I Didn't Like This: Dope Thief

I Didn’t Like This Thing: Dope Thief

“You know why they call North Philly, “the trap?” Because you get stuck and can’t ever get out.”

This line of scintillating dialogue is brought to you by Apple TV’s Dope Thief. The trailer is what hooked me, the opening credit sequence is good and the pilot is awesome. Then the next seven episodes happen and come together to create a frontrunner for my worst show of the year. The dialogue feels like there was some type of bet made somewhere to see how many times the lead (grunted by Brian Tyree Henderson from that Donald Glover show that a bunch of white guys said they liked and then forgot about) could unnecessarily curse or scream his partners name: MANNY! 80% of the script looked like “aw fuck Manny, shit what the fuck Manny, Manny man, what are we gonna do? Shit!” It's a show that boldly asks the question: "What if Omar Little were less cool, kind of a baby, way less interesting and ends up snitching?"

Don’t get me wrong, cursing is fine. I love cursing. But there has to be some sort of reason behind it otherwise you just sound like a 14-year-old whose mom isn’t around. There’s also so much verbal exposition that is supposed to be handled by, ya know, the subtext of the writing. Eight episodes of shit like “what do you want from me!? I’m broken!” Bro, we’ve been watching you do coke and rob drug dealers for six hours, we know you’re broken. The fact that the writer felt the need to say it in literally the last episode should have been a clue that the writing is bad. Oh, so they call North Philly “the trap” because it’s… a trap? Got it.

Some other things that I’m just going to bullet point:

-The villain is only a voice on the phone until the end. A truly unique storytelling tactic.

-Don’t worry, there is definitely a cop with a dark past who plays by their own rules and is trying to avenge their partner.

-Wagner Moura who was killer as Pablo Escobar in Narcos is… bad.

-The main guy who is an overweight junkie loser manages to seduce a sexy Philadelphia lawyer within three scenes because um girls love a bad boy?

-Hey, it’s a government conspiracy

-The old lady is the kingpin? I think that’s how it ended.

-The Amish! Why? Great question. Couldn’t tell you.

-The Quakers! Why? Another great question.

-The Vietnamese! Why? Vague references to the Vietnam War as “the war” which occurred over half a century ago.

-There is a sequence that feels like a fever dream where they find the bad guys headquarters and a random group of white guys in Eagles shirts show up to help the lead guy and MANNY raid it for some reason. The main white guy spends 20 minutes rambling about philosophy and then gets shot in the head never to be spoken of again.

-The cop lady gets shot in the throat and loses her voice which I’m sure was intended as some sort of commentary on how her voice was METAPHORICALLY taken by the MAN.

-There is definitely a prosecutor who argues with the lady cop on how to best handle the case that ends in him saying, “THIS IS MY CASE!”

-Ving Rhames shows up in multiple scenarios in which it is unclear what his role is intended to be.

-There are melancholy flashbacks to show the main guy’s like childhood girlfriend? Who dies I think? It isn’t made clear. But it’s definitely not relevant to the ending which is good. There is also a CD for some reason?

That’s just off the top of my head, if I really hated myself, I’d go back and watch with a notepad and really get to some of the fun stuff. The cartel was in there somehow? Meth was in sunscreen bottles? A cop was killed? There was a religious thing that never made much sense? Truly terrible.

This is what the era of rush to create content gets you. A recognizable lead, a flashy trailer and a garbage script. Same thing happened on the same streamer with Dark Matter. Holy god, what another awful show with the exact same problems. But it’s not about quality, it’s about pumping out as many things as possible. And as far as quality goes, lots of the aggregator critic sites have this as a 70-80% positive review. The studios pay for these, there is no doubt in my mind. I’m one to talk as someone who consumes a ton of this content that they keep dumping into my fat little piggie trough but at least kind of try sometimes. This was bad, I hated it, zero thumbs up.