I Love A TV Show About Florida Dirtbags Doing And/Or Solving Crimes

RJ Decker is a new show on ABC. It’s about a former photojournalist named — you guessed it — RJ Decker (played by Scott Speedman) who becomes a private investigator after he loses his job and goes to jail for a crime he kind of did not commit that involved the dipshit relative of a corrupt Florida state senator. His best friend is a guy named Wish who runs a local bar that was purchased with the winnings of a million-dollar scratch-off lottery ticket. His ex-wife is now married to a female detective on the Fort Lauderdale police force and he has moved into their pool house after his trailer toppled over into a sinkhole. One of the people who helps with his investigation is a wiseass teen car thief who he busted and promised not to rat out (to the kid’s mom). One of the first episodes focuses on a murder that the killer tried to cover up by grinding up the victim and feeding the body to a farm of illegal Venus flytraps.

Also, this is how he’s greeted when he shows up to a crime scene for the first time.

It is, to be very clear, extremely my shit. I even like that it’s a network procedural as opposed to a streaming series or prestige crime show. I like those, too, especially when they are also about Florida dirtbags solving or doing crimes, but there’s something about this that works in 42-minute chunks broken up by commercials, or by little blips where commercials would have been if I hadn’t gotten impatient and upgraded to the ad-free plan on Hulu. The show even leans into it a bit, teeing up little wild reveals or mini-cliffhangers heading into a break, which is something my millennial brain still finds comforting after watching too many This Is A 10-Hour Movie, Actually shows that mistake bleakness for quality. These are my emotional support dirtbags. Leave them alone.

This helps too…

Yes, of course, the show about the disgraced Florida man who solves wacky crimes is based on a book by Carl Hiaasen, America’s most respected author on the subject of disgraced Florida men who solve wacky crimes. He’s having a bit of a moment right now. There’s this series and there was Bad Monkey on Apple TV last year (a little darker and more prestige-y than this one, which is kind of wild considering it came from Good Vibes TV Auteur Bill Lawrence) and Amazon just recently announced an adaptation of his book Skinny Dip that will star Amanda Seyfried (and also be produced by Lawrence, who has quite the empire brewing lately). This is great news. For me. And also for Carl Hiaasen. But mostly for me. I freaking love a show about Florida idiots doing crimes.

There is always a risk of overexposure here. Bad Monkey is getting another season and this show has been a ratings hit out of the gate. We could be heading toward a situation where three out of every five shows are about some ruggedly handsome Florida man with a checkered past tracking down scoundrels. Walton Goggins will somehow star in five of them. This would be fine. Again, for me. Your mileage may vary with these things. That’s okay. But I’ll take all of these you got for now. Run them straight through the winter when it's dark and cold where I am. The formula here is simple and is as follows...

Give me some sun.

Show me some idiots and/or sleazy businessmen committing crimes.

Catch them.

Do it again.

And again.

And again.

Thank you.

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STUFF I CLICKED ON

— Mike Ryan interviewed Lord and Miller about Project Hail Mary 

— Sepinwall recapped the Oscars, which were mostly fine and still somehow broke everyone’s brain online for like 48 hours

— important journalism about the Alabama leprechaun

— loved this story about Jalen Hurts reading his new children’s book to kids

— the World Baseball Classic was a freakin blast and Kathryn Xu at Defector wrote a great blog about the very fun Italian team

— shoutout to Venezuela for winning and giving us a cool dinger celebration in the semifinals

— please watch Ryan Coogler discuss storytelling and croissants

— thank you to Dan Fienberg for informing me that there is an Australian series on Hulu that stars Will Forte and D’Arcy Carden

— Zach Braff swears he is not dating his AI chatbot

— I will watch Bradley Cooper’s Ocean’s Eleven movie

— Steven Spielberg believes in aliens

— good background on the Buffy reboot cancellation

— incredible potato chip blog

— ant smuggler thwarted

— “B.C. man sent family member to impersonate him at mandatory ethics course, lied about it to regulator”

— “CEO Asks ChatGPT How to Void $250 Million Contract, Ignores His Lawyers, Loses Terribly in Court”

— been saying “load ‘em up” in my head pretty much non-stop since I saw this deranged video from The Onion

Okay, that's it for this week. Please subscribe and share and maybe go solve a wacky mystery in the Florida Keys.