After a Sunday afternoon spent restlessly praying for sleep, I open my eyes. My alarm is ringing; it is 6PM Pacific Standard Time. I switch it off and stare at the ceiling. âTime to watch the Roadies,â I solemnly declare aloud. I am alone.
Every new episode of Roadies pulls a consistent 0.1 Nielsen rating in the coveted 18-49 year old demographic, of which I am a card-carrying member. Which means, on any given Sunday, 0.1% of the viewing public in this demographic is watching Roadies. I am, indeed, alone. This week, however, I have enlisted friends to watch it with me, if only in an impotent attempt to boost its viewership and, therefore, ensure a second season. After tonight, only one episode of Roadies remains. I, like the roadies themselves, am not ready for the tour to end.
Huna, the Staton-House Bandâs stoic, profound Hawaiian security guard, does not have trouble sleeping. As a matter of fact, he had a dream last night. About a melting animal. âIt. Will. Happen. Tonight,â he predicts.
His premonition soon comes to pass. An ice sculpture of a bear, the Staton-House Bandâs logo, drips on the buffet table of the corporate gig the band has been hired to play. âOh my gosh,â Kelly Ann, the roadiesâ porcelain doll, whispers. âHunaâs melting animal. Itâs like a metaphor, the end of something.â In the Roadies universeânay, in the Cameron Crowe universeâit is not enough to merely provide a metaphor. A character must also state that it is a metaphor, while also throwing in the name of another character for good measure. This method of screenwriting is as nuanced as the bomb that was dropped on Pearl Harbor.
My friend Joey, upon hearing Kelly Annâs metaphorical bomb, declares âPhilâs gonna die.â Let the record show he, like the majority of my friends, has not seen anything beyond the first 30 minutes of the first episode. The only difference he knows exists between Phil and Bill, two of the showâs primary characters, is that Phil, unlike Bill, wears a hat with his own name on it. And that Phil once FaceTimed Kelly Ann from outer space, where he was working on the Taylor Swift tour, because I told him.
Christopher, the bandâs sensitive-to-a-fault songwriter, neglects to show up to the corporate gig, which is for a rubber company we are led to believe is somehow unethical, thus adding to the heavy-handed, anti-sellout ethos of the episode. But he had just texted Bill that morning, and things seemed fine...why the no-show? âIâm finding my way back,â Bill reads from the text message in question. Shelli, the married tour manager and object of his affection (it canât be a Crowe joint without star-crossed lovers!), stops him in his tracks. âThatâs a line from âNovember Girl,ââ she replies, in shock. âHeâs with Janine!â Janine, as you wonât recall because you, too, have only seen the first 30 minutes at best of the first episode of Roadies, is his soul-sucking muse. This is very bad news.
The CEO of the unethical rubber company that has brought the band to sunny San Diego is not happy about Christopher (âhis favorite tortured singer-songwriterâ)âs disappearance. Reg, the corporate shill who is, for the purposes of extended scenes of self-reflection, becoming a human being, tells him the âactual truth.â And what, pray tell, is the truth? That he, having become woke, now rejects everything the CEO stands for. âThe key to life isnât the pencil,â he tells him. âItâs the eraser. The key to life is the second chance.â But...erasers are... made of rubber? I apologize for trying to insert logic into the Roadies universe.
Kelly Ann, who is, like Reg, trying to reinvent herselfâto recapture the joy and the wonder she once had as a teenager, when life was pure, possibilities endless, and selling out tantamount to deathâhas decided to start drinking. âThe whole old school vibe is dead,â a roadie for another band playing the corporate gig tells her over drinks. âPeople donât even clap anymore because they have a phone in their hand. Wake up. Weâre just here to steal a few watches off the rotting carcass of what used to be alternative music.â This pseudo-profound statement, one in a series of paragraph-length soliloquies (Aaron Sorkin does the âwalk and talk.â Cameron Crowe does the âtalk and talkâ) emerges from a completely new character we have never seen before, as opposed to, quoth my friend Sean, âone of the 32 series regulars.â Thankfully all characters, regular or no, are interchangeable in the respect that theyâre are impossible to develop feelings for. Everyone is a cipher, an excuse for a paragraph-length pseudo-profound soliloquy written by a man who, like the concept of selling out, is not long for this world.
Allow me the continued indulgence of inserting a note I wrote while watching tonightâs episode, devoid of context:
âWHY can the girl in an eraser costume sing and WHY are she and Milo singing a Gillian Welch song while sitting next to a pool WHY WHYâ
Why? Why? It is one in a series of questions that have no answers. I know why Roadies exists. Itâs all I do know. It exists because nostalgia feels safe, and Hollywood loves safe. The nostalgia of purity. The nostalgia of rockâs alleged golden era (while I may not be a Skynyrd fan, Iâll allow that Iâm in the minority, in much the same way I, as someone who actually watches Roadies, am in the minority). Hellâmaybe, in spite of it all, theyâll be another season. Iâm no Nostradamus. But you know who is? My friend Joey.
Phil has a heart attack and falls in a pool, remembering standing stage side with Lynyrd Skynyrd all the while. Reg drags him out, but itâs too late. Heâs fucking dead. Kelly Ann cries a single, cinematic, crocodile tear. The last shot of the show is of the bear ice sculpture with its head fallen off. I am immediately confused and angered by the fact that âFree Birdâ doesnât play over this scene, yet just as immediately realize it is probably being saved for next episodeâs wake scene, where it will no-doubt be performed on a ukulele by Eddie Vedder. Well played, Crowe. You have, in spite of yourself, leave me wanting more.
Speaking of more, the Song of the Day is âYou Donât Get Me High Anymoreâ by Phantogram which, previous to this episode, I had only seen advertised in the context of a bus stop bench. I assume the bus stop bench was seen by more people.