Wayne

by Pa Rock
TV Junkie

Last week I came across a new series streaming on Amazon Prime that quickly captured my attention.  "Wayne," at this point, has only one season (10 episodes) completed and available, but it has plenty of room to expand into several more seasons.

"Wayne" is the story of a sixteen-year-old boy living in the depressed Boston suburb of Brockton, Massachusetts, who seems on the surface at least, to be an incorrigible youth who has no interest in staying in school and is prone to violence.  But Wayne (Mark McKenna) is a much more complex character than his outlaw exterior would indicate.

Wayne lives alone with his father, a factory worker who is bed-ridden and dying of a cancer which he contracted as a result of his work.  Wayne has an older brother who fought overseas and now has no contact with the family,  Wayne's mother ran off with another man when Wayne was five and moved to Florida, leaving young Wayne in the care of his dad.

The company that developed this program describes Wayne as "a young Dirty Harry with a heart of gold."    He is clearly not afraid of anything, and obviously has a high tolerance for pain - if he can even feel pain at all.    Wayne, who takes it on himself to defend the world's victims, is constantly being beaten down - and always rises for more.  In scene in the first episode Wayne is preparing to fight a group of young thugs outside of what appears to be an abandoned factory.  Before the brawl can commence, however, Wayne throws a piece of ice through one of two factory windows.  An angry young man emerges from the building and proceeds to beat the hell out of Wayne, much to the delight of the local gang who now no longer have to do it themselves.  As the man turns to re-enter the building, Wayne takes another piece of ice and breaks out the remaining window.

When Wayne's mother abandoned the family eleven years earlier, she and her boyfriend took Wayne's dad's mint '79 Trans AM.  Now, every year, the boyfriend taunts Wayne's dad by sending him  a picture of him (the boyfriend) polishing the car.  Wayne's dad had intended on someday going to Ocala, Florida, and retrieving his car, but, now with the cancer, it is too late.

Wayne's dad dies during the first episode and Wayne burns down their rental house with the corpse of his father inside. Wayne then visits the landlord who lives in an adjacent house and who has been giving them grief over the rent and threatening an eviction - and he points the fire out to the enraged landlord.  The young avenger then streaks away on his father's old two-stroke 70's Yamaha road bike and heads over to the home of Del (Ciara Bravo), a fifteen-old girl from a highly dysfunctional home of her own whom he has just met - and Wayne, after physically subduing her two teenage brothers (by dropping a television from an upstairs landing onto one of them - and then biting off most of her father's nose - takes Del and they head out on the bike to Florida where Wayne plans on righting an old wrong by  taking his father's car back.

And at this point Wayne and Del become some modern variant of Bonnie and Clyde, raising hell - though often unintentionally - wherever they go as they make their way slowly down the east coast heading to Ocala, Florida.  But they are being followed as they go.

Del's drunken father and her two juvenile delinquent brothers report her "kidnapping" to Officer Jay of the Brockton PD.   Officer Jay is a kind-hearted and fairly quiet cop who looks into the matter and decides that Wayne is a troubled youth who deserves saving.  He and one of his sergeants take time off from the Brockton PD in order to travel to Florida as civilians to intercept Wayne and Del before they get into serious trouble there.

Also Wayne's high school principal, a man who has thrown Wayne out of school on numerous occasions, decides that he, too, will drive to Florida and try to intercede on Wayne's behalf.  The principal takes one of Wayne's friends along for the ride.

And then, of course, Del's father and two brothers, also decide to head out to Ocala!

"Wayne" is not a show to enjoy with the whole family, especially if the family contains young children.   About every third word begins with the letter "f," and the violence is graphic and usually shocking.   At one point, for instance, Wayne nails the hands of  a villainous day-laborer contractor to his transport van with a nail gun, and at another he pours a pan of boiling ravioli over the head of a kid who had been blackmailing Del - and then there was that biting-off-the-nose thing.  But extreme language and barbarism aside, "Wayne" is also a very, very funny show with strong messages about friendship, love, and commitment.  It can be grossly shocking one minute, and touchingly endearing the next.

In some ways "Wayne" is more Romeo and Juliet than it is Bonnie and Clyde.

The writing is highly original, the plotting intense, and the overall product unlike anything that you have probably ever seen before.   "Wayne" is satisfying on both an intellectual and a visceral level.   Those who have the stomach to make it into the second episode will very likely get hooked.

Here's hoping that a Season 2 is forthcoming!