Burned out and broke, Kenny returns to his hometown of Shelby, North Carolina, and moves into the spare bedroom of his brother Dustin (John Hawkes).
Hill has said in interviews that the pilot was shot on a shoestring budget. The motel was a real motel. The school was a real, functioning school. This verisimilitude makes the absurdity of Kenny’s behavior even more jarring. eastbound and down s1 e1
However, the pilot wastes no time in delivering the punchline. The narrative snaps abruptly to the present. The hero is gone, replaced by a bloated, shell-shocked failure. The transition is jarring. One moment, Kenny is signing multi-million dollar contracts; the next, he is driving a beat-up convertible with a tape deck, returning to his hometown in Shelby, North Carolina. Burned out and broke, Kenny returns to his
The plot is brutally simple: Kenny, a former Major League superstar whose career imploded due to steroid use, a violent temper, and an ego the size of a continent, is forced to return to his hometown. He moves into the basement of his brother’s house (a brother played brilliantly by John Hawkes) and takes a job as a substitute physical education teacher at the local middle school. The school was a real, functioning school