Crime
The Lowdown
FX’s show ‘The Lowdown’ features an all-star cast, but its all-problems content makes it unapproachable for families.
Jack lives a pretty simple life. He goes on walks, talks to his girlfriend on the phone and has a roommate.
He’s also in prison. So every 46 paces, he has to turn around on his walks. His “phone” is a rolled-up magazine stuck inside the u-bend of a toilet. And his roommate keeps a cockroach for a pet.
But then the coronavirus hit the United States and changed everything.
The governor decided to release nonviolent convicts in order to relieve over-crowded prisons and prevent outbreaks of the disease.
“Go home,” Jack, his roommate, Rooster, and his girlfriend, Gloria, are told.
Only Jack doesn’t have a home. He’s been in prison for the past 26 years for selling marijuana. He isn’t even sure how modern society looks—let alone how to navigate a pandemic-ridden one.
But at least he’s not the only one.
Rooster offers to let Jack stay at his mom Barb’s house.
It’s not an ideal situation. For starters, Rooster also invites Gloria to stay with them. And when Gloria discovers that Jack is the guy she’s been talking to through a toilet, she isn’t too pleased.
Jack isn’t a mix of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and former Major-League player Alex Rodriguez, as he claimed. And the picture he mailed to her of his (ahem) private region wasn’t even his: It was Rooster’s.
Gloria promptly dumps him, making the three inches of drywall separating her and Jack really awkward. Then Barb warns him that if she gets lonely and drunk, she might get “grabby,” and that he’ll have to resist her advances since she’s trying to remain faithful to her own online boyfriend.
But worse than that, there’s a catch to staying at Barb’s house. If you want to sleep under her roof, eat her food and drink her non-rotten-egg-smelling water, you have to help her and her son pull heists.
At first, Jack resists. He doesn’t want to go back to prison, after all.
Unfortunately, that’s not really an option with a stay-in-place order in effect. Jack is terrified of contracting the virus. And since he has no money and no job, he can’t even feed himself.
Reluctantly, he agrees to assist. (And after 26 years of chatting with inmates convicted of theft, larceny and grand theft auto, he knows exactly how to pull off the perfect crime.)
But he has a way of reconciling these new crimes: Their crew will only steal from people who deserve it—like the guy who’s hoarding toilet paper and selling it at a profit or the Congresswoman who’s making money off the pandemic due to insider trading. Then, they give a portion of every heist they pull to people who are suffering the most from the pandemic.
It’s not a perfect system—and they’ll definitely go to jail if they get caught—but it’s one Jack can live with.
Sprung is available to stream for free on FreeVee (formerly known as IMDb TV). But it’s not free of problems.
The show makes a lot of jokes about politics, the economy and the coronavirus pandemic. And while these are meant to be light-hearted, they might be too much for sensitive viewers.
Additionally, the show doesn’t shy away from the topic of sex. We don’t see anything beyond some makeout sessions and skimpy outfits, but it’s discussed a lot. (And that picture I mentioned earlier keeps getting placed in Gloria’s room by Barb, who wants to tempt Gloria to hook up with Rooster so she can have a grandbaby.)
Jack was arrested for selling marijuana. And since the crew seems fine with drinking and smoking cigarettes, they probably wouldn’t mind if he found a way to get them some harder drugs.
Finally, while Jack and his new crew are taking on Robin Hood’s “steal from the rich to give to the poor” attitude, the fact remains that they’re still stealing. And breaking and entering. And knocking out their victims with homemade chloroform. And possibly kidnapping.
Jack is sprung from prison after 26 years only to realize the world outside has become its own kind of prison due to a pandemic.
Gloria receives a picture of a man’s genitals. We don’t see the image, but it’s discussed throughout the episode, and Barb keeps hiding the polaroid in Gloria’s room, hoping it will entice Gloria to have sex with Rooster and give Barb a grandchild.
A couple makes out and then the man slaps the woman’s rear end. Jack’s crew plants gay pornography on someone’s computer to cover up a crime. We hear about premarital sex. There’s a reference to masturbation. Someone explains Bruce Jenner’s transition to Jack. We hear an adult man got into trouble previously for offering rides on his moped to underage girls. We see a shirtless man and some women in revealing outfits.
A man in prison admits to strangling his brother because he caught the brother having an affair with his husband. Barb says that Rooster’s dad died falling off the roof, and we see a brief flashback of the event. We hear Rooster accidentally shot his mom in the leg once.
A man becomes drunk and passes out. Jack’s crew then uses homemade chloroform to ensure the man and his girlfriend won’t wake up during their heist. Some characters smoke cigarettes. Jack says he went to prison for selling marijuana illegally. We hear that Rooster’s brothers joined a drug cartel (and that the brothers often shot guns at each other in anger).
Barb tells Jack and Gloria to “say an extra prayer” if their families have histories of heart disease before eating her food. She and Rooster then say silent prayers before chowing down. Gloria scoffs at Barb’s claims that her prayers for Rooster to be freed from prison were answered.
Two people talk through a “phone” they created in prison using their toilets. Someone claims the coronavirus was started because a person ate a rotten bat. We see Jack go to extreme measures to avoid catching the virus.
We hear that people were arrested for various forms of stealing and identity theft. (And Rooster has apparently been to juvie and prison multiple times.) Then we see them commit these same crimes once they are released from prison. People lie and blackmail each other. We hear several jokes about the coronavirus pandemic and prominent political figures. Characters utter about eight uses of the s-word, as well as “a–,” “b–ch,” “c–k,” “d–n,” “d–k” and “h—.” God’s name is abused a few times as well.
Jack is touched by the story of a nurse who has been sleeping in her car between shifts so that she won’t accidentally bring the coronavirus home to her elderly mother (who is caring for her two small children while she works). Jack steals two computer tablets from Barb (which she had stolen from someone’s porch) and anonymously gives them to the mother and her children so that they can video chat.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
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