Friday, February 11, 2011

Classic Review: The Wire 1x05 - 1x09

Watching The Wire is a bit like watching the writers assemble a giant jigsaw puzzle. They have all the pieces  and we're looking on as they fill in all of the blanks, starting with square one. I hesitate to say that every season is like this, as some of them come "pre-assembled", if you will. You have the center of the puzzle, which is usually the detail or some faction thereof, and as the season progresses you watch the puzzle fill in from the edges. They take more time here in the first season, as there's world-building to be done, yet episodes five through nine are where we start to see the pieces all fall into their correct places.



Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Glee Season Two - "The Substitute" to "The Sue Sylvester Shuffle"

About 4 months ago, I gave up on watching Glee. My reasons for this are many and varied, but the chief reason was this: Why was I wasting my time trying to connect with and care about these characters, when it was clear that the three men writing it (Ryan Murphy, Ian Brennan, and Brad Falchuk) didn't seem to care about them?

Classic Review: The Wire 1x01 - 1x04




(Video is NSFW! Contains profanity and adult subjects.)

"So if Snot always stole the money, why did you let him play?" "Got to. This America, man." Every season of The Wire opens with a scene like this. A scene that tells you (in mostly oblique overtones) what you're about to see. The opening scene of The Wire sets the tone and also provides David Simon's mission statement for the show. This is not your average cop show -- it is a show about the slow death of the American city, eaten from the inside out by the institutions that run it and reside in it.

Classic Review: Angel 1x01, "City Of"

Full disclosure up front: I am not a fan of season 1 of this show. Like almost all of Joss Whedon's shows,Firefly being the strong, strong exception, the show takes time to find its footing. I really believe that he and fellow creator David Greenwalt just really, really wanted David Boreanaz and the character of Angel to have a spinoff.