Michael Roberts This is something special. Feels like a stage play, with long shots and slow pacing. The performances from Steve Buscemi and Louis CK are truly outstanding. Awkward, achingly difficult to watch, but really outstanding. No trite feel-good resolution here, just a voyeuristic study of the darkness that oozes from the heart of man.

Yuki The series started of slow and struggling and was a pain to watch. Then it got better - the story started to get interesting and the characters improved. I started to care about them and began to enjoy the series.Then it got bad again. The characters degenerated - they became caricatures of some crazy mean people. Characters mumbled out stories that dragged on into "something profound". Lots of broken and bad people with nothing really interesting about them. You kept waiting hopefully for something to happen - anything! But besides long monologues that rambled on nothing much did.Then things started happening - and it got worse. The ending couple of series was _the_ pits! I don't get it - who enjoys watching a pitiful man break down? Flashbacks of some pre-feminist wife beating, child abandoning sh*t? Is this entertainment?! Some "statement on life" nonsense? Man - if you like this stuff you've gotta get a life...

chicagopoetry I was watching some video review of Better Call Saul when the reviewer in passing mentioned Horace and Pete. Horace and Pete? Why had I never heard of this show? So I got myself a copy and binge watched it over the course of three days. All I can say is WOW. This is my kind of drama. It's basically Cheers spliced with My Dinner With Andre; in other words, Cheers if Cheers was about real life. Unfortunately it's a bit too real, as characters that you instantly fall in love with just as soon die or disappear for other reasons, robbing you of the opportunity to enjoy them some more. In fact, so much in the lives of Horace and Pete crumbles by the final episode it is guaranteed that there will never be a Season 2, and that just plain sucks. Why create such lush, developed characters if you're just going to flush them down the toilet? And what great characters they are!Alan Alda shines the brightest as one of the last remaining Archie Bunker's on planet earth, but he only appears for a few episodes (in one of them he's merely a hallucination). Steve Buscemi is spot on as Pete, co-owner of the bar who is clinically psychotic and can only keep his disease under wraps by taking a very expensive drug, who finds out he isn't really Horace's brother but in fact his cousin. Edie Falco does her greatest work yet as the rough around the edges sister suffering from cancer who would like nothing more than to shut the doors of Horace and Pete's and move on in life. Jessica Lange is nothing short of wonderful as a barfly who's welcome unfortunately runs out early in the season. Add to this mix a theme song by none other than Paul Simon and a slew of cameos from other great dramatic actors (we even get the voice of K-Billy Super Sounds of the 70s) and the result will leave your jaw dropping through eight episodes. I say eight because by this time the writing and acting seems to get a little rushed (maybe Louis CK was running out of money by this time, and had to move it along) and the final episode will leave you so furious and disturbed that you'll look back and wonder was it worth it. Horace and Pete is masterful at delivering emotional pain, perhaps too masterful, because pain hurts and that's what you'll be left with at the end of the binge: a lump in your throat and a bit of heartache.I give it a perfect score of ten because it really is that good, and maybe you should just think of it as a really long movie that has an ending, because as television it's an odd bird (nothing is consistent: one episode might be thirty minutes long while the next might be fifty minutes long for example). Like some of the characters, the show itself is suicidal and it makes damn sure there is NEVER going to be a Season 2. What a loss. What a shame. It'll make you want to cry.

Eric Louthain Nothing is more honest than this show. Life is full of ups and downs, and sometimes, a lot of downs. And sometimes the downs just keep coming. And sometimes, a lot of the time, they transverse through generations. And sometimes the downs are thrown unknowingly and subconsciously onto others, and thus the cycle and domino effect continues. Horace and Pete shows this so simply and beautifully. Well done. Well fking done.Like a lot of the reviews are saying, it is very up to date on its dialogue. Some I thought to be amazing, some, not so much. But overall it was true to what might be and probably is being brought up in a lot of bars across America today. Thank you for doing something so honest and out there. I'm sick of shows pretending things are so fking amazing or glorifying the drama of life. This show did neither, so thank you.