The Baldwins

So The Baldwins gives us all the content we could want from the show. It doesn’t run from the drama; in fact, it engages with it head on. Is that a noble thing? I don’t know. But, and perhaps against my better judgement, it’s certainly entertaining.

Where The Baldwins starts to curdle is in its examination of Hilaria and Alec’s specific union—its compromises and inequities and, at least for the sake of these cameras, discomfiting performativeness. Baldwin does his best to be the affably bewildered dad. .... Hilaria tries for kooky, but also polished, candidness and proves a less successful spokesperson for the Baldwin brand. .... That said, once it was done, my viewing companion turned to me and said, “Well, I’ll be watching every episode of that.”

[Alec Baldwin] emerges from the pilot of “The Baldwins” (which is all that was sent to critics for review) not quite brought low, but diminished. .... And sometimes he even says something that lands in a place of uncomfortable truth. “I would do anything for my children,” he tells the camera as the episode ends. The existence of “The Baldwins” proves that to be true.

While purporting to pull back the curtain and reveal the real life that happens behind the scrim of scandal and celebrity—to find out, in Hilaria’s words, “where do you go from a tragedy”—the show ends up mostly pasting on a frozen rictus grin, whose dark underside we catch only glimpses of. .... And there is arguably something no less unseemly about making a show about yet-unresolved torment and grief that corrals one’s family into an extended act of performance.

Call it Alec & Hilaria Plus 7. And lament that the show—which also counts the couple as executive producers—is so obsessive in its quest to make the Baldwins seem like normal human beings, it forgets to be even a little bit interesting.

A cautionary tale? Perhaps. Does it mean anything else? Anything more profound? You almost hope it doesn’t. .... You look for motives, because the content is so otherwise static, and even disturbing—because this kind of “intrusive” ersatz reality has become so painfully pedestrian. Likewise, the plotline of the series (only one episode of which was made available).

The Baldwins is dreadful, and makes the couple look likewise.

Alec is more sad and defeated than another dozy dad in the tradition of doddery Ozzy. Whether or not he’ll be able to revive his career remains to be seen, but this series is a low-point.