'Run,' Do Not Walk: HBO's New Smart, Spiky, Sexy Comedy/Thriller

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The premise is big, bold: Two ex-lovers make good on a 15-year-old promise to drop everything, hop on a train, and see what happens. The execution: Grounded. Precise. Real. That contrast is why 'Run' is the best new show of 2020, says critic ghweldon.

They can't, of course, and the many tiny ways this begins to dawn on them — we watch it happening in the tilt of Wever's head, in the way Gleeson's eyes jitter in his face — makes for a kind of ruefully knowing comedy. We can see how much they've idealized this reunion over the years, which makes every moment they actually spend together sexy, and dangerous — and fragile.

Again and again, their idyll threatens to shatter — a bit of flirty banter goes awry, or a wave of guilt crashes over one of the other, or a muttered aside inflicts a deep wound. But they keep coming back, and before too long the pressures that endanger their time together shift from internal to external. This transition happens a few episodes in, when the series slides from rom-com to thriller... um ...-com., plays with time in a smart, revealing way.

Wever is great, here — sliding her warm, lilting voice up and down her register in a way that switches from flirty to furious and back again, often within a single line of dialogue. Gleeson is funny without ever lunging at a joke . The performances are layered enough for us to look past Ruby's selfishness and Billy's shadiness and still root for them. Even Rich Sommer, as the husband Ruby left in the lurch, gets a scene or two to invest his character with deeper levels than expected.

— a clear-eyed intelligence about adult sexuality combined with a sense of humor that explores interpersonal dynamics without relying on familiar tropes. In fact, that mid-season turn from romantic comedy to thriller feels like a transition from

 

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ghweldon Lost me in the first episode when they boarded an Amtrak to Chicago at Grand Central Station. So unrealistic!

ghweldon Entertaining pilot episode.

SilverTone_78 ghweldon NPR *and* Run? I've never retweeted so fast

ghweldon It's not original :/

ghweldon Morals not money

ghweldon Commercial not news

ghweldon Gossip not news

ghweldon Plus Merritt Weaver!

ghweldon Sounds stupid, actually

ghweldon Hello Before Sunrise

ghweldon Before Sunrise called and is pissed off.

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