CULT TV Blogging: Push, Nevada, Episode # 7: "Jim's Domain" - SPOILERS

It all comes down to this, the final episode of the short-lived half-a-season wonder of Push, Nevada, entitled "Jim's Domain."

When last we left IRS Agent Jim Prufrock (Derek Cecil), he had been shot in the back twice during a confrontation in the desert with undercover ATF agent Dawn Mitchell and the strongman of Push, Dwight Sloman. Sloman ordered Dawn to shoot Jim in the head, and we got a quick fade-out. This episode, penned by Joan Rater and Tony Phalen (and directed by Nick Gomez) picks up immediately where "S.O.S" left off and there is another shoot-out. Dawn goes down. Bam! Sloman goes down. Bam! Jim is already down. But surprise - every character is wearing a bulletproof vest - and they all get back up and try to shoot one another again. Just when it looks like Sloman is about to murder Jim once and for all, an IRS helicopter conveniently pulls onto the scene and arrests Sloman, saving Dawn and Jim.

And from there, a flurry of answers about the central mysteries of this oddball town in Nevada come racing at the viewer. Here's the deal, the best that I understand it: Push, Nevada was a town revitalized by the Mob in 1984. The Mob created the Versailles Casino and began laundering money through it, and indeed the town. Here's how - the dirty money would come into the casino, and the townspeople would all win it (which is why the casino paid out at such a high rate, 62%). The flush townies would then go and spend all their hard-earned cash at places in town like the Coffee Shop, or Sloman's Slow-Dance Cocktail Bar. Well, those places were all owned and operated by the Mob, so the town's people would be transferring, in a sense, their winnings back to the Mob families, but as clean money! Those conspiracy guys I thought worked for the government? Actually, if we're to believe the IRS, muscle on loan from the Mob to keep the town paying up.

After a romantic last meeting (and slow dance...) with Mary, who got a life-saving reprieve with the arrest of Sloman, Jim Prufrock returns to Carson City to find that he has been promoted, and that his wife, Darlene has moved back into his house and become the perfect wife. He even makes love to her at 9:15pm...

And therein lies the rub. The mystery of Push, Nevada is not solved, and Jim slowly starts to realize this as the episode ends, in part thanks to Grace, who is still puzzled about some things and how they went down. Why do all the denizens of Push act in lock-step fashion (making love at 9:15?) We don't know, though the inference here is that Prufrock has somehow been co-opted. Jim also realizes that he still doesn't know the answer to one very important question: who sent him the fax with the Casino accounting error in the first place?

As Push, Nevada ends, other questions nag at the viewer. What was in the all-important Bible, and why was it more important than the stolen cash? Who are the conspiracy guys after all, and how far up does the corruption go into the IRS? What's going on in the Boarding House's "Off Limits" area? How did the Landlady get Jim's father's handkerchief? Finally, does this episode signify the last temptation of Jim Prufrock, who seems to have landed now in the perfect life? Is that how corruption really works? Give a person everything he could want - a loving and sexy wife, new furniture, a promotion, more money...and he won't ask questions? Did Jameson Jones finally figure out how to stop Jim Prufrock, by creating for him the kind of perfectly ordered and reasonable life he had always dreamed about and ultimately lost when his father committed suicide?

Well, the series is over, and we'll never know the answers to these questions, but the journey was still worthwhile. In the years during and after the reality TV glut of 2000, television producers realized that they had to offer new types of formulae to keep the viewer tuned in. I call this post-genre TV. The latest examples are Lost (a survival, sci-fi, fantasy, soap opera), Boston Legal (a fusion of courtroom drama and wacky comeday), and even Invasion (soap opera, family drama and alien invasion story rolled into one...), but Push, Nevada charted that trajectory three years ago. It was a combination of X-Files Conspiracy, Twin Peaks bizarre character-types, and film noir conventions. Audiences never found the seriest, never stuck with it, but ultimately I think something unique and worthwhile was missed.

Hard to judge a series by seven episodes, but my wife and I were glued to this show and watched an episode every night for a week. When it ended, we felt that sense of loss we always do when a favorite show is cancelled, especially one with so much promise and potential.

And thus ends my first TV series in my CULT TV Blogging Feature. Coming up soon, I'll be starting Kolchak: The Night Stalker (the original), American Gothic, and - if I can get all the episodes - the 1987 Fox TV series, Werewolf. So stay tuned!

CULT TV Blogging: Push, Nevada, Episode # 6: "...---..." (S.O.S.)

In the penultimate episode of the fall 2002 cult TV series from ABC, Push, Nevada, intrepid IRS agent Jim Prufrock (Derek Cecil) nears his final reckoning. ATF agent Dawn Mitchell (Liz Vassey) plans to use him as bait during a dangerous final showdown in the desert with the town's corrupt strongman, Dwight Sloman (Raymond Barry). Jim fears this encounter may just prove to be the death of him. Sloman is out for blood and Dawn, as Grace (Melora Walters) has learned from a background check, isn't exactly trustworthy. Her record proves she has recklessly endangered others before...

Jim spends much of the episode trying to get someone - anyone - to hear his message about the corruption and conspiracy going on in Push. When Ira Glassman, his superior at the IRS, refuses to send Jim's final e-mail, detailing how his life is endangered because of this criminal conduct, Jim tries a different avenue. He sends out an S.O.S. (hence the title of the episode in Morse code). He e-mails 2,000 people picked at random from the AARP mailing list and college campuses. This mass e-mail represents his evidence; the thing that could clear his name should he be killed in the desert in a few short hours.

The mass e-mail angers the conspiracy, who we learn in this episode is actually led by Jim's lawyer, the competent Jameson Jones! Why the anger? Well, 67% of the e-mails will be deleted immediately, but after some calculations, an underling realizes that at least 618 people will pay attention to Jim's missive. That's 618 new threats to the "secret" of Push, Nevada.

Jones realizes that Prufrock can't be intimidated or shamed or cowed into retreating. Killing him now will make him a martyr. So Jones orders a deep background search on him. "I want to know about conversations he may have heard in utero," he snaps.

And suddenly, some of Jim's background comes into focus for the first time. Born 8/24/73, Jim Prufrock was 12 years old when his father committed suicide. At that point,young Jim suspended his comic-book collections, quit the band but remained in the Math club. Apparently, Math gave him a sense of order; a sense that things occur for a reason. In 1987 - three years before he took the SAT, Jim began taking practice exams for two hours a night, every night. He scored a 780 in English/800 in math. He is the ultimate good guy - one who believes in law and order (Math!) will overcome disorder and crime. And now he's after Push's secrets...

Finally, the episode crescendoes in the desert. Sloman, Prufrock and Dawn Mitchell gather there for the potentially deadly transaction. If it goes well, Mitchell will arrest Sloman on the spot and Prufrock will be cleared. If it goes badly, Prufrock may die. The transaction - involving a bag full of winning tickets for the Nevada State Lottery - goes off poorly. And Dwight orders Dawn to kill Prufrock.

She tells him to run. And he does. She shoots him twice in the back as he's getting away, and Prufrock falls. Then Sloman says that there's nothing like a "nice, clean head shot," and prepares to finish off Jim Prufrock once and for all. Dawn offers to do it instead, and that's where the sixth episode of Push, Nevada, this bizarre but really involving cult TV series, signs off. Only one episode to go!

More tomorrow on the finale of Push, Nevada!

CULT TV Blogging: Push, Nevada Episode # 5: "The Letter of the Law"

A secret comes spilling out onto the screen in the stunning closing frames of Push, Nevada's fifth episode (which aired in October of 2002). It's the kind of sinful secret that anyone who remembers John Huston and Faye Dunaway in Chinatown, may recall with some vividness (and disgust). And, it also lands this bizarre cult series straight back into the "film noir" category I diagrammed in my post about the second episode, "The Black Box." Corrupt familial relationships, kept hidden and beneath the surface, often represent primenoir subject matter in 1940s cinema. Here, it's Mary and Dwight Sloman who share something...awful.

"The Letter of the Law," written by John Serge and directed by Linda Cholodenko, also highlights an element of the series I haven't really blogged about yet. In addition to all the fine stylistic and thematic noir qualities, this series has another facet. It's almost as though Push, Nevada is really, in fact, Stepford, Connecticut. We've been getting strange clues about this since the first episode "Amount," but it is made even more plain here: the denizens of the cities tend to act, well...robotic. Spouses all make love every night at 9:15 sharp. Children all greet returning Dads after work as they pull up into the driveway in the family automobile. All Moms retrieve the day's mail at the same time. And at four o'clock sharp each afternoon, the town's main drag comes to life for precisely one hour. What's going on here? I don't have a clue...

Some of the series' other mysteries do begin to coelesce in this episode, I believe. For instance, late in the show, Agent Prufrock of the IRS comes to the conclusion that the whole town of Push, Nevada is nothing but a cover for something else. (Perhaps to launder money?) He witnesses people mobbing the bank at 4:00 pm, and notices that the bank has only one branch -- and that it gives out no loans of any kind. Is it offering payouts to keep some kind of secret? Prufrock compares the town to a shoe box kept under the mattress. An interesting analogy, and one that begins to put the series in some sort of perspective. Does this whole town exist just to pay a certain class of people? Was it created in 1984 (the year of the Versaille Casino's construction...) as a front for some grand crime involving the government? We shall see.

Other important things also start to happen in this episode. One of the "clues" we're no doubt supposed to catch involves a sign for the Nevada State Lottery. I have the feeling this is something we're should be paying close attention to. Also, Deputy Dawn (played by Liz Vassey) here is revealed to have a secret identity (another noir element...) After explaining the deadly effects of a 357 Magnum to Prufrock in clinical detail, she reveals that she is an ATF agent there to take down down Sloman, and that Prufrock's investigation is getting in the way. Meanwhile, Grace (Prufrock's secretary...) is still in Reno, and has learned that a company in Switzerland paid for Prufrock's bail. The company has no name, just a symbol, like the "Artist Formerly Known As..."

Finally, "The Letter of the Law" provides another perfect Jim Prufrock moment. He gets to issue another of his patented manifestoes. It's not quite as good as the one from the pilot, "Amount," but almost. "It's easy to act for the moment, to act selfishly, to act out of greed, fear..." he tells Mary. She replies that it must be easy to live in a world of moral absolutes and he counters that, quite the opposite, it's nearly impossible. What we have here is some extraordinary writing. Each character talking from the heart, from their own sense of individuality - and again, to harp on the obvious, the noir feeling is remarkable. Jim Prufrock is an upright guy (though we still don't yet know why he is so obsessively scrupulous...), and Mary comes from a world quite the oppositer. Her very heritage is immoral, so to expect morality from her makes no sense.

Two episodes left to blogging Push, Nevada, and I'm finding the series quite remarkable. I'm sure that other programming has adapted the film noir template to television, but I'm really enjoying the experiment here. I wish everybody who reads this blog could be watching the show with me.

CULT TV Blogging: Push, Nevada, Episode # 4: "Storybook Hero"

The fourth episode of the 2002 cult-tv series Push, Nevada finds our noirish hero, Jim Prufrock (Derek Cecil) in some hot water. The town sheriff and his mysterious deputy, Dawn (Liz Vassey) have just arrested him for the murder of Oswald Wilkes - the assassin with a serpent tattoo emblazoned on his arm. Even worse, his dependable girl-Friday back in Carson City, Grace (Melora Walters) has been suspended from her duties at the IRS for her illicit 7C search of IRS records on the town of Push, and his bail is set at nearly a million dollars. Complicating Jim's situation further, his lawyer - Push's public defender - isn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.

Fortunately, these matters start to clear up a little as the episode continues. Grace turns out to be a tough cookie (unlike her replacement, Myrna), and agrees to help Jim unofficially by finding out who posted his bail. The trail leads to Reno and a mysterious man named Phineas Cobb. And before long, the IRS sends Jim a decent lawyer in the person of the erudite Jameson Jones, a very bright fellow who begins asking some of the important questions that we viewers need answered. Including: who sent that erroneous fax to the IRS in the first place? I mean, think about it...wasn't it a strange coincidence that a fax should mistakenly be sent to the IRS, the worst of all possible places? Someone, somewhere, is on Jim's side...

There's a great noir-style conversation in "Storybook Hero" as Mary, the town's femme fatale - is called on the carpet to confront Sloman, our hissable villain. This reptilian fellow engages in "an exercise" about "empathy and perspective" to get her to spill the beans about the location of the missing (and all-important...) Bible. When that doesn't work, he breaks down and resorts to threats. "My heart is blacker than ash. My soul...an insatiable black hole," he warns, and given Raymond Barry's exquisite, icy delivery, we believe him.

New character: Push, Nevada introduces another new eccentric in this fourth episode, Eunice Blackwell (played by Nan Martin). She's the town coroner/funeral director, and this martini-drinking, cigarette smoking old broad talks to the dead, including Oswald Wilkes. When Jim meets her, she reveals that 1984 was a big year for Push...and dead people. Seems that eight copycat suicides occurred in one week. And there was a rash of oddball, so-called accidents. Just so happens that this "banner year" for deaths was also the very year that the Versailles Casino opened. Hmmm...

I'm still trying to discern some clues about the location and amount of the money stolen in the first episode (the contest gimmick of the series...) I think some of the clues this week include the number 2215 (the time that Jim was in the casino; military time), the chess moves shouted out by the inmates in a prison van, and the amount of the theft: 1 million, 45 thousand dollars. I guess I'll find out some answers soon (or not). Only three episodes left...

In the fourth week of Push, Nevada, written by Tom Garrigus and directed by John Patterson, the mysteries are still deepening. We see more "flash cuts" of Jim's childhood trauma (a spell in the trunk of a car...) and this installment ends on a cliffhanger, with a gun pointed at Prufrock's skull. I don't know how many people were watching this series when it aired in 2002, but I imagine it was pretty-much a nail-biter. And frustrating when it was cancelled so quickly...

CULT TV Blogging: Push, Nevada, Episode # 3: "The Color Of..."

In Push, Nevada's third episode, "The Color Of...", the search for Oswald Wilkes - an assassin (appropriately named as a mixture of John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald...) - has led straight-arrow IRS agent Jim Prufrock to a trailer in the desert where he has been forced to submit to an "inking," a tattoo. And what is that tattoo? Well, it's a legend stretching across his shoulders that reads "DEATH AND TAXES."

"The Color Of..." adds layers to the growing mystery of this unusual ABC, 2002 TV series. Grace, Jim's secretary, has conducted a 7C computer search on the town and learned that not a one of Push's residents has filed a single tax return in 17 years. Even more mysteriously, the Versailles Casino, Prufrock discovers, is paying out winnings 62% percent of the time. This is odd, because casinos cannot stay afloat if they are losing more than 50 % of the time. Operating costs preclude survival otherwise. Another oddity: Trucks are making mysterious deliveries to the casino on a daily basis...

But these new facts take a back seat to Jim's back story in this episode. We see flashbacks of Jim's deceased father, and learn that - at some point - he was actually in Push, Nevada, and perhaps understood the secrets there. Jim's landlady has been holding on to one of his father's monogrammed handkerchiefs. What was Jim's dad doing there? When was he there? Was the erroneous fax that brought Jim to Push in the first place really sent by mistake? Or is there a larger plot going on here?

These are some of the questions raised by the third, and perhaps most complex episode of Push, Nevada thus far. The viewer is asked to keep track of local authorities, black ops conspiracy men, Jim's alcoholic wife, his father, the machinations inside the IRS (complicated by Jim's boss, Ira Glassman), and the treasure map he discovers on a handkerchief. And what, pray tell, is the secret about the car trunk that Jim keeps seeing flashes of?

Stay tuned, I'm only about half-way through the series now, and hoping against hope that some of this gets wrapped up before the final episode (#7).

CULT TV Blogging: Push, Nevada: Episode # 2: "The Black Box"

After viewing the second episode of ABC-TV's Push, Nevada (which aired Thursday nights for seven weeks in 2002), I am even more convinced than before that this unique series, created by Ben Affleck and Sean Bailey, was actually a daring experiment in film noir-style for television.

What are the elements of noir, and how do they apply to Push, Nevada? Okay, let's go through them one at a time.

First, the series is loaded with what you could easily term hard-boiled dialogue, or more simply stated, bold, colorful declarations. The closest thing we have to this style today is the Quentin Tarantino film aesthetic, but Push, Nevada features its own unique brand of hard-boiled language. "I think there are a lot of bad people doing bad things here," one character states unequivocally in the second episode, "The Black Box." "Sometimes the good times make the hard times all the harder, don't they?" Another character reflects. This is good stuff; different from the way many people talk on television: more theatrical, more colorful, more individual. I'm a tremendous fan of Joss Whedon because I believes that his characters speak in a distinctive fashion, self-reflexive and post-modern. His characters just talk differently from other dramatis personae on the tube. I think you can make the same argument about the off-kilter characters in Push, Nevada. Again, it's a totally inadequate description, but the closet thing to it is really Twin Peaks, a series I adored.

Also, the very names of the Nevada locations in Push, Nevada, evoke the noir ethos, pertaining to places in the desert with diabolical or at least mildly sinister names. "Satan's Ridge," ad "Demon Head Flats" are just two such monikers that call up images of strange, dark corners of - if not a Sin City - than a Sin County.

Another element of noir? The overarching mystery structure. Here, the mystery of the stolen cash morphs into something even more interesting. In "The Black Box," we learn that another important item was stolen from the Versailles Casino vault, an old Bible. What is the value of this book? Well, like the Maltese Falcon, that's the crux of the mystery, I suppose.

Perhaps more significant even than the generalized mystery structure is the inclusion of a variety of film noir characters archetypes. Let's begin with Derek Cecil's agent Jim Prufrock. In old movies, he probably would have been called a G-Man. Here he's an agent for the IRS. But more important than that, he's a lone crusader, someone driven by a secret in his past to solve the contemporary mystery taking place in the county of Push. In "The Black Box," we get only hints of a secret in Prufrock's past, but it becomes a major plot point in the third episode, "The Color Of." What we see more clearly in this episode is Jim's obsession with bringing to justice Mr. Bodnick's assassin, the man with the serpent tattoo emblazoned on his arm. We also see how Jim's marriage to Darlene (an alcoholic) tortured him; yet he still wears his wedding ring. He's an honorable guy on a mission, making up for something he deems a failure from his past.

Other noir character archetypes are also present. There's Mary, the femme fatale that I discussed in my review of episode one, "The Amount." I particularly enjoyed the scene in this episode wherein she provided crucial expositional dialogue while sensuously slow dancing with Prufrock at Sloman's. Then there's Caleb Moore the (admittedly) unusual street thug responsible for the vault robbery, yet not in "the know" about the larger crime. He is sexually debased, I would say, and that Persian flaw proves to be his undoing. That's something that Mary exploits in this episode, to rather memorable effect. There's also a preponderance of corrupt authority figures, particularly a useless Sheriff and the black-suited hands of the conspiracy. The inability to distinguish easily between criminals and authority is a critical facet of noir, and it's here in spades. Film noir films almost always result in the hero discovering, to his dismay, that someone close to him - someone in authority, someone trusted, is actually as corrupt as the street criminals he secretly employs.

Finally, noir as a genre is always visually distinctive. If you think about film noir, it is (in the 1940s, anyway...) shaded in stark tones of black and white. Push, Nevada boasts its own unique look, not black and white, but rather a washed-out, fluttery, hot look, appropriate to life in the desert (and not far in depiction from Oliver Stone's U-Turn, which also concerns a strange desert town where bizarre and murderous plots are afoot...) The afternoon sun in Push, Nevada can kill you in four hours, and the visuals are constantly reinforcing that fact. In TV, form rarely reflects content, but here that's precisely how it works.

Film noir also often includes some intricate manner of subtext beneath the surface, in part because in the 1940s and 1950s, films had to adhere to strict codes of the then-morality, and therefore some things (including a depiction of homosexuality) simply weren't permitted. In Push, Nevada's second episode, "The Black Box," there's also a visceral scene with some dynamic subtext. Near the climax of the episode, Jim goes to a trailer in the desert to speak with an informant, a tattoo artist. There is a quid pro quo; the tattoo artist won't divulge his secrets unless he "gets" something from Jim. At first, Jim refuses this invasion of his personal space and leaves the premises. But then, more desperate, he returns. In particular, the artist wants to make a most intimate connection; he desires to mark Jim with a tattoo, but the subtext is clearly homosexuality. The artist takes off Jim's shirt, and then instructs Jim to get down and bend over a chair (shirtless). This specific and intentional positioning puts the artist in the superior role, if you know what I mean. Then, with Jim propped over the chair, the artist approaches him from behind, and prepares to stick him with the tattooing instrument. The episode closes with a distorted close-up of Jim's screaming, violated face, as the artist (to his rear...) penetrates his skin with the instrument and begins fashioning the tattoo. Reading my description of the scene, one might claim that I'm interpeting too much, or over-analyzing, but the blocking of this sequence makes it abundantly clear what it's really about. An invasion, a penetration, a dark and not totally consensual transfer. And again, this kind of layered, double meaning is often an element of film noir.

In addition to the noir characteristics, "The Black Box" adds other facets to the series' lore. Here, we see the breadth of the conspiracy, as black helicopters and a gaggle of black ops agents search for the missing Bible in the desert, while Jim watches from a mountaintop vantage point. We learn that Mary is much more involved in the criminal happenings in town, and are introduced to Push's incompetent sheriff and deputy. The deputy is Dawn, played by The Tick's Liz Vassey, and she's particularly good in this oddball role.

Things keep getting weirder, darker and more intimate in Push, Nevada, and I'm curious to see where the remaining five episodes of this TV experiment in film noir will lead us...

CULT TV Blogging - Push, Nevada, episode #1: "Amount"

I've been blogging many new shows during the 2005 season (Supernatural, Night Stalker, Surface, Threshold, Lost, Invasion...) but I want this blog to have some real depth beyond the new, fresh and hip, so I'm starting a new series where I'll also be blogging short-lived cult TV programs.

Recently, a dear friend of mine named Fred, a reader on this blog, kindly introduced me to a TV show that I missed completely on its short run in 2002. The series is called Push, Nevada and well, it sorta defies conventional description. It ran on ABC for a mere seven episodes, and was created by Ben Affleck and Sean Bailey (and produced by Matt Damon and Chris Moore). To call it Twin Peaks meets The X-Files meets Northern Exposure does the series a great (and grave) disservice, but that's easy (if not wholly accurate...) shorthand for the nature of the program. The series is sort of like desert noir in look and feel, and it is almost hyper-stylized at points, not unlike Pulp Fiction.

The story of Push, Nevada begins bizarrely, with a close-up shot of a fat bald man reclining in a bath-tub filled to the rim with ice. "You're ready, let's go," an offscreen voice tells him, and - naked - he then hightails it into the Versailles Casino vault to steal a fortune. He is not detected because the security camera detects infra-red only, and he has sufficiently lowered his body temperature to avoid being filmed. Weird.

This strange crime would have gone unnoticed except for James A. Prufrock (played by Derek Cecil), a divorced, 29-year old investigator for the IRS. One day, a fax containing a "consequential accounting error" is erroneously sent to his office, and he learns that it was sent by the casino. When he can learn nothing over the phone from the hostile fax senders, he tells his secretary Grace (Melora Walters of Boogie Nights and Magnolia...) that he's headed to investigate.

What Agent Prufrock finds in the town of Push, Nevada, is very, very strange indeed: a mystery wrapped in an enigma. He stays in a bizarre boarding house, visits a "slow dance" bar called Sloman's and quickly falls in love with one of the dancer's there, a femme fatale named Mary. James even narrowly escapes being killed by a gangster (Jon Polito) on his first day in the town. When he researches the history of Push, Nevada, Prufrock learns of the town's death and mysterious re-birth in the mid-1980s thanks to a mysterious LLC called "Watermark." But all information on Watermark is sealed by the Attorney General, meaning that the conspiracy involving Push is much bigger than even James suspected initially. Who stole the money from the casino? Why? What's going on? What's the Justice Department's involvement?

Those questions form the heart of Push, Nevada's mystery. "Like all the best secrets," Mary warns James (and the viewer...), "...it's not quickly told." In other words, this series planned to take its time developing the plot. Unfortunately, it never had that time.

Push, Nevada is a product of its time in a very interesting way. You'll recall that the 2002 fall TV season came at the height of reality TV's ascent. Scripted dramas were being taken off the schedule regularly, and there had to be a "reality" hook to many shows to keep viewers interested. In the case of Push, Nevada, there was a contest underneath the scripted drama. Specifically, clues to the location and amount of the stolen fortune were interspersed throughout the drama. Anyone who could correctly guess all the clues then had a shot at winning a real fortune.

Now, I agree that this sounds like the worst kind of gimmicky TV, but in fact, it hardly deters enjoyment of Push, Nevada. On the contrary, the contest aspect focuses all of your attention on the show in a way that only the best dramas do, like the current hit, Lost. Because you're looking for answers, you're also hanging on every word. In the opener, "Amount," several clues seem to pop up. The number on the boarding house door, for instance, changes from scene-to-scene. The street sign outside of Push, Nevada (population 10,623, elev. 1023) also seems to important. And twice James looks in on TV viewers in nearby homes and sees ABC programming, specifically Alias and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. You sense this isn't product placement or promotion, but some kind of important clue!

But really, you can ignore the whole contest aspect of Push, Nevada if you choose and just enjoy the program on its own terms and merits. Thus far, I'm enjoying how the series uses fast-motion and quick cuts for comedic effect. There's a wonderfully cinematic moment early on when Prufrock is challenged, and the camera backs away from him at warp speed, righout out of his office, to show the signage for the IRS. Then it zooms right back in a second later, and that's how we're introduced to his profession as an agent. I also like the use of split-screens and other movie touches to make the show seem as though it's more than your crime-drama of the week. In fact, it really does seem to owe a lot to the noir genre of the 1940s and 1950s, and anytime TV gets near to capturing that mood, it's a time to rejoice.

Finally, one of the best moments in "Amount" arrives when James Prufrock challenges Jon Polito's character, Bodnick, who tells him to "go ruin an honest man's life. That's all you [IRS] people are good for!" Prufrock is calm in the face of the criticism, and then delivers what I can only describe as his manifesto. "You know how this country works," he says "...you know why taxes are a burden to honest people...fraud...wealthy, greedy cheats." That's a brief paraphrase of his long speech, but it is exquisitely written and delivered and it states something I've never heard a program on TV state before; something I've never even heard a pundit on TV news acknowledge: that we - the taxpayers - suffer from high taxes because greedy businesses and corporations find ways not to pay. It's called corporate welfare and it damages this country a million times more than any personal welfare system. So many people in power (particularly those in the pockets of business, and we know which party I'm talking about right?) want you to believe the myth of the "welfare queens" destroying the system, but the so-called "welfare queens" can't account for even a miniscule percentage of the cheating going on behind the doors of big business. Push, Nevada's "Amount" is awesome for acknowledging that fact, and for making one realize that the IRS isn't really the bad guy here. It's the cheaters in the board rooms we should blame.

"Amount" was written by Ben Affleck and Sean Bailey, and directed by John McNaughton, the fellow who brought the world the riveting (and highly disturbing...) Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer. Armand Assante and Tom Towles are among the guest-stars in this first installment. Just from the first episode, I can safely say that this is a really unique program, and one that I wished had lived longer. I'm looking forward to episodes two through seven, and I hope that my posts will adequately describe for you a series that I think many of us missed three years back.

I'll be blogging the remaining six episodes over the next week or thereabouts, so please stay tuned.