Stream It Or Skip It: ‘One Mississippi’ On Amazon Prime Video

Here at Decider, we’ve committed ourselves to watching the fall pilots for you and reporting back to help you prioritize your viewing using our super-scientific rating system. Below, we tell you everything you need to know about Amazon’s new fall pilot One Mississippi.

A Guide to Our Rating System

Opening Shot: The opening of a pilot can set a mood for the entire show (think Six Feet Under); thus, we examine the first shot of each pilot.
The gist: The “who, what, where, when, why?�� of the pilot.
Our take: What did we think? Are we desperate for more, or engaging in a desperate, Faustian bargain to get those 43 minutes back?
Sex and Skin: That’s all you care about anyway, right? We let you know how quickly the show gets down and dirty.
Parting Shot: Where does the pilot leave us? Hanging off a cliff, or running for the hills?
Sleeper Star: Basically, someone in the cast who is not the top-billed star (Sorry, Rob Lowe!) who shows great promise.
Most Pilot-y Line: Pilots have a lot of work to do: world building, character establishing, and stakes raising. Sometimes that results in some pretty clunky dialogue.
Our call: We’ll let you know if you should, ahem, Stream It or Skip It.

One Mississippi

Opening Shot: Comedian Tig Notaro — playing a version of herself — is speaking into a radio microphone. She is telling a bittersweet story about how she used to run a “world-class restaurant” in her childhood bedroom for her stuffed animals. Her mother saved the furry friends in a trunk and Tig says that if comedy doesn’t pan out, she can always take the animals out and reopen the restaurant.
The gist: One Mississippi is a “sad-com” following Notaro’s struggle to deal with her mother’s sudden death while battling both C-Diff and breast cancer. The comic had a legendary set at Los Angeles nightclub Largo a few years back where she made exquisite humor out of her slew of recent tragedies and this is the dramatization of that time. The show is called One Mississippi as a nod to the fact that she’s returned to her small hometown in the Southern state to process it all.
Our take: Notaro’s great gift as a comedian is her ability to use her wit to poke at the sadness, fear, and pain that she’s felt, and in turn, she gives us the freedom to mine strange joy out of everything that’s ever ailed us. This show is a continuation of that journey and offers Notaro a new milieu to explore grief and suffering with hope and humor. It’s beautifully shot by Nicole Holofcener and features great performances. So, yeah, it’s as good as we were hoping.
Sex and Skin: Tig’s girlfriend Brooke (Casey Wilson) climbs into bed with her and asks to see her breasts post-mastectomy. She refuses and the two cuddle.
Parting Shot: After finally getting the courage to listen to her mother’s last voicemail (at her mother’s funeral), Tig turns around and two boys run past. One of them yells, “Go to Hell!” at her. Tig smiles slightly to herself.
Sleeper Star: John Rothman is one of those actors you’ve seen in the background of everything, but he is devastating as Tig’s grieving stepfather. There’s both humor and tragedy in how he’s trying to hold his emotions in check so tightly that he’s about to burst.
Most Pilot-y Line:  Every line in the show feels refreshingly honest or sharply humorous, so it’s hard to find a clunker. Though, Casey Wilson does have a few lines that are extremely Hollywood, such as, “I actually have a friend in LA who is a death doula.”
Our call: Stream it. It stands toe-to-toe with Amazon’s Transparent in terms of artistry and sheer emotional beauty.

[Stream One Mississippi on Prime Video]

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