TV Review: "The Sticky"
This Canadian-American series--anchored by a powerhouse performance by beloved character actress Margo Martindale--is an expert blend of absurdity, violence, and black humor.
Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture? Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show!
I’ve been a big fan of FX’s Fargo ever since the first season premiered back in 2014, and I’m always on the hunt for a series that hits the same notes of absurdity, violence, and black humor. Lo and behold, 2024 has given us The Sticky, a bitingly funny American/Canadian series starring beloved character actress Margo Martindale as an embittered owner of a maple syrup farm whose life is turned upside down once her struggling business is essentially stolen out from under her. This leads her to join up with Remy Bouchard (Guillaume Cyr), a disgruntled security guard at her nemesis’ warehouse, and Mike Byrne (Chris Diamontopoulos), a mobster who’s desperate to rehabilitate his damaged image in a grand heist involving enormous amounts of maple syrup. Needless to say, nothing goes quite according to plan.
Martindale shows once again why she is one of the most formidable acting talents of her generation, capable of a star turn when she gets the opportunity. The Sticky is a perfect showcase for her talents, and it gives her the chance to really sink her teeth into the role. Her Ruth is the kind of woman who has no qualms about acting like a gigantic bitch to anyone who gets in her way, whether it’s her accomplices (who, to be fair, are exasperating and quite stupid) or the cunning and ruthless Leonard Gauthier (Guy Nadon), who believes it’s his right to throw anyone under the bus in service of his own ambitions, even if that happens to include his own son. She’s not above taking a tree, hitching it up to her truck, and sending it cascading into her enemy’s office building, utterly heedless of the consequences and how this might make her look to others. It’s impossible to overstate just how much fun it is to see Martindale acting like a rampaging beast to anyone and everyone, tearing everyone a new asshole in the process.
Ruth, however, is a woman of many depths. She might be a hardass about pretty much every aspect of her life–including her sister, with whom she has a deeply contentious relationship–but she does seem to genuinely love and care about her husband, who is in a coma at the beginning of the series and is eventually sent to the hospital. Of all of the people in her life, her husband is the one person that Ruth seems to actually care about and want to help, and Martindale skillfully shifts registers whenever the two characters are in a scene together, giving us insight into what Ruth is like within the confines of her marriage.
Both Guillaume Cyr and Chris Diamontopoulos are also expertly cast as Ruth’s accomplices. Cyr perfectly captures Remy's general doofiness, and you almost come to feel sorry for him, since he is so disregarded and frustrated in his job (even if he is beloved and sometimes coddled by his father). Diamantopoulos is likewise perfectly cast, shifting effortlessly between brutal self-confidence and absolute ridiculousness. He’s even sexy, if you can look past his propensity for violence and his general ineptitude.
As with Fargo, violence is always lurking just around the corner. This becomes abundantly clear from the outset when Mike beats a man to death, without much thought for how the consequences of his actions are going to cast a very long shadow. Needless to say, this ends up causing more problems than it solves, both for Mike and for everyone else involved in the caper. The Sticky, again like Fargo, is very much about the perils of contingency, and how quickly a heist–particularly one that is so half-baked as the one that the three central characters put together–can go fatally awry.
Take, for example, the arrival of Jamie Lee Curtis’ Bo Shea, who comes into town determined to bring Mike to heel. lt It’s always a pleasure when Curtis shows up and, as always, she’s a character with a no-nonsense attitude. Believe me when I tell you that it is nothing less than an unalloyed delight to see the likes of Martindale and Curtis going at each other, particularly since Bo seems to be one of the few people capable of actually intimidating Ruth into submission and some measure of silence (it certainly helps that she has a gun and clearly isn’t afraid to use it). Unfortunately, for both her and the others, she ends up taking what appears to be a fatal fall over a railing, leaving our three antiheroes in something of a pickle.
And yet, somehow, despite everything, they manage to pull it off, though not without a great deal of fallout left in their wake. Not only has Remy’s father been arrested for the murder of his friend (committed by Mike, who’s left lots of evidence behind, but Ruth’s husband has actually come out of his coma. As if all of this weren’t enough, Bo has also survived, and it turns out she knows Ruth’s husband. As with any good black comedy, the first season of The Sticky is delightfully and fatalistically absurd right up until the end. There’s even a rather strange moral order at work, in that men like Gauthier–who is utterly unscrupulous when it comes to his business, willing to throw even his son under the bus–get their just desserts, even as Ruth and her accomplices also don’t get to have everything their way. Crime does pay, but only for a little while.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t representatives of the law here, and it’s quite fun to watch the scenes featuring Detective Valérie Nadeau (Suzanne Clément) and local cop Teddy Green (Gita Miller). There wasn’t quite as much of a balance between the criminal and law enforcement elements, though one of the funniest scenes in the entire season occurs when Ruth and company are hiding out in a storage unit and just manage to keep the police at bay by barring the door from the inside. It’s utterly silly and yet, somehow, also deadly serious. It’s everything I loved about the show distilled into one scene.
As so often is the case these days, there’s been no announcement so far as to whether there will be a second season, but there are certainly enough loose threads and areas that can be developed and elaborated upon in a second season. When you have this kind of talent on offer, it may seem like a no-brainer when it comes to giving a renewal. More than that, though, it’s just a damn funny show that is also, strangely enough, based (very loosely) on a real event. Let’s hope that it gets at least one more season to wrap up the various plot threads and give Ruth and company the satisfying send-off they deserve.