Goliath: Seasons 1 and 2 Full

June 18, 2018 1:26 PM - All Seasons

Billy Bob Thornton as Billy McBride: formerly a brilliant and personable lawyer who founded the law firm Cooperman McBride with Donald Cooperman, and the two of them grew it to be a large successful company.

He walked out of the firm and became an alcoholic after a murder suspect he got acquitted on a technicality went on to kill an entire family. He lives in an extended-stay hotel by the Santa Monica Pier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath_(TV_series)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4687880/

posted by zeek321 (10 comments total)

For me this show went from "better than it should be" to "way better than average" to "insane" (in a good way). The acting from Thornton and Arianda is excellent. The show has the feel of a fantasy series, somehow, even though nothing magical happens. It's like gritty realism that doesn't quite track reality. Self-aware cartoonish but somehow this doesn't detract. Maybe the villains are cartoonish and the plot is cartoonish but the emotional struggles are real, or something.
posted by zeek321 at 1:29 PM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

That's exactly the feeling I couldn't put into words. It's all just a bit off, but I'm pretty sure that was entirely intentional.
posted by wierdo at 9:42 PM on June 18, 2018

I watched the first season and went to watch the second, but I was sort of put off by some of the comments I saw. Has anyone watched both?
posted by holborne at 9:58 PM on June 19, 2018

The second season is less realistic and more over the top and intermittently viscerally disgusting. It's also really good TV. The acting is really good. The production values are good. The script has some issues, but the whole thing hangs together coherently. No regrets. I think I mostly just really liked the character acting.
posted by zeek321 at 12:23 PM on June 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

The humor is dark and usually understated and sometimes weirdly very humane.
posted by zeek321 at 12:24 PM on June 20, 2018

The humor

And hilarious.
posted by zeek321 at 12:25 PM on June 20, 2018

What stands out most to me: usually Billy Bob Thornton owns every scene he's in, not so much in this series. And not because he's phoning it in - the rest of the cast is just very good, too, especially Nina Arianda.
posted by dominik at 11:30 AM on June 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

I will probably go back and watch season one again (which I remember almost nothing about), but really liked Season 2, although it did seem to get a bit wacky in the penultimate episode.
And yes, Nina Arianda is fantastic!
posted by blueberry at 12:27 AM on June 30, 2018

I'm pretty surprised at the comments in here.

I literally thought S2 was the worst season of television I've ever seen. In fact, I'm rather dumbfounded it got made--it was such an unbelievable mess across the board.

S1 was pretty decent and I really looked forward to S2, but wtf? Mindbogglingly bad and idiotic.

Also, why did it look like bad 80s Canadian television? It was ugly, poorly edited... sloppy.
posted by dobbs at 5:00 PM on December 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

I thought the first season was great. Billy Bob Thornton really channels some burned out cynical half in the bag southern lawyers I've known.

Season two was terrible, IMO. I watched it when it came out and couldn't even finish it and just completely forgot about the series because of it.

Turns out season 3 is really good, if deeply fucking weird. So if season two made you write off the show, do give it another chance. You may or may not like it, but it's pretty and is definitely an experience.
posted by wierdo at 8:33 PM on October 22, 2021