Reading rock biographies, even fictional ones, can be something like watching a car crash or a tornado. There’s a morbid fascination with watching metal on metal crunch as the airbags fill or livestock fly through the air with pieces of shredded barns. That someone or some animal feels pain is an awareness. And yet the big picture has a guilty attraction.
Watching the prime mini-series about the collision between two musical forces of nature in Daisy Jones and the Six is like that. It seems to get a lot of things right:
- How two musicians handle a creative relationship
- How addiction tears apart relationships
- How families are dragged into unwanted drama and pain
- That redemption and recovery is possible, against all odds
- How people want to exploit and make money off artists
- That there is true love in all of these good and bad things
I thought the bittersweet ending was appropriate. There’s a surprise or three in the final ten minutes. The end of some relationships and the reconciliation in others is handled well.
I have a few complaints. Exceptional bands in jazz and rock work because every musician is a force unto themselves, not just the front people. Could four nameless guys from Pittsburgh leap to superstardom as depicted here? Sure. The Beatles did, especially after they got a star drummer in Ringo. And thousands of performing hours in Germany and Liverpool.
DJ6 is supposedly based on Fleetwood Mac, but nobody in the real life band was a supporting player as most of the Six are portrayed. Maybe the tv adapters ignored something of substance from the novel (which I haven’t read), but the portrayal of the whole band isn’t entirely believable, artistically.
The women actors in this effort rather outshine the men, many of whom are one-dimensional characters. And the interesting men, when they have an occasional moment, too often retreat into the background. The best performance is Camila Morrone’s portrayal of the long-suffering wife of Billy Dunne, one of the two leads.
Speaking of Dunne, he hits up rehab early in the series. He has a long stretch of being clean and sober. But no support system is in evidence: no sponsor, no 12-step groups. He’s surrounded by drinkers and users, and only once does a person ask if he’s okay if she drinks and uses in his presence.
The creators sort of leave things open for a sequel. I think there’s not much more to tell in this story.
I’d give the effort a solid B. I binge-watched the whole thing in less than 24 hours. Maybe that’s too much for some people. If you are a fan of music in general, I’d recommend. Lots of drug use and foul language. The sex is muted. 16+ seems the right rating.
Catholic Sensibility 