by Michael McCarthy
OK, you all know how much I love Netflix, right? But I am kind of annoyed with them. When they licensed Heels and High Town from Starz, they had to have known that both of those shows last season’s end with huge cliffhangers that were never resolved because the shows were prematurely canceled. And, honestly, I don’t think Netflix should license shows with huge cliffhangers. It’s like playing games with their viewers. They know nobody likes shows ending with huge cliffhangers but they went ahead and licensed them anyway. Which shows that they don’t really give a damn about viewer satisfaction at all. It seems like they’ll put anything on there if they think you might watch it, even if the end result is that you’re annoyed and disappointed.
Honestly, I kind of wish I had not watched High Town or Heels. Had I realized they ended with huge cliffhangers, I wouldn’t have watched them. But I guess that’s my bad for not looking into them first. I especially should have looked into High Town, being that it’s made by the same company that canceled Heels with huge cliffhangers. But I had Starz years ago and they never used to cancel shows without proper endings. I guess their business model changed and now they only care about ratings, whereas before they seemed to care about ending things on a note that would make their viewers happy. It certainly appears that way anyway.
I definitely won’t watch anything else from Starz without googling it first.
Of course, Netflix has even canceled some of their own shows with cliffhangers so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. But they, too, used to seem to care about viewer satisfaction years ago. Even if they canceled things with cliffhangers they usually weren’t major, unlike the massive cliffhangers with High Town and Heels.
As someone who watched professional wrestling religiously when I was a kid and again in my 20s, I found the look behind the curtain you get from Heels to be quite fascinating. I already knew about Kay Fabe and a lot of the inner workings of wrestling companies but I had never seen it all transpire before the way you get to see things happening in Heels.
The whole cast of Heels was great, honestly. Even the actors and actresses with smaller parts, like some of the B level wrestlers, were really good. My favorite performance in the series is that of Kelli Berglund, who plays the first female wrestler in the fictional company the show is about. She’s truly an under-rated actress and I hope she gets more roles where she’s able to showcase her abilities going forward. She also had a smaller part in one season of Animal Kingdom and she was great in that even if it didn’t afford her the opportunity to show the range she reveals in Heels.
But I would still recommend High Town to people from New England because they actually have a lot of Massholes starring in it so they actually get the accents right. The stars who aren’t from here just speak without an accent but that’s fine. As long as half the cast is speaking with genuine Massachusetts accents I’m happy. If the cast who isn’t from here was speaking with bad, fake accents, that’s what would put me off. It’s also interesting to people from around here because it shows that there’s — apparently — also a very dark, drug-infested side to Cape Cod, which most people just think of as a quiet, happy place to go vacation. Still, if big cliffhangers really annoy you then you shouldn’t watch it. But if you think the local touches are interesting enough that you would enjoy it even with cliffhangers then I would say it’s worth watching.
Heels is a show about amateur wrestlers, centered around two brothers whose dad started his own wrestling company. It stars Stephen Amel of Arrow and Suits L.A. fame; he made it during the time between those two shows.
High Town is a show about cops and drug dealers on Cape Cod. It especially reminded me of The Wire on HBO. Partially because both are about the struggles between dealers and cops. But also because the tone and humor of High Town was also very much like The Wire. And I definitely think that the creators of High Town were influenced by The Wire. No way they’d feel so similar otherwise. And The Wire is one of the most famous shows of all-time and one that has influenced a lot of cop shows that have come since. Also, one of the actors in High Town often says “shiiiiiit” the same way one of the actors said it on The Wire and I am almost certain that it’s a deliberate homage. The main star of High Town is Monica Raymund of Chicago Fire fame. She’s terrific in High Town, but her character is an alcoholic and drug addict who gets too obsessed with trying to save people and half the time you’ll want to give her a hug and the other half you’ll want to scream at her for making such stupid and self-destructive decisions all the time. My favorite performance in High Town is that of James Badge Dale, who plays a cop named Ray. Dale is from New York but he totally nails the Massachusetts accent. I don’t know if he’s spent a lot of time here in Massachusetts or if he’s just really good at learning accents but I had honestly thought he was a Bostonian based on how perfect his accent is. It was only when I started writing this that I was shocked to learn that he’s from New York.
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