Chic, IL Must see TV

I can only judge The Wire from the pilot and the first 2-3 episodes, which were terrible. Though I suppose The Wire must have gotten better since it's lasted so long, I doubt it ever got better than The Shield, or NYPD:Blue (in its prime).

At what point did The Wire improve?

D'

 

"The Wire" has always been awesome, I dunno what you're smoking. I'd put it at least even with the first four seasons of "Homicide" and the first five or six of "NYPD Blue." I was also a huge "Hill Street Blues" fan as a kid, but can't fully trust my judgment on that one since I haven't seen an episode since ~1987.

I've seen the first two seasons of "The Shield", and it's very good in its own right. Still, I wouldn't put it in the same league as the shows mentioned above. Maybe I'll change my mind someday when I get around to the rest of the series.

Overall though, I'm just happy to see that there are still cop shows that focus on characters instead of plot points. The "CSI" shows can be entertaining from time to time (and they tend to attract better actors than needed/deserved), but they make "Dragnet" look like a rich character piece and are about as realistic as "Space 1999". How many real-life crime labs have mood lighting and are furnished by Sharper Image and CB2? Not that it isn't worth tuning into the first few minutes of "CSI: Miami" once in a while, but that has nothing to do with the show's quality.


I've only seen a half-dozen episodes or so, but I liked what I saw of "Bones", a forensic-template crime show that focuses on the characters at least as much as each week's victim. It still suffers from "CSI" art design, but it's not bad overall.

"From the tracks on his arms, large caliber wound, proximity to a heroin market... I'd say it was a heated dispute about the symbolism of red and blue in 18th-century French romantic poetry."

 

Top Gear returns on Monday!

Here's a sample. At least I think it is from this season/series.

HELL YES!

 

It is. If you watch Top Gear at all, you already know who wins. The episode after that, though, they race a quarter-mile with an Aston Martin DB9 against a guy on rollerblades...with 3 turbojet engines strapped to his back.

 

Goat is right. The new USA episodes are From the current series, which is 10. I would have to say it is one of the best if not the best series. Great challenges, great cars, and of course The Stig!

 

I like Bones too. I'd never seek it out, but the one time I saw an episode, I was both entertained and laughed a few times.

I'm woefully behind on my character-driven cop shows but when it comes to procedurals, I think my personal favorite is Law and Order: SVU. I like the cases, I like the little bit of character detail they stir into the series, and I like all the actors a lot, especially Richard Belzer, who gets taken for granted a lot but is still freakin brilliant as Munch, and also happens to be a key figure in the only theory of existence that makes any sense to me.

 

Munch got a very brief cameo in this week's "The Wire." Fittingly, he was arguing about his bar tab.

Word on the street is that Tina Fey will host this week's SNL. I can't bring myself to actually watch the show, but thankfully there'll be no shortage of youtube clips on Monday.


"I did do an excellent job finishing my muffin."

 

Can someone who does have the patience to sit through a first-run episode of SNL post here if tonight's Tina Fey-hosted ep is any good so I can track down the torrent and/or inevitable YouTube clips? Thanks.

"Jesus horse?"

 

She is hosting and so far there has been some funny stuff.

 

All told, it was a pretty good episode. It was a little weird at points (the Tina Fey "hey, I'm gonna do update by not doing update" portion, while funny, felt strange), and a lot dumb at points (the opening sketch was awful--they shoulda opened with the Celebrity Apprentice bit, which was also kinda dumb, but funny dumb).

Fey acquitted herself well throughout, Steve Martin made a good cameo, and the mock commercial was a laugh-till-you-cry bit. Worth torrenting/YouTubeing....

...or just set your DVR to tape it every week, so you can fast forward through the commercials, the musical guest, and dumb sketches. We can do a 90 minute SNL in about 40 or so.

 

God Damn you people fro not watching "The Wire." I've resorted to the AVClub's boards for regular internet geekery for this show.

"This ain't Aruba, bitch."

 

Some quick thoughts after finally watching the full episode of the Tina Fey SNL...

- Kristin Wiig does an awesome (and kinda hot) impression of Jennifer Tilly
- Is the "drunk wedding speech" gag tough to mess up, or was that one as good as it seemed? Maybe its brevity kept it from sucking
- Carrie Underwood's natural voice talent can't cover up the fact that she's blandly awful
- To hell with all the crappy kids' movies he's made lately, Steve Martin is still great
- Mike Huckabee's not funny (in fact, his moderate popularity is kinda scary) but he's a good sport. I can't see Hiliary or Obama doing something like that once one of them gets shoved aside
- I didn't find Fred Arminsen (a white guy) in the role of Obama offensive, though I was somewhat bothered by his uniformly bad impression
- The game show was a good idea wasted
- Same deal with I Drink Your Milkshake
- Overall, the whole thing wasn't bad. If they cut the episodes down to one hour, they might be able to put together a uniformly good show every week.

Oh, and one more thing:

Tina Fey, why you no call me after the show like I asked!? Don't you love me no mores? Please, baby, I make it up to you! Just come back to me!

 

Good night, "The Wire".

"Come snuggle with me, Lester."

 

Is anyone else watching Lost anymore?

I've long since given up on theorizing about the show--my mind just can't hold all the necessary trivia--but it's been pretty good this season.

 

SciFi.com reports that Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Katee Sackhoff, Jamie Bamber, James Callis, Tricia Helfer, Grace Park, Michael Hogan, Aaron Douglas and Lucy Lawless will present the Top Ten on Late Show with David Letterman on Wednesday, March 19. That's on CBS, WBBM-TV (Channel 2) at 10:35 P.M. It's also the day after Battlestar Galactica Season 3 DVDs are released.

Phil

 

I think Lost has definitely gotten back the magic of the first season. I mean they'll never totally recapture that first season thrill....but one of the (cheap) reasons the first season was so awesome is the writers apparently threw a crap of cool mysterious stuff that they had no idea how to follow up on. So, now they're being more careful not to pain themselves into unexplainable corners which probably brings the thrill-o-meter back down a few hertz plot-wise.

D'

 

Amazon just (within the last hour) sent me an e-mail saying that my Season 3 DVDs had shipped. Tracking number and everything.

Estimated delivery, March 24. Bleh.

 

The HBO "John Adams" miniseries has started out pretty well. The first episode is kinda slow, focusing mostly on the Boston Massacre and the conditions that surrounded it. Episode two really gets into the meat of the Revolution, showing the deliberations of the Constitutional Congress as they lurched toward the Declaration of Independence.

Two central figures (Jefferson and Franklin) were not seen too favorably by the series' primary source (McCullough's Adams biography from 2002, which is awesome btw), though they're both still pretty universally loved in most of American culture. We'll see what happens once Adams makes it to Paris.

"There are two educations. One should teach us how to make a living, and the other how to live."

 

Did they get a good shot of Adams crapping his pants hearing news about Shay's Rebellion....while yelling to hang everyone as he ran. Adams was only around to make sure that democracy didn't get too much of a hold on the new nation. Thomas Paine should have punched Adams in the face. I can see where a fan of Adams wouldn't like Jefferson too much.

I recommend anyone interested in that particular time-line read Chares Beard's: An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, and these excerpts fromHoward Zinn: Tyranny is Tyranny & A Kind of Revolution

D'

 

Recommending anything by Howard Zinn instantly decreases your credibility by ~70%.

Adams didn't start seriously disagreeing/clashing with Jefferson until after the Revolution. Jefferson was an incredible person, but I'll take Adams' impassioned-yet-deliberate approach over Jefferson's bloodlust any day.

Also, David Morse is great so far in his few scenes as Washington.

"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House... with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

 

I can't imagine losing a larger percentage of my credibility than I have for being seen in public with your gullible ass.
I wont try to defend Ho Zinn's writing style. It's annoyingly simplistic and heavily biased in an equally annoying way. However, it's hard to find a better counter to the BS American history we get in public schools (and most non-public schools while we're at it). Unfortunately, you'd have to read something and not just watch a docudrama about it...so I guess you're SOoL.

D'

 

Majoring in history helps some.

The problem I have with Zinn is the same problem I have with Michael Moore. They both have good intentions, and they're effective rabble rousers, but their works lack depth and perspective. You've got a point that they're strong counters to the "powers that be" (for lack of a better term), but in order to do so, they've become just as polarizing. They've either lost sight of or are disregarding the big picture. Hey, whaddaya know... that's a problem I've had with Jefferson too.

Check out the McCullough biography, I think you'd like it. The miniseries is obviously going to paint Adams in a more heroic light (putting a camera on someone does that), but the book is largely even-handed. McCullough originally conceived it as an examination on the correspondence between Adams, his wife and Jefferson. After a while, he decided to focus primarily on John Adams, but the other two remain major factors in nearly all the key events of Adams' life.


"I'm an idealist without illusions."

 

-Fixed

 

Lost knocked it out of the park again this week.

I don't think anyone here watches The Riches but it is an interesting show. I watch it mainly for being a big Eddie Izzard fan, and a fan of dark, gritty comedy. Though it delivers dark & gritty, it's a bit too fantastical to maintain disbelief through some of the plot-lines and the story itself moves rather slow. However, Eddie Izzard is fun to watch even when he's not wearing women's clothes.

D'

 

I really enjoy Eddie Izzard and have been meaning to try and catch The Riches...I need to tape an episode one of these days.

We are so frakkin behind on BSG and I'm just praying that our DVR tapes enough reruns for us to catch up before next weekend. Actually, I have some DVDs to return...maybe I'll try scamming some store credit over at Best Buy and getting the DVDs for season 3.