‘Lodge 49’ – A Series That Television Needs Right Now

Written by John Edward Betancourt 

If you’re a fan of Lodge 49 and you’re reading this, then you’ve already heard the unfortunate news that AMC has opted to not renew the series for a third season, and I think it’s safe to say that fans of this series are heartbroken about this decision. Which is fair, since this is a show, we all love with every fiber of our being and feeling a gamut of emotions is only natural, even if they’re negative. And while that setup makes it seem as though I’m preparing to vent said emotions and unleash upon AMC, that’s simply not the case. Instead, I’m hoping to do my part properly today in trying to convince someone out there to pick this gem of a show up because this really is a series that T.V. needs right now.
 
Why exactly, well that’s going to require me to get a little personal with all of you. Something I don’t often do, but I think opening up is quite relevant to this particular discussion. For a year ago, when I discovered this series, I was in an odd place, mainly because 2017 was quite a dark year for me. Because in ’17, I saw several family members that were a fixture of my youth and my life pass into the great beyond, and that shattered me because I was lucky enough to not deal with death all that often growing up, and those losses put me in a tough place mentally, and some professional failures only added to the darkness around me. If anything, I felt lost at this point in my life and thanks to some incredible support from my friends, my best friend Shae and my family and a dash of therapy, I finally pulled myself out of that funky place.
 
But despite feeling better and finding peace, I still felt lost to a certain degree, as though a new chapter was opening up for my own story and I hadn’t a clue how to write it. So, in all honesty, I drifted about a bit in ’18, searching for answers and directions as to what comes next when someone you love is gone and when a particular aspect of your professional life is back to square one. And at about that time, is when I stumbled upon Lodge 49 and this show was, a revelation in its own right. Partly because the story was so incredibly unique in its own right since it offered up a modern fable involving alchemy, but it is what I discovered, as I came to know these characters, that truly made this show revolutionary and powerful, in my mind. 

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Because this series found a way to resonate with me on a supremely personal level, and I was able to feel genuine empathy for Dud and Liz’s pain, and Ernie’s quest to find purpose in life, and seeing dynamic characters that were going through something that I had and was currently going through sucked me into this story like never before, to the point where I was hanging onto every single minute. Because this was a series that straight up addressed the question, ‘what comes next?’, and it actually offered guidance on the matter. For Lodge 49 taught me that there is no right way to bounce back from trauma and loss, that you really do have to take everything one day at a time and more importantly, that you need to take a moment and celebrate the progress you do make and bask in the wonder of what you have in your life, after it seems as though everything has been taken away from you.
 
Because it’s easy to get lost when you’re putting the pieces all back together, and to find a series that takes the time to remind us that we are richer than we think and loved and likely further ahead in our goals than we give ourselves credit is magnificent and stunning and something that television needs right now. For this is a dark world, one that often provides us with tough challenges and bad news and it’s rare to find a story that wants to help people celebrate the beauty of the world that surrounds them and that reassures them that everything is going to be okay and that someday we all find our way back, especially when we have great people in our lives, when we in essence… belong to a Lodge of our own, and those lessons helped me so much and allowed for me realize everything we discussed and if this series was able to do that for me, I guarantee it’s doing it for others.
 
Which means, this series needs to continue along, to offer the anthesis to all the gimmicks that are on television right now. But more importantly, it needs to stay on the air because it’s a human story, one that strips down all the layers we surround ourselves with and shows us for the flawed and beautiful beings that we are and that’s what the finest stories out there do, present the human condition and all of its follies and successes in a raw and frank manner. And with that in mind, please, someone at Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, or any network out there that’s looking to offer up something that is truly magical and breathtaking, and original; pick up this series. Because this one, resonates with people on a fundamental level, and it makes us laugh and cry and everything in between because it is flawless art, the kind that needs to thrive and be celebrated on a regular basis and it would just be a shame to see this powerful story come a close well before its proper time, since it offers so much and all I can do now is sit and wait and hope that the Lodge will reopen its doors to all of us and soon, since this is indeed a series that works to make the world a better place.

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