Then the last three episodes suddenly realize that this is not an ongoing series, and stuff that even the show doesn’t care about has to be resolved.
#Nick schwartz series
The series is so much more confident being a not-all-that-funny, not-all-that-romantic rom-com that the intrusion of the “Who Shot Sam?” mystery is jarring any time it becomes central. She’s convincing as the cool girl who knows the music that will change your life and he’s convincing as the wallflower who, if he would cut his hair, just might have perfect bone structure. Oleff and Wonders, both straight out of the Schwartz casting playbook, are likable leads of a very familiar type.
Heck, City on Fire goes so far as to create a plotline in which Sam has been including coded messages in her books, which is straight out of Green’s Paper Towns. Yes, that means that it’s basically Looking for Alaska, the John Green novel that Schwartz adapted for Hulu, in which the nerdy boy tries to solve the riddle of the manic pixie dream girl who enabled his maturation before meeting a dark fate because she had no autonomy of her own. The case or cases are being investigated by a pair of personality-free detectives (Omid Abtahi’s Parsa and Kathleen Munroe’s McFadden), who have one trait apiece: He walks with a limp and she’s the only person in the show who talks with an exaggerated New York accent.įor its most successful stretch, which is probably the first two or three episodes, City on Fire is one of those stories in which the real mystery is Sam herself. And then there are the anti-gentrification anarchists who Sam used to hang out with in the city, including charismatic Nicky Chaos (Max Milner), hulking Sol Grungy (Alexander Pineiro) and languid Sewer Girl (Alexandra Doke), who all may be working on something bigger and deadlier than just passing out leaflets in the streets. All come off as refugees from a discarded Gossip Girl subplot. The plot, which is very convoluted in a very limited circle, also involves William’s sister Regan (Jemima Kirke) and her estranged husband Keith (Ashley Zukerman) William and Regan’s real estate mogul father Bill (Geoff Pierson) and their scheming step-uncle Amory (John Cameron Mitchell). The arrival of the police is witnessed by Charlie (Wyatt Oleff), a Long Island teen in unrequited love with Sam who actually came into the city to join her at a reunion concert for the influential punk band formerly fronted by, yes, Mercer’s boyfriend William. Mercer becomes a suspect when police find heroin in the dinner jacket that belongs to his artist boyfriend, William (Nico Tortorella). Her body - she spends most of the series in a coma, but not dead - is discovered by Xavier Clyde’s Mercer, who was abruptly leaving a posh party that he wasn’t exactly invited to. Chase Sui Wonders’ Samantha Yeung is shot in Central Park.
The series, written in its entirety by Schwartz and Savage, begins on July 4, 2003. But those aspects fizzle entirely in an exposition-dominated homestretch culminating in a series of contrivances that are too ludicrous to be resonant.
There are reasons to watch City on Fire: The ensemble is good, the New York City settings authentic and the soundtrack on the level you’d expect from Schwartz and Savage. All that remains is Hallenberg’s main mystery, told in primarily linear form that focuses the storytelling but doesn’t make it more engaging. The flashbacks are limited and rarely informative, and the stylistic detours are almost entirely gone. The ’70s setting is gone, replaced by a lackluster shift to 2003.
With an eight-episode length that’s either way too long or way too short, City on Fire has done away with almost everything that was distinctive about the book. Watching Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage’s Apple TV+ adaptation of City on Fire, which arrives with no particular hype, it isn’t always clear what connection it even has to the book in the first place. Cast: Wyatt Oleff, Chase Sui Wonders, Jemima Kirke, Nico Tortorella, Ashley Zukerman, Xavier Clyde, Omid Abtahi, Kathleen Munroe, John Cameron MitchellĬreators: Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage
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