That’s A Rapp: I Have No Idea What ‘The Immoral Dr. Dicquer’ Is Going To Be

Let’s get right into it. The Immoral Dr. Dicqer is weird. It’s just plain weird. That’s okay. Weird can be good.

But let’s put the weird aside for a moment. What I’d like to talk about for the next three sentences is the question of when to send your show out to critics for review. I think the crucial rule of thumb is when you have enough content to show off to the world that allows us a strong enough look into characters. I’m not entirely certain The Immoral Dr. Dicqer was far enough along for review, but they sent it over, so here I am. Okay, now back to the weird.

The series is set “in the distant future,” which is apparently “The Year of Our Lord 1988.” Some people are, for reasons never made clear in the pilot, hybrid human and animals. Or people really like to wear animal masks. And I think a baby has a gas mask on for some reason. I should note I watched this twice, clear-headed, and coming off a good night’s sleep, not in a Lebwoski haze.

We’re introduced to Dr. Dicqer, who is immoral, and the ladies all love him as their OBGYN. He’s clearly sleazy, and a bird man (pretty much Rorschach with a bird mask on) is stalking him. Mrs. Dicquer is from Hell’s Island (so named to scare off the pirates), and the not-so-good doctor was at one time a pilot, but gave up that life to become a family man. The bird man is apparently from Hell’s Island island and is going to make Mrs. Dicquer choose to come back. For some reason.

Man, I don’t know.

Visually, it alternates between pretty and, well, not. The camera pans look like they’re frequently done in post-production, and the whole thing appears like it’s shot in front of a green screen, until it isn’t. At times it seems like it’s completely digital, and that’s when the strangest moments in The Immoral Dr. Dicquer hit the screen. But then a shot will appear that’s clearly staged in real life, and I find myself pulled out of the moment.

Acting wise, it’s hard to gauge the show. In the pilot, there was hardly any. Dicquer seems sleazy enough, if a bit stilted, but I don’t know. All the other characters may have had, combined, a total of six or seven lines. If that. Writing wise, it’s the same. Bird man stalks the doctor for some reason, doctor’s a sleazebag, and that’s pretty much all we get. And a baby has a gas mask on and some people have the heads of animals. Or masks of animals. I have no idea which.

I’m not totally comfortable reviewing anything off the minute-long trailer, because it’s a number of disconnected scenes and overlapping dialogue. Some of it is good, some of it they should sell in Obscura. So, for this one, I’m not going to give it a rating, because it came to my inbox half-cooked. If you like David Lynch, this might scratch that itch, but I can’t even be certain of that. We’ll just have to wait and see.