Daily Times

The conversation about “nepo babies” has grown tiresome – and not just because “nepo baby” itself is such an unattractive turn of phrase. The general outrage over the idea that children of famous actors find themselves drawn to acting, ginned up by an artfully provocative recent cover story in New York magazine, has tended to elide the simple fact that said children often find themselves acting because they share talents with their parents, who are famous for good reason. So it is with John Owen Lowe, who seems like a slightly altered carbon copy of his father Rob (of “The West Wing” and “Parks and Recreation,” among others), with the smarm ironed out. Together, they’re headlining “Unstable,” a new Netflix comedy that’s infuriatingly better than it needed to be. Lowes père and fils share executive producer credits with Victor Fresco and Marc Buckland, two creatives with long comedy résumés. And what might have been expected to look like a Lowe family vanity project – Rob Lowe has built a sort of performed vanity into his public persona, after all – has ended up as a sharply written comedy with some genuinely great lines. Here, Rob Lowe plays Ellis Dragon, a biotech entrepreneur who seems to have the future of humanity tantalizingly just beyond his grasp. Ellis is a genius, but one who is easily distractible; he might just save us all, if he could stay on-task. The latest distraction is a sorrowful one, as he mourns his late wife – John Owen Lowe plays his son Jackson, a career flautist who’s called into duty at the lab in order to bring his father back to attentiveness.