The Magician’s Hat is Empty in ‘Black Rabbit’

If you’ve seen Breaking Bad, Ozark, and Uncut Gems, you’ve seen about 85% of a better version of Black Rabbit, an 8-episode limited series that’s been near the top or at the top of the Netflix series chart since it debuted on Sept. 18.

Jude Law (with the same non-yielding hairline since 1997’s Gattaca) and podcaster Jason Bateman play New Yawk brothers Jake and Vince. They were in a one-hit-wonder alt-rock band before they opened a chic and popular restaurant with the same name: Black Rabbit. Something went very wrong at the restaurant involving Vince, who disappeared for a long time; now he’s reemerged with a shaggy beard and gambling debts, sending a tsunami of chaos in Jake’s direction.

Said chaos culminates in an armed robbery at the restaurant that plays out in the first episode; the series then backtracks to catch us up on what led to that night. We see this mostly through recent flashbacks, way-way-back flashbacks, and one off-model Rashomon-style episode late in the season showing the robbery from different characters’ points of view. Then the show spends an additional episode and a half mopping up the narrative mess it made showing the aftermath that follows the robbery, plus an overlong epilogue that strains for unearned profundity.

Look, this might be your thing. Black Rabbit wants to be an inside-baseball ensemble about running a restaurant like The Bear, dredge up family traumas like Mare of Easttown, and have funny, sardonic dialogue – mostly delivered by Mr. Sarcasm Jason Bateman – while also blowing up the lives of its characters with rising, frantic tension like the aforementioned Uncut Gems.

But even with eight lengthy episodes to play with, Black Rabbit never comes close to reaching the heights of any of those productions. It’s neither as smart, nor as stylish, as any of them, and ultimately it has very little to say about its characters except that they are extremely flawed. For what other reason would its makers subject us to siblings who get two chances in life to be huge successes, drawing talented people into their orbit like moths to Klieg lights, only to throw it all away on bad decisions and selfish pursuits?

For a little while it works. Jude Law and his strange Christopher Walken-by-way-of-Tony Soprano American accent gels with Bateman’s fuck everything patter and you start to believe these two men could be toxic brothers with a deep, dark secret.

But despite having loving families who forgive their many sins and coworkers at the restaurant who adore them (at least at first), Jake and Vince are just assholes. As a pair, they’re irredeemably selfish, a little stupid, and unlucky as an addict and his enabler could be. It’s clear from the first episode where it will all go: they’re going to spiral down until it’s too late for Jake to stop Vince from ruining everything. Jake will, in fact, contribute quite a lot to their downward spiral.

The two are surrounded by a glowing cast of costars who never get enough to do, even when the show tries to shift the focus in their direction for a few meager scenes. Cleopatra Coleman is luminous, but written boringly, as a designer Jake falls for; Amaka Okafor plays a talented but increasingly troubled chef; and for some reason, Morgan Spector from The Gilded Age shows up as a wise fixer who spends most of his time handing off envelopes of cash on behalf of a lecherous artist because Venmo transactions aren’t as visually interesting.

When Jake delivers a eulogy for a minor character, it’s clear it’s just an acting exercise for Law; we didn’t see enough of the person he’s talking about to care or for the monologue to matter.

Only on one count does Black Rabbit break out of its retread gear and that’s with Oscar-winner Troy Kotsur, who plays a passionate and principled mob boss with a mess of a family situation. Without speaking, Kotsur terrifies and fascinates in every scene where he features. Yet, the show doesn’t know when to quit and sells out Kotsur’s character in the final episode with a treacly coda.

Ultimately, Jake and Vince’s increasingly desperate moves damage the brothers, but also hurt those in their orbit even more. It can’t be a coincidence that with the casting of Black and brown actors in the roles of the chefs and designer and musician (Sope Dirisu) who made their restaurant succeed, that they’re the ones whose lives are most upended (or just ended) because of these two entitled white guys.

Vince and Jake have excuse after excuse, and they’re given multiple chances to set things back on track. But of course, they can’t. They won’t. And everyone else pays the price.

If that sounds like a fun hang, Netflix has got your back and you’ll be entertained by Black Rabbit. But don’t be surprised if it feels overly familiar and extremely sweaty.