Can We Talk About “The Residence” and the Viewing Experience?

Just over three weeks ago, Netflix dropped the eight-episode series “The Residence” (not “The Resident” so don’t let your phone autocorrect). It’s a funny, quirky, delightful, highly entertaining whodunnit set in the White House during a state dinner when the head usher is found murdered.

And the show wears its influences on its sleeve. Each of the episodes is titled after an older story/book/movie. The characters even namedrop famous detectives. And, of course, the story centers on a unique detective.

Cordelia Cupp, played by Uzo Aduba, is brought in by the Metropolitan police to solve the case. She’s a birder and brings her patient, no-BS style of investigation to the most found house in America. She’s not what anyone suspects a detective should be, which enables her to keep everyone off balance.
And by everyone, I mean the stellar cast. Randall Park’s “Watson” who goes along with Cupp and rarely knows the right thing to say. Jason Lee’s wonderful performance that seems to channel his characters from those Kevin Smith films, reminding everyone just how funny and acerbic he can be. The understate Giancarlo Esposito, who, as head usher, is more than a mere victim. And so many more. Excellent casting.

Interspersed into the main state-dinner scenes are flash-forward scenes of a congressional hearing (chaired by Al Franken) about the murder. The editor must have had a field day putting this together (or many, many late nights) but the quick cuts usually serve as punchlines to setups.
I do not binge TV. I prefer to watch my shows at a leisurely pace, often watching a single episode per week. When my wife and I opted to try out the first episode, we became so hooked that, four hours later, I surrendered to tiredness and had to go to bed. But I didn’t want to. For a traditional TV watcher like me, that is a big deal.

Which brings me to how it is being presented.

It’s a Netflix show, so first of all, thank you, Netflix, for greenlighting this show; thank you, Shanda Rhimes, for getting it up and running, and thank you Paul William Davies for writing the show. I look forward to a new season next spring.

But I wonder if this show might’ve caught a little bit of a zeitgeist if it had been presented weekly. It would have had a chance to breath, maybe get mentioned on SNL, and maybe had more blogs talk about how good it is. It could build up a head of steam and get more casual viewers who happened to hear about it in the office kitchen.

Still, it’s a wonderful way to spend 8.5 hours (the last episode is nearly ninety minutes). I rarely re-watch a TV show, but I’ll be re-watching this one as we wait for season two.