Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Madison’ On Paramount+, Where Michelle Pfeiffer Is A New York Woman Who Goes To Montana To Deal With Her Grief After A Tragedy

Where to Stream: The Madison Powered by Reelgood

Taylor Sheridan has a penchant for attracting A-list movie stars to his TV series, and he gives them roles that they can really sink their teeth into. Michelle Pfeiffer, for instance, says that Sheridan wrote her role in the new series The Madison expressly for her, and it shows in her performance. The rest of the show? Well, it is written by Sheridan, after all.

THE MADISON: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: A gently flowing river, and aerial shots of a lush river valley.

The Gist:  In the Madison River valley in Montana, we see Preston Clyburn (Kurt Russell) and his younger brother Paul (Matthew Fox) fly fishing. Preston spends most of his time in New York, tending to his very successful company and his family, but once a year he comes out to Montana to visit his brother and disconnect. For his part, Paul lives by the river alone and prefers it that way; he used to be part of the rat race, but separated from that years ago.

Back in New York, Preston’s wife Stacy (Michelle Pfeiffer) is seemingly content with being a “city mouse”; Preston has invited her and their adult daughters Abigail Reese (Beau Garrett) and Paige McIntosh (Elle Chapman) to come out with their families, but Stacy has always said no because Paul does not have an indoor bathroom. She’s content with seeing the river vistas via photos Preston takes and the FaceTimes they have while he’s away.

The city is wearing her down, though. Paige gets punched in the face and robbed while she was walking on 5th Avenue, and she’s afraid to tell the cops what the color of the man’s skin was. Abigail is divorced and has fights with her ex-husband over what their daughters Bridgett (Amiah Miller) and Macy (Alaina Pollack) are doing with whom. Paige’s husband Russell (Patrick J. Adams) sits at dinner with the Clyburn women and basically keeps his mouth shut. Everybody looks at their phones during a nice family dinner out.

Then a tragedy happens, and the entire family flies out to Montana. There, Stacy realizes what she missed out on, but also realizes just how being in New York has made her family into something that she and Preston never envisioned when they married almost 40 years ago.

Photo: Emerson Miller/Paramount+

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Taylor Sheridan, you could say that The Madison is Yellowstone but with the pacing and more personal vibe of a show like Virgin River.

Our Take: One of the things we noticed when you watch The Madison is how much we missed watching Michelle Pfeiffer. Sure, she’s been in movies here and there for the last decade, and she played Betty Ford in The First Lady. But in The Madison, she gets a chance to really dig into a role and play all of its emotional aspects. And whenever she’s on screen, and especially when she’s expressing Stacy’s intense grief, she’s mesmerizing.

For instance, in a scene near the end of the episode, she’s reading from a journal, and we can see Pfeiffer expressing both grief and regret through subtle facial movements. She has a look of utter sadness in her eyes that shows that she spent too long in the rat race while Preston was where he felt he belonged.

Then we are reminded that Sheridan wrote the first episode, either via clunky speeches given by Pfeiffer or the rest of the cast or just the general terrible perspective he has when writing female characters. It’s strange that while Stacy shows a depth of emotion and surprises throughout the episode, the rest of the characters are very one-note. Abigail snipes at her overprivileged younger sister Paige when Paige calls her nieces “my children,” and Paige acts like a spoiled child even though she’s hovering somewhere around 30.

We’re particularly flummoxed at Adams’ role as Paige’s husband Russell. Remember, Adams was a co-lead on a hit show (Suits) for years, but here he seems to be reduced to comic relief, like when he sprays a whole bottle of lighter fluid on the charcoal in the outdoor fire pit and is shocked when a fireball erupts. We were waiting for him to do do something other than just make goofy comments from the sides and backs of scenes, and we were wondering why he’d agree to do a show where his character is reduced to a sidelined husband in a group of strong women.

The first episode certainly telegraphs a lot of moments when the Clyburn family will be out of their element in Montana. What we hope, though, is that the fish out of water aspect of the show will be treated less cartoonishly as the season goes on.

We also wonder how awkward the narrative structure of this first season is going to be; there will certainly be a lot of flashbacks, and it feels like Preston and Stacy will be interacting via FaceTime a lot. Perhaps we’ll get flashbacks showing the two of them together at an earlier stage of their marriage. But in the first episode we saw a hell of a lot more chemistry between Russell and Fox than we did between Russell and Pfeiffer, and that makes absolutely no sense.

Photo: Emerson Miller/Paramount+

Performance Worth Watching: Pfeiffer, for all the reasons we stated above. She definitely is going to get Emmy consideration for this role.

Sex And Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Stacy and her family go out to find a patch of land that Preston wrote about in his journal.

Sleeper Star: Beau Garrett’s character Abigail definitely seems to be the most sympathetic to the way Stacy wants to process her grief, especially when she expresses that she wants to stay on the ranch for awhile instead of going back to New York. Also, we haven’t seen a ton of Matthew Fox on our screens of late, so it was nice to see him playing Preston’s reclusive brother Paul. Series director Christina Alexandra Voros has a knack of capturing the beauty of Montana’s vistas.

Most Pilot-y Line: Stacy’s friend encourages her to get a place in the Catskills to satisfy the outdoors needs of her “mountain man.” “I think they invented fly-fishing there,” she says.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We were happy to take in the contemplative pace of The Madison as well as watching Pfeiffer’s performance. But we’re also concerned that Sheridan’s penchant for leaden dialogue and sketchy portrayals of female characters are going to ultimately drag this show down.

How To Watch The Madison

Paramount+ offers two subscription plans, Essential and Premium. The ad-supported Essential plan costs $8.99/month, while the ad-free Premium plan (which comes with Showtime titles and live CBS) costs $13.99/month.

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.

View Original Article