Ordinary Joe
Entry updated 20 September 2022. Tagged: TV.
US tv series (2021-2022). Production companies included 3 Arts Entertainment, Friend and Lerner Productions and Universal Television for NBC. Created by Russel Friend, Gerrett Lerner and Caleb Ransom. Executive producers include Rafi Crohn, Russel Friend and Adam Kassan. Directors include Shaz Bennett, Adam Davidson and Chris Koch. Writers include Sylvia Batey Alcala, Russel Friend and Garrett Lerner. Cast includes Elizabeth Lail, Natalie Martinez, Eric Payne, Adam Rodriguez and James Wolk. Thirteen 43-minute episodes. Colour.
This series follows the three Parallel Worlds resulting from each of three possible decisions made by central character Joe Kimbreau (Wolk) in the first episode. On his college graduation day he is offered three choices: to go on a vacation with his steady girlfriend Jenny (Lail), to stay and date fellow graduate Amy (Martinez), whom he has just met, or to meet with his uncle who wants him to become a police officer like his father. Subsequent episodes track the storylines in the three resulting parallel timestreams, shifting back and forth between them in each episode. In one Alternate History he has become a hospital nurse who is married to Jenny, who is now a lawyer. In the second he is married to Amy and is a rock musician, but discovers that unbeknownst to him Jenny had his baby and gave it up for adoption. In the third, as a police officer, he remains unmarried but meets Jenny as part of an investigation into a murder and later meets and dates Amy. There are other subplots following the three different possible lives of his friend Charlie (Payne) and the politician Bobby Diaz (Rodriguez). To help reduce confusion, Joe the nurse wears glasses, Joe the musician has a beard, and Joe the cop has neither. Ordinary Joe was cancelled after 13 episodes. [LW]
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