In the second episode of Netflix’s Painkiller, two sales representatives (West Duchovny and Dina Shihabi) call in on various doctors’ offices to push a pill that promises to reduce pain and enhance quality of life. Like all good sales reps, they come bearing gifts, among them a cute stuffed toy in the shape of a pill, a recurring motif throughout the series meant to represent danger disguised as something innocuous. The drug in question is OxyContin, and the sales reps work for Purdue Pharma, the company that, under the ownership of the now infamous Sackler family, marketed the opioid to millions of Americans to devastating results.
The plot unfolds as Edie Flowers (Uzo Aduba), a jaded state investigator, recounts her findings to the lawyers trying to build a case against the Sacklers. The series attempts to address every possible angle of the scandal, from the company that created the drug, to the reps who sold it, to the doctors who prescribed it, to the victims who became addicted to it, to those who tried to protect the public. But Painkiller fails to adequately cover all of this material across its six hour-long episodes, with some of its storylines, like the one that depicts a dispirited doctor (John Ales) who tries to intervene, feeling rushed and underdeveloped, while others, like the one focused on a debaucherous Big Pharma party in Miami, are stretched out to painful lengths.
Tonally, Painkiller is inconsistent to the point of being trippy, which is possibly intentional. Moments like the Sackler family literally trading blows across the dinner table sit jarringly alongside more nuanced discussions about the use and manipulation of medical language. There are also bizarrely comedic hallucinations interspersed throughout the series, as in the cartoonish ghost of the dead Arthur Sackler (Clark Gregg), one of the three patriarchs of the family, repeatedly appearing to advise and taunt his nephew, Richard (Matthew Broderick).
To its credit, the series does draw a gripping contrast between the ugly realities of Purdue Pharma’s victims and the pristine, synthetic world of Big Pharma. The story of a likeable mechanic, Glen Kryger (Taylor Kitsch), whose life is upended after being prescribed OxyContin for a work injury, is particularly harrowing. There are also some well-constructed parallels between Edie’s brother, Shawn (Jamaal Grant), a crack dealer who pays the price for his crimes with hard time, and the Sacklers, who are rewarded for their dealings.
As Painkiller progresses toward its climax, though, its frequent tonal shifts distract from the substance of the story. The hallucinatory sequences, including one in which Richard is beaten up by Arthur’s ghost, escalate to the point of absurdity. And ostensibly meaningful metaphors like a smoke detector that won’t turn off are deployed with a clunkiness that strips them of their significance. Turns out, the show’s intrigue—revolving around topics of wealth, corruption, and a historic betrayal of public trust—is ultimately packaged and sold like a stuffed toy.
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