Not long since the end of ‘The Offer’, a limited series based on the memories of Albert S. Ruddy, producer of ‘The Godfather’ movie, so here we remember this nice little series with a bunch of photos and a review that our Twitter-voters wanted (14 yes against 1 no). Here’re the pictures and if you wish to read the review, click on the Read More tag after them!

Television > (2022) The Offer > Behind the Scenes

Television > (2022) The Offer > Promotional Stills

I’m not the biggest fan of ’The Godfather’, only saw the trilogy once many-many years ago, but my sister really loves it, and can quote it effortlessly – I remember ’Jane Austen’s Maffia!’ more clearly, so as you could guess now, the subject of ’The Offer’ isn’t exactly my familiar ground. But that doesn’t matter, because this series is actually not about ’The Godfather’ – it’s more like ’Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’, where the big happenings are going on in the background, unseen to us; meanwhile, we’re witnessing something that a journalist somewhere called „a Ruddy hagiography”, and I couldn’t put it better myself.

Albert S. Ruddy is a wealthy, very old Hollywood producer, and I saw some of his works, like the original ’The Longest Yard’, and heard about others, like ’Million Dollar Baby’, but when you think about those films, Ruddy’s name isn’t the first that pops into your head. Not even the second. So even if he was part of these very successful projects, he’s still relatively unknown to the masses – and that’s why he wanted ’The Offer’ to happen, so that people will remember him as „The Two Times Academy Award Winner Producer of The Godfather and Million Dollar Baby”.

His own company, his own coworkers and his own daughter are among the crew, as well as Uncle Albert himself, but instead of advertising it as „the life of a legendary producer, who you may not know”, they told us it’s „The Making of The Godfather” – and that’s not exactly true. Sure, it’s in the series, but it’s mostly about other stuff. And those who were part of the movie in question and are still alive, like Francis Ford Coppola, Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, or the very recently deceased James Caan didn’t wanted to take part in this at all. Why? Because they probably remember differently…

Aside from the fact that now we have a story that’s based on the (probably cloudy) recollected memories of a man in his 90’s, that ignores many facts and adds some totally fictional elements (like the Barry Lapidus-character), this could have still been really good, but the main line of happenings just isn’t interesting enough. What is good though is the phenomenal supporting cast, who steals the show from the main character – they’re the reason to watch the subject of my article, and Juno’s one of them.

Our story begins with Al Ruddy (played by Miles Teller, who’ll be forever „the dude from Whiplash” for me, which is not a bad moniker at all), who’s a great computer engineer (or what?) at Rand Corporation, but decides that’s not exciting enough for him. So he goes to a party, where he meets a guy who works with television scripts, they talk and he ends up in a meeting room with Hollywood executives, where he pitches an idea from nowhere to them, that they love instantly – but not before meeting and taking home the hottest woman of the party, who just happens to be a millionaire too. Does this sound realistic or exciting to you? Well, it gets worse, with the over-exaggerated vocal performance of Giovanni Ribisi as mafia-boss Joe Colombo, who’s entire subplot is totally boring and uninteresting as well. So far this is the first episode, but something still hooks you up, and that’s the presence of Juno (as Bettye McCartt), Matthew Goode (as Bob Evans) and Burn Gorman (as Charlie Bludhorn).

At least that was it for me. Somehow in the last 5-6 years, if you watch literally any series, the first episode is always shit. I cannot name any exceptions, and I can’t understand why they’re doing this, but it’s happening, and ’The Offer’ is true to this rule, the first episode was boring as hell. But they’ve released the first three episodes in a bunch, and that was enough to hook in basically everyone.

The story revolves mostly around Italian Americans and people who lived in the recent past and were famous enough for us to know them, so they couldn’t diversify everything; and there were actual very interesting events surrounding the birth of this movie masterpiece, so there’s the good story and the easily recognizable figures. The makers have chosen some of the best character actors out there to portray these guys, for example we have Dan Fogler (as Coppola), Patrick Gallo (as Mario Puzo) and Justin Chambers (as Marlon Brando), with the relatively unknown, but incredible Anthony Ippolito portraying Al Pacino; plus two legendary actors from the past, Paul McCrane (E.R.) and Lou Ferrigno (the original Hulk) in tiny recurring roles. This will work, right?

Well, sort of. The main problem with ’The Offer’ is that none of the conflicts matter and every obstacle is solved in the span of maximum two episodes, with the inevitable involvement of Al Ruddy. Example Nr. 1.: The Pacino-dilemma. Evans says no to his casting, but Coppola wants him, no matter what. So Ruddy just doesn’t answer clearly to Francis’ question regarding Pacino, then goes over to Bludhorn, who’s the boss of Evans to make him tell Evans to greenlight Pacino. And when this happens and Evans is mad as hell, the episode ends with the cliffhanger of Pacino saying he can’t take the offer (hehe), because he already signed a contract. And in the next episode, Ruddy goes to Evans and tells him to buy Pacino out of the other contract, and Evans just does it, after a bit of swearing. So in the span of two episodes, the conflict got solved with Ruddy going around and saying „do this for me” and everyone just does it for him.

Example Nr. 2.: The Joe Gallo-subplot. Joseph Russo, who was hired for this role, looks incredibly menacing and dangerous, his character comes out of prison, then seals a pact with a gang of black guys to have revenge on Colombo for something, that happened in their shared past, but for like 2 or 3 episodes, he’s just there, being menacing and very killer-like. Then there’s some shooting and killing, but the subplot doesn’t go anywhere. Then Colombo gets shot in a cliffhanger, and the next episode starts with Gallo taking his place in the „producer’s seat”, so Al has to get a lot of dosh to give as protection money. And he just comes up with this incredible idea that results in 26.000 dollars, and this is just enough to pay Gallo, but now the crew can’t go to Sicily. We’re still in the playtime of one episode here! What happens? Caeasar takes some of his best „colleagues”, goes into a restaurant and kills Gallo with his guys. Nobody asks him to do this, he never gets punished for it in any way, the crime’s threads doesn’t lead anyone back to Ruddy and thanks to the assassination attempt, Colombo’s out of the picture too. What a miracle! Basically every damned conflict resolves like this, either by deus ex machina or Al Ruddy saying „PLEASE”. Plus we all known that the movie will get made in the end, so there’s nothing to be really excited about.

Luckily, the performance of those who I’ve named before makes you forget these hollow conflicts, but at the price of adding lots of subplots, like Evans’ marriage problem or Bettye going around as the embodiment of feminism, literally punching people. The good thing is, these are much more interesting than Ruddy’s private life, where he continues to have success in everything he tries. The most memorable scenes are the ones which doesn’t have anything to do with the „hagiography” aspect, like Brando’s transformation to the Don; the main characters watching the birth of the famous restaurant assassination-scene or Evans and Ali McGraw’s (the wonderful Meredith Garretson) final scene together. The banter and resulting jokes are great and everything feels very authentically ’70’s, like the incredible amount of smoking everywhere, the groovy clothes and cool music. This atmosphere, along with the feeling of inevitable great success coming for the protagonists makes ’The Offer’ very enjoyable.

Examples of this, Nr.1.: After like 3 episodes, I was looking forward for Joe Colombo’s appearances, because Giovanni Ribisi makes this guy so real and he’s not your typical mafia leader. Looks like an aging accountant, has this funny voice and still, he’s just as dangerous and calculating as Joe Gallo, just doesn’t shows it all the time. People underestimate him for their own downfalls, and it’s a shame how he basically just got „written out” for the last two episodes. Nr. 2.: Objectively speaking, the best performance in every aspect award goes to Matthew Goode, because he’s charming, funny, sexy and incredibly entertaining to watch. He acts drama, comedy, biography and transforms into his character so well, that I even forgot his real voice or his previous roles where I saw him.

Last, but not least, the Juno-aspect: She’s maybe the best actress to portray a woman from the ’70’s, as evident by this, ’Vinyl’, ’Safelight’ and her tiny roles in ’Lovelace’ and ’The Pretenders’ (I guess that was set in the ’70’s too). She’s always really well dressed, her hair is between the natural curly state and the Keeley Jones-straightness, she smokes, drinks and swears, like a real person. Bettye is Ruddy’s right hand woman, she knows everyone and everything, and there are many times where her connections save the day. She’s the absolute female protagonist (after the departure of Ruddy’s girlfriend), also the object of fascination by Caesar and Bludhorn too. This role is much closer to her original dramatic roots, but has a hint of quirkiness, a bit of coolness and a lot of fun to it. Her outstanding performance captured everyone, as far as I remember, I only saw like 2 tweets that said negative things about her, regarding this role.

Let’s summarize things, shall we?

Pros: Great supporting cast, interesting supporting characters, great atmosphere, good level of ’70’s authenticity, good music at the end credits, lots of fun banter between the figures, insignificant amount of forced political correctness, actual starting point and ending available.

Cons: Uninteresting main character with magical problem-solving skills; hollow conflicts that either solve themselves or they get solved by the magical Ruddy-powers; many-many subplots; needless antagonists (Lapidus and his ilk); not enough and not authentic enough ’The Godfather’ content.

But all in all, it’s entertaining to watch, and that’s all it should be. It’s not a documentary after all. I say it’s worth your time much more than your usual everyday series, which gets produced nowadays…