week, that I miss the most when it isn’t on, and that more often confounds, delights, and pleases me, episode after episode.
Like many mystical concepts, the greatness of Lodge 49 — currently about to air the finale of its brilliant second season on the AMC network — is easy to describe but nearly impossible to understand. It’s the story of Sean Dudley (the perfectly cast Wyatt Russell, son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, who channels his inherited good looks into a Quixotic affability) and his sister Liz (the electric Sonya Cassidy). The two of them are of a very specific type that is as common as clouds in these latter days of American capitalism: they drift from job to job, circumstance to circumstance, haunted by an unresolved trauma — in this case, the recent death of their father, who ran the family pool cleaning business — and essentially living from paycheck to paycheck under mountains of debt so vast they can barely conceive of them. Dud, as Sean calls himself, dreams of an escape from a system that seems as ubiquitous as water to a fish, dreaming of the Tongva natives who once saw his southern California home as a paradise and not just one series of obstacles after another; Liz is a bitter realist at far too young an age, with talent to spare but a rebellious streak she can’t quell and a resentment that she was handed just enough tools to keep cleaning up after everyone else. Then, one day, Dud finds a signet ring for a local fraternal lodge called the Order of the Lynx, and tries to shape it into the key that will unlock a hero’s journey.
That’s really all there is to this extremely contemporary fable, but within those loose parameters, it builds a world so new and strange, and yet so familiar and relatable, that it seems like the very alchemy that lodge member Blaise St. John, a dope shop operator played by the wonderful David Pasquesi who takes Dud on as his apprentice, is forever experimenting with. As crafted by the show’s creator, Jim Gavin, Long Beach is both a mirror of a modern small city, where everyone has a side hustle to replace the vanished industry that once supported them (in this case, aerospace behemoth Orbis) and a fantastic kingdom of infinite possibilities and causal surreality. It’s both instantly recognizable, with its landscape of ever-changing strip malls, generic industrial buildings falling into disuse, and calculated corporate eateries, and filled with a California mysticism both familiar and baffling, with old trailers next to creaky oil pumps, predatory sharks of the aquatic and loan variety, and buildings filled with long-forgotten tunnels and secret passages. As is entirely appropriate for a show so influenced by Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (a longtime favorite of mine), it’s a vast daytime connected by nearly invisible threads of electricity and symbolism, and it’s easy for someone as vulnerable as Dud to get lost in it and forget which connections are real and and which are just hallucinations borne of paranoia, alienation, loneliness, and hope.
And connection is really what Lodge 49 is about in its most transcendent moments, of which there are many. Everyone in it is untethered somehow, lacking connections they used to rely on. Dud and Liz have lost their family and their financial security; Ernie Fontaine, Dud’s reluctant best friend and mentor at the lodge, has lost his career; Scott, the new Sovereign Protector of the lodge, has lost the respect of his peers he thought would come from his ambition, and he’s also lost Connie, his wife, who, along with Blaise, seems to be losing her very grip on reality. Even the lodge itself is disconnected — from its glory days, from its mysterious past, from its place among the wonders, and possibly from the Order of the Lynx itself, to which it’s in arrears. But it is the lodge and the people in it, and the struggles to repair old connections and forge new ones in the face of constant setbacks and uncertainty, that make this show so deeply compelling, so hilarious and tragic, so endlessly watchable.
Lodge 49 does so many things well, it’s hard to order them in my mind while still maintaining a readable length to this review. It’s one of the few shows that really addresses our socioeconomic moment, and while I don’t want to read too much of my own political views into it, it’s spectacular at portraying the tenuous state of so many peoples’ lives and their search for the kind of common space that once divided our private lives from the predations of capital — capital brilliantly portrayed here in the form of Burt, a gnomish pawnbroker to whom the characters are forever losing, regaining, and re-losing their most cherished possessions. It engages in a lot of heady interplay about the great mysteries, but in a loose and inviting way, using them as excuses for gorgeous visual sequences or window dressing or points of entry, but never forgetting their essential power. (I don’t want to put too much stock in this particular element, but it’s also one of the best shows ever to watch while stoned, and it also pulls off the notoriously difficult trick of showing scenes where the characters are stoned that don’t come off as corny or hacky but are still deeply funny.) It’s visually sumptuous, with a murderer’s row of skilled directors and cinematographer Jeffrey Jur providing endless treats for the eyes and some of the most beautifully composed shots on television today; and the scripts wander but never meander, blending seamlessly with the lensing of the show, with results like “Circles”, the sixth episode of season 2 and one of the most perfect episodes of American TV I’ve ever seen.
I could keep talking about this beautiful little jewel of a show for twice as long as I already have, and I hope that it gets as many seasons as it needs to tell its fantastic and necessary story so that I get the chance to talk about it again. But in the end, I think maybe the reason it succeeds so well is that its cast and crew, from Gavin (whose background as a novelist gives the show a literary quality that elevates and charges it but never makes it pretentious or twee) to the directors who are so in synch with his vision to the lovingly selected music to possibly one of the greatest casts in television history, made up largely of powerfully capable players who have often had to settle for minor roles and are finally being given the opportunity to do something magnificent. (I don’t have the time to single out every great performance but of particular note are Brent Jennings as Ernie, the anchor to the entire show; the revelatory Cassidy; Linda Emond, so complex and true as Connie; Eric Allan Kramer, who does so much with the palette of Scott’s emotional makeup; and the trio of Atkins Estimond, Daniel Stewart Sherman, and David Ury, masterful as Liz’s Greek chorus of co-workers. There’s also some terrific small parts for bigger names, of which Bruce Campbell as industry tycoon Captain, Cheech Marin as Mexican lodge seer El Confidente, and Brian Doyle-Murray as Ernie’s boss are standouts.) They all seem to genuinely like each other and love the work they’re doing, and recognize that they’re on a special show — qualities that I think have marked some of the great quiet classics in television history. The people who make Lodge 49 mirror the people who have come together to keep Lodge 49 alive, for different reasons but with the same ultimate goal of taking base matter and transforming it into something more. Please join them, because they’re making magic.
I agree with every word of this. Few shows hit the sweet spot like this one does. And your commentary, Leonard, is True Lodge. I would add this: the music is wonderful. And the opening credit roll mesmerizes and prepares your brain to go places it usually doesn’t go when you watch TV. A real treasure. And yes, it’s also quite fun with a buzz on.