Set in what appears to be Silverlake in LA, Eastsiders describes itself as a "dark comedy"...but the writing had nothing worth laughing at. The ACTING on the other hand was in fact laughable in a face-palm kind of way-- an example being one of the leads, John Halbach, obliviously miscast as a straight character...because his boyfriend, the writer and other lead (surprise!) didn't have the courage to say, "oh, honey...no...you don't "do" straight very well". This is one of those projects where all the parts were written as vehicles for these aspiring writer-director-actors to showcase their particular abilities (or lack thereof) to potentially catch someone's eye for future projects (an example being a scene where one particularly bland actor, Matthew McKelligon gets to speak Schweizerdeutsch..to show he can). Luckily, however, this forum did appear to help a certain brilliant and amazing star, Constance Wu (who was the ONLY reason I watched this mess). Although the writing for her is pretty much as predictable and stale as the rest of the characters (all of whom seem to be written in the tone of an ultra-liberal male feminist), she is the only actor who actually carried the scenes and personalized the character to any depth (she is the only one who really stands out as having formal training). In fact, these 4 VERY generous stars are only because of Constance, who I'm hoping will not have this mess come back to haunt her, in what I hope is a very long and successful career.
Review of Eastsiders
