Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Lodge 49’ On AMC, Where A Surfer Down On His Luck Finds An Unusual Refuge

AMC has leaned on antihero characters during its 11 years as a purveyor of original programming. But with Lodge 49, it’s going in a bit of a different direction, towards a hero that’s optimistic and tries to do the right thing. Does it make for a show that people will want to watch?

LODGE 49: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A long shot of a beach, then from the right side of the screen, a guy with a metal detector is seen walking along the sand.

The Gist: Sean “Dud” Dudley (Wyatt Russell) seems like he’s just a Lewbowski-esque ne’er-do-well who pawns things he finds on the beach to get money, pays for gas with change, hangs out at the local donut shop next to his family pool store, and crashes at his old apartments in order to sleep.

But, in reality, he’s a bit lost, as we find out later in the pilot. He owes his twin sister Liz (Sonya Cassidy) money, and is afraid to ask her if he can crash on her couch. Their father, who owned the pool business, left them with nothing after surfing out into the deep blue and never being found. On top of that, Dud suffered a snake bite that he has never quite recovered from, and he can’t surf anymore.

He finds a ring in the sand that he discovers is from the Ancient and Benevolent Order of the Lynx, and when his car runs out of gas in front of the Lynx’s local Lodge 49, he thinks it’s fate.

Meanwhile, Ernie Fontaine (Brent Jennings) is a 59-year-old plumbing salesman whose business had cratered to the point where he made bets to keep things afloat, he has to meet his new girlfriend Connie (Linda Edmond) at a hotel because she’s married, and he just wants to become the “Solemn Protector” of the Lodge, especially after the current leader, Larry Loomis (Kenneth Welsh), has his umpteenth heart attack.

Dud runs into Ernie at the lodge and finds out how to join. He thinks this will really help him out in life, knowing all these upstanding citizens of Long Beach, and when he tells the members his story at the lodge’s tavern, Larry punches him… And has another heart attack.

Our Take: If you watched the first 2/3 of the first episode of Lodge 49, you’d likely think the same way we did: It’s not a bad show, it’s just weird. Dud seems like a good guy, just aimless. He’s smarter than his circumstances indicate, he likes to spew “research” that’s equal parts informative and bullshit, and he knows that the guy who runs the pawn shop is going to die alone. We also know that Ernie is being kept awake by crows and that he really wants to make his mark in some way, even at this later stage in life. But it just seems like vignettes of two lives that aren’t going the way the people living them expected.

But when Dud spends his first night getting to know everyone at the Lynx lodge, and especially when he finally relates his story to them, the episode comes together and you get the idea of what Lodge 49 is about. It’s definitely not high drama; there are plenty of moments that are amusing, albeit not really laugh-out-loud funny. And there’s a fantasy element there, especially in Dud’s brain; he thinks fate is drawing him to this dusty old lodge, and he thinks he’s been there before.

So even though it takes a while for things to come together, the effort by creator Jim Gavin and showrunner Peter Ocko to paint the picture of how Dud’s and Ernie’s lives are in disarray should help later on as we see Dud try to get back to the life he once loved with the help of the people in the lodge.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in this show.

Parting Shot: After Larry is carted out, Ernie invites Dud to have one last drink before he locks up. The two of them look at themselves in the mirror behind the bar. We then pan up to a drawing of a knight and his apprentice fighting a snake. Hm. Older and younger, the snake imagery… not exactly subtle, is it?

Sleeper Star: David Pasquesi is one of those “that guy” character actors who always distinguishes himself, and he does so here as Blaise St. John, a pot apothecary and the lodge’s bartender/philosopher.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Dud gets caught crashing in his old pad, one person in the couple who happens to be looking at it was a former classmate of his and, apparently, still mildly attracted to him. It was awkward just for the sake of being awkward.

Our Call: Stream It. Lodge 49 is definitely quirky. But now that some of the exposition is out of the way, it should be a fun ride.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Where to stream Lodge 49