Look, we have to talk about that 2018 moment when everyone thought Alan Ball was going to save television again. You remember the hype, right? The guy who gave us Six Feet Under and True Blood was coming back to HBO. It felt like a guaranteed slam dunk. He had Holly Hunter. He had Tim Robbins. He had a massive budget and the kind of "prestige" branding that usually translates to five seasons and a dozen Emmys.
Instead, we got the here and now tv show, a series so strange, so polarizing, and so deeply messy that HBO pulled the plug after just ten episodes. It didn’t just fail; it vanished. If you try to find people talking about it today, you’ll mostly find confused Reddit threads or critics who are still trying to figure out if it was a brilliant satire or just a colossal wreck.
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Honestly, it’s a bit of both.
The "Experiment" That Went Off the Rails
The core premise of the here and now tv show sounds like a sociology thesis. Greg (Robbins) and Audrey (Hunter) are these aging Portland progressives who decided to build a "multi-cultural" family. They adopted kids from Liberia, Vietnam, and Colombia, then had one biological daughter. Greg actually calls the family an "experiment" at one point, which is... yeah, it’s a lot.
The kids are all grown up now, and they are not okay.
- Ashley (Jerrika Hinton): A fashion mogul who is secretly self-destructing.
- Duc (Raymond Lee): A "motivational architect" (basically a life coach) who is obsessed with control.
- Ramon (Daniel Zovatto): A video game designer who starts seeing 11:11 everywhere.
- Kristen (Sosie Bacon): The "boring" biological child who feels invisible.
The show basically dumps you into the middle of their mid-life and quarter-life crises. It’s heavy. It’s loud. And it really, really wants you to know that the world is a scary place.
Why the Here and Now TV Show Felt So Different
What makes this show such a weird artifact is how it tried to mash genres together. One minute you’re watching a grounded family drama about a marriage falling apart, and the next, Ramon is having psychic visions of a woman scratching her face off. It was Six Feet Under meets Sense8 with a heavy dose of 2018 political anxiety.
Critics at the time, like those at The Guardian, called it "stiflingly self-important." They weren't entirely wrong. The show had a habit of stopping the plot so a character could deliver a five-minute monologue about white privilege or the death of empathy. It felt like Alan Ball was trying to scream everything he felt about the Trump-era world into a megaphone.
But there was something fascinating about the Shokrani family, too. Dr. Farid Shokrani (Peter Macdissi) is Ramon’s therapist, and his story—involving his gender-fluid son Navid—was arguably more compelling than the main family’s drama. The show was trying to do everything at once. It wanted to be a mystery, a social commentary, and a tear-jerker.
The Ending Everyone Hated (Or Loved)
If you actually made it to the finale, you know things got wild. We spent ten episodes wondering if Ramon was actually psychic or just having a mental breakdown. The show kept teasing this connection between the characters that felt spiritual or even alien.
Then, the clock hits 11:11, and Mount Hood literally erupts.
That was it. No Season 2. No resolution. HBO canceled the here and now tv show just weeks after that cliffhanger. It left fans (the few that were left) stranded. Greg was visiting a guy named Ike who had the same visions, the world was ending, and then... black screen. Forever.
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Lessons from the Bayer-Boatwright Collapse
Looking back, the here and now tv show suffered from "Peak TV" syndrome. It was too ambitious for its own good. It tried to represent every single social issue—racism, trans rights, mental health, infidelity, political polarization—in a single ten-hour block. When you try to say everything, sometimes you end up saying nothing.
However, the performances were actually stellar. Holly Hunter played the "well-meaning but narcissistic" mother role to perfection. You wanted to hug her and fire her at the same time. Tim Robbins played Greg as a man who had simply given up on the "now" he used to preach about.
If you're thinking about watching it now on Max (or wherever it's currently streaming), go in with your eyes open. It’s not a cozy binge. It’s a jagged, uncomfortable, and often frustrating piece of television. But if you like seeing a master creator like Alan Ball take a massive, weird risk, it’s worth a look just for the sheer audacity of it.
How to approach a rewatch:
- Ignore the "11:11" mystery: It never gets a real answer, so don't drive yourself crazy looking for clues.
- Focus on the sibling chemistry: The best parts of the show are the scenes where the four kids are just being humans together.
- Prepare for the "cringe": Some of the dialogue about social issues is very "2018 Twitter," which hasn't aged perfectly.
- Watch it as a limited series: Treat the eruption as a metaphor for the family’s collapse rather than a literal sci-fi event.
The show serves as a time capsule of a very specific moment in American culture. It’s messy, it’s preachy, and it’s undeniably unique. Sometimes the failures are more interesting than the hits.
For those looking for something similar but perhaps more "balanced," you might want to revisit Six Feet Under or check out more recent character-driven dramas like Succession, which handles family dysfunction with a bit more cynical precision. If you still want that supernatural edge, The Leftovers remains the gold standard for shows that use the "unknowable" to explore human grief.
Actionable Next Steps:
Check your local streaming listings for Here and Now to see if the full 10-episode run is available. If you've already seen it and are looking for closure, look for Alan Ball's post-cancellation interviews where he discusses the intended direction for Season 2, which would have leaned much further into the metaphysical "mountain" mystery. Be aware that most "answers" to the show's mysteries remain speculative as no official script or book continuation has been released.