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List Price: $39.98 | | Label: Hbo Home Video
Salesrank: 4472
Released: April 1, 2008 |
| Our Price: $9.99 |
| Used Price: $9.84 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Just north of the border, in the tired coastal town of Imperial Beach, CA, live three generations of Yosts: surfing royalty turned society misfits. The Yost's reign and reputation, once defined in the cure of a perfect wave, has been eroded by years of bad luck, addiction and hubris. But just as things are looking like they can't get worse, a stranger named John arrives - and the Yost's banal existence is lifted into something profound, miraculous and, possibly, universal.
Description of John from Cincinnati - The Complete First Season:
A 2007 HBO television series created by Deadwood's David Milch, John from Cincinnati details a week in the dysfunctional Yost family--a family comprised of three generations of men obsessed with surfing who experience firsthand the perils of fame, paranormal events, and an inexplicable realization of the interconnectedness of man. Past surfing great Mitch Yost (Bruce Greenwood) had his career halted by a knee injury, but passed his love of surfing onto his son Butchie (Brian Van Holt) only to have fame drive his son to a heavy drug use that's destroying his life. Butchie's son Shaun (Greyson Fletcher) is being raised by Mitch and his wife Cissy (Rebecca De Mornay) and also possesses a deep love surfing and a talent that promises him a great future, if he can only get his grandfather to allow him to compete. The family's circle of friends and acquaintances seem mostly to argue, swear, and generally tear each other down and include retired and mentally unstable police officer Bill (Ed O'Neill), surfer girl Kai (Keala Kennelly) who works at the Yost's surf shop and watches out for Shaun, motel manager Ramon (Luiz Gứzman), Butchie's settlement lawyer Palaka (Paul Ben-Victor), and a few other seemingly unrelated townspeople. The mysterious arrival of John, who insists on seeing Butchie, sparks the beginning of one strangely paranormal experience after another for the family and community including unexplained levitations and visions, a haunted hotel room, and two resurrections from death. Somehow, John emphasizes the connectedness of both family members and townspeople and, while John himself comes across as significantly dim, he has a knack for saying the profound without understanding a word of what he speaks. As the days go by, it becomes apparent that John gives voice to the words of his father or The Father. This eight-episode series is an exploration of self-centeredness, fear, and faith and John's role as savior, doomsayer, unwitting pawn, or simpleton is never clear--the end of the season at day seven brings no real resolution or sense of whether the Yost family is better off or worse than they were before John appeared. A truly bizarre show full of unanswered questions and crude language and subject matter, it is somehow intriguing even as it is repulsive and unsatisfying. --Tami Horiuchi
John from Cincinnati - The Complete First Season Reviews:
How could HBO cancel this extraordinary series? 
2009-08-19 - I am still amazed at HBO's decision to cancel "JFC", and yet the exceedingly boring "Big Love" continues to get renewed. I wish another network (Showtime)would pick this up. The characters draw you in, and soon enough your part of this compelling journey. I have NEVER been so moved by a television series. Mr. Milch, how can you let this go?
Fantastic
2009-08-02 - The DVD set came so fast - it was only a couple of days and the set looks brand new. Thanks much for a good transaction
What a crying shame....cancelled?
2009-07-22 - This show is one of the best ever produced. Maybe the best as far as quality story and actors. More than that it was so meaningful to the viewer it has to be called what it is: ART. David Milch should be freely allowed to make any show he wants to...for the good of society. Cancelling this show was a crime against society, and we are all the poorer for it. Gee, I wonder how this (and Deadwood's cancellation -plus the DW movies being axed) will affect Milch's muse.... will it make him create something SAFER? Something the network will actually allow to be created and shown? Thanks for leading, HBO, thanks for crushing the artist. At least give him two seasons! This show had something that is almost never touched on in TV - spirituality and man's place in relation to God. It had to be killed.
Still mourning this show's loss two years later!!!
2009-06-04 - HBO really, really needs to revive this series. I still miss it two years later. One of the best I've seen in my 50 years. I grew up near the beach in CA and this show always made me imagine I could smell the salt air and hear the waves crashing against the shore. Each episode left me a little shocked, thinking and conversing more deeply than usual. Almost makes me want to take a trip back.
Milch should get out of the game ;-) 
2009-03-25 - I love HBO series, I really do. And I loved Deadwood, even though the third season petered out as Milch seemed to lose his nerve and promise a bloodbath that never came ( which took some guts, I guess, but cost the series in the ratings and may have caused its demise); As for John from Cincinatti, what can I say? Where can I begin?
"Milch should get out of the game"?
"What do you mean, Milchie Yost"?
"John will soon be gone ( and not a day too soon)"?
Despite great characters actors and an intriguing debut, the series flounders around the third episode and never breaks the surface again. Actors like rebecca de Mornay are evilly shortchanged, changing for the sake of the "storyline" from a nervous though reliable grandmother to a ball-breaking hysteric, if for no other reason then creating "conflict" where there is none. Intriguing characters get no story arc, do not evolve. As a viewer I tried to keep the faith, grasping at straws, giving Milch the benefit of the doubt. "maybe it'll get better at the end" "maybe some if not all things will be explained..." Actually, I was just trying to forget that these were 10 hours of my life I was not ever going to reclaim. The tenth episode must rate as one of the most pitiful end to a series, ever, with, I kid you not, the climax of this HBO series being a parade of six cars on a waterfront to peddle new swimwear ;-)
So OK OK, the religious, mystical content of the series was not lost on me. It just promised, and was incapable of delivering. Stay clear from this as you would avoid a dead whale on the beach.
