What a mess this thing was. Reminds me of Green Acres in an odd way, except nobody is really having a good time, and it wasn't funny. Ed O'Neil was the onlygood character on it, and he was basically doing Al Bundy with birds.Milch himself seems to be embarrassed by it in some interviews I've seen, and rightly so. I always wonder how does a train wreck of a series like this get the green light to go on in the first place? And comparing this mess to a great show like Deadwood is just hilarious. Is this REALLY the best that HBO could come up with? I doubt it, they just wanted to go weird for weird's sake. Weird is sometimes good, but usually, it's BAD, and this show was VERY VERY BAD.

After watching the first few episodes of this show, I was stoked...was the most excited I'd been about a show in years. Interesting characters...intriguingly vague plot developments that seemed to elude to something huge...but then a switch flipped. Coherence became taboo. Look...I understand that some people like a challenge...a big challenge even. Checkers isn't you're game. You prefer chess. This is the equivalent of playing chess blindfolded with pieces missing...and you get a smack across the face every time you make a move. Frustrating and pointless. Thank God the show ended...as I would have inevitably continued watching in an attempt to find that initial excitement again. To the self proclaimed intellectuals that got off on this thankfully brief failure of a series...fear not. Go to your local museum or art gallery...find a nice lil abstract painting...and find the plot in that. FYI...the blue splotch represents your struggle to prove that less is more.

From watching the first couple of episodes I wasn't sure what to make of this new series. It was a world that we've seen before, sort of. I mean, we've seen shows about beach communities(Flipper,Baywatch). We've seen shows about strange and wondrous beings among normal human beings(My Favorite Martian, Mork and Mindy and even THE FLINTSTONES w/The Great Gazoo). What distinguishes this story from those other shows is that even though the the situations are vaguely familiar David Milch slows things down and opens up the world to more than the standard situation conflicts that we're accustomed to. When a character can levitate when he's never levitated before is something you would see on 60's TV. But usually that is the only thing weird going on. You don't spend time on a telepathic parrot or a couple of immaculate conceptions. On top of that a lot of hard drug abuse, incest, communication with the afterlife and porn stars. Now with all that going on is Milch's signature writing style that forces the audience to pretty much pay undivided attention to what the characters are saying and what they are doing while they are speaking. Basically, this is another show too smart for its own good. I would have liked a second season. We don't get enough Rebecca DeMornay as it is.

Now that the show is canceled by the time of this writing, I have to say i'm neither sad nor glad at the decision. The show was pretty deep and bizarre, especially when the title character John was there.John (Austin Nichols) himself was probably the best character in the entire show. He was child-like in nature, but there was so much more about him that was intriguing to keep watching the show. His ability to learn by repeating sentences (and relentlessly repeats them), pull things out of his pockets, and heal were probably a few of the possibly many things the writers originally planned to do with him. We will never know now.Greyson Fletcher as Shaun Yost is probably one of the worst casting decisions ever made. This kid can skate and (possibly) surf very well, but he sure can't act. Pro surfers like Keala Kennelly actually can act pretty well despite their actual profession, so this is simply inexcusable. As I read somewhere, this is reminiscent to George Lucas casting Jake Llyod as Anakin Skywalker in Episode I: it should have gone to a more capable actor and they should've been the stunt doubles instead.The entire Yost family was interesting to say the least, they lacked a certain something that could've made their characters more engaging. I can't say the same for everyone else, especially Ed O'Neill and Luis Guzman who were very uninteresting and hollow in their performances (sad cause they are good actors). If the show had more compelling characters (and a few actors) along with the dialogue actually going somewhere instead of being overly dull and cryptic, this would've been a great show without a doubt. It has its moments (episode 2 and 3 were great especially of what the show should've done, as well as the John and Cass relationship), but ultimately it left me wanting more of "human" moments and less of the nonsensical ones.