MagneticMediaFed

Well, the nominations are out and The Wire failed to get even the obligatory “final season” nod. Even if it wasn’t their strongest, I still don’t understand how the actors continue to be ignored. Isiah Whitlock Jr’s Clay Davis? C’mon. Simon and Burns did get a writing nod for the finale.

That being said, both Mad Men and Damages were nominated for Best Drama, which is pretty damn cool — especially since this is the first time a basic cable show has been up for said award. The rest of the list you can probably predict. (HBO nominated for a miniseries? Now I’ve heard everything!)

Full list can be found here.

Almost Famous

With the exception of Venture Brothers there hasn’t been a single thing on television this summer worth mentioning — until, that is, now. Generation Kill, the new miniseries by David Simon and Ed Burns (of The Wire) has yet to show us much of anything we haven’t already seen in the likes of Jarhead (young kids with itchy trigger fingers unable to act), Three Kings (military-civilian relations) or even The Wire (chain-of-command nonsense and the failure of institutions) but we’ve really only scratched the surface of the program’s seven-plus hours. It doesn’t hurt that proceedings are nevertheless incredibly watchable and (dare I say it) actually kind of fun (racism, sexism, and homophobia aside) — though knowing Simon and Burns oeuvre I’m sure they’re setting me up for devastation.

Plus, it looks great as this is the first time their canvas is in high-definition.

It’s a bit early to get too emotionally involved. One of the problems with movies or series like this is that when all of your characters are more or less wearing the exact same thing (and when that thing happens to be several pounds of camo and armor) it can be difficult to grab a hold of individual personalities. Perhaps that is why most of the cast is packed with That One Guys and The Dude From The Things.

Until Mad Men gets underway at the end of the month, Generation Kill is the only show on television that actually feels important.

Don’t buy it, but love it.

Yesterday afternoon, while watching the second season premiere of The Riches I began to think about the general improbability of the action on the show — how the set-up is so inherently ridiculous I’m astonished that they’ve already gotten an entire season under their belts and can hardly fathom the creators putting out at least another half-dozen this spring. I mean, how have these characters not been caught yet? But the thing is, the show works. I mean really works, like way better than a lot of those series that actually have believable plot lines. I started to think about which method makes for a better television experience. The short answer is its all about execution. The longer answer is after the jump…

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The Wire comes to a brilliant conclusion.

Series finales are always cursed with high expectations. Fans of any show luckily enough to meet its natural conclusion can attest to this. Sure, there have been some great ones, but for every Newhart there are dozens of Seinfelds (unless you subscribe to the theory that the Seinfeld conclusions was more of a post-modernist joke, but for the sake of this discussion let’s say it wasn’t). The Wire, the greatest dramatic series in television history, whose finale aired Sunday night, was note perfect from the first frame to the last. More after the jump…

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I wasn’t going to blog anymore until my relocation to Nashville was complete but after rewatching last night’s penultimate episode of The Wire, I’ve got to say something. First and foremost, for a show whose bread and butter is unavoidable despair, I found this episode particularly sad. Well, maybe that isn’t entirely true. One of the times when I almost broke down in tears was a positive reaction to Bubbles’ sobriety. (Honestly, I never thought he’d make it out of this series alive. I’m happy to be proven wrong.) But Michael and Snoop and then Michael and Dukie? That is some bleak, dreadful shit, and so it goes that as Bubbles is freed Dukie is enslaved, now on a trajectory to fill that role.

The rest of the episode — the nuts and bolts that will eventually reveal who the leak is in the DA’s office (Is it Rhonda? Is it the judge who started this whole thing off back at the beginning of season 1?), how McNulty does or doesn’t make it out of this intact, how Levy again skirts the law and how Marlo and co. will inevitably go free — was just as brilliant. Crime writer supreme, George Pelecanos filled the episode with so many hard-boiled detective scenes (Lester and Clay Davis at the bar, Gus and the vet at Walter Reed) the story moved with a breakneck pace and was loaded with dialogue so rich all I could do was think about rolling in it. And of course there was the prison scene where for the first time ever we see why Marlo is Marlo. Terrifying.

One week to go.

NOTE: I just called Comcast in Nashville and found out that I won’t be getting my cable until March 11th. So my series wrap-up won’t be published until at least the 12th. Sorry.

Clark Johnson as Gus Haynes and Michael K. Williams as Omar Little

For those playing the home game, allow me to pass along the following:

• Tuesday Terry Gross interviewed Clark Johnson on Fresh Air. Mr. Johnson plays city editor Gus Haynes of the Baltimore Sun this season. He also directed the pilot episode and will direct the finale in a few weeks.
• This was followed Wednesday by her interview with Michaek K. Williams who plays the exponentially awesome Omar Little.
• A couple weeks ago HBO put out The Wire: All the Pieces Matter, a collection of music from the series as well as Beyond Hamsterdam: Baltimore Tracks From The Wire, a stripped down disc that focuses exclusively on the hip-hop that has come out of the city. The cool kids seem to think the two are a mostly worthy effort.

Yesterday afternoon I enjoyed my day off by watching the fourth episode of The Wire season five on HBO On-Demand. As I was sitting in my living room watching it there seemed to this perfect storm of politics swirling around me as the episode played out. I was home from work for the MLK holiday, which obviously has its own political implications, especially as I enjoyed the comfort of my gentrified New York neighborhood watching a series ostensibly about the progress (or lack thereof) of the African American community in our country’s cities. The best parts of the episode (and I might argue the best parts of the this season as a whole) dealt with the complex maneuvering of political capital by Baltimore’s fictional mayor in order to further his own political ambitions. While watching this and thinking about why I was staying home form work I couldn’t help but also think about the current presidential race that is now going full bore and the disconnect between what I was currently seeing on screen and what the candidates have been screaming about on the stump. More (with very minor spoilers) after the jump…

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HBO is going to be posting new episodes of The Wire on HBO On-Demand a week before they air. Because of this, and because “seeing them early” doesn’t really mean “seeing them fast” I have watched the season five premiere three (3!) times over the past week. Some would say this may be excessive. Those people are idiots. More after the jump…

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I love making end of the year top ten lists. Sometimes I think it’s the only reason I put up with the fifty weeks of mediocre nonsense (but then I take my antidepressants and go back to playing with that shiny piece of foil). The problem with having television as your medium of choice is that the television schedule doesn’t fit nicely into the Gregorian calendar. Typical seasons on the networks run from September to May, while cable tends to stick closer to the actual climatological patterns of the earth. It’s easy to say that first season Friday Night Lights was the best thing of 2007 except for the fact that half of the season landed squarely in 2006. MagneticMediaFed has figured out the solution to all of this: EPISODES. Episodes are what make television TELEVISION. A good episode keeps you glued to the screen for the full hour (or half hour), it tells a complete story while adding significantly to the series as a whole, it shows you something you didn’t think you’d see or makes you laugh in ways you didn’t think were possible.

I’ve spent a good chunk of the past couple weeks culling over the MMF-archives reminding myself of those episodes that I thought really stuck out. I watch a lot of television, though I don’t purport to watch all television (anyone who does should be shunned and bathed — not necessarily in that order). Because of this, my list only includes the shows that I regularly watch and is missing some obvious gems that I simply don’t know/care about (i.e. Battlestar Galactica, A Shot At Love with Tila Tequila). Still, I think most of the bases are covered. If there was a fantastic episode you remember from this past calendar year, please let us know in the comments. The full list, available right after the jump…

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Picture via NYTimes.com

I have to make this super-quick as I have to catch a flight in a few hours and could use a little sleep. Join me after the jump for some parting words for HBO and the BBC’s Extras…

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It’s Thanksgiving (at least it was an hour and twenty minutes ago) and I’ve been wracking my brain all day about something I could be thankful for this fall in the television universe. The fact of the matter is there’s nothing there, so I was just going to forgo it.

Then I got off work (yeah, I had to work… blarg!) and went over to a friend’s place to drink pumpkin ale. While we surfed the channel guide looking for something to watch we ended up on HBO On-Demand (a place a lot of us end up when we are confused and in need of comfort) and as most voyages to this, the queen-bee of the instant-access universe, end we settled on watching The Wire — season three to be specific.

I’m going to keep this short: The Wire season three is THE SINGLE GREATEST SEASON OF TELEVISION EVER. We watched three episodes, each better than the previous. As I watched I tried to figure why this show was so much better than everything else. My conclusion was in the obvious stuff (the characters are brilliantly written and fun to watch, the arcs are subtle but important and long-running, the plotting is brilliant and plays better with each viewing), but also in the fact that each season of The Wire, while all set within the same universe, is completely different from the previous season. A character that may have been a supporting role in season two might be the primary focus of season four. Great dramas on the networks, like Friday Night Lights, have had brilliant first seasons but then had no where left to go. The Wire is one of the few shows ever that has realized there can be dramatic success built around original plot, not simply character and repetition. Less than two months left until season five!

Two great scenes from season three:
A forty degree day
The brown paper bag

The second the Black child (not to be confused with “the black child”) said, “Where’d my gerbil go?” I think just about everyone watching Curb’s sixth season finale immediately said to themselves, I know where this is going. Luckily, by the time it got there (about halfway through the episode) we realized that it didn’t so much matter, other factors were all ready in play. While the episode (which ran about 40 minutes) couldn’t compete with season three’s sucker-punch of a finale (the restaurant opening) in terms of providing a perfectly themed exclamation point for the entire season, I still found it quite good. More after the jump…

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Knowing me, knowing you.

Curb had me right off the bat this week. It wasn’t due to any particular gut-busting comment or scenario (though the funny was brought) so much how Larry’s description of “New Larry” basically mirrored my recent descriptions of “New Rick.” I don’t know if I should be concerned that my life so closely mirrors that of the TV-Larry-David, but as of right now it does. More after the jump…

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Curb has always had an interesting relationship with reality. Most of its funniest moments are derived from Larry David’s specific view of how the world should operate. It is because of this that most of the show would be classified as “realistic” (quotes included). The series is rarely cartoony, doesn’t rely on parody or out-there premises (except for a few episodes this season) and is comprised of characters that one could expect to find (if they looked hard enough) in the real world. That Sunday’s episode was “unrealistic” (with quotes) is perhaps one of the reasons why I thought it worked so well. More after the jump…

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First and foremost, I need to know. Did anyone watch The Wire last night? Let me know in the comments. I re-watched the premiere yesterday afternoon and found a lot of things I didn’t pick up on the first time around. That’s how the show works. Think of it as the Arrested Development of drama. You get points for catching things in the background. For the die-hards, I’d say check out Alan Sepinwall’s weekly recap. It’s incredibly thorough and well written. As for the rest, it should be noted that last night’s episode had some of the coldest moments in the shows entire run. Aside from Wallace’s role in season one, you can’t get much more hardcore than something involving plastic sheeting, quicklime and a nail gun.

Now then, speaking of quarterbacks last night NBC’s multi-billion dollar hail mary came to fruition as their NFL coverage began. Given the match-up and the final score, it seems to have been worth every penny. I expect nothing shy of ground-shaking ratings. In the weeks to come, the NFL will always do well but the timing of this week makes me think it could be one of their highest rated weekends of the season (only competing against some cartoons on FOX and the 9/11 movie on ABC).

What’s funny about football and about the changing of networks, is that all of this money is spent on hyping the moves (MONDAY NIGHT FOOT, FINALLY ON ESPN! SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL’S GLORIOUS RETURNS TO NBC!), but then when you tune in you remember, “oh yeah, this game is going to look exactly the same no matter where its broadcast.” It’s not like NBC was going to show the game in 3-D or Smell-O-Vision. It’s football. It sells itself.

What did you watch this weekend?