Good concept, poorly executed.

A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Former Republican President Richard Graves (Nick Nolte) is adored by his supporters, and reviled by almost everyone else. He starts to have doubts about his legacy. His wife Margaret (Sela Ward) is looking to run for office. Isaiah Miller (Skylar Astin) is his true-believer new body man. His daughter Olivia (Heléne Yorke) has a broken marriage. His son Jeremy (Chris Lowell) is bitter after four years in the army. Sammy (Callie Hernandez) is the new waitress at his local diner who opens up his eyes to a new outlook.Nick Nolte sorta works as this burnt-out former man of power. He has the demeanor. The varying cast around him mostly work as individual characters. It's the interconnections and the plot writing that often falls down. The waitress is an odd character to get sucked into his world. She needs to be tied to the family a lot more securely. At a certain point, there are too many recurring characters. It needs to work on the relationships between the main characters. I like all the actors and Nolte does his good standard gruffness. The plot does keep drifting which gives the show an unhelpful instability.

They basically created an incarnation of Trump on the liberal's side. At least somebody they wish that would pull his same stunts in their favor.Not really sure this contains spoilers. Only got through three episodes to post this review. Slightly amazed about the lack of reviews. The show carries a clear message about what they consider good and evil. If you want to be on the side of good, act cool by smoking pot, hanging with young people, play an impromptu guitar on stage, endorse defense cuts, and invite illegals to live on your property.Slick, nice-looking production. Sela Ward is beautiful and solid, as always, but in a straight role. Nick Nolte is not really funny or very endearing. Reminds me of his turn in 48 Hours as a grumpy, sloppy cop. Getting kneed in the groin made me laugh a little, in particular because it keenly - and not intentionally - captured the intolerant traits of liberals.In my opinion, Portlandia and Veep pull off biting satire far better, without clunking you over the head with their agenda. Four out of ten based on Sela, some cool cameos, top notch production, and some random destructiveness.

I only watched the first episode of this series, but I feel there's no reason to believe the show would get any better.The basic premise is an ex-U.S. president regrets his actions in office and decides to rectify all the awful choices that make him a historically terrible president. (Graves seems to be mainly based on GW Bush, who certainly ranks as one of the worst presidents.)First off, this is a very silly fantasy premise. Politicians are huge egotists, and they really feel qualified to make all these decisions. Certainly some presidents have looked back at some of their decisions with regret, but I suspect most of them would insist that at the time of those decisions it was a sensible option. I certainly don't think any president would do a 180 because pundits and historians were attacking him; after all, there would also be pundits and historians praising him - even Bush gets that.But the first episode suggests the real problem with the series will be cowardice. Because the first thing Grave says he'll try and rectify is cutting funding for cancer research.Is there any issue that is safer than saying, I'll do more for cancer research? As terrible as cancer is, it's very well funded and thus not struggling as much as a lot of other programs.If this were a political satire, which it pretends to be, it would start off with something genuinely controversial. Voter-suppressive ID laws, immigration policies, abortion.Perhaps the series is just warming up, but here's the thing; satire doesn't dip its toe in the water to check the temperature. It doesn't ease you in. Satire is cutting and savage and strikes out in all directions. Satire, in other words, is Veep. Graves is, well, not much of anything.I wouldn't be as annoyed with the series cowardice if it just had the decency to be funny. But I didn't laugh once.That being said, the acting is good, even if the characters are stock.

Small mercies or inability to accept Nick Nolte failing changed what would have been a 5/10 to a tentative 8.I almost missed the last 3 or 4 minutes of ep. 1, while logging in to dejectedly rate what seemed 1/2 hearted, 1/2 rehearsed, 1/2 committed....yadda yadda yadda ....still within earshot I caught Graves stumbled speech to the Cancer society, I re-watched the whole show, then ep. 2. What I had first taken as poorly scripted, poorly executed, now unfolded as Graves himself began too. I think if Noltes 'eyes opening' momentum can keep up moving forward, and if the writes can consummate the foreplay with substantial reward to Graves apparent epiphany of moral conscience this could be a win =)