User Reviews (4)

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  • Warning: Spoilers
    This show really tells it like it is. I lived threw it, lost a lot of friends. At one point, just about everyone I knew did Oxy. 80's went for $100-140 bucks EACH. 40's were $40-60 each. When they changed the form, making it unchrushable, everyone switched to Herion. Many, not me, but a bunch of my friends were shooting it. I myself was doing 4 80's a day when I had them. Girls were willing to do ANYTHING to get Oxy. It was very sad. This show us very good at showing that, but I have yet to see someone take the coating off and crushing it and snorting it up there nose. Anyone who had a friend who was on pain meds should watch this show. It is very very good.
  • This mini-series, like Beth Macy's non-fiction book it's (loosely) based on, has three different simultaneous narrative threads: first, there's Sacklers' Purdue Pharma boardroom, in which Richard Sackler, brilliantly played by Michael Stuhlbarg, tries desperately to save his family's business by overselling his latest drug, "OxyContin," as a true miracle; second, the U. S. Attorney's Office and DEA (represented by several actors' characters, including Peter Sarsgaard and Rosario Dawson) trying to figure out how to respond to the growing epidemic; and third, well-meaning doctors and patients in pain in Appalachia, as played by Michael Keaton and Kaitlyn Dever (a young, 4th-generation coal miner with a painful on-the-job injury, also struggling with her evolving sexuality at the same time, another powerhouse performance).

    Recognizing that the first few episodes of any mini-series are crucial in getting and keeping an audience interested, Danny Strong, the series' co-creator/developer writes them and Barry Levinson directs! The first three of an expected 8-episode series were all released on 10/13/2021.
  • Warning: Spoilers
    ...but I must say that it pleases me when casting directors take the time to at least TRY to make families look a little alike. Even better, when they match younger versions to older versions...be it with natural looks or contact lenses.

    I know, I know, it is a small thing...but it makes the biologist in me crazy when a young version of a character has eyes so brown that they appear black, only to have the older version with pale blue eyes (without dialogue as to how they got that way, even contact lenses). It seems a very small even petty thing but there you have it.

    Even better is the casting of Mare Winningham and Kaitlyn Dever as mother and daughter. If you had seen Mare in movies when she was a youngster (everyone loved seeing her in movies with her long beautiful hair), you'd agree that this was excellent casting, on top of fantastic acting skills of COURSE (yes, that SHOULD come first).

    I'm just mentioning a small thing that makes me happy while watching a very very sad story.

    Speaking of which, it is downright depressing. I've cried twice already and I'm barely into episode two. I know how this ends.
  • I worked in prescription diversion for years. This series tells the truth about the culpability of the FDA and the DEA in the opioid epidemic. They came in like heroes in 2010 but they were a I've part of the problem in the first place.