REVIEW: Magic City (Season 2, 2013)

Actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan at The Losers film panel at WonderCon 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

MAGIC CITY

SEASON 2 (2013)

A Television Review

Copyright Dragan Antulov 2013

When Starz announced cancellation of MAGIC CITY after its second season, few people were surprised, author of this text included. Making of Season 2 was actually announced even before airing of the very first episode of the entire show. Such decisions might reflect either great confidence among the creators or cheap attempt to create extra publicity. Based on what I saw in first season, I tended to believe the latter explanation. Second season did few things to clear such impression.

First sign that Season 2 wouldn’t be an improvement is in the opening titles, which used different and less impressive music that in Season 1. After that almost any change in the show was change for the worse. This could be explained with apparent loss of creative energy by showrunner Mitch Glazer. In first season he used fascinating setting and fascinating character; in second season he didn’t know what to do with them.

Both seasons – with eight episodes – were relatively short, but the second looked much longer. The main plot – conflict between hotel owner Isaac “Ike” Evans (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and his bloodthirsty gangster partner Ben “The Butcher” Diamond (played by Danny Huston) – was resolved through not very convincing deus ex machina. Entry of James Caan as Diamond’s mentor and boss only reminded audience about THE GODFATHER, a film much better than a TV show MAGIC CITY could ever aspire to be. Those two main characters didn’t have much of development in next eight episodes; Ike is still a dedicated family man trying to do the right thing despite unsavory business and social connections; Butcher Diamond is just as evil and depraved as he was in Season 1.

The most interesting character of all was Ike’s new wife Vera, which nevertheless proved to be rather thankless role for Olga Kurylenko. Her character was badly served by dancing subplot which didn’t go anywhere. Other women fared only marginally better. Jessica Marais in the role of Diamond’s femme fatale wife was provided with some space to explore her past and make her character more interesting. This opportunity was squashed in predictably violent plot development. Yet the worst happened to character of Judi Silver (played by Elena Satine) an elite prostitute turned state’s star witness, who, for some not particularly convincing reasons, decided to stay in Miami only to provide Season 2 with new batch of scenes of sex and nudity.

It would be unfair to say that the show creators didn’t try to make at least some things in second season better. Character of Ike’s nemesis – crusading state attorney Jack Klein – was made more complex by adding  genuine care about daughter (and presumably about community’s wellbeing) as further and more convincing motives than mere political ambition. Even more interesting was an idea to have Ike play mobsters against Castro in an attempt to secure business empire in post-revolutionary Cuba. Although audience, at least those viewers familiar with Cold War history, could have known that such scheme ultimately wouldn’t work, this was a subplot that had some potential; transitional periods in history are known to provide best dramas. This subplot was even more promising with character of Ike’s father (played by GODFATHER veteran Alex Rocco) being implicitly  portrayed as socialist; it would have been even more interesting to see his reactions towards business alliance between Cuban leftists and his capitalist son.  Sadly, this opportunity was lost in the cancellation.

In the end, failure of MAGIC CITY is going to be as irrelevant as the show itself. It was interesting attempt to re-create the magic of a bygone era and success of other period shows, The concept was put on the screen half-heartedly and without much inspiration. MAD MEN or BOARDWALK EMPIRE showed that period drama require something more than “cool” setting.

RATING: 4/10