Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Florida Man’ On Netflix, Where An Ex-Cop Goes Back To His Home State And Finds Himself On A Crazy Search

When a streaming service or network doesn’t provide a screener for a new series that isn’t part of a franchise, it’s often a bad sign. It’s a sign that the service is distancing itself from the show and that it doesn’t want what they think might be bad reviews to dissuade people from watching a show. We were surprised when Netflix didn’t provide us screeners for the new comedic thriller Florida Man. But after watching the first episode, we understood why.

FLORIDA MAN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man sits in a Gamblers Anonymous meeting and does his share, saying, “I lost my friends, lost my job, lost my wife. That’s it.”

The Gist: Mike Valentine (Edgar Ramírez) is a former Philadelphia police detective whose gambling addiction got out of control. A year after that meeting, his gambling days are over, but he’s now in the employ of a gangster named Moss Yankov (Emory Cohen), with whom he’s in debt for a whole lot of money.

But he’s trying to make amends, like making a new ring for his ex-wife Iris (Lex Scott Davis), who is still an active police detective. She hates the fact that he’s working as a thug for a guy like Moss, threatening fellow GA meeting attendees over their debts.

Moss and his girlfriend Delly West (Abbey Lee) go to an anniversary dinner, but she walks out when he gives her a fenced necklace with another woman’s hair still in the clasp. Moss tells Mike to get her home, but the two of them stop at a club first, which is when their attraction to each other comes out. From their conversation, this has been going on for awhile. She tells him that they should both run away to a place like Florida, which is when she tells him that’s where he’s from and doesn’t want to go back.

The next day, she disappears. Moss tells Mike to go find her, citing red light camera tickets she generated in Coronado Beach, Florida, which just happens to be Mike’s hometown.

Once he’s down there, it doesn’t take him long to get embroiled in things with his family. After video of him getting bitten in the groin by a shark goes viral, he’s visited by his sister Patsy (Otmara Marrero), who susses out that he’s not there to try to give someone an insurance check. She advises Mike to “ask a criminal” to see where Delly might be, meaning their father Sonny (Anthony LePaglia), the town’s former police chief who is no stranger to indulging in some crooked side activity. Sonny asks the current chief, Andy Boone (Paul Schneider) to help him out, but also has his own people keeping an eye on his son.

Through various breaks, Mike finds Delly and follows her and a guy back to vacation bungalows, but then he hears shots. He goes in and finds Delly in a pool of blood, seemingly shot to death, with a familiar coin in her purse. He leaves in a hurry, but the owner tells Chief Boone that someone matching Mike’s description was at the scene. One problem: Delly’s body is nowhere to be found.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Florida Man has the feel of Burn Notice, with a lot of humor (or attempts at humor) mixed in with the noirish aspects. There’s Tulsa King vibe going on, as well.

Our Take: The first episode of Florida Man felt endless, and when we thought the episode was at a good endpoint, we were shocked to press pause and see that it had 20 minutes left. The series, created by Donald Todd (This Is Us) isn’t exactly a mess, but the first episode has to set up so many characters that have to interact with Mike at some point, that the story itself is hard to connect to. And just when you think you’ve got an idea of the thread of the plot, something changes that throws all of that out the window.

Through it all, the only character traits we get from Mike, the guy at the center of all of this mayhem, is that he’s a reformed gambler and an ex-cop. Through all of the hoops he jumps through to find Delly, we don’t get an idea of how he actually does his job or what his thought process is. Without his father’s connections, for instance, he’d likely still be figuring out where Delly is.

Will we delve more into his childhood, where he found the weird coin Delly had in the belly of a fish, touching off his gambling addiction? How about his relationship with Sonny? You don’t put LaPaglia in that role and have him do some sort of pseudo-Latin accent (one that’s somehow less pronounced than his son’s) to not have him more involved in the story somehow.

We could have gotten more of a chance to dive into Mike’s psyche had we not gotten distracted by everything else going on, like Moss trying to take over his crime family from his father, or Iris investigating the dismemberment of the GA groupmate both Mike and Moss threatened. There are also flashbacks to all the times that Mike and Delly had sex and told each other they’d never do it again. What are the implications of all this when it comes to Moss?

Most of all, though, the end of the episode tosses all of this out and starts Mike down a different road. So what was that interminable hour we just spent for? Maybe more questions are answered in the second episode, but we don’t have a lot of interest in finding out.

Sex and Skin: There are sex scenes, but they look basic-cable safe. The only nudity is that the girl Mike saves before getting bitten by the shark comes out of the surf topless and claims he attacked her.

Parting Shot: After telling Moss that Delly was dead, he walks into his open hotel room door and sees her on the bed, holding a gun. “I got into the mini bar,” she jokes.

Sleeper Star: Lauren Buglioli plays a news anchor whom Mike tricks into giving him footage of an ambulance that escaped the scene of Delly’s shooting. Yet another character we’re being asked to follow that we’re not sure has a purpose, but she makes the most of the scenes she’s in. We also forgot to mention Clark Gregg, who plays a sheriff from another state whose gun Mike yanks off a luggage carousel in the airport. What his role in the story is, we have no idea.

Most Pilot-y Line: “This isn’t fucking Disney World anymore; this is the realest goddamn place on earth,” Sunny tells Mike after he asks his son to leave.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Florida Man is a muddled show that has some interesting characters and story points, but they’re lost in a show that’s far too crowded with characters and storylines.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.