Spoilers Below
On the surface, Eastbound & Down is the quintessential blue comedy. The dialogue is laden with expletives, there is an inordinate amount of casual cocaine use, and bare breasted women are on display in every episode. But if you look deeper, Eastbound & Down, like all HBO shows, is actually a drama with humorous notes. At the very least, Eastbound is a dark comedy.
This article may be a bit premature as there is still one episode left in the series but I feel that this show has delivered some very real emotional gut punches this season and nobody has been talking about it.
I have argued with regular contributor and good friend Michael Margetis about the merits of the series’ second and third seasons. It’s widely accepted that Eastbound’s first season is it’s greatest but I believe the series has been solid throughout it’s run. While some have criticized the choice of putting Kenny in Mexico for it’s second season I believe it was simply another vehicle for one of televisions greatest antiheroes.
Kenny Powers and Walter White: Two Men Who Missed Glory
I am going to go out on a limb and compare Kenny Powers to Walter White. While the shows are completely different, they are both driven by a flawed man who is a victim of his own hubris. Both started their careers off with high aspirations, Walter with Gray Matter Technologies and Kenny with a career in professional baseball, but both failed and felt slighted by the world around them.
Walter White mangled his family, his friends and his moral code not for money, as the show originally indicated, but for power. “I’m in the empire business,” growls Heisenberg in the first half of fifth season.
Nothing could truly satisfy the great Heisenberg, not the barrels full of money in the desert nor his emotional enslavement of Jesse. Everyone, including his infant daughter, was a tool and Kenny Powers is no different.
For the first three seasons, Eastbound & Down was about Kenny Powers finding redemption. Whether it was playing in the big leagues or marrying the woman of his dreams, you could almost forgive Kenny’s despicable actions because he was the underdog, there was always a bigger douchebag or insurmountable odds playing against Kenny. But with the penultimate episode we find Kenny on top of the world. Following Guy Young’s racist rant, Kenny is the new host of Sports Sesh and he has more money than he knows what to do with.
However, this is not enough for Kenny and he uses his new found success to destroy his friends, family and ultimately his success. Kenny has used his partner in crime, Stevie, just like Walter used Jesse. When Walt is virtually broke in the beginning of season 5, Jesse fronts him an incredible amount of money. This is the same man who wouldn’t give Jesse more than $500 when his car and millions became evidence in the death of Tuco Salamanca. Kenny Powers does the same with Stevie, for years Stevie has put his family’s financial well being on the line to support Kenny, but when Stevie needs money to buy his kids Christmas presents Kenny dismisses him and calls his wife a bitch.
Fame and infamy are the two things Kenny and Walt seek, respectively. They both hope to be remembered when they are gone. Kenny and Walt can’t just be good at something, they need to be the greatest. Walter found this out the hard way. He may have had one last victory against the Nazi’s but at the cost of his family and his life.
Kenny Powers has one last episode to find redemption, I’m not sure he really deserves it after saying some of the cruelest things to April in this penultimate episode. Every season so far has ended with beginning a new phase of his life. Can Kenny redeem himself one last time or will he die on the floor of a warehouse with only his former glory surrounding him?
The series finale of Eastbound & Down airs this Sunday on HBO and HBO GO.
