The Wire Hates Politics – Maybe

•July 4, 2009 • Leave a Comment

So my posting has taken a bit of a break due to various parties and hangings out with family and friends over the past week,  but now I’m back home and all settled, and ready to make a second post about The Wire (which is actually the topic my first post was supposed to be on, until I wrote it and it wasn’t). I’m kind of glad for the break, because while it interrupted my posting it didn’t do the same to my show watching, so I’m writing this post from halfway through the second season of The Wire, instead of at the end of the first season.

the wire 004What I want to talk about is the absolute disdain some of the characters in The Wire have for politics and careerism. During the first half of season one I would have said this was just McNulty, but later on Lt. Daniels really stepped up in this department too. I can illustrate what I’m talking about best with this great big quote from McNulty:

If only half you motherfuckers in the State’s Attorney’s office didn’t want to be judges, didn’t want to be partners in some downtown law firm, if half of you had the fucking balls to follow through you know what would happen? A guy like that would be indicted, tried and convicted. And the rest of them would back up enough so we could push a clean case or two through your courthouse. But no everybody stays friends, everybody gets paid, and everybody’s got a fucking future!

This is a viewpoint I share completely, and one of the reasons I love McNulty so much. I’m pretty sure I brought up my hatred of politics in a post about Jerry Kellerman one time, and I think McNulty and Jerry would get along fine. Except for the part where Jerry would be trying to free the guys McNulty had taken down. Hurm, getting a bit off topic, so politics! I hate them, I hate the fact that most people would rather try to do what people in positions of power want in order to assure themselves of a career (which is a word I hate, it makes your current job sound like a more vital aspect of your life than it should be).

the wire 005The fact that people in The Wire actually stand up to the power structure and try to push for a good case is one of my favourite aspects of the show. The number of  crises they come across that could (and sometimes do) undermine their case is so disheartening, but the fact that they (McNulty and Daniels) still try to do good by the case knowing what will happen to them, what did happen to Freamon, makes the show less disheartening but more tragic. They all prove that they’re damn good police, and get punished for it.

I said that having watched half of season two would change this post a bit, and here’s how: In the second season the case really wouldn’t come together if it wasn’t for politics. The reunion of the main characters in a new special detachment only occurs because Major Valchek is pissed about his stained glass window, and he has a great deal of political power at his disposal. Granted the connection between the special detachment and the case (which still isn’t firmly in place where I’m at) comes about as a result of a combination of good police work and McNulty trying to screw Rawls and not because of Valchek, but it’s still his political leverage that gets the gang back together.

So maybe The Wire hates politics, but admits that they can sometimes be inadvertently beneficial would have been a better title for this post.

-Jerk

JDB Actor Bingo: Day 12

•July 2, 2009 • 2 Comments

elosha-and-her-scrollWe’ve taken a few days off to celebrate Canada Day but we’re back in full force with a sad tribute to another fellow Canadian.  Lorena Gale sadly passed away earlier this week at far too young an age.  During her admirable career she gave us the memorable priestess Elosha on Battlestar Galactica that we were all sad to see go.  She has also appeared on shows like Dark Angel, Stargate SG-1, The Outer Limits, The X-Files, Highlander, The 4400 and The L Word.  Our somber but loving tribute day should really help fill out your cards.

A Montreal native, the petite Mrs Gale was also an award winning playwrite penning Angélique and Je me souviens. She recently lost her battle with Cancer but will be remembered fondly by her fans.

Early Summer Round-up

•July 2, 2009 • 1 Comment

With less than two weeks to go to Leverage and a bunch of our summer shows back up and running it’s fair to say the summer season is in full swing.  I thought I’d update you with a collection of thoughts on the shows I’m watching instead of rambling on about each one enough to make a whole post.royal-pains-20090508105014371_640w

My first and maybe only new show of my summer watching season is Royal Pains.  I talked about the pilot a couple weeks back but I’m back to air my grievances.  My big problem with Royal Pains is that the plot changed.  I wish I could find you a clip of the first few minutes and intro of the second episode but I was just short of appalled.  The entire premise that pulled me in was that Hank didn’t want to be working for the rich, he wanted to do good but the intro made him sound like he was pretty damn pleased with his new set up.  If there’s no conflict there, it’s just ER on wheels for rich people.  That doesn’t appeal to me at all.  Not to mention the title and credits are some of the worst I’ve seen in years.  They’re worse than Dollhouse. (eg, rising from the bottom of a pool arms out like Jesus come to save the Hamptons)  Srsly.

True Blood really had me last week but this week’s episode has driven off the tracks for me again.  WTF happened?  I was starting to like Tara and now she’s emo again.  What happened to Sam?  Why is he nice now?  I get that Sookie is a sexual character but could somebody give Paquin a sandwich?  She makes me feel awkward and is by far my least favorite character.  I don’t care about the main relationship anymore.  For all the people that draw the parallels to twilight, and they’re definitely there, this is where Twilight succeeded and True Blood is failing.  I’m excited to see what happens with Jessica and her new boyfriend.

alg_raising_barLastly Raising the Bar is doing a good job of posing questions each week that actually make me stop and consider which side of the fence I’m on.  Sometimes I agree with the verdict, sometimes I don’t but this weeks lack of conclusion was both fitting and troublesome.  I was left to ask will they bring this story back?  I think the way they’ve set it up they almost have to.  The question is when and how will it be treated.  I think they really run the risk of being monotonous if we have to sit thought the same trial again.  I’d like to see quick flashes and the final verdict but not until quite late in the season if not the finale.  It would be a good way to wrap the season up into itself.  That said I could easily forget that this story ever happened after a few weeks.  I’m interested to see what they do.

Alright that’s my round-up!  Only two more weeks till we’ll be able to get digging back into Leverage and from whats going around I’m only getting more and more excited for this season.  That said, let me know what summer season shows I’m missing and I’ll try to catch up.

-DoubleBitch

Bone Delay

•June 30, 2009 • 1 Comment

Bones-tv-show-f21So I finally got around to watching the final episode of Bones and first I should clarify that I’m not a regular watcher.  I’ve seen almost every episode of this past season but I couldn’t even tell you which season that is.  I watch for pretty much the same reason that I’d guess most people do, David Boreanaz, but I’ve grown to really enjoy the show in a CSI, L&O kinda way.  It’s something you’re glad to see when you’re flipping through the channels but you don’t feel too bad if you miss a few.

The finale was kind of an odd one.  Lets see what the team does when we take away their protector.  Booth being kidnapped was reminiscent of two things.  First the oh no he’s been buried alive thing has been done not only by this show but it reminded me a lot of that time they buried Nicky on CSI.  It was missing that element of ‘oh no! what’s going to happen?!”  because clearly we knew he’d be alright and they left no cliffhanger for next season, which I’m not that upset about.  I’m not really a fan of the cliffhanger but there needs to be some sustaining energy.  I guess it’s a well established show that generates it’s own audience.   The finale also reminded me of the episode of Angel when he was stuck in a submarine  but that’s probably just me.

One thing Bones has going for them is a strong cast.  Not just interesting supporting characters but Booth and Brennan specifically, they can hold their own story lines when separated and are classic when they’re together.  I see a lot of similarities between these two and Castle.  I think I’ve said that before but both shows pull it off well.

I kinda got off topic but I thought the finale was a little lack luster though I don’t really think that will be as much of a problem for Bones as it would or could have been for any other less established show.  It’s pretty much in Smallville territory now.  Do what you will, people will still keep watching.

-DoubleBitch

JDB Actor BINGO: Day Eleven

•June 29, 2009 • Leave a Comment

bingo 011Today we’ve got someone who was actually born in Los Angeles, fellow only child Clea DuVall! I first saw her as Stokes in The Faculty, which is a movie I love far more than I should. She referenced Heinlein, I’ve been a fan ever since. The majority of her credits are for films, but she’s appeared in quite a few shows. Clea’s biggest television roles were playing FBI Agent Hanson in Heroes and staring in Carinivale as Sofie. Clea’s other TV credits include ER, Lie to Me, Grey’s Anatomy, Law & Order: SVU, CSI, and Popular.

The character she played in one episode of the first season of Buffy, the invisible Marcie Ross, has a strangely large and vocal following who keep writing letters asking for her to appear in the Buffy Season 8 comic books. Clea directed and starred in a short film called It’s Not Easy Being Green, which also featured her Carnivale co-star Carla Gallo and Leisha Hailey.

-Jerk

JDB Actor BINGO: Day X

•June 27, 2009 • Leave a Comment

bingo 010Wow, ten days in. I’m honestly a little surprised that nobody’s won yet. I’m not sure if that means we’ve been doing a good job or a bad job of picking actors.

Anyway, today we have Ron Rifkin! Ron is probably best known for playing the Rambaldi-hunting Arvin Sloane on Alias, though he’s now spent the last three years playing Saul Holden on Brothers & Sisters. Ron has appeared on many, many shows over his 40+ year career, including ER, Law & Order, Hill Street Blues, Kojak, the Rockford Files, and Barnaby Jones. Hopefully he’l help fill in some of those older shows on your cards!

Along with his TV and film work, Ron has also done a lot of theatre. In 1998 he won a Tony for his performance in Cabaret. On the subject of Cabaret, Ron looks quit similar to the star of the Cabaret movie, Joel Grey. They’re often mistaken for each other, something that was actually used as a plot during the fourth season of Alias.

-Jerk

Summer Viewing: The Wire Season 1 – Modern Noir

•June 27, 2009 • 2 Comments

A while ago DoubleBitch and I asked you guys for some ideas of shows we should watch over the summer. I chose The Wire and, holy crap do I love. This. Show! This next bit is gonna be a little convoluted as I lay down some layers of background RE: the loving, but hopefully you can make sense of it all. **totally gonna be spoilers for season one in here**

the wire 001I’ve mentioned it before (I think, at least a few times) that I’m something of a really big comic book fan. I love the medium (yes medium, not genre, that’s a pet peeve of mine. It’s like saying ‘you know what genre I like? Movies.’ Anyway) and I’ve been reading them for just about two decades now. Like pretty much every comic fan I started out with superheroes (Spider-Man was my drink of choice) but over the years I’ve spread out, trying all kinds of different genres in comic form. Jumping now but I’ll get back to this.

So more recently, when I started to use Twitter naturally my first follows were a bunch of my favourite comic writers. One thing I noticed was that pretty much all of them were really into The Wire, and the final season that was airing at the time. Now that I’ve watched some, I understand why. It’s the dialogue and characterization that make this show. Every character love them or hate them, good or bad you care about them. It can be the slowest, least important scene with regards to the main plot but you’re just drinking it up, utterly enthralled.

the wire 002Back to those different comic book genres. As my web of comicy knowledge grew, I found that more and more of my favourite titles were crime and noir. Books like Powers, Sleeper, Gotham Central, Scalped and Criminal. I started looking into some crime and noir books and movies. It’s easily the genre that I’ve expanded into the most over the past five or so years, and one that many of my favourite comic writers have a deep love for.

Finally getting back to The Wire, which I honestly hadn’t really had any interest in until all these people whose work I loved were tweeting about it. I’d dismissed it as just another cop show (bit of an aside, nothing has drilled it into me that ‘cop’ has a negative connotation more than The Wire. It’s how they always say police), except on HBO so they’d say fuck a lot. I was so completely wrong (and I’m guessing by now you know that The Wire is modern noir, right?) about what the show was in a way that’s honestly embarrassing. I’m usually really good at reading a couple paragraphs, seeing some production photos and being able to figure out what a show’s about (or if not, at least that I’ll need to see it to do so), but with The Wire I was way off.

the wire 003The Wire is, as I said, modern noir. Certainly not the Philip Marlow, Sin City type of noir, instead it’s a modern setting, a realistic depiction of police work (they don’t solve all their cases! And they don’t get them one at a time, wrap them up and move on to the next!), and missing any of those classic noir characters. No hardboiled P.I., no sultry and mysterious femme fatale. Instead we just have a collection of very real, very flawed people. What it does have is that sense of inevitiblity. You know things aren’t going to go well. You know McNulty’s career is fucked regardless of the outcome of the case. You know Wallace isn’t going to get back in school. You know D isn’t going to change the game like he wants. You know Bubbles won’t be able to stay clean. All of this you know in your gut but it doesn’t make it any less intriguing watching them reach their fate, hoping they get something better.

This is getting long so I’ll stop there. Oh and sorry I didn’t explain noir at all in this post, people who aren’t familiar with the genre. That would have been a really long post, but please feel free to do some Googling if you’re interested!

I’ll be posting more about The Wire soon.
-Jerk

JDB Actor BINGO: Day Nine

•June 26, 2009 • Leave a Comment

bingo 009Today’s BINGO entry is Diane Farr! She’s played Maria’s mom Amy DeLuca on Roswell, Jan on The Job (and like many on that show, she later appeared Denis Leary’s next show Rescue Me), and Megan Reeves for three seasons of Numb3rs. Diane’s also had guest spots on CSI, the Drew Carey Show, and V.I.P., and she’s joined the cast of Californication for its third season.

Outside of acting she’s co-hosted the Loveline TV show in the late ’90s and has written a book, as well as articles for numerous magazines, and IMDB also says she started up a greeting card company with a friend one time.

-Jerk

I Knew Waiting Was a Good Idea

•June 25, 2009 • 1 Comment

true blood s2 001You may have noticed that amid all our BINGO postness there was narry to be seen with regards to the second season of True Blood. That was my bad, but I had a reason and I think it worked out! DoubleBitch said I could have the TB post, but after watching the second season premiere I felt… a little underwhelmed. Less whelmed than I had hopped to be. Some bits were great (such as everything about Lafayette), some showed real potential (Michelle Forbes character, and all the various relationships with said character), and some bits were honestly a bit lame (Bill and to a much greater extent Sookie (and their creepy blood fetish sex scene), and I was pretty apathetic to the most recent murder on the show). Oh and Sookie’s one line dismissing Lizzy Caplan’s character as just some V junkie seemed really out of character to me. Anyway after watching the episode, I felt like I needed to wait until I’d watched the second episode as well before posting.

true blood s2 002Well, now I’ve watched the second episode and boy was I right. While the first episode felt a bit lacking, I thought the second was firing on all cylinders. Maybe even some extra cylinders that were just thrown in there for the hell of it, they were firing too. It was brilliantly funny (the triple play of Bill shopping for women’s clothing > the saleswoman hitting on him > Bill being totally gay for Eric was perfect), wonderfully gory (I loved Lafayette’s attempted escape), and even better I enjoyed all the various plotlines. Leaving out the latest dead body was a good move, though I’m pretty sure it will end up being tied to Maryann in the end. Oh and before this episode I could have cared less about Andy, but his line about dancing was great, and following that up by actually showing him dance was amazing! Almost as good a display of bad dancing as that one Angel episode.

When the first season finale introduced the ‘Jason joins the anti-vampire church’ storyline I was skeptical, to say the least. But so far I’ve really, really enjoyed it. I like the head guy and his wife, Jason is of course amazing, and his leader workshop nemesis Luke was great. I did not expect to like this story, let alone love it.

true blood s2 003I’m also really digging that Maryann appears to be some ancient, Dionysus-ish god, I’m really looking forward to finding out where Alan Ball and company are going with that one.

But so far the standout storyline of season two has to be Lafayette and Eric. Though that said, if next Sunday rolls around and Lafayette is not now a vamp I shall be very cross indeed. Oh and while we’re talking about Eric? Not sure about his new, normal style (even if Bill is), I really dug his old ‘Goth Viking’ look.

The first episode may have been a little on the weak side, but ep 202 was everything I love about the show in a neat 55-minute package.

-Jerk

JDB Actor BINGO: Day Eight!

•June 25, 2009 • 2 Comments

Jerk here to bring you daily BINGO actor yet again, as DoubleBitch is heading to New York (for her first visit to the greatest city in the world!) to sing at Carnegie Friggin’ Hall! Yeah she rocks and you should all wish her luck!

bingo 008Anyway, BINGO time and today we’ve got Malcolm-Jamal Warner for you! You all know him of course as Theo Huxtable from The Cosby Show, but he’s got lots of other cool credits to his name. Did you know he was the voice of the Producer during those bits at the end of every episode of the Magic School Bus? I didn’t and I loved the Frizz. After The Cosby Show Malcolm starred as one of the titular characters in Malcolm & Eddie. He also starred as Kurdy in Jeremiah. Malcolm’s had several guest spots on shows like Sliders, Dexter, and even this week’s episode of HawthoRNe.

Along with his acting Malcolm enjoys basketball and playing poker, and also fronts a jazz-funk band, Miles Long.

-Jerk

What’s that you say?

•June 24, 2009 • Leave a Comment

More Leverage countdown gifs?!  Why not!

three-weeks-to-go-2_4from the awesome katysam as always

-DB

JDB Actor BINGO: Day VII

•June 24, 2009 • Leave a Comment

bingo 007To finish off the first week we’ve got he of the creepy pale eyes, Ian Somerhalder! Ian was born and raised in a small town in Louisiana, and first started modelling before becoming an actor. He appeared in two CSI’s and a Law & Order before being cast as Adam Knight in Smallville, one of  the most interesting characters to ever be unfortunately connected to a Lana subplot (and I was really hoping he’d evolve into the show’s version of Bizarro).  Ian followed up Smallville by being the first Lost castmember to be cast, and also the first to be killed off back when the people who died weren’t just the problem actors on the show. You can see him next starring in the terrible looking The Vampire Diaries on the CW.

Cool trivia from IMDB: The surname “Somerhalder” originates from his adoptive great-grandfather. His biological great-grandfather, a wealthy English landowner, got one of his mistresses pregnant and paid an immigrant worker of his to marry this woman and give the baby a name, which was Somerhalder. The biological great-grandfather’s name was Hull. Ian Somerhalder is a much better name than Ian Hull.

-Jerk