(no subject)

[proximoception]

We've been alternating Fringe and The Wire. Poor, typecast Lance Reddick.

Fringe is very silly - clearly pitched as Lost meets X-Files but it's all JJ Abrams all nude all the time, hence pure Alias. Whereas The Wire Season 1 was fantastic, as everyone said it would be (though they also said that about the blahish Sopranos). In fact I assume we're the very last humans of our make and model seeing it. Not unflawed and presumably charged with less shock-of-the-new, ten years on, but who cares. I wonder how closely trying to do something genuine with television paralleled McNulty's quest in the show. Given how high it shot results were maybe ultimately as mixed as his own, or for that matter his accent, but you can't not fall in love with this kind of trying.

Comments

[wolodymyr.livejournal.com]

I feel like the Sopranos goes best with a really tight episode guide. Because there are gems in there, but the show spent a LOT of time coasting on automatic. And the people getting an acceptable vicarious thrill, completely content to adore every episode, were numbingly legion.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well put - seemed that way to me too, that the "mafia = opera" brigade were behind the overpraise, or at least its endurance into the era of apparently superior progeny shows. I'd be happy to try again with a guide though.

[thelican.livejournal.com]

My feeling, too. Thank you for validating it! (No one else seems willing to.) I just wasn't able to wade through the automatic parts of nihilistic stupidity, which were never a vicarious thrill for me. I think I stopped watching (four episodes in?) after Tony's people beat up his shrink's boyfriend.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

We stopped around there on both our attempts too.

sorry for edits

[wolodymyr.livejournal.com]

Well, anything serious would probably take a while (and would be interesting, for me personally) but in season two both the episode where Tony goes to Italy ("Commendatori") and "D-Girl" are excellent, and great back-to-back. The first one is absolute David Chase, this kind of padded nihilism in which the colors are bright and the edges are soft and no-one actually has a conversation, because conversation would require understanding and that's impossible. So it's perversely cruel, and then D-Girl, where Tony Jr finds that talking about Camus - just using the word existentialism - is better at shaking up the grown-ups than...anything of which he could have DREAMED. Just watching the adults twitch at the word "existentialism" is...awesome, lovely, and satisfying. So these two episodes are kind of about the same thing, explicitly, even, but the feel couldn't be further off. And they're in the same world with the same actors! So that's an experience I can easily recommend, and even be envious of.