The last thing Normal is is normal. Not sure that’s proper English, but let’s go with it.
Odenkirk plays Ulysses, an interim sheriff sent to the small Minnesota town of Normal after the previous sheriff dies under unusual circumstances. What looks like a quiet temporary assignment starts coming apart after a botched bank robbery makes it clear that almost nothing about this town is what it seems.
That’s probably all you need to know.
The fun of Normal is watching the weirdness slowly reveal itself. It starts as a slightly off-kilter small-town mystery, then keeps getting louder, bloodier, and more ridiculous.
Odenkirk is exactly the reason it works. He can play tired, confused, and dangerous almost at the same time, which turns out to be a pretty useful combination here.
It’s not trying to reinvent the action movie. It takes a basic setup, gives it a very strange little twist, and gets out in about 90 minutes.
And it worked for me.
