HBO’s Here and Now is far too self-important and dreadfully unrelatable -- a “real stinker” from Alan Ball

The Washington Post

The family drama from the True Blood and Six Feet Under creator is “surrounded in snide dialogue and hollow gestures of concern,” playing out like a “straight-faced sketch that fell off Portlandia’s truck and is now damaged beyond repair,” says Hank Stuever. Here and Now is about “a family with more first-world problems than it can possibly count,” he adds. “In four episodes made available for review, the show rummages through a mixed bag of inscrutable themes, one of which appears to be an indictment of the performative cultural correctness that sets people off nowadays.”

ALSO:

• Here and Now is alternately suffocating and baffling, featuring miserable characters
• It’s the kitchen sink of TV shows: Ball tries to do too much, amounting to less than the sum of its parts
• The characters seem to be built around talking points —written and overwritten
• It recalls the best and worst of Six Feet Under
• Here and Now is a beautiful, disjointed mess
• How Here and Now attempts to reflect multicultural America