THE best thing about “The Riches,” FX’s strange new, family slapstick/drama, is the back story – the one which we don’t see enough of each week.
That’s the story of the Malloys, a nuclear family in a larger family of “travelers” (what we, the uninformed, would call Gypsies) from backwater Louisiana. No, I had no idea that there were Irish-American Gypsies drifting their way around the south, living in mobile home camps. Oh come on! Don’t even say you knew this!
It’s the front story in “The Riches” – the one we see each week that’s the problem. And for my money, that story stretches farther than a latex thong on Rosie.
It’s tough to buy a plot about a family that steals another family’s identity and then goes on to live their life.
The series opens with the Malloys stealing wallets at a high school reunion that they crash. Dad (Brit wit Eddie Izzard) grifts the crowd into believing that he’s a member of the class by giving the class speech and getting everyone up and cheering.
Flush with wallets a plenty, Dad hops back in the RV with the kids – whiny 17-year-old Cael (Noel Fisher), hot-to-trot 16-year-old Di Di (Shannon Woodward) and little Sam (Aidan Mitchell), the 10-year-old who likes nothing more than to don a nice pair of pink satin pumps – and it’s off to pick up mom who has just been sprung from prison.
That would be Minnie Driver as Mom, aka Dahlia, who is addicted to drugs and is also hot to trot. We come to realize that in their own crazy way, they are a committed couple and have a semi-normal family structure.
When they get back to the travelers’ camp, they are informed, however, that a marriage has been arranged for Di Di with a man she doesn’t love but which is necessary to unify the families. Sort of like a royal marriage – with stolen jewels. Instead the Malloys break into the travelers’ vault, steal the entire bankroll of ill-gotten bucks and go on the lam.
And here’s where it gets even more bizarre. Their RV runs another car off the road in a terrible accident and a couple is killed. This wealthy couple is conveniently named Rich. The Malloys decide to assume their Identities, but it’s more than mere identity theft. They actually move into their home, take their positions and become the Rich family. Right.
Since the Riches were on their way to a new life themselves, technically no one should know them. Huh? They make a mention of how they have no family, but really, no one ever contacts them again? Hard to believe, like I said.
The Malloys simply move into the new house that the Riches have just purchased and live as them, becoming “buffers” – regular nine-to-fivers who go to school, have regular jobs and play golf.
Of course the travelers are still after them, but with dad assuming the role of a corporate lawyer (hello?) in a real estate firm owned conveniently by a slimey scam artist, life can be good. Just not believable.
The clash of cultures works well and the point is driven home – no one is clean, just some people don’t hide behind a gated community (the new picket fence), blah, blah.
Thing is though, Izzard and Driver are so good that you may be able to overlook a lot – like a plot to believe in.
On a last note, can I beg Fox to kill the convenient last name bit? Last week we had the Bells running a wedding service – now we’ve got the wealthy Riches. Oy.
“The Riches”
Tonight at 10 on FX
* * ½