MagneticMediaFed

I started this site for a couple reasons. The first (and most obvious) is to garner international acclaim for my no-nonsense brand of television commentary and maybe, just maybe, change this crazy world (is it a coincidence that our world leaders haven’t tried to use MagneticMediaFed in their negotiations with the middle east? I think not). The second reason is a hope that I might be able to get people to watch shows they wouldn’t normally watch.

Well, I’m cashing in all my chips. If you’re ever going to check out a series based on my recommendation, make it The Wire. It airs this Sunday on HBO at 10:00pm et. It’ll also be airing on HBO On-Demand the entire week prior to each broadcast. Because of this I was able to watch the first episode of this season, and as expected, it was great.

Of course, there will be problems. The Wire is unrelenting in its complexity. Watching the premiere of season four I thought about this, and being that MMF readers are some of the sharpest minds on the internets, I think you’ll be able to handle it– even if you hadn’t seen previous seasons. BUT! That doesn’t mean you can tune in this Sunday, get frustrated and never check it out again. The Wire is about seasons. The build is long, but the payoffs are huge. If you give the show four or five episodes, you’ll become enamored by the characters and totally hooked (even if you aren’t entirely sure what’s going on).

Here’s a basic plot breakdown for the first episode: The city of Baltimore has a crime problem. A special unit was established in season two designed to target the most violent drug dealers in the city. The problem is, as season four starts, no bodies have been found in four months. For a town that clocks over 300 murders a year, this is preposterous. Elsewhere in the city, a white councilman is running for mayor in a predominantly black city. And lastly (for this recap) a former cop decides to start teaching in an inner-city middle school. There’s obviously more. A lot more. But that’s enough info to follow along. I have no doubt that after season four concludes, you’ll want to run out and rent the previous installments, so I won’t ruin those arcs. This year seems to be a bit of a departure (in terms of regular characters) from the previous three, making it a great jumping-on point.

Plus, now that the season has started, The Wire will be taking up more and more of this site’s real estate, so you might as well watch to know what’s going on. It’ll be the best decision you make all fall.

Now have at it. (Thanks)

Sunday marked the season finale of Deadwood. It also happened to be the series finale, kind of. David Milch, the show’s creator desperately wanted a fourth season to finish telling his story, but HBO balked. They said he could only have six episodes. In what initially seems like a completely backwards decision, they reached a compromise where the show would instead come back as two, two-hour movies for the network. If you do the math you’re left thinking, “Wait a minute. That’s four hours instead of a promised six? WTF, Mr. Milch?” I thought the same thing, but in an interview with Brian Cox on NPR’s FreshAir Mr. Cox made the point that a “movie” would actually allow Mr. Milch to work outside of the perameters he had already constructed. There’s more by clicking below…

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I honor of the fourth season of The Wire, which will premiere on HBO Sunday, September 10th, I’d like to pose the following question to MMF’s readers:

Why do you or don’t you watch The Wire?

Leave a comment. I’d like to know.

• Real Sports on HBO did a great piece on Dick Ebersol, television-sports-producer extraordinaire, which went over not only his tenure at NBC and their recent aquisition of the NFL, but also on the tragic plane crash the claimed the life of his son. It’s a really well put together piece.
• The end of last night’s Rescue Me, the next-to-last episode of the season, should have been way more obvious to me than it was at the time. Basically, the episode was curiously hillarious. Lots of laughs. Lots of people not experiencing horrible tragic circumstances ALL THE TIME. And then it suckerpunches you right in the jaw– not unlike the same episode last season. If you watch the show, leave a comment and let me know what you thought.
• DON’T FORGET! THE DEADLINE TO JOIN THE FALL FANTASY TELEVISION LEAGUE IS THIS FRIDAY. THERE ARE REALLY GOOD FRIENDS OF MINE WHO REALLY LIKE TELEVISION WHO HAVE NOT SIGNED UP. I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

Tonight after work I sat down in front of the television to take in the season premiere of the Showtime comedy Weeds. It’s an unremarkable show on an unremarkable network, but they’re both trying and that’s usually worth something. Showtime has no easy hill to climb. If you ask and Tom, Dick or Larry on the street where you’re going to find the best programming on cable they’re going to say HBO. Maybe Larry will accidentally say Showtime, but that’s only because he’s a big Red Shoe Diaries fan.

Though if they’re ever going to make a move, now is precisely the time to do it. HBO is limp. It’s top show, The Sopranos seemed to hemorrhage viewers this past season (maybe because people don’t like having to wait 20 months between seasons, or maybe because the shows sexiness has apparently bored the creators). Its top comedy, Sex and the City is long gone and nothing seems poised to take the reigns. HBO still makes great shows (this week’s Deadwood was awesome and exactly what a ‘payoff’ episode should be), and even the greatest show, The Wire, which I’ll be talking about in more depth later in the week. But none of these shows have the buzz that the network once had. Showtime, if it played its cards right, could finally start to chip away some of HBO’s viewers.

Weeds is a big part of that plan. It’s a crowd-pleaser (maybe too much so). Throw in The L Word and Brotherhood and you’ve got yourself a respectable one-two-three.

ANYWAY, I’m watching the show (on the SHO) and laughing occasionally at the occasionally funny moments on this occasionally interesting series about a pot-selling suburban mom when something happens. Something that should never happen on a premium channel. What was it? Click below to find out…

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Salon.com produces a podcast called “Conversations” (subscribe here) which usually is just the raw audio from a press junket. This week it showcases the awesome Ian McShane, who talks about working with Woody Allen in the new picture Scoop and also speaks at length about Deadwood, David Milch, and strangers coming up to him asking him to say C***sucker.

Definitely worth a listen.

As of this moment, the podcast had yet to be posted on the Salon page listed above, so you’ll have to subscribe with the given feed via iTunes or whatever your preferred agregating program happens to be.

Just finished watching last night’s Deadwood. It was great, as usual. It also had a scene that might have been one of the more violent things ever taken in by my eyes. There’s gore, and then there’s violence. Its curious how rarely the two of those things actually meet in cinema. This was different. This was the culmination of four weeks worth of buildup by the principal characters leading to an extended sequence in which they fought, hand to hand, to the death. It was intense, but not just for me, the winner of the fight left more traumatized than any viewer could have. It was a scene of grizzly, real, violence without a clean resolution. It was great television.

First of all, I don’t mean for this to turn into the Rescue Me blog, but until It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia starts up next Thursday (premiering with two new episodes!) Rescue Me is simply the most interesting show on all of television. But before I get to the actual basis of this post, a few words about last night’s episode [#304]. It ended with a fairly troubling scene involving Tommy forcing himself on his ex-wife. It was troubling in the same way Straw Dogs is troubling. Its yet another example of how this series finds a way to seemlessly walk its audience from the comforts of frat-boy humor to the depths of the human experience. It makes for a great ride.

Now then, I’m watching tonights episode, and like every night I watch the show, I think to myself, “Damn, Rick. This has one of the best title sequences ever, but certainly the best on TV right now.” Sometimes I reply to myself, “You should post about that, and perhaps include some other good intros,” but frequently I just sit silently and go back to drinking my beer.

Not today! Check out five of the best show openings by clicking below…

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Seth Stevenson of Slate (happy 10th!) writes an excellent piece about the recent Apple ad campaign that I initally loved, but have grown to hate.  I’ll let him hammer out the whys, but lets just say that, as a Mac user, these ads seems to be going after the wrong people (or maybe they’re going after the right people, wrongly).

As for Entourage… well, meet me after the jump…

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As The Sopranos wimpers into its final lap, it’s curious as to what exactly HBO is going to bank its future on.  Right now signs, unfortunately, point to Entourage– the greatest dramedy ever about people whose lives have little unresolvable drama.  This summer HBO is bringing out the bench players, doing their best to convince subscribers the network is still valid.  It is.  Kinda.  Check out the lineup after the jump…

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Channel Island is reporting that last Sunday’s finale of The Sopranos was the lowest-rated finale for the series since its debut in 1999. It averaged 8.9 million viewers, or a 19% drop from the previous season in 2004.

Obviously this number doesn’t include the amount of people who did tune in to Sunday’s finale but found it boring and uneventful.

Programming note, before I get started: I missed Lovespring International last night (the new comedy series on Lifetime) as my DVR became confused by a few too many bookings. Who programs a new series for 11pm? That’s Daily Show/Adult Swim/reruns of Seinfeld territory. I mean, I’m a young male, the chosen demo, surely the “women’s network” wouldn’t want to squander our viewership, right?

Anyway.

CBS has been airing this sit-com starring Julia-Louis Dreyfus called, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and it seems to be mildly successful. By mildly successful I mean it’s attracting viewers, got renewed, and has garnered, if not favorable reviews, then non-negative reviews, which is about all you can ask out of a mainstream sit-com (wow, I just reread that sentence and feel kind of depressed).

Last night’s episode had to do with Old Christine going to her son’s something at school, and how the kid finally met New Christine, who he really liked. Honestly, I laughed a few times, and if the transitive property is to be believed, I guess this means I liked the show. It should be noted, however, that my continued watching hinges mostly on the fact that it is summer and there really isn’t a lot else on the dial (my TV has a dial, does yours?).

Months ago I declared laugh tracks obsolete. While I still feel this way, two track-infused shows has crept into my TV lineup, How I Met Your Mother and now The New Adventures of Old Christine. I guess we can focus this blame on CBS. HIMYM (which looks almost dirty when abbreviated) relies frequently on editing in its jokes making a live audience an impossibility, but there isn’t any reason TNAOOC (what?!) should rely on canned laughs.

While I’m not wholly enthusiastic about it, the biggest selling point for the new HBO comedy Lucky Louie (aside from Louis C.K.’s Pootie Tang connection) is its use of an actual LIVE studio audience. I don’t care if you want to put a three-camera show on the air, but at least respect you viewers enough to give them actual laughs.

• FX is going to begin production of a new series this fall (slated to air early 2007) called Dirt. It’s produced by and stars Courtney Cox Arquette as the editor of a tabloid newspaper.
• Deadwood will end its propper run after the upcoming season 3, but appears to be coming back in the form of a feature-length movie. Huzzah!

Info via Cynopsis

HBO seems to be dropping the ball left and right. It is no longer the sole home of high quality televised drama (thanks for canceling Arlis, a-holes), and when it is given the advantage (i.e. when The Sopranos is airing), it completely destroys any sense of momentum in the season by skipping a week before the finale. Neither The Sopranos nor Big Love were on last week, probably so the network could get away from the added pressure of competing with everyone else airing their season finales. What happened to “It’s not TV, it’s HBO?” Are things really in such dire straights the big, bad HBO can’t stomach going up against Grey’s Anatomy, a series so popular it wasn’t even ON last week? This is a shame for both of their series. All the urgency was drained away exposing flaws that might have otherwise gone undetected. The Sopranos held up, as it always does. It’s flaws aren’t dramatic, but instead simply illuminate the direction of the show. Big Love is a different story altogether. Keep reading by clicking below…

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There’s nothing more shocking than a recurring character getting killed off of a television series. Well, maybe that’s a lie. I’m sure there are plenty things MORE shocking– like waking up in the morning only to realize that someone has stolen your kidneys, or perhaps, putting a fork in an electrical outlet. Nevertheless, it’s a dramatic trick as old as sweeps itself: killing off characters. This past season has been no exception, as many lives were claimed and many plots were twisted (some were killed off in such a dramatic fashion they were forced to leave TV altogether for the movie biz).

Anyway, please click below to pay respect…
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