What I’m Watching: Hap and Leonard

I watched S1 when it first came on, I love Joe Lansdale and an adaptation of his dirt-poor ’80s Texas dark comedy/mysteries should be fantastic.

Sadly, S1 was pretty dull, there’s some treachery but a lot of forgettable driving around Texas, and most of the supporting cast were the worst kind of walking meatsticks rather than actors. But it was great having Michael Kenneth Williams (Omar Little) playing cowboy Leonard, and James Purefoy (foppish Mark Anthony in Rome) as ex-hippy Hap has aged into a passable Fred Ward-like tired old hooligan. ★★☆☆☆

S2 is massively better. A kid’s body under Leonard’s dead uncle Chester’s house leads to these two knuckleheads trying to investigate, as Chester had previously, with a mob of women with missing kids led by… no small personage… And there’s a carnival which is always fun/terrifying, and my own biases confirmed when they get down to the killer.

This time most of the cast are competent; the killer is, sadly, one of the walking meatsticks and not convincing. MeMaw’s great. The flexible redhead in the carny is amazing and I may be rewatching her a few times. Even the shitheel Texan pigs are complex for shitheel pigs and played out well enough.

Only real complaint is even at 6 eps, it’s too long, this could be done in 4 or less.

S3 is going to be the KKK story, which should be fun, in a Blazing Saddles, Fletch Lives, Django Unchained kinda way.

“I tell ya. I ain’t never been more proud to be an atheist than I am today.” “Amen to that!”
Hap & Leonard in a church parking lot

★★★★½