Kenny Powers's professional baseball skills may be diminishing, but EASTBOUND & DOWN hasn't lost an ounce of zip on its fastball. In fact, its velocity might be on the uptick.
Having watched the first two episodes of the second season (which officially kicks off this Sunday night on HBO at 10:30 PM), I am both elated and frightened by the direction in which the show is headed. Last season, Powers was just a deluded has-been bullying his way back into the lives of his friends and family in his podunk hometown of Shelby, North Carolina. This season, he's a deluded has-been living the tequila-soaked low life in Mexico, where he's attempting to reinvent himself as a champion cockfighter named "Steve". Once again, Kenny's managed to scrounge up some scuzzy hangers-on to do his bidding, but this time he lacks the dubious celebrity pedigree to keep them loyal. Kenny's fallen before, but in Mexico, where no one gives a shit about this cornrowed gringo, there are even greater depths to plumb - which, I think, is precisely what EASTBOUND & DOWN fans want to hear.
Though most of Season One's characters have been jettisoned, the series' creative team - Jody Hill, Danny McBride, David Gordon Green and Shawn Harwell - is still very much intact, and committed to pushing as far as HBO will allow them - which is pretty fucking far. The language is rough as ever, the situations are unimaginably sleazy, and there's a... sight in the second episode that would almost certainly earn the series an NC-17 if released theatrically. Most importantly, though, the laughs are there - explosively so at times. Abject human desperation has never been funnier.
Perhaps more shocking than anything in the show is the fact that its creators come off as some of the nicest, most genuine guys in the entertainment industry. I was reminded of this when I got on the phone with Hill last week; though he's behind one of this fall's most hotly anticipated shows, he remains incredibly humble and a little taken aback by the show's success. What started out as a cult phenomenon on the level of Hill's unapologetically dark character comedies (THE FOOT FIST WAY and OBSERVE AND REPORT) gradually became a crossover smash; months after the show's six-episode run had concluded, sportswriters and athletes themselves - even the ones being skewered - were unabashedly quoting Kenny Powers.
It's incredibly gratifying to see Hill connecting with a wider audience - partially because he's talented and deserves it, but also because it suggests mainstream viewers might be eager for more formula-eschewing comedies. And while I don't think these things necessarily work better on television (OBSERVE AND REPORT was a terrific film; it just got lost at the multiplexes for reasons that are far too complex to discuss here), at least cable channels like HBO, FX and AMC don't undermine the artist's vision with a nonstop flood of useless, largely imbecilic notes. It's as much a writer's medium as theater - and as the great work piles up, the more I'm convinced we're in the midst of a creative renaissance reminiscent of American film in the 1970s.
Hill and his crew are already looking into doing another series for HBO; in the meantime, they plan on producing one more season of EASTBOUND & DOWN before sending Kenny Powers off into the sunset. There are films planned, but, as you'll read below, it sounds like Hill is content to save his fastball for television.
Mr. Beaks: From the opening of the first episode, with the Morricone and the cockfighting, I was in. That's a recipe for greatness.
Jody Hill: Oh, good! I hope people can accept it. Right off the bat, I think they'll have to get through the first episode, and then they'll be fine. It's such a jarring thing to not have the cast members back and be somewhere else completely.
Beaks: I didn't know exactly how you were going to manage that transition. I liked how you had that little montage showing them without Kenny in their lives. Was that something you'd always planned to do, or did you feel audiences might need to see these characters again just to ease the transition?
Hill: I guess it just fit the story for us, with Kenny looking back. And we thought a funny way to do that would be to show them doing just fine without him. (Laughs)
Beaks: I like how the music and Kenny's dialogue makes it sound kind of somber, but, for the most part, they couldn't be fucking happier.
Hill: They're having the best day of their lives! I guess I'm giving away all the jokes, but the kids love Cutler. They're high-fiving him.
Beaks: Meanwhile, Kenny's in Mexico, and we can see how, culturally, that's going to get dicey. But the great thing about Kenny is that you've got the perfect delusional creep through whom you can say any awful thing. It's like Cartman on SOUTH PARK. "Don't get mad at me! That's who he is!"
Hill: For some reason, Danny can pull it off. If it was some other actor doing it, you may not be able to watch it and smile; it might come off wrong. I mean, don't get me wrong: it comes off horrible. But it's fun when Kenny does it. It's not depressing or mean when he does it. There's just something about Danny; I guess it's the cut of his gib. (Laughs) He just makes people smile.
Beaks: It works. My friends who are of the races and genders he's often disparaging, they love Kenny Powers.
Hill: It's weird. My mom and her friends all enjoy the show. We do try to not single out one race or sex or a place in the world. All of our jokes don't hammer one thing. We try to spread it out. If someone doesn't get hit in one episode, it's going to switch in the next one. It all comes around.
Beaks: What did you want to accomplish with the second season? Why the shift to Mexico? And what are you hoping to do with the characters, new and old?
Hill: In terms of Kenny, he runs out at the end of the first episode. Kenny sees himself as the star of his own movie, and in old westerns, they're always running off to Mexico to hide from the law or whatever. It always feels like the last place to go. We kind of approached this as a western, and this is just the part where the character goes on the lam to Mexico. In Kenny Powers's mind, he thought Shelby was the lowest place you can go, but, no, he has to leave the whole country. (Laughs) We thought that would be worse for him. What we were thinking about is how hard you can push the rules of television. Do you have to have the same people every season? Do you have to have the same location? I feel like most TV shows get caught in a formula with character interactions and everything, and... this show is not about a former baseball player taking a job teaching PE at a local middle school. That's the tagline for the first season. But after that it's a straight-up character piece where you follow this guy all through life. That's really what we wanted to establish this season.
Beaks: Is there anything, short of penetration, HBO won't allow you to show? I mean, you start the second episode with [no way I'm spoiling this]. It's just an awful tableau.
Hill: (Laughing) No, man. I mean, HBO has been really cool this season. They were cool the first season, too; we obviously got away with everything we wanted. To their credit, they took the ride with us. But luckily for us, this show has built up a cult following. I don't know how big it is, but it's definitely built a following. So HBO was on board with us doing whatever we wanted to do this season; they've been really good with not giving us too many notes. It's been a real easy process this season with them.
Beaks: How is Danny dealing with that following? Though he's been in a lot of movies, he's now being very closely identified with Kenny Powers. It's becoming his alter-ego, almost.
Hill: He's handling it really well. Danny's a down-to-earth guy, so it hasn't gone to his head. He's still super cool, and hangs around with the same friends he's always hung around with. It's a little weird to see Danny... back before the first season came out, he would get recognized once in a blue moon for THE FOOT FIST WAY or HOT ROD, and then a little more after PINEAPPLE EXPRESS. But it was not to the level where, like, you go out with him now and everyone is turning their heads. It's kind of surreal. It's a credit to him that he can keep a good head on his shoulders and maintain.
Beaks: EASTBOUND & DOWN has gotten so huge in the sports world. I'm amazed by how many sportswriters and athletes love this show.
Hill: It's weird. Honestly, Danny and I don't know anything about sports. I've never played sports. I've never followed it, and neither has Danny. People are always asking if this character is based on John Rocker. I didn't even know who John Rocker was until this came out. (Laughs) We're always getting, "Was he based on this guy or that guy?" And it's like, "No, we just made him up." It's really cool, though, that all of these athletes are getting into the show. We did a commercial with Jeremy Shockey for K-Swiss, and he totally knew all of the lines. He was quoting it.
Beaks: And Shockey's the kind of guy who might've inspired the character of Kenny Powers. I don't think he's ever gone to the extremes Kenny has, but he's certainly the template you're exaggerating.
Hill: (Laughs) I better watch what I say. He's a big dude. He'll come kick my butt. But the show's definitely up his alley. He was a good dude, though; he's a wild man, but he's a good dude. We had a good time with him.
Beaks: From the opening of the first episode, it's obvious there's a spaghetti western influence on this season. But it also feels like there's this this desperate, BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA thing going on as well.
Hill: (Laughs) That's kind of Kenny's state at all times. He's like a middle school girl; he's always in the midst of some huge drama, and everything is the most important thing. If it's not all about him, he gets upset. He's always in that state. But I think this season, because he's so far away and there's this sense of being lost... our show doesn't have strict goals. The baseball thing is always going on, but in terms of what Kenny needs and how he achieves it, it's never clear. It's one of those things you have to figure out along the way. We hope it makes sense in the end, but we don't want to reveal it right up front. Kenny never knows how to fix his problems, so I think being so far away in Mexico sort of adds to that crisis.
Beaks: He's already down in these first two episodes. Is he going to get punished significantly more than he did in the first season? How far down can you drag him?
Hill: He's going to keep spiraling down, I think. The whole idea is that this guy is kind of a loser. He's a fallen hero. It feels like Kenny works best when things aren't going his way - so when they do, it means something.
Beaks: That's the great moment of the first season. When things start going his way, Kenny Rogers's "Love Will Turn You Around" kicks up on the soundtrack.
