I watched season 4 of Goliath

 

It was enjoyable, and since it was set in San Francisco I enjoyed seeing the sights that I will never again visit. I used to fly out there three or four times a year, but have not been this century. I hear it's changed.

Other enjoyable things about the final season of that show include the visual aspects of the filming. Say what you will about Billy Bob Thornton's acting, how he lives his life, etc., the boy has a good eye for what to put up on the screen. The framing of various shots and the camera angles were very interesting, and many of them, new to me. He did a good job and has obviously been paying attention to composition.

The acting is all over the map - it looked like the "I see dead people" kid was there just to pick up a paycheck. Bruce Dern was very good, very convincing, assuming he was acting. There were lots of other familiar faces and I liked that.

The story line - meh - to be a good story you have to have a good villain, and the Farmers Insurance guy was just not up to the task. Also, opioids are so last year - this year Big Pharma is making billions and killing tens of thousands with the Trump Clot Shot, so they missed being topical by a wide margin.

At its heart, this series was a courtroom drama, and to be effective you have to have a good story, good law talking and compelling witnesses. All of those could have been better, but you get what you get. The woman judge seems to waver and wander and behave in capricious way with regards to the law, but she is a woman who went to law school, so you can't expect anything other than emotional garbage from her.

All that aside, however, the way BBT filmed that part of the season is great. I am colorblind but I get the sense that he muted the colors almost to the point of it becoming black and white. Very interesting to look at, and that, combined with how he framed the shots, those scenes kept my attention.

The dream sequences were also very good - the symbolism and the stories told in flashbacks to Billy's youth were top notch. I get the sense that Thornton likes baseball.

There were some random things that were never explained, but that's not always a bad thing. It is Chinatown, after all.

That's it. Entertaining, not the best, not the worst, but I am glad I watched it.

Edit:

Right at the end there are some lines being read, I figured it was one of Troop's favorite alky poets or someone like that, turns out it was part of Kerouac's "October in the Railroad Earth". Interesting use of language in that ramble, and I liked the part "It was the fantastic drowse and drum hum of lum mum afternoon nothin’ to do, ole Frisco with end of land sadness--the people--the alley full of trucks and cars of businesses near abouts and nobody knew or far from cared who I was all my life three thousand five hundred miles from birth-O opened up and at last belonged to me in Great America."

End of land sadness - I got that. It's like you kept going west until you could go no farther and there you are.