I haven't seen it yet--no good ahem is out yet--but I am itching to watch. I am so into this show! I was really wary when I heard Eddie was doing american drama, but I was so impressed right off the bat--his charisma and charm makes it through without all the wackiness of his stage performances. And this is such a great role for MD, whose roles the last five years or so have been largely underwhelming. I'm also really impressed at how they coax such remarkable performances from the actors playing the kids. They're showing top-shelf acting, which is impressive from child actors on a general television drama, but perhaps it's due to FX's production, and the combined heavyweights of EI and MD.

I think you'd need serious chops to keep up with EI and MD.

So far I'm utterly loving it.

I was so impressed right off the bat--his charisma and charm makes it through without all the wackiness of his stage performances.

Yes. So very much so. This role seems to serve all of his best qualities so very well; you can see the wheels in his brain turning and all the little cogs clicking into place when he's working a con -- the cautious improvisation at the beginning, when he's just feeling out and guessing where he needs to take it, the moment when it clicks, everything after when he's found his footing and he's just running with it with absolute authority. And, oh, God, he and Gregg Henry work together so beautifully.

Part of me feels like all the scenes where he's running a con or selling a lie (or the one desperate bail-out narcolepsy scene) are tidy little Lovable Con Artist set pieces and it's cheap of me to be so smitten, but they're so well written and so brilliantly played.

And this is such a great role for MD, whose roles the last five years or so have been largely underwhelming.

She's utterly amazing: sexy and rageful and floundering and fiercely protective of her family, all simultaneously hard and snarling and graceful and capable of being deeply moved. I love the dynamic between Dahlia and Wayne, the layers of resentment and mistrust and passion and loyalty, how she's more deeply rooted in Traveler culture and more reluctant to leave it than he is, yet oddly less gifted at the solo con (that scene where the welcome wagon from the local temple dropped in while she was curled up beery and Valium'd and miserable on the dead woman's couch, I literally had to watch from the hall) -- but when she's with him, they work so beautifully, so seamlessly as a team.

And I'm wrecked for her every time she stumbles on some secret pain in the apparently bland, shiny lives of the buffers: her dentist boss, lost in a haze of grief; the real Doug Rich's ex-wife.

Bah. Gotta get back to work. Just, oh how good they both are, how good everyone is, how many layers of pain and funny and HSQ they've laid the groundwork for but haven't even mined yet. I'm all glowy and intoxicated with the crush I've got on this show.

I thought it was Dahlia, not Delilah?

From what I understand of the context, Wayne came into it later in life, not from family like Dahlia did.

I love how Dahlia feels everything, and is capable of expressing those feelings so well. Its a quality you don't see often in television characters--the ability to tell the straight truth because it's needed, even when (and perhaps especially when) it hurts.

You're totally right. My brain got crossed 'cause of the daughter nicknamed DiDi, plus the sleep dep. Going back to correct it now.

I missed the first episode (eventually they'll reshow it when I can remember to catch it!) so I'm still missing a bunch of background -- I thought Wayne was also Traveller-by-birth. I'm not even sure you can marry into Travellers or Rom in general.

Well, Travelers and Romany are unrelated. And I would cite where I was getting that information, but I can't find transcripts online and it's one in the morning, so maybe tomorrow.

Here's the marriage traditions page of a Roma website run by a leader in the Bay Area Roma community:

[link]

About Roma/non-Roma marriage, he says:

He or she is expected to marry someone within their particular tribe and most Roma conform by marrying within their group. Even with respect to other Roma, permissible marriage choices may be restricted. This is a way of maintaining tribal and social purity. If a Roma male marries a gadji, his community may eventually accept her, provided that she adopts the Romani way of life. But it is a worse violation of the marimé code for a Roma female to marry a gadjo, because Roma women are the guarantors for the survival of the population. In the case of a mixed marriage, many tribes consider the children Roma only if the father is Roma.

eta: I just googled "Irish Traveller marriage" and, from the first 20 or so results, it looks like the Travellers are much more hostile to exogamy than the Roma, to such an extent that a huge percentage of the Google results point to medical journal articles studying genetic anomalies in the Travellers due to almost exclusive marriage within clans.

Here's a Traveller's own perspective on it.

And, googling more, there's... not much about marriage traditions except some brief asides in papers about other subjects that note that people who marry outside tend to fall away from the culture so it's discouraged, and that the most common marriages outside the clans tend to be with Scottish Travellers and Roma, i.e., other nomads.

Huh, I thought Travellers were Irish Rom. Off to Wikipedia, I guess!

I'm LOVING this show. THere were distractions last monday, so I missed some big chunks of the last ep, though I caught enough that there were some laugh until I cried bits.

This show is remarkable. It's very clearly about the web of lies that so often seems to make up the world, and what it actually true among that. I think what the writers are setting up is a situation where even though the Malloys are the ones most actively fabricating their existence in Eden Falls, everyone else but them is hiding much more expansive lies.

Also, in re: Theo's question about Wayne -- he's half traveller. They have not (that I've caught) explained which of Wayne's parents were legit, and what his full back story is, nor have they explained how Wayne managed to get permission to marry Dahlia (except by implication that Dahlia's dad liked Wayne more than even his own son, and wanted somebody compotent to run the family after he was gone).