Ask any TV fan, and they can name for you their favorite show that was canceled too soon. Deadwood, Freaks and Geeks, Firefly, My So-Called Life: everyone has a friend that will pin you in a corner at a party and extol the virtues of their favorite gone-too-soon show and not let you go until you’ve promised to watch the entire thing. Today, we’re going to be that friend for Lodge 49.
Lodge 49 ran just two seasons and 20 episodes on AMC, from August 2018 to October 2019. It was created by Jim Gavin and starred Wyatt Russell, Brent Jennings, and Sonya Cassidy heading a stellar ensemble cast, and was set mostly in Long Beach California, with a few forays to London and Mexico. It had a definite cult following, but that wasn’t enough to save it. The cancelation ended the show on a cliffhanger, and fans were pretty devastated. Let’s take a look at what made fans so devoted, and maybe we can convince you to see for yourself.
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The Quirky, Constantly Surprising Plot
AMC
One problem fans might have when trying to pull in new recruits is the difficulty in explaining the plot. To wit: Dud is a currently incapacitated surfer (he got a snakebite that refuses to heal properly) whose life is basically falling apart. The death of his father and loss of the family pool business, along with his on-and-off estrangement with his sister, have left him searching for something. He’s sure he’s found that something when he stumbles into Lodge 49, a down-at-heel fraternal order whose members have largely been put out of work.
Dud’s sister Liz waitresses at a restaurant called Shamroxx, fruitlessly trying to dig herself out of the debt their father’s death left her with. Ernie is an unhappy plumbing salesman who is having an affair with fellow lodge member Connie, who is married to a third lodge member. There’s a mysterious general contractor known only as The Captain, a friendly pharmacist/aspiring alchemist, an overbearing CEO of a cult-like startup, and Paul Giamatti as a once prolific writer who narrates his own audiobooks.
And the Lodge itself practically qualifies as a character, with generations-old secrets, hidden rooms, and, just possibly, the key to the universe, if the lodge members can only find the scrolls. If, indeed, there are any scrolls at all.
The Flawed, Lovable Characters
Wyatt Russell’s Dud is a textbook definition of a lovable loser: he’s unemployed, basically homeless (he either couch-surfs at his sister’s, sleeps in his often-broken down car, or crashes at a variety of even more unsuitable locations), has an unfortunate habit of getting drunk and breaking into the pool at the home which no longer belongs to his family, and still manages to maintain an air of complete positivity. The death of his father and the loss of surfing as an outlet to deal with his grief are far bigger issues to him than a lack of money or somewhere to live. Like many of us do when grieving, he latches on to something to save him. That something ends up being Lodge 49, and he throws himself into its pursuit with reckless abandon.
Sonya Cassidy’s Liz (you might recognize her from early seasons of British detective drama Vera) is processing her grief in an altogether different manner: through rage. She attacks life with a sort of desperate fury, resigning herself to a dead-end job and lousy apartment, drinking her way through most of her life rather than facing reality. And yet she has a crackling wit that makes her the center of attention wherever she goes.
And then we have Brent Jennings’ Ernie, a just-getting-by salesman who spends all of his time at the Lodge, nostalgic for the days when the bar was full and his friends all still had jobs. He’s having an affair with his first love Connie, but that, too, is fraught with difficulties. Like Dud and Liz, there is a feeling that Ernie has, that if he could just get this one thing, everything would be fine. And like with most people, getting the one thing you think you need is never the answer.
The Sensitive Yet Honest Treatment of Mental Illness
Many of the main characters of Lodge 49 are suffering from the kind of depression that vast numbers of Americans do: depression caused by ongoing grief, money troubles, career unhappiness, a lack of fulfillment. And sure, maybe everyone could have gone to therapy and felt better. But this show does a brilliant job of showing the ways that ordinary people try and patch things up themselves, sometimes not terribly well. To all outward appearances, even though Dud’s life is clearly a shambles, he presents such an overwhelming impression of cheer that most people in his life assume he’s doing alright, and it’s mostly just Liz who can see through that veneer.
Liz deals with her own problems by getting as far away from them as possible. She ghosts men that genuinely like her, and she will jump off of an actual ship to get away from a job that she feels unready for. Her constant caring for Dud often precludes her from taking care of herself, not that she would know how, anyway. And she is so tightly wound that the least deviation from her comfort zone usually has disastrous results.
Ernie is losing sales to a younger, cockier colleague, Connie is experiencing debilitating health issues (along with being caught between her husband and her lover), and Blaise (the aspiring alchemist played movingly by David Pasquesi) has a nervous breakdown. In this modern age where family is not necessarily a solace, and you need friends around you, this show tenderly explores the ways that we can be there for our friends, and create a makeshift family from them.
What Could Have Happened Next
Given the wild plot twists that occurred during just two seasons, there’s no telling what could have happened next. Surely the characters would have continued their quest to find out if Lodge 49 was indeed the true lodge. Ernie has been made the lodge’s sovereign protector at long last, which would surely have shaken things up, and Liz experiences the same mystical feeling of deja vu that Dud had when he first entered the lodge’s throne room, alluding to secrets from their past. And Dud, well, Dud had disappeared, possibly into another dimension.
Whatever was intended to follow, it would have been unexpected and delightful, and likely a little sad as well. Despite a devoted audience, ratings for the second season just didn’t cut it for AMC, and attempts to rehome the show were unsuccessful. We’ll never know what would have happened to the misfits of Lodge 49, but even without the promise of further seasons, this amazing show is worth a watch. We promise it’s unlike anything else.
