Should You Help Make The Slap A Hit?

What Is This Thing?

Hector was already having a pretty bad fortieth-birthday weekend. Last thing before he left work, he found out he wasn't getting the promotion everyone in his office expected him to (and guess who got it, guys? A WOMAN). Then he went home to be plagued by complaints from his wife about his overbearing mother, and fantasies about the high-school girl he's developed a dangerous and apparently reciprocated crush on. Things only get worse when, at his birthday party, his friends' son Hugo has a baseball bat-swinging meltdown that stops only when Hector's cousin Harry stomps up to slap Hugo across the face. Naturally, this sparks a firestorm that threatens to destroy all of (obviously) Brooklyn.

When Is It On?

Thursdays at 8 PM on NBC.

Why Was It Made Now?

I can only assume NBC realized that the end of Parenthood meant there would be a vacuum in the "fictional rich white people to judge for their bougie assiness" space, and kindly decided to fill it for us.

What's Its Pedigree?

It's adapted from an Australian miniseries by the same name, which aired at one point here on DirecTV's Audience network and is now streaming on Netflix, and which was itself adapted from the book The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas. NBC's version is produced by Jon Robin Baitz, who's primarily a playwright but who previously created Brothers And Sisters. All eight episodes will be directed by Oscar nominee Lisa Cholodenko, corralling an all-star cast that includes Melissa George (reprising her role from the original as Rosie, the mother of the slappee) and a literal all-star cast that includes Peter Sarsgaard (Hector), Zachary Quinto (Harry), Thandie Newton (as Hector's wife Aisha), Brian Cox, Thomas Sadoski, Uma Thurman, and up-and-comers Penn Badgley and Marin Ireland; promised in future episodes are also Michael Nouri and Blythe Danner.

...And?

You know, I really thought that when Smash ended, I would never be able to love that way again -- a big, sincere, complicated love of something so completely misbegotten and moronic that it comes all the way back around to fascinating and brilliant. It's gross to quote myself, but when Smash wrapped its first season, I tried to explain my complex feelings about it for Slate thus: "[A]s Smash spirals ever further downward into irretrievable failure it's become the show I most look forward to each week. Why? Because of the endless entertainment provided by the yawning chasm between what the makers of Smash think they’re doing and what’s actually on the screen. Watching it, one can list every decision that went into making each episode, and one can easily see how every last damn one of them was completely wrong. Smash is that most delightful of misfires: the crummy show that thinks it's important." You can sub "The Slap" for "Smash" in that quote and it stands 100%.

Where to even begin with this shit? Oh, I know! AT THE FIRST SECOND OF THE FIRST EPISODE, when poor Victor Garber kicks off his turn as our omniscient narrator. Over a shot of a nubile young girl riding in a car, Garber tells us, "On the day before his fortieth birthday, Hector Apostolou had only one thing on his mind: Connie." Because this 2015 high school student Hector is infatuated with is named CONNIE, as no girl child has been since 1976. What names did the writer REJECT for this character: Doris? Francine? Bernice? But guys, it gets better/worse: we will later learn that his reverie of Connie comes from his memory of the time he drove her home after she BABYSAT HIS CHILDREN and she wanted to hang out in the car with him once they got to her place because she was so enraptured by the JAZZ ALBUM he was playing, because he's THAT MUCH of a cliché. After getting the bad news that this anonymous, unseen WOMAN got the job he thought was his, Hector goes home, where we meet his wife Aisha, a doctor who looks like Thandie Newton -- and talks like her, too, in her real English accent. Well, no wonder he's restless in his marriage if he has to get into bed with THAT disgusting monster every night!

But the real magic happens at his birthday barbecue. Well before the titular Slap occurs, even if you hadn't seen the trailer you would know immediately which little shithead was going to get it. Hugo is the kind of shitty little trophy kid who's gotten to age four (I'm guessing based on talk of his going to preschool and the fact that he speaks in completely coherent full sentences) without getting a haircut...or weaned off breastmilk. Seeing him mess around with Hector's albums (do I even need to add the detail that they're on VINYL) brings up mixed feelings: by all means, scratch up that Mingus by taking it out of the sleeve and throwing it into the hallway, yet on the other hand, why are neither of this child's parents watching him and stopping him from potentially destroying someone else's property, no matter how pinko-ish said property is? The neglect of Hugo's parents Rosie and Gary with regard to the records is, naturally, of a piece with their whole parenting ethos: when Hugo strikes out playing wiffleball and loses his shit, waving the bat around wildly and blindly, Harry wouldn't have to step in and slap the shit out of him if his parents didn't apparently have an "It Takes A Village"/"Anything Goes" attitude toward Hugo's behaviour.

Naturally, what animates the story is supposed to be the complexity of the circumstances surrounding The Slap. Yes, Gary and Rosie have every right to raise their own son with whatever strictures (or lack thereof) they choose. And yes, Hugo shouldn't get so violent just because he refused to abide by the established rules of a game. And YES, Harry is wrong to hit any child, never mind someone else's, and yes, a slap is still serious, even if it's not a closed-fist punch. But like...this is the kid at the show's premiere party.

You right now:

I'm kidding (is a thing I probably should say for moral reasons, I guess).

Anyway: I wasn't kidding up top with the Parenthood/judging white people analogy. That is what this show is for, and the fact that it plays this incident as seriously as a one-kid Holocaust is what makes it, for me, an instant camp classic. It's seriously worth watching just to try to decide which of the actors secretly knows how full of shit the whole enterprise is. Melissa George does, I think? Peter Sarsgaard definitely doesn't. Zachary Quinto: hmmm. Maybe.

...But?

I mean, it's objectively terrible. The fact that I love it so much should not mislead you as to its actual quality.

...So?

If you just like to watch shows that are legitimately good as opposed to so bad they're good, then you will hate this, and you will not be wrong. If the promos have you curious about just what kind of glorious abortion of through-and-through wrongness it is, then PLEASE watch so we can talk about it.