Rake wrapped up with season 5 last year, apparently this time for surely sure (each of season 3, 4 and 5 were declared to be the last). As with season 3, they were ambitious in changing Cleaver’s setting, to that of a federal senator elected by a combination of social media and weird preference deals (see Ricky Muir for a real-life example of election via weird preference deals).
This introduced some challenges, most notably satirising Australian politics in the wake of the turnover of Prime Ministers since 2010 and the dual citizenship crisis that eventually led to the deputy Prime Minister needing to re-contest his seat. (He was also conducting an affair with a former staffer at the time.)
How do you get weirder than that? Honestly I think they didn’t manage it and I’m not entirely convinced they should have tried. NSW Parliament might have been easier: the problems are more Cleaver-sized and the sense that there’s only 10 people in Sydney and they all fucked Cleaver at university could have continued seamlessly from other seasons.
Beyond that, they broke a few key formulae that make Rake work: they made the villain prosaic, and they made Cleaver stupid.
The series villain, Jakub, aside from being irritatingly stereotypical (basically a cut price Eastern European Bond villain archetype, but this kind of thing isn’t new to Rake) is just too straightforward. He loans Cleaver money when he’s down on his luck, and what he wants from Cleaver is his money back with ruinous interest, or else he’ll cut off half of his finger. He doesn’t particularly like or dislike Cleaver, Cleaver is just the most easily accessible mark.
This isn’t what makes Rake work! What makes Rake work is people with either a profound Achilles heel (most of the organised crime lords in season 2 and 3 were undone by their love for Kirsty) or an irrational desire to specifically bring Cleaver down at all costs, or, ideally, both. Yes, there’s a blink and you miss it side plot with Jakub’s beloved cat, but not well integrated. Someone who just wants money and their business interests furthered doesn’t work in Rake; functional people win too easily. Functional people can leave Cleaver’s orbit, and the entire point of the series is that everyone is dysfunctional and so no one can leave Cleaver’s orbit.
And in return, Cleaver falls for this without question, seeming to believe that his driver is generously offering him cash as a mate and being startled in the extreme when the bill comes due. Cleaver does fall for anything to do with women, drugs, or money rather easily, but this one is so. so. obvious. Outside of this plot, Cleaver’s life isn’t a mess because he’s stupid, it’s a mess because he’s incredibly greedy and unbelievably clever at self-deception. Many of the series’s finest moments are when he turns his self-deception beam onto others and the sheer force of his belief in his nonsense corrupts them too. This plot arc would work so much better if Cleaver had to floridly talk himself and everyone else into trusting Jakub against all common sense, just like he’s done so many times before.
Beyond that, the amount of money and the threat of violence is surprisingly mediocre for Rake: Cleaver has owed larger six figure debts to organised crime before and taken a serious on-screen beating over them. In season 4 he was seconds away from being tortured by branding on the orders of someone who had corrupted the entire NSW police force (admittedly not as much of a challenge as it could be). In this very season, Cleaver has been held prisoner by agents of the US government, and commissioned his own shooting. Losing half a finger to someone he owes $180k to is lower, not higher, stakes.
There’s a few successful new things that are worth noting, but unfortunately they’re episodic. Anthony LaPaglia, like Cate Blanchett, is too famous and expensive to do more than a short appearance in Rake, in his case as the US Secretary of State, but it’s glorious. Jane Turner as Senator Penny Evans is a much more Rake-worthy villain than Jakub, and she should have been given the full series to let it play out.
But most of the things that do work are through lines from previous series. This season Cal McGregor, previously a rabble-rousing talk show host and previously previously the husband of the NSW Premier, does battle with his half-brother Joe over a $10 painting their father owned, which ends up making Cal Prime Minister as a side effect. David Potter completes the set of disastrous relationships with Cleaver’s exes by not quite having sex with Wendy. (The producers also seem to no longer have been able to resist how good-looking Matt Day is, and find an excuse to let the character have stubble and better glasses for the last few episodes. Thank you.)
Some of the better characters are under-served by having their foils not reappear this season. I was heartily sick of Barney by the time we made it through season 4, but losing him reduces Nicole to a full season of being righteously annoyed with Cleaver (until it suddenly turns out they’re together). Melissa was already completely (and outrageously) destroyed by her drug addiction in season 4; living off Cleaver and Wendy’s charity gives her character little scope compared to her occasionally showing up lit by greater and greater celebrity throughout seasons 2 and 3. As with Barney disappearing when he was so much of what motivated Nicole, not having Fuzz until the final episode means Melissa’s remaining arc from season 4 falls over too.
The last episode is very satisfying, but primarily because it almost entirely returns to the through lines. Fuzz and Melissa joyfully interrupt their breakup to mess with Cleaver’s head, David and Cleaver have a chest bumping battle over Wendy (see, in the context of a series where people get badly beaten a lot, you can do something great with deliberately low stakes violence!) and then finally very satisfyingly team up to corrupt a judge in the nation’s best interests, only to have Cal McGregor in turn corrupt them in his. Lots of fun, but the final episode’s return to the themes and characters of earlier seasons demonstrates the failure of the last season compared to the earlier ones.
Leaf Litter 