MagneticMediaFed

Let’s kick this up a notch…

My love for FX’s The Riches is, this season, perfectly in line with my fear for The Riches. Maybe it’s some sort of law that people outside of show business do not know about, but why must sequels always play that coy game of oneupmanship with its audience. BIGGER explosions! MORE twists! FRILLIER dresses! What no one ever remembers is that most of us who enjoy watching certain characters over and over is that we thought the original frilliness was just fine. More after the jump…

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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 always been on the fence with Weeds, Showtime’s best bet at grabbing some of HBO’s audience (and when you’re talking about a hot suburban mom selling pot, it’s possible to do that). It’s a funny show, but it never seemed it was ever funny enough. It also is suppose to be a biting satire on life in suburbia. In that regard the show is about as subtle as a .45 to the back of the head, but perhaps more importantly… so what? I feel like the whole “there’s trouble a-brewin’ in them there gated communities” angle is a bit played out. Maybe not even “played out” but wrong. As a product of the suburbs (and as one who secretly, deep down, kind of loves it), I think what really bothers me about those shows or movies that claim to poke holes in the lifestyle is that none of them seem to be asking the right questions. What’s interesting and funny about suburbia isn’t the fact that everything looks the same or that families are dysfunctional, but instead how things came to be that way and why people accept it and embrace it.

There’s also a weird give and take between the white characters on the show and the black characters on the show. Being Whity McSuburbia-lover, I can never tell if the series is being clever or vaguely racist. Maybe a little of both, in which case they might cancel each other out. Either way, Conrad and his family are arguably the best written characters in the series.

Last night’s episode, however, was mostly great (a rating that seems to be directly proportional to how funny the episode is). Now that the plot is moving and all the characters are established from the first season the show is able to sit back a little and let the situations drive the humor. I laughed out loud at least three times.

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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Stereogum has reported that the theme song to the Showtime series Weeds will be covered by a different artist in each episode this season. Pretty sweet, I say. Last season I found the show to be quite good, but hardly great.  Though its soundtrack was TOP NOTCH.