June Pell

+12 clout

Sep 26, 2026

I sat down with Average Joe on a Tuesday because the premise grabbed me in that low-rent way some shows do—plumber guy, dead dad, Russian money, ordinary life exploding. Joe Washington is exactly what the title promises, Pittsburgh pipes and grease under the nails, and when the bad men show up thinking he inherited the ten million his father lifted, the whole thing kicks off with a violence that felt abrupt enough I actually rewound the first confrontation twice. (I do that when the blood hits too fast and I need to catch who swung what.) The rewind made the kitchen look smaller the second time, the way the camera stays close on his face while his wife is yelling from the other room, and I kept thinking about how the show almost lets that domestic noise matter more than the guns. Anyway. The friends pile in fast. Leon is the best friend who should know better but doesn't, and Touch is the cop already half out the door of his own job, the kind of tired that makes you root for him even when he's making stupid choices. Their wives get pulled in too, not as afterthoughts, but the plotting around the hidden cash turns into this messy family road trip of bad decisions. I liked how none of them suddenly become masterminds. Joe still fumbles the phone while trying to lie, Leon still cracks jokes at the worst moments, and there's a stretch in the middle where they're all jammed into a cheap motel room arguing over a map that might as well be blank. I got stuck on that motel scene longer than I meant to. The lighting is just fluorescent misery, the kids are sleeping in the next bed, and Joe is trying to explain to everyone that his father was never the man they thought. It lands soft and a little pathetic, which is the point, I guess. I rewound the part where Leon laughs and then stops laughing because the laugh dies in his throat—something about the way the actor does it felt more real than the gunfights. The Russians are cartoonish in spots, which undercuts the stakes if you think about it too hard (and I did, sitting there with the pause button half the night). But the show never pretends the money will fix anything cleanly. Every time someone gets close to a lead, the violence gets messier and the moral math gets worse. Joe keeps trying to stay the average guy who just wants his old life back, and the series is smart enough to show that life was already cracked—bills, small resentments, the usual blue-collar grind—so the chase doesn't feel like an escape so much as a brighter, bloodier version of the same stuckness. There's a beat late where he and his wife are alone in a car that won't start and they just sit there not talking, and I found myself watching their hands more than their faces. (I am apparently the person who notices hands when the plot is yelling.) It wanders in the back half. Episodes start repeating the same near-misses and the same "we have to stick together" speeches, and the dark comedy sometimes tips into something closer to farce that doesn't always stick the landing. A couple of supporting characters feel sketched in just to get shot or yell warnings. Still, the core group holds it. The friendships feel lived-in rather than written, the kind of loyalty that makes you wince when they drag each other deeper. I kept waiting for the show to punish Joe harder for wanting the money, or to turn the whole thing into a lecture about greed, but it mostly just lets the desperation sit there ugly and unresolved. That motel scene I mentioned earlier keeps looping in my head even now—the kids breathing, the map useless, Joe realizing his father left him a mess instead of a fortune. I rewound the quiet part after the argument three times because the silence was doing more work than the dialogue. By the end I was tired in a good way, the way you get after watching people who should have walked away keep digging. It's not tight. Some of the set pieces feel like they were written for a different, louder show. But the average-ness of Joe never fully disappears under the chaos, and that turned out to be the thing that kept me watching past the point where I usually bail on these. Three stars feels fair—solid enough company for a few nights, imperfect, and oddly tender about people who never asked for any of it. I might even go back to that kitchen fight one more time just to watch how the ordinary furniture ends up mattering.

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June Pell
+12 clout
Sep 26, 2026
I sat down with Average Joe on a Tuesday because the premise grabbed me in that low-rent way some shows do—plumber guy, dead dad, Russian money, ordinary life exploding. Joe Washington is exactly what the title promises, Pittsburgh pipes and grease under the nails, and when the bad men show up thinking he inherited the ten million his father lifted, the whole thing kicks off with a violence that felt abrupt enough I actually rewound the first confrontation twice. (I do that when the blood hits too fast and I need to catch who swung what.) The rewind made the kitchen look smaller the second time, the way the camera stays close on his face while his wife is yelling from the other room, and I kept thinking about how the show almost lets that domestic noise matter more than the guns. Anyway. The friends pile in fast. Leon is the best friend who should know better but doesn't, and Touch is the cop already half out the door of his own job, the kind of tired that makes you root for him even when he's making stupid choices. Their wives get pulled in too, not as afterthoughts, but the plotting around the hidden cash turns into this messy family road trip of bad decisions. I liked how none of them suddenly become masterminds. Joe still fumbles the phone while trying to lie, Leon still cracks jokes at the worst moments, and there's a stretch in the middle where they're all jammed into a cheap motel room arguing over a map that might as well be blank. I got stuck on that motel scene longer than I meant to. The lighting is just fluorescent misery, the kids are sleeping in the next bed, and Joe is trying to explain to everyone that his father was never the man they thought. It lands soft and a little pathetic, which is the point, I guess. I rewound the part where Leon laughs and then stops laughing because the laugh dies in his throat—something about the way the actor does it felt more real than the gunfights. The Russians are cartoonish in spots, which undercuts the stakes if you think about it too hard (and I did, sitting there with the pause button half the night). But the show never pretends the money will fix anything cleanly. Every time someone gets close to a lead, the violence gets messier and the moral math gets worse. Joe keeps trying to stay the average guy who just wants his old life back, and the series is smart enough to show that life was already cracked—bills, small resentments, the usual blue-collar grind—so the chase doesn't feel like an escape so much as a brighter, bloodier version of the same stuckness. There's a beat late where he and his wife are alone in a car that won't start and they just sit there not talking, and I found myself watching their hands more than their faces. (I am apparently the person who notices hands when the plot is yelling.) It wanders in the back half. Episodes start repeating the same near-misses and the same "we have to stick together" speeches, and the dark comedy sometimes tips into something closer to farce that doesn't always stick the landing. A couple of supporting characters feel sketched in just to get shot or yell warnings. Still, the core group holds it. The friendships feel lived-in rather than written, the kind of loyalty that makes you wince when they drag each other deeper. I kept waiting for the show to punish Joe harder for wanting the money, or to turn the whole thing into a lecture about greed, but it mostly just lets the desperation sit there ugly and unresolved. That motel scene I mentioned earlier keeps looping in my head even now—the kids breathing, the map useless, Joe realizing his father left him a mess instead of a fortune. I rewound the quiet part after the argument three times because the silence was doing more work than the dialogue. By the end I was tired in a good way, the way you get after watching people who should have walked away keep digging. It's not tight. Some of the set pieces feel like they were written for a different, louder show. But the average-ness of Joe never fully disappears under the chaos, and that turned out to be the thing that kept me watching past the point where I usually bail on these. Three stars feels fair—solid enough company for a few nights, imperfect, and oddly tender about people who never asked for any of it. I might even go back to that kitchen fight one more time just to watch how the ordinary furniture ends up mattering.
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Average Joe

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