MAN BEHIND THE DESK: Kelsey Grammer is back in prime time once again as Mayor Tom Kane in the new Starz series “Boss.” (A Starz Original Series)
In the opening scene of the new Starz drama, “Boss,” starring Kelsey Grammer as mayor Tom Kane of Chicago, the mayor is meeting his doctor in an abandoned slaughterhouse.
The immediate metaphors, “King Lear” aside, seem as thick and nasty-smelling as congealed bovine blood and as heavy as a fatted golden calf.
Mayor Kane is in a blood-thirsty business and, unless he’s smarter than the herd, they’ll trample him and turn him into chopped chuck. Especially if he’s perceived as weak and vulnerable.
And he soon will be, as Dr. Ella Harris (Karen Aldridge) tells him in no uncertain terms that he’s suffering a disease akin to both Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, which will cause him to become erratic, hallucinatory, violent, unable to complete everyday tasks, nastier than he already is and, oh yes, he may start to pee the bed. In other words, like every other mayor and politician we’ve been underprivileged to hear about for the last several years.
Meantime, for reasons not made even a little clear to us, Boss Kane wants his old bud Governor McCall Cullen (Francis Guinan) out and wants young gun Ben Zajac (Jeff Hephner) in as governor.
But how can you trust a young gun who’s having hot sex right on top of the city hall chamber stairs with the mayor’s aid, Kitty O’Neill (Kathleen Robertson), while his wife and kids are still descending said stairs?
In his endeavors to keep the city clean and his pockets lined, Kane is (yes) ably assisted by his beautiful, Chanel-wearing estranged, ice-cold political wife, Meredith Kane (Connie Nielsen), who happens to be the daughter of Tom’s predecessor, who is now catatonic and presumably also in adult diapers.
Tom and Meredith have a daughter, Emma Kane (Hannah Ware), a minister who works in the poor people’s street clinic, who serves up tepid food and equally tepid sermons that even bore the three drunks in the pews.
But, this lady of God hates her parents, and they hate her and, like them, she also has a nasty past — that’s heading towards a nastier future. So, in other words, no, there is no one you’d like to share a beer with.
Lots of the characterizations work wonderfully, and the acting is fantastic. But, in the hands of Gus Van Sant (“My Own Private Idaho,”) and Farhad Safinia (“Apocalypto”), and under the auspices of Starz of the sluts ‘n’ sandals epics like “Spartacus,” the city of Chicago seems less like a municipality than a principality run by some meth-fueled Arab sheik.
For example, if you try to shake the mayor down, you get your ears sliced off, and, instead of pickling them, he shoves them down the disposal and breaks the damn thing. I hate when that happens.
If you happened to be the poor shmuck of a doc who’s treating him, you may be injected with nerve-paralyzing drugs to shut you up. And if you have the disadvantage of being on his bad side?
You may be accused of having young, hot male lovers — especially if you’re an old fat, male governor. Maybe they should call it “Mob Boss.”