Painkiller review: Netflix’s opioid-crisis miniseries is too offbeat for its own good
Uzo Aduba and Matthew Broderick star in this grim and weirdly goofy show
TV Reviews Painkiller
“This story is a tragedy,” Uzo Aduba elucidates in Painkiller’s premiere, setting up six episodes that chronicle the horrifying rise of the opioid epidemic. Purdue Pharma’s deceitful, evil ways to market the addictive OxyContin pill and the nationwide crisis it caused are already well-documented in various forms: Dopesick, Crime Of The Century, The Pharmacist, All The Beauty And The Bloodshed, and Recovery Road are just a few noteworthy examples from recent years. So to stand out and justify its existence, Painkiller, which debuts August 10 on Netflix, adds surrealism to the mix, much to its detriment. Despite an essential and timely narrative, the show often resorts to goofy dialogue, distracting needle drops, and out-of-synch creative choices that chip away at its sincerity.
Painkiller director Peter Berg claimed in an interview that they wanted to boldly captivate audiences with this move: “It’s tough material. It’s sad, it’s heartbreaking. If we want people to engage, there has to be an entertainment component to it.” While the intention is somewhat understandable, for our money, the opioid crisis feels like too dark a story to infuse with offbeat humor. It’s pointless and gross to see Purdue chairman Richard Sackler (Mathew Broderick)—mainly responsible for relentlessly promoting Oxy—dance around his luxurious mansion in silk pajamas, staring the camera dead in the eye, as he keeps getting richer as people overdose. Painkiller undoubtedly invokes rage, shock, and sympathy. But it doesn’t allow anyone to sit with those emotions for long. It’s too busy being ridiculous.
The show struggles to juggle multiple timelines, character POVs, and tones, only allowing some interesting angles to get surface-level treatments. It has a confusing mix of genres, too: The drama is obviously fictionalized yet it feels like a docuseries, with excessive use of voiceovers, graphics, and headline clippings. Plus, every episode opens with real people remembering their loved ones who died. So there’s whiplash when a tearful mother talks about her son who passed away, and then Richard Sackler is introduced right after with Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound Of Silence” blaring loudly. So yeah, there’s just too much going on.
At least Painkiller primarily uses Aduba’s Edie Flowers, a medical investigator, to thread its myriad stories pretty well. The Orange Is The New Black star is phenomenal here as the catalyst pushing the story forward. Her subtle, sentimental approach grounds everything that is obtrusive about the show, even if she’s frequently only narrating the devastation caused by the Sackler clan. In the early ’90s, Edie discovers how Oxy is being pedaled through doctor prescriptions and pill mills across America, with Purdue using naive young women as their sales reps, among other techniques. She makes it her mission to bring the whole operation down with the aid of her new boss, lawyer John Brownlee (Tyler Ritter).
Edie explains how Richard Sackler came into power after his uncle Arthur’s (Clark Gregg) heart attack and emerged as the mastermind behind creating and supplying OxyContin—without giving a damn about its lethal outcome. Broderick and Gregg face off against each other in absurd ways throughout the six episodes, including a physical fight at the end played for pointless, offbeat laughs. Arthur keeps “appearing” to Richard to guide him on how Purdue Pharma can take advantage of everyone—doctors, FDA administrators, their own employees—to manipulate the public. There’s a never-ending spiel on the “legacy” of the Sacklers, who have once again become the main story as opposed to the families whose lives they destroyed.
That’s not to say the series doesn’t examine the problems of addiction. It does just that via Glen Kryger (Taylor Kitsch), a business owner who is prescribed Oxy after an onsite accident. The medication slowly takes over his life, ruining his entire career and family in the process. Glen’s cautionary tale is distressing to witness because it effectively unpacks how folks got dependent on Oxy, promoted as the ultimate pain-reliever, without realizing it. Painkiller touches on some of the nuances well. But it’s a shame those perspectives weren’t given a better chance to shine. Furthermore, the show sadly and completely ignores how people of color were disproportionately impacted by the opioid epidemic (a problem that’s also in HBO’s Crime Of The Century, directed by Alex Gibney, who co-produced Painkiller).
The show also heavily focuses on Purdue reps Shannon Schaefer (West Duchovny) and Britt Hufford (Dina Shihabi, stuck in an extremely one-dimensional role), who excel at their jobs for the perks before it takes a toll on one of them. Once again, Painkiller spends far too much time on Purdue’s internal corporate culture, depicting everything with a slightly comical lens. Take Richard’s constant debates with his family and board members. Grown white men yelling at each other in a conference room can get really tiring really fast, especially if we already know how corrupt they are.
It also feels like mixed messaging, with the series creators losing their grasp on the meaningful story they want to tell in favor of “entertainment value.” Painkiller might be worth watching for anyone who wants to learn about the epidemic. However, far better projects about the crises exist—and this one just comes off as wasted potential.
Painkiller premieres August 10 on Netflix
45 Comments
This better have Judas Priest doing the theme song.
This sounds too much like Dopesick. That show focused on the Sackler family, pharma sales people (also a male and female duo), and a young person who got addicted to opioids after a workplace accident. I guess the description is missing if this one also follows the prosecutors going after Purdue and a doctor who gets addicted (Dopesick was too all over the place as well…too many stories and timelines).
While I enjoyed Dopesick, it seemed as if it didn’t know whether it wanted to be Succession, The Wolf of Wall Street, or Euphoria, so it took the most banal and surface-level aspects of each and threw it all in.
Michael Stuhlbarg, of course, was still brilliant.
Dopesick had its defect but it was carried by the wieght of some performances, specially Michael Keaton who delivered his life’s best. I don’t see much room for that here. Broderick won’t be able to out-slime Stuhlbarg, and that guy in real life is as close to venomous slime as it gets.
Error.
I loved the performances. It was just too disjointed. Keaton was excellent, but it often felt like they were just throwing stuff at the wall not sure what worked
It was very earnest storytelling, which serves its purpose. Painkiller is more audacious, and I’m enjoying it more – if that’s the correct word for the dissection of an American tragedy. Dopesick had some smaller devastating moments, as when Sackler says they’re developing a version of Oxy for children (!) – but Painkiller makes me feel more, via the immediacy and graphic nature of the lives destroyed.
I can see your point. I thought it was really good, close to being masterpiece level.
Keaton was awesome in Dopesick, and it is one of his best performances, but I believe his best was in Birdman.
Curiously I never watched that one. The whole “one-shot” thing made me feel like it was pure gimmickry and then everybody started talking about it and I lost all desire to watch. Yeah I’m sometimes idiotic like that.
Don’t worry about what it sounds like – the two shows are only alike in subject matter – how Purdue destroyed lives. Each approaches with a different technique and tone. Dopesick used a scalpel, Painkiller uses a tenderizing hammer. Both are effective.
To use a pharmaceutical analogy. This show is the generic version of Dopesick. Only now with 5 dozen incredibly annoying needle drops!
I’m not going to let Purdue completely off the hook, but the real villain in the opioid crisis was the Joint Commission (known at the time as JCAHO), the quasi-governmental body that certifies health care facilities and organizations. They were the one who pushed that “pain as the 5th vital sign” and all the mandatory guidelines for pain control that hospitals were forced to adapt lest they lose their coveted certification. Purdue was certainly a bad faith actor, but they had no regulatory power. The Joint Commission does have that kind of power, and they should have known better what the inevitable results of their pain control mandates would have led to (just about any health care provider with experience treating patients on a regular basis could have predicted this). I know Hollywood loves an easily identifiable villain to put all the blame on, but I think there’s a more worthwhile story illustrating the harms of regulatory overreach, group-think, and institutional non-accountability. The Joint Commission has since removed these harmful mandates, but they never issued any kind of apology for the damage they caused.
Painkiller tries to dig into it but it’s still from a Purdue/Sackler perspective, unfortunately.
This post ignores why those JCAHO guidelines went into effect (to address discriminatory practices, especially the undertreatment of Black people’s pain). It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to say that people with experience managing pain were opposed to increasing regulatory focus on pain management – most of us have the opposite experience, which is trying to convince other providers that people’s pain (especially Black people’s pain) is real. On top of that, the bulk of opioid prescriptions come from outpatient clinics, where JCAHO doesn’t have much (if any) influence, but drug company reps absolutely do. All of these things (discriminatory treatment, overly blunt regulation, physicians’ willingness to engage with Purdue reps and believe the impossible pitch that Oxycontin was safe for long-term use, substituting opioid prescriptions for more thoughtful and effective pain management) reflect inequities that American medicine has no idea how to address. But when Purdue had a deliberate, well-documented, very effective campaign to increase opioid prescribing, it’s hard to buy that the real problem was “regulatory overreach.”
A whole lot of primary care clinics are owned by hospitals, so yes, that pain treatment model did extend to the outpatient setting. I worked in one at the time. I never once encountered a drug rep trying to push their brand of opiates, but I sure as hell heard from the regulatory compliance officer of the hospital on how we were expected to address pain issues, and our charts were regularly audited to make sure we were following the guidelines. Many of those opiate prescriptions were started on the in-patient side, which after several days of being treated with high dose opioids, it was already near impossible to wean the patient down in an outpatient setting.No matter the reasoning or justification, “pain as the 5th vital sign” and tying reimbursement to patient satisfaction on pain control metrics were bad ideas.
Makes me wonder if there was influence from Purdue (et. al.) on JCAHO to do that. “Regulatory overreach” doesn’t remotely seem like the problem here; hospitals absolutely should be heavily regulated! “Blame the government which is answerable to the people, not the private corporation which is only answerable to its shareholders” is a typical conservative talking point.
Yeah that was my takeaway from the post. See also how that person followed up with an irrelevant personal anecdote about the operation of their workplace.
I’m sure Purdue influenced the Joint Commission. Too much of a coincidence otherwise.
I wouldn’t be surprised, although coincidences do happen: Purdue could have noticed the pain thing and seen an opportunity. (They’re still monsters either way.)
Maybe it wasnt just Purdue alone. There where a bunch of Oxy imitators from other manufacturers as well (something these Opiod crisis shows seem to overlook). Why else would this regulatory commission suddenly go out of there way to emphasize “pain” treatment so much at exactly the time that all these “extended release” meds were poised to hit the market? Industry lobbying and legal bribes.
Like I said, I wouldn’t be surprised. And it should be easy enough to find evidence.
Apparently not, if it’s still speculation 25+ yrs later.
As someone in recovery, I can promise you that I have yet to encounter a more off-beat and darkly funny environment than a room full of my fellow folks with substance disorders. Carrie Fisher hit the nail on the head when she said if her life wasn’t funny, then it would just be sad.Haven’t watched the show, but addiction needs levity. it weighs so heavy on us and the people we love, the risk of getting crushed by it again is life and death.
Perhaps, but I’m still trying to square the need to inject that levity into this story with “Plus, every episode opens with real people remembering their loved ones who died.”
we lose a lot of people in our recovery rooms sadly all the time, idk, this seems like a pretty accurate capture of our lives both in and out of addiction.
The way each episode starts with the real family members, and then jumps into the absurdity of the show is really jarring. In fact, it’s gross. Like the producers realized their show was waay off in tone, so they decided last minute to use real people’s tradgedy to substitute the show’s weightless script and cheap drama.This show is basically Hulu’s “Dopesick” but directed like some corny Guy Richie knockoff.
Unfortunately it’s mostly everything but the addiction story threads that inject the cutesy levity in this series. That’s why it ends up feeling incongruent, even though that’s clearly the intention (“look at these cartoon characters being silly while their victims are suffering in gritty dark corners!”). It works better in some episodes than others.
I think they thought they were making “Thank You For Smoking”, but for Oxy (aka a bad idea). The so-called levity was pretty terrible. Like the one board member guy who loses his shit in every meeting. In wasn’t just incongruent, it was hacky af.
Levity is fine, but it should include genuine respect for the subject as well. Portrayals of other mental health issues deserve the same balance as well (i.e. psychiatric hospitalization), and balances portrayals can be few and far between.
I know way too many people whose lives have been ruined by the opioid epidemic to enjoy whimsical look at all that pain and suffering.
Most of us do. The show isn’t whimsical – the reviewer is very off here. It’s dark humor, used, skillfully, to amplify the real tragedies of the Opioid epidemic. Painkiller puts the viewer in the eye of the hurricane – from that vantage point anything can be absurd and frightening, yet also the truth. Taylor Kitsch, especially, gives a nuanced and truthful performance.
Hey Taylor!
It didn’t hurt that a lot of small-town doctors (or others with not particularly lucrative practices) found slinging Oxy prescriptions to the most vulnerable segments of the population a great way to seriously increase their incomes.
I’m docking this series one letter grade for its flagrant lack of Jane.
Wasn’t there already a good version of this on Hulu?
Or you could watch it and decide for yourself. Two completely different approaches to laying out the Opioid epidemic, each useful, instructive, heartbreaking and anger-inducing, in its own way.
I’d say this one was slightly better
An off-kilter review for a deliberately quirky and graphic, yet haunting show. Saw Dopesick last year, and it was measured and earnest – a fantastic primer on the Oxy tragedy/travesty, with great work by Michael Keaton. Painkiller, however, has a more immediate and vital feeling. If the reviewer doesn’t appreciate the dark humor, that’s one thing, but the tone – ever shifting yet always on target – reflects more than amplifies the absurdity of a world where we have allowed ourselves to become enthralled in the Medical Industrial Complex of Big Pharma and little minds. Our gullibility as a nation, hand in hand with the Power Of Advertising and a criminally complicit FDA, holding out until the pressure from Purdue was too strong, is the real tragedy/travesty Painkiller exposes – perhaps it’s time this kind of complicity between the gullible and the predator needs to be shouted to the hard of hearing – because it will happen again. At first I found Matthew Broderick awkward, but then realized it was a sardonic piece of casting – almost as if Ferris Bueller grew up and ran a Pharma giant, reflexively causing us to ask just what kinds of traits did we laud in our youth that are actually seeds of (some of) our destruction? Taylor Kitsch gives a nuanced yet primal and empathetic performance; if anyone has known their share of addicts and alcoholics, the immediacy of his acting hits the bullseye. I’d group Painkiller with Adam McKay’s “The Big Short” and “Vice” for having the audacity to show us, through barely exaggerated dramatic tropes, the horrors we bring upon ourselves…showing us the lives ruined, and those protected from ruin. All it takes is a loose recipe of hope, fear, gullibility, greed and a cynical penchant for looking the other way rather than doing the right thing. Painkiller is like an opera, a horror movie, and a relentless expose on a culturally devastating situation that needn’t have happened – as they point out several times how it could have simply been nipped in the bud. Even though it’s dark and dips into absurdity, sadly these qualities can’t even approach eclipsing the horror and absurdity of the opioid crisis.
You clearly don’t know a lot about twisted irony, or accentuating character traits to make a point in a film – since, unlike real life, films have a short time to give the viewer an understanding of characters that would take years in reality. So, yes, it WAS disgusting watching Richard Sackler dancing around his penthouse in silk pajamas while getting rich off of the deaths of people addicted to his product. AND THAT WAS PRECISELY THE POINT. it was SUPPOSED to show you exactly what a callous, selfish person we’re dealing with.