One Dollar 1x01-02

Literally the only thing I knew about One Dollar when I decided to watch its first episode was that it features several characters who at one point each possess the titular one dollar bill, and who all end up being connected to a murder committed in their small town. This was enough for me to be interested – I like it when a series tries to distinguish itself from the thousands of other murder investigation shows in some way, and the one dollar method seemed like a particularly clever idea.

Unfortunately, it sounds way more interesting than it actually is in practice. It’s true that several characters have exhanged money in the course of these two episodes, and I’m guessing that there was always a one dollar bill among all that cash since the cameras made sure that we could see the exchanges in close-up, but it’s not clear what purpose that particular bill actually serves. If the writers intended to show that the bill is somehow connected to the murder mystery and ultimately it will be significant who possesses it and when, I failed to catch it. For now it seems to function only as a kind of baton, since the person who gets it the last time in an episode will be the central character of the next one, but that’s it. The show would not change one bit if it was named something clichéd and silly like „Stone Cold Murder” or „Murdertown”. So that was my first big disappointment. Everything else I didn’t like about the episodes cannot be classified as such since I knew nothing about the setting, characters or plotline beforehand, so I didn’t really have any expectations to fulfill.

So far, there’s only three characters that stand out from the ensemble, and by „stand out” I don’t mean that they wowed me with their performance or anything like that (no one’s really got the chance to do that yet, it was only two episodes after all), simply that so far they got the most screentime and opportunities to flesh out their characters a little bit.

First there’s Garrett Drimmer, a down on his luck single father who is currently involved in some shady business concerning the multiple murders that happened at his place of work. He also beat up a guy because he thought he was assaulting a woman, when in fact he was just tickling his date/girlfriend, a rich high school grad called Dannie Furlbee, which is important because she’s now really interested in this mysterious man who was so ready to „save” her. As of now she accidentally took a job as his babysitter in the second episode, so we’ll see where that goes. For the record, the actress is 19 and the actor is 28 so I don’t expect anything sexy, which is probably for the best. And last but not least there’s Jake Noveer, a nosey private investigator (which I guess is just an ordinary private investigator) who is simultaneously spying on Dannie’s dad AND working for him, while also investigating the murder case which he probably really shouldn’t do. Other than these three we can make note of the two cops, Rook and Trask, the owner of the steel factory/murder scene Bud Carl, played by your friendly neighbourhood serial killer John Carroll Lynch, and Dannie’s rich guy father, who might actually be Hades in disguise:

  

So there are at least a few noteworthy players - but only a figment of plot - and I’m sure others will become more prominent as the episodes progress.