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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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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

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?

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)

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.

The fall season started last night on FOX (who is trying to give their new seasons a foothold before playoff baseball starts) with Prison Break and their new show about a kidnapped senator’s wife called Vanished. Being the second kidnapping tale I’ve seen in the past two weeks (NBC’s cleverly titled Kidnapped being the other), there are obvious comparisons to be made. While Kidnapped was occasionally interesting when the characters weren’t talking and has the better cast, Vanished is just really really bad.

Here’s where the show went astray: 1) It was crazy, but not “crazy.” Prison Break is “crazy,” which is why I can respect that show despite giving up watching it last fall. “Crazy” is good. It means you have a sense of humor about what you’re doing. You understand that television stories need twists and turns to keep the viewer interested and you understand how that is contrary to how actual life works. But vanished is just crazy. Crazy is bad. Crazy is trying to convince yourself that the characters on screen are real people and yet having them do things that no real person would ever do. Of course, neither of these descriptions are as good as Crazy, the song of the summer.

2) After watching a show like The Wire (and spending two hours in my local police precinct last fall), I’ve begun to hate any depiction of the FBI (or any law enforcement agency) as being “super high tech.” Real police have lousy technology, and its usually yellowed by fluorescent lights, not shiny and metal. Sure, this is nitpicky. Sure, this is a something that is entirely common in Hollywood cops and robber stories, but Vanished is all ready awful. This is only adding salt to the wound.

3) Was it me or did the show introduce a bunch of new characters in the last two minutes? Talk about a low-rent cliffhanger.

So did anyone else watch this?

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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