Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dopesick’ On Hulu, A Sprawling Drama About OxyContin And How It Made Millions Into Addicts

Dopesick has gotten a lot of attention because it signals Michael Keaton’s first TV series project since The Company in 2007. But it’s also an ambitious and sprawling miniseries about the OxyContin addiction epidemic and how Purdue Pharmaceuticals, government regulators, and unwitting doctors conspired to get America hooked on the opioid.

DOPESICK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “1986”. We see a closeup of a man saying “The time has come to redefine the nature of pain.”

The Gist: The man who is making that statement is Richard Sackler (Michael Stuhlbarg), who is proposing to members of his family, major shareholders in Purdue Pharmaceuticals, that they take the time release element of their soon-to-be-genericized MS Contin and create an opioid that doctors can prescribe for people with moderate but chronic pain. The idea is that the new drug, OxyContin, would be less addictive than other opioids because of the time release function. Sackler’s claim is that only 1% of people taking the drug will get addicted to it.

The narrative of the series Dopesick, about how millions in the most vulnerable parts of the country got hooked on Oxy in the nineties, careens between this introduction by Sackler to 2005, when U.S. attorneys Rick Mountcastle (Peter Sarsgaard) and Randy Ramseyer (John Hoogenakker) take grand jury testimony about the addictiveness of the drug.

In between, we go back to the late ’90s, when Dr. Samuel Finnix (Michael Keaton), who is the type of rural doctor who knows just about everyone in the small mining town where he practices, is being introduced to Oxy by Purdue salesman Billy Cutler (Will Poulter). Cutler is shown in sales training to emphasize that the FDA added a statement to the drug’s label that Oxy is less addictive than other opioids. Finnix is skeptical; he’s reluctant to prescribe any opioid to manage moderate pain because of the addictiveness of the drugs in that family. But Cutler’s sales pitch at least makes Finnix consider Oxy.

Dr. Finnix is eventually called to help Betsy Mallum (Kaitlyn Dever), a young miner following in her father’s footsteps. She actually likes mining, and likes proving that a woman can do what was traditionally a man’s job, but an on-the-job back injury has slowed her down. Finnix wants her to rest, but Betsy wants to work so she can save enough to move out of town, where she can be with her girlfriend Grace Pell (Cleopatra Coleman) — her supervisor at the mine — and get out of the harsh judgmental environment fostered by her religious parents (Mare Winningham, Ray McKinnon). Finnix gives her Oxy, but warns her only to take two a day.

We go back to 2002; Mountcastle and Ramseyer get the go ahead from their boss John Brownlee (Jake McDorman) to investigate the uptick in crime in the rural Appalachian region due to the influx of Oxy. They talk to DEA agent Bridget Meyer (Rosario Dawson), who spent the previous 3 years looking into Oxy after she found bags of it at a cocaine bust. It’s been such a consuming investigation that it cost her her marriage, but it was stopped without resolution.

In the meantime, back in the late ’90s, Sackler is trying to ensure the warring factions on the board of Purdue that OxyContin’s sales will more than make up for the money he’s spending in R&D.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The sprawling nature of Dopesick brings to mind some of Ryan Murphy’s more ambitious series, like all three seasons of American Crime Story. However, creator Danny Strong and director/EP Barry Levinson use more deliberate, considered pacing than Murphy ever did.

Our Take: Dopesick, adapted by Strong from the nonfiction book by Beth Macy, takes its time in the first episode setting up the story about how Purdue, regulatory officials, and doctors all conspired – willingly or not — to get Americans hooked on OxyContin. The fact that the company got the FDA to put the unprecedented statement about the drug’s addictiveness on its label, without any clinical trial evidence to back it up, is something that would infuriate anyone whose lives were torn apart by their own or a loved one’s addiction to Oxy.

Strong has to tell the story in a non-linear fashion because he has so many characters, from all sides of the story, involved. We have to see Meyer sign her divorce papers in 2002 before we jump back 3 years to see her make the raid where she finds the bags of Oxy right after making a date with her future husband; it’s an immediate sign that the investigation she undertook cost her her marriage. We need to see Fennix’s testimony to the grand jury in 2005 before we see him skeptically accept Cutler’s sales pitch nine years earlier.

Those jumps in time can get confusing if you’re not paying close attention, but this isn’t a show that you can watch while scrolling on your phone. There’s a lot going on, and a lot of people to keep track of. It’s indicative of just how widespread the crisis became, even at its earliest stages, that Strong has about 5 stories that he’s trying to tie together.

The series is definitely buoyed by its strong performances, from Keaton’s reserved and reticent Dr. Fennix, to Dever’s confident portrayal of Betsy, who just wants to be herself but knows it can’t be in her hometown. Sarsgaard and Dawson do their usual excellent work. But there were moments during the first episode where giving background on these characters got in the way of telling the story about how Oxy got so ingrained in American society so quickly. That’s the story we’d like to see going forward in this limited series; now that we see what’s at stake for the individual players, we’d like to see the emotional gauntlets these people go through because of this conspiracy between Purdue and certain FDA officials.

Sex and Skin: Betsy has under-the-covers sex with Grace, but that’s about it.

Parting Shot: After giving Betsy the Oxy and seeing her parents pray for the drug to take her pain away, Fennix gets in his car and drives through the snowy town back to his office.

Sleeper Star: We’ll cite Mare Winningham here, because we’ve been fans of hers for decades now. We just wish she played more than uptight moms and grandmothers, which seem to be the only roles she’s considered for these days.

Most Pilot-y Line: After the sales training, Billy tries to ingratiate himself to a salesperson named Amber Collins (Phillipa Soo) by complimenting her Gucci suit. Her first response: “Are you gay?”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Dopesick will certainly be a slow burn in spots. But it deals with a subject whose depth most people aren’t aware of, and the performances are so good that it should keep viewers interested.

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, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Dopesick On Hulu