"Florida Man: A Shaky Plot Transitions a Meme into a Netflix Series"

2023-04-17 21:06:40

When news becomes an internet phenomenon: who doesn’t know the crazy news headlines from the USA describing the latest adventures from the state of Florida? Netflix sees potential in this and is producing six episodes inspired by this social media inside joke. But is a meme really a good basis for an entire series?

By Natasha Juracsik

Mike (Edgar Ramírez) loses his job as a police officer, all his money and his wife to a gambling addiction that also leaves him in debt to mobster Moss (Emory Cohen). To pay, he agrees to work for Moss, but when the career criminal’s girlfriend, Delly (Abbey Lee), simply disappears and Mike is hired to bring her back, it leads to a wild treasure hunt in Mike’s former home state: Florida .

The first two episodes of “Florida Man” deal exclusively with Mike and his attempt to get his life back on track – the treasure is only hinted at here and only moves into focus from episode three. However, this transition in content is anything but smooth: the various plotlines don’t quite fit together and the script only provides half-hearted explanations for the connection between Mike’s life, Delly’s escape and the treasure hunt; You have to turn a blind eye to this plot to find it believable.

The relationships between the main characters in “Florida Man” are similar. Mike actually wants to save his marriage to Iris (Lex Scott Davis), but the next moment he’s not only having an affair with Delly, he even seems to be developing feelings for her – it doesn’t help that there is hardly any interaction between him and Iris chemistry has. Of course, characters with paradoxical behavior patterns are often interesting, but in this case it rather suggests a sloppy script, which the uncreative, clichéd dialogue only confirms. The actors – above all Edgar Ramírez and Abbey Lee – obviously make an effort to embody their roles in a sympathetic way.

The short news excerpts, which remind the viewer of the inspiration behind the title, are a little better done. Each episode provides a succinct and sarcastic account of what Florida’s crazy people are up to, which goes well with the show’s shallow, sometimes even endearing, humor. These brief interruptions basically have nothing to do with the actual story, but that’s hardly noticeable given the shaky plot structure.

A large part of the budget for “Florida Man” seems to have ended up in the soundtrack and in the post-processing of the material: the music is appropriate and quite fun, but after episode two it seems like the playlist of a beach bar on Mallorca. Visually, care was clearly taken to make each and every image as bright and colorful as possible; as a result, isolated scenes even appear visually successful, but the general aesthetics of the series seems a bit exaggerated after a short time. Neon lights just can’t replace a strong script, even if they might make what’s being shown look more entertaining.

Conclusion

Netflix runs out of ideas and a meme becomes a series: “Florida Man”, like so many productions on the streaming platform, is one thing above all: medioker. A superficial story, more or less sympathetic characters and a summery look are held together by a plot that shouldn’t be examined too closely. If mediocrity is good enough and you just want to switch off, you might like this series.