Television Thread: this time, nonotyet didn't do it.

[elpollodiablo]

Alluc rocks as of right now

[dominic]

I miss teevee.

[Andrew_TSKS]

OK, so now I need to know if I should be jumping on this Friday Night Lights bandwagon, of which I know nothing except that some of you kids seem to like it. The question is, is at a genuinely good quality show, is there some sort of ironic appreciation thing going on? I have very low tolerance for bad TV - my standards aren't insanely high (I love my Veronica Mars, my Battlestar Galactica, my Buffy, etc.), but have absolutely no interest in dipping beneath those standards. So tell me, LPTJ, should I watch? I trust you.

you're canadian.  this is american football.  you probably wouldn't get it.   

seriously, how weird is canadian football. three downs? 110 yards? are you kidding me?

[ellaguru]

OK, so now I need to know if I should be jumping on this Friday Night Lights bandwagon, of which I know nothing except that some of you kids seem to like it. The question is, is at a genuinely good quality show, is there some sort of ironic appreciation thing going on? I have very low tolerance for bad TV - my standards aren't insanely high (I love my Veronica Mars, my Battlestar Galactica, my Buffy, etc.), but have absolutely no interest in dipping beneath those standards. So tell me, LPTJ, should I watch? I trust you.

you're canadian.  this is american football.  you probably wouldn't get it.   

seriously, how weird is canadian football. three downs? 110 yards? are you kidding me?

Yeah, I was thinking of suggesting that the only real differences were that y'all play on a child-sized field, and that you need an extra down because it's too hard for you to do anything in three. But then I remembered how (a) I don't really give a rat's ass about football anyways, but (b) there's pretty much no getting around how your version is better than ours.

[hannah]

I finished the eighth episode of the third season of The Wire last night. Man, that scene in which Stringer tells Avon about how he killed D almost because he wants to prove to Avon that he still can kill was just incredible.

Another thing. My brother claims that the second season is the show's most popular. As much as I loved a lot of it, I thought the dock stuff was often terribly mishandled -- sometimes well done, often funny, but somehow feel lightweight in spite of its gravity (and the-man-who-would-eventually-be-my-beloved-Palaka was, alas, misused). Is it is really the "most popular"? Blucas, you mentioned earlier you love the second season. Can you or anyone else explain why? I don't want to put anyone on the spot, and I do understand this is ultimately a matter of taste and it'd be fruitless to discuss it etc. Just curious.

[elpollodiablo]

I don't think it was mishandled, I just saw it as a digression. The real heart of the story is on the street, not on the docks. It worked as an alternative view of urban/middle class decay, and there were a few stellar performances in there (Frank, in my estimation), but there was something off-key about it.
Perhaps Simon, Price and many of the other writers are also better, for whatever reason, at connecting with poor urban black culture than they are with lower-middle class white workers. I always felt like an outsider looking in on the IBS guys; with the Barksdales and later Marlo and them, you never get that feeling.

As far as it being the most popular: it might be that there was a slight ratings spike in the second season after the first was so well-reviewed, but blucas is the only one I know who claims it as his or her favorite season. Dunno where you brother's getting his info.

[ellaguru]

My brother claims that the second season is the show's most popular.

I hadn't heard that, and would have suspected it would be the least popular (of the first three, beyond which I know nothing). I don't have a favourite, but I would have thought the Barksdale storyline would be one people would latch onto more.

[hannah]

I don't think it was mishandled, I just saw it as a digression. The real heart of the story is on the street, not on the docks. It worked as an alternative view of urban/middle class decay, and there were a few stellar performances in there (Frank, in my estimation), but there was something off-key about it.
Perhaps Simon, Price and many of the other writers are also better, for whatever reason, at connecting with poor urban black culture than they are with lower-middle class white workers. I always felt like an outsider looking in on the IBS guys; with the Barksdales and later Marlo and them, you never get that feeling.

Exactly. I agree with every single word of this, except I think perhaps it felt more off key for me than for you. Even though in the real world it does, I never felt the stevedore stuff had any resonance outside of the lives of the Sobotkas; it did feel like a digression, and one I had no business watching.

As far as it being the most popular: it might be that there was a slight ratings spike in the second season after the first was so well-reviewed, but blucas is the only one I know who claims it as his or her favorite season. Dunno where you brother's getting his info.

Yeah, I sort of figured my brother just had his facts wrong, or was basing it on the reaction of one or two of his friends.

[dieblucasdie]

Yeah, it's actually probably the least popular.  I actually asked this question on TwoP once, and it was split pretty evenly between S1 and S3.

The reason I love it so much is because it completely fucked with my expectations (introducing a dozen new characters with no explanation, the male lead stuck on the boat away from the main action for half a season, etc) Watching as much effin' TV as I do, that doesn't happen much anymore. 

[elpollodiablo]

Yeah, and the way they tied Prop Joe and that side of the street-level stuff in with the Greeks felt kind of tacked on, to me. It works in later seasons, like se. 4, tho.

I think a lot of people (and this isn't to say anything about blucas or your brother [maybe blucas a little]) were drawn to se. 2 just because there were more white faces than any other season. Having a cast that's 75% to 80% black is extremely rare on American television, and I assume that HBO's subscriber base is predominantly white.

[hannah]

Well, my brother may or may not be racist, but he's with me and you on season 2. His statement was him just sayin', if falsely.

[dieblucasdie]

Fuck you!

The reason I don't like S3 as much as a lot of people (it's still really really good) is because the whole Hamsterdam plotline is the first time I had trouble suspending my disbelief for The Wire.  I mean, that could just never, ever, ever, ever happen.

[elpollodiablo]

I think it could happen for a short period of time, before word of it leaked out. The only issue on which you really have to suspend your disbelief is the amount of time it stayed up... What was it, about six weeks on the show? No way that's happening, but if someone in command wanted to try something like that and didn't really care about his career, you could probably swing it for a week or so. Don't you think?

Also I wasn't implying anyone is a racist (except blucas), just that se. 2 might seem more conventional and therefore more palatable to a wider viewing audience.

[dieblucasdie]

See, I think no matter what it would last about a day.  With that whole district patrol involved?  Someone would've gotten wind of it, whether in the media or up the chain of command.  Also, when Major Crimes finds out about it and still nothing happens... yeah.  Also, someone like Colvin would *have* to know they could still fuck with his pension.  Oh and no way in hell that that reporter would've sat on it.

But it's kind of a silly argument.  I mean, I still love it a lot.  More so the second time I watched it and I could pay more attention scene-by-scene.

[guanajuato]

Dun dun dun dun.

I kind of ignored Showtime shows for the longest time. With HBO in a bad point right now as far as their series are concerned so I jumped to Showtime. Here's what I learned:

Weeds is good. I rented season 1 but never finished it because it wasn't that good. But either it's improved over the years or it is just better when you watch it on TV.

Californication. This is the show with the X files dude who has a failed movie career. My favorite new show. It's bitter.

Dexter. I rented season 1. The show really picks up steam about halfway through the season due to the tension between the ice truck killer and Dexter. Good shit!

Here, here, for Showtime. Up next I'm renting Brotherhood.


Showtime: HBO's younger, slightly pathetic looking, but way nicer cousin.

[dieblucasdie]

Dude.  Californication is so bad.  Like, The War at Home bad.

[guanajuato]

Right, just like, Flight of the Conchord is bad, you lover of fat moms and defiler of the universe.

[maggiego]

While Californication is not good, it is not that bad, either. It is completely sexist like TWAH, yes, except for the daughter. The writerly stuff on it is embarrassingly bad though.

[ellaguru]

The Hamsterdam thing: if you want to see this done well, check out DaVinci's City Hall, which I don't know how you would do that. It's the spinoff/continuation of Davinci's Inquest. One of the plots of the series is trying to set up a legal red light district in Vancouver. It's more realistic than Hamsterdam because the plan is not by some renegade, itis being pushed by a mayor who won his election basically on the platform of wanting to establish the red light district (this can happen because -a- it's Canada, -b- it's Vancouver, -c- it's only a few years after the Vancouver cops found a pig farm full of chick corpses that nobody was looking for because, hey, they were only hookers and who cares about missing hookers, and -d- it did happen: the show is based on the actual mayor of Vancouver, who became mayor during the run of DaVinci's Inquest, which was also based on him, from when he was coroner. Anyway, DaVinci's City Hall's one season tracks DaVinci's attempts to push his plan through as well as the political, business, police, &c., opposition to him.

It came out about the same time as The Wire season 3 (maybe the same year, maybe a year after, I get my Wire on dvd and my Canadian TV on TV so it's hard to tell), and it was fun to watch them both around the same time because the story was following a similar line. And DaVinci's City Hall did that part of the story better. Not comparing anything else between the two shows, just their sustained looks at attempts to "legalize" a "sin".

[Andrew_TSKS]

all this talk of season 2 makes me feel compelled to post one of my favorite dialogue bits from "the wire". don't worry, it isn't a spoiler, it's got nothing to do with the plot.

SOBOTKA: Your son... The oldest one, he goes to what school?
DIBIAGO: Jason's at Princeton.
SOBOTKA: Princeton. And after he graduates he's gonna do, what?
DIBIAGO: Whatever he wants.
SOBOTKA: Right, you sent him to Princeton to do whatever the fuck he wants. You know, back when we was kids, Danny Hay's father stole a case of cognac off a ship. 'Cept when he gets it home, it ain't cognac, it's Tang.
DIBIAGO: Tang?
SOBOTKA: Just invented. TV was saying it's what the astronauts drank on their way to the moon. You drink it, well...
DIBIAGO: You could be an astronaut too.
SOBOTKA: All summer long, that shit was all the hare kids drank, Tang with breakfast, Tang with lunch, Tang when they woke up scared in the middle of the night. What do you think they grew up to be? Stevedores. What the fuck you think? Something tells me Jason Dibiago will grow up and squeeze a buck the way his old man did.
DIBIAGO: You're outta line, Frank. My great-grandfather was a knife sharpener. Yeah. Pushed a grinding stone up Preston Street to Alice-Ann, one leg shorter than the other from pumping the wheel. And since he didn't want his sons to push the goddamn thing, he made sure my grandfather finished high school and my old man went to any college that would take him.
SOBOTKA: You're talking history, right? I'm talking now. Because down here, it's still "Who's your old man?" 'Til you got kids of your own and then it's, "Who's your son?" But after the horror movie I seen today... Robots! Piers full of robots! My kid'll be lucky if he's even punchin' numbers five years from now. And while it don't mean shit to me that I can't take my steak knives to Dibiago and Sons, it breaks my fucking heart that there's no future for the Sobotkas on the waterfront!

[guanajuato]

Just had that lying around, Andrew?!?

Good news on the Wire front. Wire: Season 4 comes out December 4th!

[Andrew_TSKS]

googled it. thankfully i remember the exact wording of some of frank's sentences. it was on the internet in exactly one place.

[elpollodiablo]

Just had that lying around, Andrew?!?

Good news on the Wire front. Wire: Season 4 comes out December 4th!

Or last fall if you have a computer

[dieblucasdie]

So I guess Season 5 is only 10 episodes?  Boo.  What fucking else do you have to air, HBO?  That Anna Paquin Vampire show (milly will love it)?  At least they got it finished before the strike, though.

[guanajuato]

Just had that lying around, Andrew?!?

Good news on the Wire front. Wire: Season 4 comes out December 4th!

Or last fall if you have a computer

If you like watching things on a laptop screen.