NP but P: Cute write-up of Lodge 49 in Paste

[Allan Balliett]

Created by: Jim Gavin
Stars: Wyatt Russell, Brent Jennings, Sonya Cassidy, Linda Emond, David
Pasquesi, Eric Allan Kramer
Original Network: AMC

WATCH ON HULU
<https://www.hulu.com/series/lodge-49-5061e151-c887-4e29-9e13-c1b48e392123>

If Jim Gavin and Peter Ocko’s quietly extraordinary fable recalls the
blissed-out Southern California of the 1970s—shag carpet and stained wood;
surf shops and lodges; the rakish disrepair of once-booming Long
Beach—that’s because its subject is the disappearance of a way of life.
Though its plot is set in motion when Dud (Wyatt Russell), a down-and-out
beach rat reeling from the death of his father, joins a fraternal order in
search of new purpose, Lodge 49 expands its warm, gentle embrace from there
until its simple pleasures become almost mystical: An out-of-work newspaper
reporter begins having visions; the laid-off employees of an aerospace
manufacturer come together for a midnight project; a plumbing salesman
chases his holy grail; Dud’s sister, Liz (the wickedly funny Sonya
Cassidy), abandons ship (literally) when a dalliance with corporate culture
becomes too much to handle. Far from uncomplicatedly nostalgic, Lodge 49 is,
rather, a humane, tenderhearted examination of the communities that emerge
where others have withered, and perhaps the finest treatment of the Great
Recession and its aftermath yet to appear on TV. —Matt Brennan