When age is catching up and your prime as an actor seems to be nothing but gone, what would you do to re-assure yourself that you still have a life?
The Kominsky Method was a pretty honest look into life after acting. Sandy Kominsky (played by the brilliant Michael Douglas) managed to establish himself as a great acting teacher. His students love him, but is that enough for him to love himself and learn to love other people?
As you grow old, there are certain things you have face, whether you like it or not. First of all is people around you starting to drop off. The mentioning of the number of funerals one attends every year is morbid but true. And the fact that Sandy couldn’t face the illness of his best friend is a very cruel and realistic reflection of life at his age. He still wants to believe there is still a lot of life in and around him, but whenever the punch of reality comes along, it become harder and harder for him to get back up.
One of his redemptions at this point of his life was his resolution with his daughter, whom, had since his divorce, been living with her mother. Now she is helping him running the acting school and dealing with all the fallouts he triggered by his reckless and irresponsible lifestyle. She became the reality check for him that he doesn’t want but needed. Their interactions and power dynamics have changed, and the fact that he wanted to be part of her life without facing part of the responsibilities sometimes made things extremely hard for both of them.
Sandy is loved by his students, as eccentric as some of them were, they all love him, and most think that they can make it in the industry. But then which acting student doesn’t think so? Sandy’s love for his students made it hard for him at times to inform them of the truth of the industry, but his Kominsky Method of acting was well respected in the industry, despite his lack of a sustaining leading man career in the field. For him it was not his ability but his standards, but for others, it was not because of his ability but his attitude. But Sandy is not the one to favour reality checks, especially when one of his best friends is his cynical, bitter but ridiculously successful agent.
Sandy’s agent Norman Newlander (played with ease by Alan Arkin) has always been ruthless, cynical and straight to the point. For him his success was built on this no bull attitude with all his actors and employees. He doesn’t go in to the office as much but at the same time managed to control the behaviour and performance of all his agents, staff and actors. The only thing he could not control was his wife and his daughter. He loves his wife and despise his daughter, which he may or may not know he was a contributing factor. Sometimes watching him made you wonder, “Do all successful people need to trade in their families for their success?” Age made him transforming from a cynical person to an at times intolerably cynical person. I do at times felt that Chuck Lorre, the creator of the show had overplayed his cynicism, but then I have seen elderly people became more and more intolerable about things around them as the years progress, so maybe that is just an uncomfortable reflection of the real life.
The Kominsky Method is a sometimes funny and sometimes dark dramedy. When it dealt with serious subjects like cancer, deaths, drug addiction, cults etc., it does not hold back at all. But the comedic elements of the show when delivered by the really brilliant cast, including Sarah Baker as Sandy’s daughter Mindy, and all the actors portraying as Sandy students, made the whole show so much more digestible and a lot less depressing. Also, the 30 minutes chunk structure made the show a lot more accessible for me when I just need something quick and relaxing after a long day at work.
I personally quite enjoyed The Kominsky Method. It is one of the few things that I turned out really enjoying without affected by any hype around me. And maybe that makes me feel owning the experience a lot more. I do look forward to the third and probably last season of the series. I do hope for a happy ending but with this kind of show, you never know.
The Kominsky Method is now available on Netflix
