Oct. 08--In the Amazon Studios way of doing things, pilots are posted for public perusal long before they go to series; and so we became acquainted some months back with the promising first episode of a comedy called "Red Oaks" nine more episodes have now come along to build on that promise, and to better it.
A coming-of-age story set in the 1980s -- made somewhat, sometimes, in the manner of a coming of age story made in the 1980s -- its full run becomes available to stream early Friday for subscribers to Amazon Prime. The series was created by Gregory Jacobs, Steven Soderbergh's longtime producer (Soderbergh returns the favor here) and Joe Gangemi, though the more significant names, perhaps, are its directors, including David Gordon Green ("George Washington"), Amy Heckerling ("Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Clueless") and Hal Hartley. Hal Hartley!
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Craig Roberts ("Submarine") plays David Meyers, a New York University student with an interest in art film, who is starting a summer job as the assistant tennis pro at a suburban New Jersey country club. Richard Kind, used at unusually satisfying length, plays his father, a CPA who dreams that David will join his business. Jennifer Grey, of real '80s films "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Dirty Dancing," plays his mother, who has grown restless. The work they do together -- and this goes for everyone here -- is more delicate than the outlines of the show might suggest.
The cast is filled out with familiar types, written and acted with affection and intelligence: the shaggy, stoner-y best friend (Oliver Cooper); the hot blond; the flamboyant reprobate mentor (Ennis Esmer as tennis pro Nash, a Turk among Jews), who tells David, "I just hate to see a bright young fellow like yourself throwing away your future for an education" the dark authority figure, Paul Reiser's club president, Getty.
There is some more-than-incidental commentary on class -- showing us gardeners in the yard at Getty's mansion is a choice, after all. The country club is a hierarchical world through whose strata David, by virtue of his job, moves with ease, putting him into regular contact with his aerobics-instructor girlfriend, Karen (Gage Golightly), and the boss' daughter, Skye (Alexandra Sochi), the Betty and Veronica to his Archie.
Karen dreams of marriage, with "a garbage disposal, curtains, maybe a cat," of one day belonging to the club where they work; David wants to live in New York, "riding the subway everywhere, eating Indian food, seeing Eric Rohmer movies in an actual theater." Meanwhile, he warily bonds with Skye over mutual knowledge of Alice Neel, Jackie Curtis and Lou Reed.
The show is a little motley, owing to a willingness to play with style and to give its directors room to move, and the plotting can feel a little methodical when contrasted with a greater urge to let character emerge and deepen gradually.
You're never completely unaware of the artifice, but the series feels very alive nevertheless, as it moves in and out of the tropes, embracing some, avoiding others. Genre-specific elements over-stressed in the pilot -- the conventional "brief nudity," notably -- are softened or abandoned as the series goes on.
In fact, apart from male buttocks played for comedy, even the sex scenes are shot discretely. Period references make their usually humorous point and withdraw.
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A gathering power and gravity keep things on track, even during a "Freaky Friday" body-swap episode -- and it's not a dream sequence either. And it works, opening up new angles and the characters and giving the actors fresh notes to play. (Roberts is especially funny channeling Kind.)
Not to freight "Red Oaks" with more weight than it might mean to carry -- and it certainly isn't true of every period piece -- but there is an element of time built into the series; we are watching these people from their future, or somewhere past it. The older characters hear a ticking clock -- indeed, we begin with a heart attack -- as the younger ones wake to new experiences.
It gives the series a half-melancholy air of precious, fleeting life that makes the series something greater than its parts, and very much worth the binge.
robert.lloyd@latimes.com
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'Red Oaks'
Where: Amazon Prime
When: Anytime, starting Thursday
Rating: TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17)
