Think about the crumpled one dollar bill sitting
in your wallet or maybe your pocket right now.
If people still even carry cash. Right. Right.
Yeah. But seriously if you have one just visualize
it. Where was that specific piece of paper yesterday.
Oh that is a wild thing to think about. It really
is. Like who held it before you did. Was it used
by a grandmother to buy a birthday card at a
pharmacy or? Or was used to snort something highly
illegal in the alleyway behind a dive bar. Exactly.
I mean, you literally have no idea. And usually
when we talk about a murder mystery, there's
this very rigid, comforting formula. Yeah, the
classic procedural setup. Right. A grizzled detective
shows up at a crime scene, flashes a badge, and
starts interviewing suspects one by one. It's
a very straight, logical line from the crime
to the culprit. Because we ride shotgun with
the person whose literal job is to solve the
puzzle. Exactly. Which, you know, is incredibly
safe for the viewer. We follow the investigator,
we know who the hero is, and we completely trust
their perspective to guide us through the darkness
of the story. But what if the camera didn't follow
the detective? Oh, man. What if instead the camera
followed the money? Welcome to today's Deep Dive.
If you are a curious learner who loves dissecting
unique storytelling experiments, you are in the
exact right place. You really are. Today, we
are cracking open the history of a television
series from 2018. It's a somewhat forgotten show
called One Dollar. It really slipped under the
radar for a lot of people. It did. And our mission
here isn't just to recap a canceled TV show.
We are going to deconstruct a truly fascinating
narrative experiment. Right, because the structure
of this show is just... Wild. We want to examine
how a single everyday object was used to completely
map the class and cultural divides of a post
-recession American town. And we'll get into
why critics were so intensely divided on it.
Yeah, whether this was a stroke of absolute genius
or just a cheap gimmick. OK, let's untack this.
Well, what's fascinating here is how structure
completely dictates meaning. I mean, when you
change the lens through which a story is told,
you completely change the story itself. Absolutely.
So let's start with the premise and the gimmick
itself. The setup of $1 is incredibly atmospheric.
Very moody. Yeah. We are dropped into a small,
unnamed Rust Belt town in post -recession America.
The inciting incident is heavy and immediately
demands attention. It's a multiple murder, right?
Yes, a shocking multiple murder at a local steel
mill. That is the hook. But the narrative engine
-like, the actual mechanism of how we experience
the fallout of this crime is the catch. This
is the part I love. The point of view shifts
entirely from person to person depending on who
is holding a specific one dollar bill. It forces
a completely bird's eye view of a fractured society.
Think about how currency actually functions in
the real world. It just changes hands constantly.
Right. A dollar bill has absolutely no loyalty.
It has no class consciousness, no morals, and
no political affiliation. It's just a piece of
paper. Exactly. That single bill could be sitting
in the cheap plastic cash register of a struggling
diner at eight in the morning, handed over as
a tip by a waitress who is, you know, barely
making rent. Yeah, just trying to survive. But
then by noon, it could be slipped into the leather
wallet of a wealthy real estate developer who
just bought her building. Oh, wow. Yeah. And
by midnight, that same piece of paper could be
paying for a bribe or something totally illicit
in that wealthy guy's gated community. It's the
ultimate neutral observer. I mean, the best analogy
I can think of is a relay race. OK, I like that.
But instead of a smooth, wooden baton being passed
between elite athletes on a manicured track,
they are passing around a bloodstained piece
of currency. That's a great way to put it. And
whoever holds that bill, that is who the camera
follows. It forces the story to look at completely
different corners of the community that would
normally never interact with each other. Because
a detective, no matter how good they are, only
goes where they think the clues are. Right. They
follow their own logic. Yeah. They have biases.
They have blind spots. They interview the immediate
family, the co -workers, the obvious enemies.
But the dollar bill goes everywhere. It literally
slips through the cracks of the investigation.
It crosses those deep class and cultural boundaries
without asking for permission. Just think about
applying this to your own life right now. Like,
think about your workplace. or the city you live
in. It would be terrifying, honestly. It would.
If you could somehow attach a microscopic camera
to a $20 bill and track it as it moved through
your local economy over the course of a single
week. You'd see everything. How would that completely
change your understanding of your own social
ecosystem? You would see the invisible threads.
connecting people who would never otherwise speak
to each other. The barista, the CEO, the unhoused
person on the corner, the local politician. Yeah,
that invisible web of commerce is the actual
engine of this show. But, you know, a theoretical
premise is just a whiteboard idea until you build
the world. Right. Execution is everything. Exactly.
A geographically accurate town is just empty
real estate without the right texture. If the
town doesn't feel authentic, the dollar bill
stops being a microscope into the human condition
and just becomes a cheap laser pointer bouncing
around a stage. The setting has to be strong
enough to carry the weight of that constant perspective
shifting. Because if the audience doesn't buy
the town, they won't buy the gimmick. So let's
look at how they built it. The series was created
by Jason Mosberg. and directed by Craig Zobel.
Some really solid names. Yeah. And backed by
some serious production muscle from CBS television
studios and anonymous content. But the hyper
local authenticity is what really jumps out as
the defining characteristic here. Oh, absolutely.
The location choices were so deliberate. They
didn't just film this on a generic backlog in
California and call it Anywhere USA. They shot
the series entirely on location in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, starting in March of 2018. Which,
if you've ever been to Pittsburgh in March...
It's bleak. It's very gray. Very authentic, but
gray. Yeah. And they made a very deliberate,
somewhat shocking decision to prominently feature
the regional Yinser accent. Which, from a television
production standpoint, is a massive creative
risk. Really? Just the accent? Oh yeah. The industry
standard usually defaults to a sort of flat,
non -regional, Midwestern broadcast dialect.
Network executives are historically terrified
of highly specific regional accents. Because
they think people won't understand it. Exactly.
They worry it will alienate a broader audience
who might feel like they need subtitles to understand
what's being said. I mean, for anyone who isn't
from Western Pennsylvania, the Yintzer accent
is incredibly distinct. It really is its own
thing. It's this Appalachian -tinged working
-class dialect where you all... becomes yinz.
Right, yinz going to the game. Yeah. And downtown
sounds like downtown. There's a very specific
rhythm to the phrasing and it carries a heavy
blue collar connotation. It does. So my question
is, does leaning into something so hyper -specific,
like an obscure regional dialect that had rarely
been used as the default voice of a TV drama
before, actually make a show more universally
relatable? That's the million dollar question.
Doesn't making it strictly Pittsburgh risk isolating
a viewer in say, Texas or California? I'd actually
argue the exact opposite. Really? How so? Well,
when we look at the core theme of $1, which is
the grinding reality of post -recession, America
authenticity in location and voice is the only
thing that grounds the mystery. OK, I can see
that. When you are dealing with themes of deep
economic hardship, cultural friction, and massive
class divides. Rooting the story in a real, tangible
geography prevents it from feeling like a generic
morality play. It stops it from feeling like
a lecture. Precisely. The Yinzer accent, the
rusted bridges, the gray, oppressive skies of
a Pittsburgh march. So gray. Yeah. Those aren't
just background details or set dressing. They're
the actual texture of a post -recession reality.
It signals to the viewer, like, these are real
people trapped in a real place. Right. It makes
the struggle feel lived in. Exactly. The more
specific the details, the more genuine the human
struggle feels. And human struggle is what is
universally relatable, regardless of whether
you live in Dallas or Seattle. You're making
the town a living, breathing character, not just
a set. 100%. But even a perfectly designed town
needs the right faces. And because this show
doesn't have a single main character to slap
on a billboard. Right, because the protagonist
shifts every single episode. Yeah. So they couldn't
just cast one massive A -lister and build the
show around them. They had to build an entire
ecosystem of actors capable of carrying the narrative
baton. And that requires a very specific type
of performer. You can't just fill the town with
generic, beautiful people. No, you need some
grit. You need actors who carry own gravity.
Which is why the ensemble they put together is
so brilliant. Instead of leaning on traditional
leading men or women, they built a deep bench
of heavy hitting character actors. The casting
was phenomenal. You have John Carroll Lynch,
an actor who brings this incredible, quiet, working
class menace to almost everything he does. He
is always so good. Always. And then you have
Leslie Odom, Jr. fresh off his massive Broadway
success in Hamilton, bringing this undeniable
charisma to a wealthy real estate character.
Such a great contrast. They pulled in Philip
Even the country musician, Sturgill Simpson.
It's an eclectic mix, but it serves the structure
perfectly. If the dollar bill lands in your character's
pocket, you are suddenly the lead of a television
show for the next 60 minutes. No pressure, right.
You have to be compelling enough to hold the
audience's attention entirely on your own while
still fitting seamlessly into the background
of someone else's episode. the very next week.
That's a huge ask for an actor, and the episodes
are literally titled after the characters holding
the bill. Yeah, I love that detail. Episode 1
is Garrett Dremmer. Episode 4 is Chelsea Weiler.
It's basically an anthology hiding inside a serialized
mystery. It really is. But despite this incredible
cast and this hyper -authentic world, the life
cycle of this show was shockingly brief. It came
and went so fast. It really did. It was originally
ordered way back in 2017 under the title $1,
just the symbol and the number. Oh, man. I imagine
someone in marketing finally realized that title
was an absolute typographical nightmare for search
engine optimization. Oh, without a doubt. Try
Googling a dollar sign and a number one and finding
a TV show. Good luck. Impossible. So they changed
it to spelled out one dollar. It premiered in
late August 2018 on CBS All Access. It ran for
a tight 10 episode season, dropping weekly and
finished its run on November 1st. And then? And
then the absolute abrupt end. By the middle of
December, just six weeks after the finale aired,
the network announced the show was canceled.
Wow. If we connect this to the bigger picture,
this cancellation is a perfect snapshot of the
brutal reality of the 2018 streaming era. Six
weeks to decide the fate of a completely unique
narrative experiment. That feels like they barely
gave it a chance to breathe. It's ruthless, but
it's indicative of the ecosystem it was born
into. I mean, six weeks is nothing. Right. Think
about your own streaming queue right now. Think
about how many thumbnail images you scroll past
on a Tuesday night looking for something to watch.
So many. Hundreds. Exactly. In 2018, platforms
like CBS All Access were desperately trying to
build their subscriber bases to compete with
Netflix. They were pumping out an ocean of content.
Just throwing things at the wall to see what
sticks. Yeah. So even with a stellar cast, a
unique premise and critical intrigue, a tightly
wound 10 episode experiment can simply vanish
in the sheer volume of television being produced.
If you don't make an immediate massive cultural
splash, the algorithm simply moves on. It has
no loyalty. Just like the dollar bill. Oh, that's
a good point. It doesn't have the patience to
let an audience slowly discover a slow burn Pittsburgh
mystery over three seasons. There was no runway.
In the peak TV era, critical patients doesn't
pay the server bills. So what does this all mean?
That brings us to the autopsy of the show. Let's
cut it open. If the premise was cool, the setting
was hyper -authentic, and the cast of character
actors was incredible, what actually went wrong?
Why didn't it work? Yeah, why didn't it make
that massive splash? Let's look at the critical
reception, because this is where the conversation
around narrative experiments gets really divided.
It's a fascinating study in what critics value
more. The mechanics of a plot or the texture
of a world. The reviews were generally positive.
but deeply mixed on the actual execution. Like
the data shows an 80 % on Rotten Tomatoes, but
a 64 on Metacritic. So very split. Yeah. On one
side, you have... critics like Robert Lloyd from
the Los Angeles Times, he specifically pointed
to the excellence of the acting and praised what
he called the English naturalism of the production.
Right. English naturalism is a crucial term to
understand here. What does that actually mean
in this context? Well, in television and film
criticism, that usually refers to a style of
filmmaking pioneered by British directors like,
you know, Ken Loach or Mike Lee. OK. It is unglamorous,
it's grounded, and intensely focused on the day
-to -day realities of the working class. It doesn't
shy away from ugly kitchens, worn out shoes,
or awkward stilted conversations. It's not glossy.
Not at all. Lloyd felt that this deep naturalistic
commitment balanced out the show's narrative
flaws. Because he did admit there were flaws.
Sure. He noted that the show occasionally sacrificed
logical sense for the sake of drama, and that
the characters' actions were sometimes improbable.
But he felt the writing gave the actors such
rich, naturalistic material that it was worse
the ride. He valued the journey over the logic.
Right. And that sentiment was echoed by Liam
Matthews over at TV Guide, who absolutely loved
the world building. Matthews pointed out that
the writers seemed much more interested in the
small, seemingly irrelevant vignettes that built
out the town than they were in the central murder
mystery itself. Yeah. He argued that those smaller
side stories gave the show an indie movie -like
texture about people just trying to survive the
American economy. Exactly. But then we have the
other side of the critical coin. The less forgiving
side. Much less forgiving. Tim Goodman from The
Hollywood Reporter offered a pretty scathing
take on those exact same elements. He really
did not like it. He argued there just wasn't
enough good writing or logical motivation to
follow these characters from week to week. He
called the characters intentionally half -baked
and said their supposed indie movie quirks were
just masking a lack of actual depth. Ouch. Yeah.
And his most damning line of the entire review
was, quote, Smart people eventually do exceptionally
dumb things. Which is the absolute death knell
for a procedural mystery. It really takes you
out of the story. It does. If the audience stops
believing the choices the characters are making,
the tension completely evaporates. For Goodman,
the sacrifice of logic that the LA Times forgave
was an absolute deal breaker. And it gets worse.
Even TV Guide, the same publication that praised
those indie movie vignettes, actually called
the core connecting concept of passing the currency
an unnecessary gimmick. Wow. They loved the result,
but hated the tool. Right. And here's where it
gets really interesting. I want to passionately
challenge that specific critique. I'm listening.
Break it down. If the critics, even the ones
who gave the show mixed or negative reviews,
almost universally agree that the side stories
the margins of the town, and the indie movie
vignettes were the absolute best part of the
show. Doesn't that inherently prove the dollar
bill gimmick actually worked? My argument is
this. Without that specific gimmick, forcing
the writers to follow the money into the cheap
cash registers, the dive bars, and the wealthy
estates, we would never have seen those fascinating
margins of the town. That's a really fair point.
The gimmick is the only reason those highly praised
vignettes exist in the first place. You're defending
the structural integrity of the vehicle over
the destination. I am. You can't praise the beautiful
scenic overlooks on a road trip and then turn
around and call the car that drove you there
an unnecessary gimmick. Well, when you put it
like that... If they just follow the detective,
we would have had another generic flat procedural.
We never would have seen the waitress or the
real estate guy's kid. This raises an important
question about how we as an audience judge narrative
tools. Was the dollar bill a gimmick? Technically,
yes. A gimmick is just a device used to attract
attention or alter a traditional structure. But
a gimmick isn't inherently bad if it serves a
larger thematic purpose. Right. It had a job
to do. And the dollar bill in this show was a
vehicle for forced empathy. Forced empathy. I
love that phrasing. That's really what it was
doing. It forced the audience to sit down and
spend an hour with a struggling single father.
like Garrett Dremmer, and then abruptly shift
entirely to spend an hour with a wealthy heir
like Chelsea Weiler. It makes you live in their
shoes. Yes. Even if the central murder mystery
like the actual whodunit aspect of the plot failed
for some critics because characters made illogical
choices, the structural experiment succeeded
in doing exactly what it set out to do. It mapped
the town. It painted a comprehensive, multifaceted
picture of a deeply divided ecosystem. The murder
was just the shiny object. they used to trick
us into looking at the map. Precisely. It was
a tool for forced exploration of the American
class divide. So as we wrap up this journey into
the post -recession rest belt, let's recap what
we've actually uncovered. It's been a ride. It
has. $1 was a fascinating casualty of the peak
TV era. It was a show that dared to try a highly
specific geographic and structural experiment
that justified the algorithm. completely ignored
the safe route. Yeah. It committed completely
to the gray skies of Pittsburgh, the working
-class Yinser accent, and a rotating cast of
incredible character actors, all tied together
by a single piece of currency passing from hand
to hand. It was an incredibly ambitious swing.
And perhaps it didn't perfectly nail the landing
of its central murder mystery, but it overwhelmingly
succeeded in its sociological ambitions. And
just a quick nod to the past before we go, there
is a really fun piece of trivia surrounding this
concept from the source material. Oh, right.
This isn't actually the first time this specific
structural experiment was tried on screen. Not
at all. Back in 1993, there was a film called
20 Bucks, which used a very similar premise,
tracking a $20 bill as it moved from person to
person. though it was executed in a much more
comical, lighthearted way. Yeah, a bit different
tonally. So the idea of literally following the
money has always been a tempting narrative device
for writers wanting to capture a cross -section
of society. And it remains a potent one today.
Largely because physical money touches every
single part of our lives, often in ways we prefer
to keep hidden. So true. Which leaves us with
the final thought to mull over. I asked you earlier
to think about the physical cash you might have
in your wallet right now. Yeah, that visual.
If that object, that five or ten or twenty dollar
bill, could suddenly project a hologram. instantly
broadcasting a highly detailed, traumatic vignette
of the last 10 people who held it. Their deepest
secrets, their quietest economic struggles, their
hidden cultural divides. Would you actually want
to sit down and watch that show? Or are we better
off letting some of those secrets stay quietly
in circulation? That is a genuinely haunting
thought to end on. I'm not sure I'd want to know.
Thank you for joining us on this deep dive. Keep
questioning the stories behind the everyday objects
around you because you really never know where
they've been.