Tee Vee Casualty: *Goliath*, revisited
Billy Bob’s One-Gear Legal Western Noir Fever Dream was better than *Landman*.
Billy Bob Thornton as Billy McBride in Goliath: “It’s Chinatown, Billy.” (📷 Photo courtesy Amazon Prime Video)
After writing about Landman a few weeks ago, I found myself wanting to revisit Goliath. I watched the entire run when it first aired (streamed? dropped? whatever we’re calling it now) and remembered really enjoying it. But as soon as I pressed play, I realized I didn’t remember a fucking second of the show. At first, that was a little alarming—had I burned through it too quickly the first time? Had the sheer volume of content I consume finally fried my brain? But then I realized: This was a gift. It was all fresh to me again, something to rediscover.
And I have to say, I think I prefer Goliath to Landman, even though I enjoyed the latter. Landman had the slickness and the pacing, but Taylor Sheridan’s not-so-latent red state politics ultimately grated on me. Goliath is a different beast altogether—a thoroughly modern LA noir.
The first two seasons felt like a 21st century Rockford Files, right down to the way it was shot and the protagonist’s scrappy, low-rent vibe. But rather than James Garner as down-and-out ex-con-turned-gumshoe Jim Rockford, we get Billy Bob Thornton as Billy McBride, a down-and-out alcoholic lawyer. And instead of a beat-up trailer on the beach, McBride operates out of a hotsheet motel room. Which, let’s be real, is probably an even more fitting headquarters for a man of his particular talents.
That setup—washed-up, brilliant legal mind clawing his way through cases nobody else will touch, and triumphing spectacularly in the end—made Goliath compelling from the start. There was something refreshing about its simplicity in those early seasons. No grand conspiracies, no abstract reality-bending, just a deeply flawed man up against insurmountable odds. The stakes were high, but they always felt personal. McBride wasn’t a noble crusader—he was just stubborn, pissed off, and incapable of walking away from a fight. And he was brilliant.
A Shift Into the Surreal
Then Season 3 happens, and the show takes a hard turn into David Lynch territory. It’s like someone in the writer’s room asked, “What if Twin Peaks actually made sense?” The result skewed eerie, surreal, but still tethered to the hardboiled realism of the first two seasons.
Season 3’s descent into the weird was a gamble, but one that largely paid off. It still had the central noir structure—McBride unraveling a legal conspiracy, pushing back against powerful forces—but now it came with moments that felt ripped from a fever dream. The villains became more grotesque, the stakes felt more existential, and the entire tone of the show shifted into something almost mythical.
A big part of why Season 3 worked was its casting. Dennis Quaid played Wade Blackwood, the most grinningly loathsome bastard in the series’ run, a grotesque caricature of power and entitlement. And Beau Bridges as his brother—brilliantly smug and detached—gave the season’s villains the perfect one-two punch of political and corporate corruption. Their performances leaned into the heightened reality of the season, adding just enough theatricality to sell the dreamlike horror of McBride’s situation.
The Lounge Singer in the Dream: Lynda Kay’s Surreal Cameo
One of the weirdest and most unexpectedly brilliant touches in Season 3 was the recurring presence of Lynda Kay, a vintage country-lounge singer who kept turning up in the hotel bar where McBride was staying. She wasn’t just background noise—she was Goliath’s own Julee Cruise, a Greek chorus crooning eerie, melancholic torch songs that seemed to narrate the existential dread of the season. Every time she appeared, it felt less like McBride had wandered into a bar and more like he’d drifted into some liminal space between reality and a whiskey-soaked afterlife.
Her haunting, reverb-drenched voice made Season 3 feel even more like Twin Peaks, Jr. And just when you thought she was a one-season gimmick—boom! There she was again in Season 4, making a quick, unexpected cameo. A little moment, sure, but one that reinforced Goliath’s ongoing theme: that nothing ever really disappears, least of all Billy McBride’s ghosts.
More than merely a quirky recurring bit, her presence underscored how much Goliath relied on music to shape its shifting moods. Whether it was Lynda Kay’s ethereal crooning, the show’s deep cuts of classic blues and rock, or the way it used sound design to heighten its surrealism, Goliath treated its music as more than just a backdrop—it was a character in its own right.
Billy Bob in the Fever Dream of Chinatown
Then comes Season 4, where the show abandons any pretense of realism altogether. McBride, still reeling from the gunshot wound inflicted by his own daughter, spends most of the season drifting between reality and some half-lit purgatory of his subconscious. The story moves to San Francisco’s Chinatown, where it’s perpetually raining and nighttime, and McBride takes on Big Pharma in a case that feels as hopelessly tangled as his own mind.
Season 4’s when Billy Bob and company said, “Screw it, let’s go out with a tribute to everything we love about cinema.” It’s a mishmash of classic noir, High Noon Western showdowns, a pharmaceutical conspiracy straight out of Chinatown, and a disorienting, dreamlike structure that keeps you guessing what’s real and what’s a painkiller-induced fever dream. Hell, Season 3 even invades Season 4 now and again, several characters like Kay reprised on some of that storyline’s sets, in yet more hallucinations.
At times, it’s hard to tell if Goliath is even pretending to be a legal drama anymore. The courtroom scenes are almost incidental—just waypoints in McBride’s increasingly surreal odyssey. There are moments where you’re left wondering if what you’re seeing is actually happening or if it’s another one of McBride’s painkiller-induced hallucinations. The whole thing has this hazy, dreamlike quality that makes Chinatown look like a procedural police report by comparison.
And yet, through all of this, Billy Bob grinds his solitary acting gear like a goddamn champion. If there’s one thing you can count on in Goliath, it’s that McBride will always be McBride—hungover, pissed off, and ready to throw himself into the next unwinnable fight. Bless his heart. He plays the role like a man who’s resigned himself to a cosmic joke, trudging through the absurdity because, well, what else is he going to do? He lights endless cigarettes, flexes his Billy Bob Thornton persona, and suppresses a smirk that tells you he, too, is waiting for someone to say, “It’s Chinatown, Billy.”
The Supporting Cast: The Good, the Bad, and the Nails-on-Chalkboard
As much as Goliath is Billy Bob’s show, it wouldn’t work without its supporting cast. Patty Solis-Papagian (Nina Arianda) remains the one constant in McBride’s life, grounding him just enough to keep things from completely unraveling. She’s the character that makes sure the show never drifts too far into the abstract. No matter how bizarre things get, Patty keeps it tethered to something resembling reality, across all four seasons.
Then there’s J.K. Simmons, the world’s greatest underrated actor. As expected, he’s the absolute mark of quality. He plays George Zax, the Big Pharma mogul at the heart of Season 4’s conspiracy, with that calm, measured menace that makes him such a magnetic screen presence. Simmons has a way of making even the most routine corporate villain feel layered and interesting. He’s a guy who never has to raise his voice to be terrifying, because you just know he’s got all the power.
Bruce Dern also makes an appearance as Franklin Zax, George’s eccentric brother. Dern is just Dern—grizzled, unpredictable, and barely distinguishable from the wild-eyed characters he’s been playing for decades. But Goliath leans into that, using his presence to add another layer of chaos to an already chaotic story.
Then there’s Lenora Crichlow’s Eva Canning, whose mere presence is loathsome. Some characters take time to worm their way under your skin—she managed it in seconds. It was everything—the accent, the attitude, the sheer vibe of the character. There’s just something grating about her presence, like nails on a chalkboard every time she appears on screen.
On the flip side, Jena Malone’s Samantha Margolis is a fantastic addition. Smart, sharp, and morally ambiguous, she plays the kind of character who might be an ally, might be an opportunist, but is always interesting to watch. She adds a much-needed counterbalance to the madness, working alongside McBride and Patty while still keeping her own motivations close to the chest.
Season 4’s best casting move? Bringing in Robert Patrick, an actor as underrated as Simmons. His performance as McBride’s father in the fever-dream sequences is incredible—icy and menacing, yet somehow tragic, a specter haunting McBride’s damaged psyche. Patrick plays the role with the same controlled intensity that made him iconic in Terminator 2, but here it’s layered with something more haunted, more personal.
The Final Verdict
Goliath started as stripped-down legal noir, took a detour through Twin Peaks, and ended as a surrealist neo-noir Western fever dream. It wasn’t always perfect. It didn’t always make sense. But Goliath swung for the fences in a way few shows do. And I’ll take that over safe, predictable television any day.
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Oh, I hereby declare Napalm HQ a sovereign nation! With my first executive order, I am changing the name of the Gulf Of America!
Thanks, Bill Holdship!
Gabba Gabba Hey! Have a great weekend!
Next week: James Baker, Part 4; The Saints box set; more about the Acme™ Corporation!
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