Shut Eye

Shade

I just saw a preview for Shut Eye on Hulu about a con artist posing as a psychic. Tarot cards appeared in the trailer quite a bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXTfBiHkfA4

So we have Romany crime families controlling the fake psychic trade...

(at this point I'm sort of retching)

Then just when I've had enough it looks like he receives actual psychic abilities. Hmmmmmmm.

I absolutely understand why a storyline and setting about psychic con artists is appealing to writers who think everything we do is mumbo jumbo. I get it, you get all the great occult set pieces and candles and statuettes and you get a crime story which Americans just love.

And like... yes this is a significant cross-section of the reader population. But it's such a detriment to all the true believers or "eyes-shut" readers out there.

I think I might watch because:

Isabella Rossellini
It looks like he gets actual psychic powers so maybe.... maybe there is something there

Seriously though, Isabella Rossellini has been a role model since Death Becomes Her.

Also, I'm not Romany, but it does look like the show could be pretty racist towards Romany.

I always worry that this is the sort of thing that will make people say "see, they are a bunch of phonies, I saw how they did it on TV." I worry even more than if I get tow episodes in I'm going to be thinking "Yep... I'm a phony."
 

Shade

So I took the plunge over the weekend and marathoned nearly every episode of Shut Eye and enjoyed it quite a bit.

It's very much a crime show wherein our ne'er do well lead characters get themselves into an increasingly complicated series of scrapes across the season, improvising along the way, with each lie creating more and more strain on relationships. There are one or two altruistic moments but the leads are mainly anti-heroes.

I personally love the look and feel of shady fortune-telling parlors so I enjoyed that throughout. As far as Tarot goes the show mainly looks derisively at the cards with the single exception of one or two scenes in which the lead characters refer to the effectiveness of the symbols to work with our intuition - but of course in both scenes they are speaking to a person they are trying to con.

As we see in the trailers, the leading man develops psychic powers unexpectedly - but this of course further solidifies the idea that all other forms of fortune telling are hokum.

Isabella Rossellini is a power house and I adored watching her as the head of one of the families running the fortune telling trade. She is gorgeous as ever and her costumes are faboo.
 

MissChiff

I really enjoyed this show...I agree with Shade about the feel of it..the fortune tellers parlors...just great. I watched the series in two days...I hope they have a second season.
 

RoseLily

I've been binge watching this show all week. Love it! It' the Sopranos Meets the Romanies. It can be pretty graphic at times, there is a lot of very dark comedy, great music, and I can't even begin to keep track of all the twists and turns. It's setting stereotyping back decades, pink neon tarot signs are abundant, and I am a fan! Bring your sense of humor, take it for what it is, and enjoy it!