Second Half
The programmer's note
New this week, and the one we would put money on. Okafor made Cottonmouth, which is a thriller, and this is nothing like it except in the thing that matters: she shoots work. The bus route, the intake form, the drill run four times until it lands. Watch the scene at the kitchen table where nobody says the word treatment. Thirty-four minutes, and by the end you want the next seven episodes, which is what a pilot is for.
The film
Deborah Grier drives a route for the county schools, which means she is finished at half past four and knows every family on the east side of the district by name. Her sister Pam goes into a ninety day programme on a Monday. By Wednesday Deborah has two nieces in her two-bedroom on Hollywood Road, a caseworker with a folder, and a request from the athletic director that she take the girls' team, because the last coach quit and the season starts in three weeks. The pilot is about logistics as love: who gets picked up, who eats, who signs the form. Okafor films practice the way she films the bus route, in long takes with real time passing, and she lets the kids be funny rather than brave. The show this sets up is not about winning. It is about a woman finding out how much of a life she is willing to rearrange, and about a fourteen-year-old deciding whether the rearrangement is worth trusting.
