NBC’s Ordinary Joe Serves Up Mostly Ordinary Drama, but with Three Times the James Wolk
Photo Courtesy of NBC
If there’s one thing to be said about NBC’s new series Ordinary Joe, it’s that it’s ambitious. The show, which started as a script written by Felicity co-creator Matt Reeves in 2007, explores a question we’ve all had at one time or another: What if there were three TV shows starring the handsome visage of James Wolk on at the same time? That’s essentially what we’re getting here, and in a way it almost makes up for the fact Fox cheated us out of an entire show by prematurely canceling Lone Star, in which Wolk played a con man living a double life, all those years ago.
The soapy series, which feels tailor-made for the This Is Us crowd (NBC clearly hopes it will fill the void the family drama leaves once it ends this season), opens on the day of Joe’s (Wolk) graduation from Syracuse University in 2011. It explores three different versions of his life, each determined by what he does following the commencement ceremony. There’s the path Joe’s life takes when he meets up with his family, including his uncle Frank (David Warshofsky), who wants Joe to become a cop like his father, who died on 9/11. There is also what happens when Joe joins his best friend Jenny (Elizabeth Lail), whom he’s also been dating on and off, at the beach. And then there is what happens when Joe works up the courage to talk to Amy (Natalie Martinez), a woman he just met.
If that sounds confusing, that’s because it is, at least on paper. The show does a surprisingly effective job of using visual clues so it’s easy to follow which version of Joe we’re watching at any given time, whether it’s the one who became a police officer (colored in blue, naturally), the one who married Jenny and became a nurse (colored in green, the color of sickness), or the one who married Amy and followed his dreams of becoming a rock star (colored in red because red is sexy?) It also helps that Wolk’s hair and facial hair are all styled differently as well (everyone knows only rock stars have beards).
While the different color palettes border on overkill at times, especially when it comes to the use of red in Rock Star Joe’s timeline, they do at least make sense. It’s not like Ozark, where everything is colored dark blue for reasons no one understands. The use of the different colors here really helps to differentiate what’s going on at the outset, as the show sets up what is a high-concept premise featuring multiple timelines in just 42 minutes. While other shows debuting this fall manage to be confusing despite showing a literal timeline on screen, it’s appreciated that a show like Ordinary Joe recognizes the audience is going to need a lot of help to understand what’s happening and when, especially since viewers are probably also scrolling Twitter while watching (we all do it, don’t pretend you don’t).
But while executive producers and showrunners Russel Friend and Garrett Lerner have gone the extra mile to make sure the series is as easy to understand as possible in the beginning, one does have to wonder what Ordinary Joe will look like week to week, and how it can sustain the complex “what if?” scenario of its premise. In the pilot, which quickly fast-forwards 10 years to the present day after introducing its point of divergence, we’re introduced to Joe’s three different lives, as well as a cast of supporting players who are all destined to be included no matter which path he chose that fateful day. In addition to Uncle Frank, Jenny, and Amy, we also meet Joe’s mother (Anne Ramsay) and his lifelong best friend, Eric (Charlie Barnett).