Shut Eye

At its best, the show mimics the stylized visuals, outlandish violence, and comic cynicism of early episodes of Breaking Bad--though, so far, it lacks the clarity and the focus to make its story half as thoughtful.

The show runs hot and cold, loose and stiff from scene to scene, sometimes pulling back a curtain on a hidden world but just as often running down tracks that nearly two decades worth of TV anti-heroism have worn thin.

Over its next three episodes, Shut Eye, created by Les Bohem (“Extant”), loses most of its momentum as the story grows overcomplicated and undercharacterized. It’s like watching a trick in which the dove fails to fly out of the magician’s hat.

There are a lot of moving parts, some of which work quite well (Mel Harris as a wealthy but naive client who thinks the Haverfords are saving her from a short con when they’re really setting her up for a long one), others of which grind the show to a halt (Dylan Schmid as the inevitable troublemaking teenage son).

When Shut Eye focuses on the often separate-but-equal storylines of Linda and Charlie, it’s intriguing; the more it peels off into a tedious storyline about their son’s high school life or the illegal doings of Rossellini’s gangster empire or the strong-arm tactics of the gangster (you’ll wince at a death-by-boiling-oil in a doughnut shop), the more diffuse the series becomes.

Despite a magnetic performance from its lead actor, it’s not difficult to see Shut Eye’s rather predictable trajectory.

The just-sufficient fascination of the entire operation is owed almost exclusively to the cast, with special nods to Donovan, Strickland, and the indomitable Rossellini. The rest of Shut Eye is engaging only at the most base level, and fails to conjure the menace, magic, or all-around strangeness of a life made passing messages along from beyond this plain of existence, whether genuine or not.

Through four episodes it's still struggling to establish a consistent tone or to settle on the hook of its premise.