I’d link to the HBO site, but it’s hopelessly slow. Stars Dustin Hoffman, produced by David Milch (of Deadwood fame) and concerns the horseracing game. Sounds like it might be interesting.
Here’s the “About the show” quote from the HBO site (which is indeed very slow):
Got a favorable write-up from Ken Tucker at Entertainment Weekly, for what it’s worth. Should be interesting if only for Michael Mann’s involvement, and to see Hoffman in a recurring television role.
I watched the first episode when they had a preview of it on HBO a few weeks ago. Hey, Octavia! is in it (from Rome) although she has a small part so far. I really liked the premiere although there seems to be alot of characters to keep track of. Nick Nolte looks good - he and the trainer Escalante are my favorites so far.
I was less than thrilled with the premier. They need to lose that annoying background music and stick to good writing. I like Dennis Farina, and Hoffman is looking good. The insider jargon is a bit thick, and I had to turn on CC in order to catch a lot of the muttered dialogue. We’ll give it another week or two and hope it improves with watching.
Yeah, it was especially hard to keep up with what Richard Kind was saying.
Anyway, I don’t know much about horse racing myself. Can someone explain just how a Pick 6 works? And just what kind of scheme were the the wheelchair guy and his buddies pulling?
I’m cautiously pessimistic. Looked interesting, but I didn’t find the pilot particularly compelling… I don’t know anything about horse race betting and didn’t really understand how they ended up winning so big. I fear that as with “John from Cincinnati” and competitive surfing, it may not be able to hold my interest in a theme I don’t much give a shit about.
This horse racing fan (who just got a new horse–a mare who ran twice at Santa Anita in 2003 but now just hauls my butt around at a much slower pace) had to watch, of course. I was fascinated by just how much jargon they were using, and told my hubby they were going to lose a lot of people with it.
Okay, first of all, as a long time racing fan and horse owner, I was distracted by nitpicky things 90% of viewers would not catch. But, being the SDMB and all, I feel compelled to share them anyway. 
The horses in the racing scenes were far from exerting themselves. They had their heads up and mouths open (which means they’re pulling, saying “Lemme go, lemme go!”) and never seemed to go above a gallop. A lot of the times the jocks were sitting really high in the saddle, too, and had their feet far forward (known as “on the dashboard”), which means they were hitting the brakes, not the accelerator.
No horse would be able to continue forward after a compound fracture like that. That sort of breakdown at that speed results in a fall; an ugly fall. Jocks say it feels like the horse steps in a hole and falls in. But I understand they wanted to make it clear the horse had a fatal injury.
BTW, personal note, just put down my beloved mare this past September. The euthanasia scene was quite accurate and tough for us to watch.
Both hubby and I were vexed by Nick Nolte’s star horse in the nylon halter. I was stunned hubby, not nearly the racing fan I am, noticed as well. I don’t know anyone in racing who uses nylon halters–it’s all leather because it breaks away easier.
Also distracted by some bad horse makeup jobs, most notably the very obviously painted over blaze on Nolte’s horse in their final scene together.
Great seeing Gary Stevens acting again. I was pleasantly surprised as he’s fairly wooden as a commentator.
Also interesting to see Chantal Sutherland–she is a current top jockey who was 2nd in last year’s $5,000,000 Breeder’s Cup Classic. She was the woman talking to the exercise rider on the rail while they watched the final race.
I don’t get the drama over Escalante betting his own horse. It’s perfectly legal for a trainer or owner to bet their own horse in a race–they just can’t bet someone else’s horse. FTR, trainers do more than their fair share to hide horse’s talent as they don’t want the horse claimed (we see a claiming tag in the season previews), but not all races are claimers. (Claimer: every horse in the race is for sale, for prices ranging at least at Santa Anita from $10k to $80k. A claim is put in on a horse before a race, not after, and sold horses get the red CLAIMED tag after the race so they are taken to their new barns.)
The racing program showed Escalante was running the horse in a $10,000 claimer, which is the bottom barrel level at Santa Anita. Other tracks do run them at lower prices.
These were the mellowest, best-behaved racing thoroughbreds I’ve ever seen.
The pick six was interesting, but as far as I could tell (outside of the security guard dealings), nothing was illicit about their bets. They just were making a HUGE gamble by having only one horse, a long shot, as their choice in the 4th.
The picture painted of backstretch barn activity was pretty realistic.
So, there’s my racing fan blah. If you have any questions about racing aspects of the show, fire away.
You know, on second thought the euthanasia scene was not quite so realistic. The massive syringe of “pink juice” looked very much the part, but horses (or any animal) do not slowly blink or fade away. They’re just suddenly gone, eyes wide open and unblinking. The scene brought back painful, vivid recent memories that made the scene seem more true to life than it was for us.
My wife was in tears over that scene, as it was reminiscent of putting our cat down six months ago.
Vulture’s Q&A about the premiere helps explain a lot of the confusing stuff.
I love David Milch’s writing, but he never makes it easy on the audience. “Deadwood” was pretty difficult to understand early on as well.
This is mentioned in the Vulture link I posted above, but maybe showed that he knew something that others didn’t about that horse’s chances. Doping perhaps?
I doubt it’s doping simply because there was nothing hinting at that. I didn’t see Escalante doing anything inappropriate or dishonest, so I don’t understand the Serious Scene Is Serious tone showing him redeeming his tickets.
It’s very common–heck, it’s just good sense–for trainers to dissemble a talented horse’s ability, especially if the horse is running at the claiming level. You do NOT want someone to catch wind that your horse is on the upward advance (moving up claiming levels and winning=profit!), because then they will put in a claim for your horse and now, you have no talented horse to train and/or own. A friend of mine who’s been training for 50 years (and had some hella nice horses) was spitting nails because he had one such on-the-upward talented horse he was trying to keep under wraps that got claimed out from under him. The horse went on to win races worth six figures.
Now, the question is why run a horse in a claiming race if you fear losing them–well, a horse needs to run at the level it can compete in, and sometimes, that’s a claimer. Sometimes your horse needs a race, and all other suitable races are full. Some horses need to run to re-experience winning as a confidence builder (seriously!); this is what they did with 1999 Kentucky Derby winner Charismatic, who ran for $62,500 a few months before his Derby victory. He won the claimer (and thankfully, was not claimed) and seemed to suddenly “get it,” if a horse can be said to do so.
Also, Escalante’s horse was 12-1. That is far from a “gift from the god of long shots” as they said in the show. 12-1 is a live bet, a horse that is unlikely to win, but has serious potential and is always worth a good long glance. It’s when you get to 20-1 and above that your eyebrows start raising.
Incidentally, the pay outs may not have made sense as you hear he’s 12-1 but they got $26 back on a win bet. Everything is based on a $2 bet, so 12-1 x $2 = $24. Then they also give you your original $2 bet back, so $24 + $2 =$26.
Ruffian, first of all, thank you very much for sharing your expertise. After just one viewing, I felt sort of like Vinyl Turnip, in that it was interesting, but not sure it would or could hold my interest dealing in so much arcana. Now I’m thinking I’ll watch this episode again, and give the series another shot next week. I have the feeling you’ll be fielding a lot of questions should us uninitiated types stick with it.
I’m a bit confused on the concept of “claiming” you’re referencing here:
So . . . who owns the horse before it’s claimed? The trainer? The track? Who gets paid when the horse is claimed?
Also, given that trainers can lose horses out from under them when they are claimed, what’s their deal? I understand they can bet their own horses to make money, but who’s paying them for training the horses? Can they claim one of their own?
A horse has three key players: the owner, the trainer, and the jockey.
The owner pays all the bills–buys the horse, pays the trainer’s fees (something like $50 a day minimum; this would also include feed and board), pays race entry fees, pays vet care, pays for farrier care, etc. Dustin Hoffman’s character apparently has been barred from owning a horse and has the limo driver buying horses for him.
The trainer rents the stalls at the track, manages and oversees the horse’s care and training regimen, select races, etc.
But, a trainer can also own a horse they train, or a part of it.
The jockey typically rarely meets the horse prior to the actual race, although jocks will breeze (exercise) certain horses in the mornings to get some familiarity. When it’s a big horse in a big race, they usually do more of the exercise work to give them as much advantage as possible. Jockeys agents are often seen on the backstretch, as seen on this episode, trying to get trainers to use their clients.
BTW, winnings are divided up usually something like this: owners get 60% of the purse, and from that 60%, pay the jockey and trainer 10-15%, and the horse’s personal groom gets 1%. So, the owners of the horse that wins the $2 million Kentucky Derby get $1.2 million, then turn around and pay the jock and trainer about $120,000 each. The groom would get $20,000.
Let’s take a fictitious horse named Cecil Adams and say he’s owned by Ed Zotti and trained by Lynn Bodoni. He’s a nice, but not exceptional, horse and would be terribly overmatched in the upper levels of racing, so Lynn puts him in a $32,000 claimer, with everyone understanding they take the risk of selling the horse in exchange for putting him in a race on par with his performance level. Cecil wins! Hooray! So, next Lynn puts him in a $40,000 claimer. He wins! Hooray! But uh oh. When he circles back to the front after finishing the race, they put a red claim tag on him…he’s been sold! OpalCat now has a new racehorse.
Cecil now moves over to Opal’s trainer’s barn, and Ed gets $40,000 from selling the horse.
Claimers are the bread and butter of the racing world; the vast majority of racehorses are claimers. The levels work something like this: maiden claimers (for sale and never having won a race), claiming races, straight maidens (races for horses who have never won, but NOT claiming), allowance, stakes race, grade 3 stakes, grade 2 race, grade 1 race. There are more complicated layers in there, but that’s the basics.
Oh, and one term that threw me was “triple bug boy.” A bug boy is an apprentice jockey–called “bug” because they have an * next to their name on the program. They get a 5lb weight allowance in every race they ride in. It means they haven’t won 100 races, but I’m not sure what makes one a triple bug–unless that means they are reeeeeally new. Folks over at a racing forum were chuckling that actor was way too well fed to be a bug boy, heh.
hah. It’s funny. I haven’t seen you talk about horses around the SDMB for a few years, Ruffian, but you are who I thought of when I watched that horse euthanasia scene. It’s nice to read your interesting take on the episode. That scene was extraordinarily effective. I almost cried for the poor horse we just met. I like that the jockey was so sentimental and sweet with the horse, and in talking to the older jockey they showed that this is not an isolated incident. It makes the jockey horse relationship a bit less business like and a lot nicer.
I enjoyed the show. Some of the dialog went by so fast, or so mumbly that I had to rewind and watch again. The cast was good. Although, Hennesey seemed sort of wasted in her scene. I mean, I am sure she enjoyed pretending to stick her hand up the horses’s butt, but I hope she gets a bigger part as the series goes on.
I always enjoy my time at the track. The show made me want to go back out and throw some money away on beautiful animals I know nothing about. (I mean the track, and not a strip club.)
I’ll be back next week. I’m interested in seeing were the show goes. I hope there isn’t too much of the 4 winners trying to cheat each other out of the winnings. I wouldn’t enjoy that kind of drama. It’s funny; Dustin Hoffman is billed as the star of the show but he had a pretty small part of this episode. I’m sure that will change as the show continues and the intrigue around his character expands.
Thanks once again, Ruffian! Now at least I’ll know what’s going on when the “claim” comes up in the show ('cause I doubt we’ll see much on-screen exposition).
Yeah, the ‘dialogue’ seemed to be a sentence here and there. I don’t know if this is poor editing or not, but it makes things nearly impossible to follow.
HBO has already greenlighted a second season. Guess they still have faith in David Milch.
HBO may have faith in Milch, but I couldn’t even get through the second episode last night. This thing is so choppy and the dialogue so stilted, it’s nearly unwatchable.