Eels. Why'd It Have To Be Eels?

There's a scene in Bodkin, a 2024 miniseries on Netflix, where a shambolic David Wilmot—all big-eyed and fatherly—approaches podcaster Gilbert, played by Will Forte, on a bridge in the titular town. Gilbert has just gotten off the phone with his wife, and they are having a rough go of things. Seamus, Wilmot's character, is quickly dismissed by the upset Gilbert, and it appears Seamus is going to leave. Instead, he returns to his truck, flicks on the radio which just happens to start playing Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time, and much to Gilbert's chagrin, he watches as Seamus dances back across the street and pulls Gilbert into his arms to give the podcaster some advice about his marriage.

It's a rare scene to see two hetero males just being sweet to one another in movies or television, and the scene affected me a great deal. The primary reason is there was someone who was going out of his way to succor Gilbert when Gilbert didn't even want it. I love tender scenes like this between men. There was no macho posturing. No alcohol involved. They aren't even related, so it's not one of those stereotyped moments you see in films where fathers reconcile with their children for one scene, and for us to cry, before whatever the entertainment's denouement.

Of course, the loveliness of the scene is soon followed by the volatile Seamus using a stapler on a Traveler after said Traveler makes an ill-timed joke, but I will take what I can get.

I'm not sure why I sat on Bodkin for so long. It has loads of things I love: Irish people, Irish people being drunk, Irish people being rude, and loads of character actors you'd recognize from any movie with Brendan Gleeson or Colin Farrell (or both) over the last 20 years. It takes place around Halloween, which is my zodiac sign! Or Samhain as they call it in that lush green setting. The mystery is even intriguing.

Dove, a reporter for The Guardian, ends up in hot water when a whistleblower she's working with ends up killing himself after his name is leaked. She's forced to return to her native Ireland to guide (or babysit) Gilbert and his mouse assistant Emmy (sometimes Sizergh). Gilbert is in Bodkin to do a podcast on the anniversary of the disappearance of three people at Bodkin's Samhain Festival, which stopped the night of the disappearances, but now a local tech mogul is planning on starting the festival up again as a thank you for welcoming his tech center into the community. We are told early in the first episode that Ireland is the Tech Center of Europe by Seán, the trio's notoriously unreliable driver and guide.

From that point, the show springs off into many different directions that probably feel a little too convoluted. I'm not sure if we really needed the subplot about eels, but it was great to hear David Wilmot give a stirring monologue about how we've been to the fuckin' moon but we don't know how eels fuck.

This is all allegedly based on a true story.

If you don't know who David Wilmot is, you'd recognize him from any number of things. I remember him fondly as the psychopath—or could it be sociopath?—from The Guard, where he's offed by Brendan Gleeson's Gerry Boyle who has a tiny pistol hidden in his crotch. As Wilmot and Gleeson wax philosophical, Gerry admits to having a crab problem which allows him to get the drop on Wilmot's character. It's a great scene because you don't know where it's going, and I think Wilmot might be a master of that. One minute a slow dance, the next a staple to the forehead.

Bodkin isn't a great miniseries, but it is a very good one. There's no bad acting, though some over-acting, but you might expect that. Will Forte is such an underrated guy. Here he plays the everyman fish-out-of-water with severe marital problems very well. It's not a comic role; he plays it earnestly, and that makes him all the better for the part. He carries with him a lightness that makes him fun to watch.

I was lost by the end, but I understood the big picture, and like a lot of Irish entertainment, you have to accept the laughs with the melancholy and the hope with the tragedy. I think that's what ultimately makes Bodkin a very good watch.

And the dance.

Man, I should have had this one loaded up for St. Patrick's Day, but I didn't start word goblin until two days later so fuck you.