Day 2,007, Quasi-Quarantine: Underdogs Try To Topple Rigged Entertainment Game In "Everybody Knows"

 

“This feeling washes over her, this soul-deep wish to just go back to when she could walk through this burning world without noticing it’s on fire.”

This entertaining tale is powered by rapid pacing and clipped sentences, as the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles is exposed block by block. "Everybody Knows" proceeds breakneck through the LA streets as every Hollywood sin joins the never-ending car chase.

“Everything is a sequel or a reboot or an adaptation. Everything is an echo of something else. It’s like her friend Sarah says about the Industry: Somebody somewhere catches lightning in a bottle – and all over town people run out and they buy bottles.”

Jordan Harper has created a noir feel that tries almost too hard to be noir. At times, Aaron Sorkin-level dialogue also serves to undercut the story arc. 

“No one asks if those things are true. No one cares. The only job is to disconnect power from responsibility.”

“‘I know who he is.’

‘You’ve got it wrong already. At a certain point people stop being a who and start being a why.’”

The result is an oppressively dark exploration of the unstoppable force of the bad and powerful, making this one truly a story for its time.

“Who doesn’t know their lives are built on top of bones? Who doesn’t carry inside them that it’s only brutal violence keeping this world afloat? Child slaves making our clothes, factory farms turning animals to slurry, nations of plastic floating in the ocean. Is she supposed to yank all that down too? Just her?”