X-Men: Messiah CompleX

I’ve been reading the current X-Men crossover, Messiah Complex, as it’s been along, and, one chapter from the end, I think it’s safe to say that it’s been pretty underwhelming. With only 22 pages to wrap up, I don’t think they’re going to be able to salvage this thing. I went into the book really liking Mike Carey’s X-Men and Peter David’s X-Factor, but the crossover format has sucked momentum from those books, and slowed everything to a monotonous crawl.

That’s not to say stuff doesn’t happen. There’s a ton of fight scenes, and a lot of nominal progress, but there’s no real substance here. The setup was, the X-Men try to get the mutant baby, and we haven’t really moved beyond that. That’s fine as a MacGuffin, but you’ve got to have something deeper at the heart of your story. My guess is the writers deliberately wanted to avoid the convolution of previous X-overs, to focus on one goal. That’s cool, but I think it ignores what made previous X-overs work.

The first two X-Men crossovers weren’t really crossovers per se. The Mutant Massacre took an inciting event, the slaughter of the morlocks, and used it as a jumping off point for a story about the various X-teams of the era. It’s an amazing story, one of the best of the ‘grim and gritty’ 80s superhero stories. It works fine if you read just one piece of the crossover, but reading the whole thing you get some nice bonus connections. Fall of the Mutants isn’t really a crossover, the next big event was Inferno, an unbelievably convoluted, excessive, bizarre story, but one with a purpose. Reading Inferno, you feel like they’re struggling to fit all the material into the story. It’s the culmination of 150 issues of plot development, ten years of stories, all leading up to this one story.

It’s got a lot of flaws, but it’s got an undeniable energy. It’s that energy that makes X-Tinction Agenda work, in spite of the plot flaws. No one could break those X-overs down into linear story, but reading them is an experience. You’re immersed in this reality, this mythos and even if you don’t know what’s going on, it’s still a lot of fun. That’s what missing from Messiah Complex, the crazy insanity of the X-universe, the soap opera excess that Claremont was known for. There’s no emotional stakes in the crossover, no subplots of doomed love and broken relationships, just a relentless focus on this one kid, and we don’t even know who it is. I think that reveal should have happened already, if only to make clear what the stakes are.

That’s not to say it’s all bad. There’s a lot of scenes that work on their own, but as a whole, it’s frustratingly single minded. Both this and House of M are such conservative, boring crossovers. There’s no moments that make you say “Wow,” it’s all about playing out what you’d pretty much expect to happen. DC’s Infinite Crisis may be exceedingly difficult to follow, but it’s got moments that just leave you in total awe. As a story, it fails, as an experience, it succeeds. I’d rather read a crazy work like Infinite Crisis, a work that taps into years of mythology and spectacle than something like Messiah Complex, a work that’s competent, but boring.

Imagination

Back in the 60s, there was a genre called the ‘Head Film,’ which de-emphasized traditional narrative in favor of stream of consciousness, visual based immersion in a psychological place. Imagination falls squarely in that genre, recalling strange masterpieces like Head and The Holy Mountain. It’s a film with astounding visuals and a wonderful sense of psychological immersion. You go into this film and you enter a world, one that can move seamlessly from live action to stop motion to drawings, all filled with strange and wonderful imagery.

The movie centers around two twins who are afflicted with Asperger’s and blindness respectively. Together, they form a strange bond and go on a strange odyssey over the course of the film. It’s a folly to talk about plot in traditional terms with a film like this, and that’s something I love. I’ve been going on here about how films need to move away from traditional narrative and embrace the new mission of immersing you in a world. The scenes that don’t work in the film are the ones that exist in a ‘real world’ narrative space. The doctor’s freakout when the twins are missing is the scene that jumps out for me as not working, it replaces the hazy dreamscape of the rest of the film for a moment that feels false, largely due to acting that just doesn’t quite make it. That’s a scene that needed another take.

But, most of the film doesn’t rely on dialogue to convey the story, it uses visuals to replicate the twins’ mental landscape. This is a film filled with stunning imagery, from a cool snowy forest stop motion interlude to a fun human stop motion sequence with the twins. The imagery I liked most focused on the womb, and much of the film seems to follow the twins’ journey back to the place before birth. The imagery is trippy, but resonant. It seems to touch on something deeply human and real within all of us.

At a relatively short one hour running time, the film doesn’t have to be about anything more than just taking us to this strange place, sending us on a visual journey and then getting out. I can imagine a lot of people complaining that the film is just a bunch of visual wankery with no ‘point.’ We’ve been trained to view narrative as the be all and end all of cinema, but that’s not the case. This movie throws back to a time when Jodorowsky and others could make movies that were just weird and trippy for their own purposes.

Along with that, a lot of people would probably say this is a movie you need to see high to enjoy. I think that’s an insulting attitude when considering the capabilities of the human brain. What we consider normal in film, or in life in general, is all a social construct. What makes a rap song any more normal than an avant garde record of someone screaming? Our expectations, and social structures that dictate what normal is. People have trouble engaging with movies like this, and they feel like they need to be in an altered state to ‘get’ it.

After one viewing, I couldn’t say exactly what the movie was about, but I can say that I loved what I saw, and I felt like the journey of the film was complete when it ended. You could do a deep analysis and find acres of meaning in the film’s various images, or you could just glide the surface and find meaning only in the aesthetic power of the images themselves. Either way, the movie is a great, unique experience, and I’d highly recommend it.

The Official Site

The Wire: 'Not for Attribution' (5x03)

The last season of The Wire is starting to remind me a bit of the last season of Buffy, in the sense that there’s a disparity of focus between what I’m really interested in seeing and what we’re being shown. The problem in both shows was the decision to bring in a whole new set of characters when the story is right near the end of its last act. The newspaper people on The Wire aren’t as bad as the potential slayers on Buffy, but with a few exceptions, that storyline just isn’t doing it for me in the way that the other stories on the show are. The police is as strong as it’s ever been, Marlo and gang are reaching a Barksdale crew level of riveting, Omar bursts onto the scene and instantly raises the game, but we’ve still got fifteen minutes an episode that’s back at the establishing stage.

I hate to start with the newspaper section of the show, since it’s been sucking up critical attention, and spinning discussion of the show into a vortex of self reflection, but I’ll start there anyway. I still think the newspaper storyline is at best peripheral to the season, it’s not like the port storyline, which was deliberately designed to dominate the show, it’s inserted as another piece of the puzzle, in the same way the political stuff in season three just appeared on the show and became an ongoing subplot as it went on.

My biggest issue with the newspaper stuff is that it feels off to have a storyline in the getting to know you phase when we’re in the saying goodbye to the rest of the show. This is a consequence of the storyline having to jump in halfway through the overall storyline. The other problem is that the newspaper is another system like all the systems we’ve already seen. The parallels are made abundantly clear, but we have no emotional investment in what’s happening. The reason the school story worked wasn’t because we heard people talking about how bad standardized tests were, it was seeing the disconnect between what the bureaucracy thinks should happen and the reality of what’s going on in the classroom. Without that emotional engagement, the newspaper storyline comes off emotionally flat, even if the points are thematically valid.

For all Simon’s talk about how character trumps story, it’s the characters who make his thematic points work. When we see how the police department works, or how the school works, we understand why it’s woefully inadequate. With the newspaper, I feel like there’s a lot more show, don’t tell. There’s a reason that most TV shows are about cops and doctors, those are professions where the consequence of failure is death. Here, the consequence of failure is a failure to properly serve the community. That really does matter, but it’s harder to make that point, certainly not as one small piece of the larger plot in only ten episodes.

What does work for me is Alma’s story because we’re allowed to emotionally engage with what she’s doing. She’s not talking about what it means to be a newspaper writer, she’s living it in the moment. We enter at the moment where her idealism and reality come into conflict, and it’s great to watch her enthusiasm quickly turn to sadness when she realizes how her stories are treated, even the sensationalized serial killer storyline McNulty came up with. Gus is a likable guy, but he’s already so ingratiated into the system, I feel like there’s nothing he can really do. He can either quit or go along like he is now, doing the best he can. Alma is the closest thing to our point of view character, and has the most potential for change over the course of the storyline.

But, that’s not the real meat of the episode. For his first two years on the show, Marlo and his crew were a nebulous menace, an incarnation of the ‘fiercer’ streets, but not particularly personally developed. This season, Marlo himself has taken a bigger role, following the path Stringer traveled to a more legitimate business model. It’s interesting to see just how ill equipped he is to deal with basic social systems, like banks. This is a guy who totally owns the streets, but won’t trust that his money is being kept in a bank. And, after seeing the kids’ storyline last year, we can understand why. He has learned on the corners, not in the classroom.

Marlo wants to control everything, the money isn’t enough for him, it’s about power too. This is the same kind of thing Stringer was looking for, only Stringer wanted success in the legitimate world. Marlo wants to own the streets, to remove all his competitors and lord over Baltimore. He’s not doing it for the money, he has more than he can possibly spend, it’s more that he just needs power. Simon has called the Greeks representatives of uncontrolled capitalism, and that’s just what Marlo is as well. He’s even taking advantage of corporate loopholes, like bank accounts in the Caribbean. He’s going to learn from his competition, then destroy it.

Marlo’s one great flaw is his excessive pride. We saw it last week when he killed three people to fight back against a slur on his name, and we see it this week when he decides to bring Omar back out of retirement just so he can kill him. Joe realizes this is a foolish idea, he’s older and knows when something’s working to just leave it alone. Cheese tips off Marlo about how to get at Omar, and in the process begins a process that will almost surely lead to Joe’s downfall.

Throughout season four, we saw Chris and Snoop do some awful, awful things, but throughout, they never really lost our sympathy. Snoop is such a presence on camera, you can’t help but like her, and the combination of her joy and Chris’s brooding made for the perfect team. The only moment where you see one of them snap is Chris’s assault on Bug’s dad, and that feels justified. The scene is more about seeing Chris’s inner feelings than it is about the violence. After seeing that display, you somehow feel closer to the man.

After all the murders, it’s only this week that they crossed the line for me. The assault on Butchie was nasty, and cruel in a way that none of their other murders have been. This was purposeful, to get Omar’s attention, but it made it clear just how sadistic these two are. They may take direction from Omar, but the bodies are on their head. Butchie was a great character and it was hard to watch him go out like this. But, it was necessary to get Omar back in the game, and wow, was it time for him to return.

I’m not as huge an Omar fan as some people. In a lot of ways, he’s the Spike of the show, and though I don’t like him as much as I did Spike, he’s undeniably a presence, and it wasn’t until he was gone for two episodes that I realized, we seriously need some Omar. His entrance was amazing. For all the talk about the sociological themes of the show, it’s moments like Omar strolling the streets, giving out candy to kids that put it over the top. There’s a sense of dread hanging over the scene, Omar’s done too much to just walk away, and now he’s got to go back to Baltimore and finish things…again.

If Marlo and Stringer are meant to stand for the oppressive force of capitalism, Omar is the chaos in the system. Corporations can fall when they get too greedy because there’s always going to be individuals out there fighting back. Omar is an over the top character at times, but it’s okay to go over the top when it’s so fun. The Western showdown between Brother Mousone and Omar has nothing to do with reality, but it’s brilliant all the same. The show is entertainment at its core, it’s meant to enlighten and challenge you along the way, but if it’s no fun, no one cares. And, if you read Omar as the force of chaos and individuality in the world, some of his over the top actions make more sense. It’s hard to believe one man could survive this long, but when he’s the avatar of chaos, it starts to make sense. All I can say about his return is that it’s about time.

The force of chaos hits Marlo on many levels, one of which is Michael, the young lieutenant he’s been grooming for bigger things. Turns out Michael isn’t any more thrilled with working than any other high school kid would be, so he cuts out on his corner and goes to Six Flags. I liked that scene because it brought back memories of how these kids were before they caught up in the game. The question you’re left with after that scene is can Michael and Dukie ever go back to being those kids for the long term? Hell, they never really had a chance to be kids because they had to care for their parents.

And, if Michael does continue to ditch his work, what’s going to happen to him? Chris has heard about what he did, how will he react to his protégée not being who he hoped him to be? I want to see Cutty get involved in all this again, and find out what’s going to happen to these kids. It’s easily one of the most compelling angles of the season. With Bodie gone, we lost that connection to the street level, Michael and Dukie are carrying on as best they can.

I feel like the death of Bodie really took something away from the show. He never had that much importance to the plot, but in a lot of ways he was the soul of the show, the ultimate corner kid, someone who’d been through all the major plots and survived. I love the way he went out, but it’s hard to go on without him.

Elsewhere, the McNulty serial killer plot comes to the fore…and no one cares! I liked that twist, who really would care about homeless people dying? I bet a lot of people would kind of happy to have the problem taken off their hands. In a great twist, Lester stands up to support the idea, and recognizes the need to sensationalize things for the media. It’s got to be sick and twisted, and the killer has to have a personality. I’m not really sure where McNulty and Lester will get the bodies to do this, but I’ve got faith that the story will work. The show has always made the point that institutions don’t work, and maybe only a lie will allow good work to get done.

The greatest strength of the plot is the humor surrounding it. I loved how no one paid attention when McNulty tried to get people involved in the plot. The line of the episode is definitely McNulty saying “We have to kill again.” I feel like bringing this plot through the newspaper gang will do a better job of pointing out media failure than characters we don’t know getting laid off will ever do.

On the whole, this was really strong episode. The Marlo stuff is amazing, and the McNulty side of things is great too. I’m really curious to see where things go, and I hope next week brings Carver and Herc back into action.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - 'Pilot' (1x01)

With the prospect of up to a year without new shows, I figured it’d be worth checking out Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I really enjoyed Terminator 2, but I wouldn’t say I’m a huge fan of the film series. However, good TV sci-fi is hard to come by, so I gave it a look. The first episode is consistently entertaining, even as it raises the question of how this is going to support a season’s worth of episodes, let alone a whole series.

The thing that made the show work for me was the relationships between the three central characters. From the beginning, there was an intensity to the emotions that just wasn’t there in the lackluster Terminator 3. What made Terminator 2 so fantastic was the creation of a family amidst the action. The ending works because we care about Arnold as a character, not because of the action stuff.

This show bumps the characters up a few years, so instead of getting a father figure, John is getting a girlfriend figure. After years on the run, we’ve got to assume he hasn’t had much in the way of attention from the ladies, there’s only one woman in his life, his mother. The thing that made the episode work was the bizarre love triangle at the center of things. Sarah is so fiercely protective of John, you get the sense she was only with the guy at the beginning to give John some kind of a father figure. It’s John who has qualms about walking away, not her. She has centered her whole life around him, and it’s hard for her to face the fact that he doesn’t need her to protect him anymore, he’s got Cameron.

It produces a weird dynamic between her and John, they’re very close, and it seems almost too much so at times. I think that’s something interesting to play with, the notion that Sarah’s so obsessed with John’s destiny, her feelings are going to an inappropriate place. And, at the same time, will John fall in love with the robot Cameron? What role does Sarah play in his life now, she’s been bumped out as both source of love and protector? It’s an appropriate metaphor for what it is to have a child grow up.

Unlike a lot of reviewers, Lena Headey as Sarah really owns the show for me. Summer Glau is good at what she does, but she’s right to remain as a supporting character. She doesn’t take control of the show the way Katee Sackhoff did on Bionic Woman, I think Sarah’s strength and slightly unhinged quality are what drives the show. That said, I would like to see her pushed to a crazier place, as she was in Terminator 2. It looks like there will only be three main characters on the show, and the tension between them is what’s going to fuel events. Really, it’s a clash between Sarah and Cameron, with John just sort of standing there in the middle.

So, I’ll give the show a few more episodes. It’s not great, but the production values were pretty solid, and there’s a lot of potential there. The central question is whether they’ll let the premise evolve beyond just running from terminators. There’s a lot of interesting stuff within the mythology, but it’ll take a while to see what the show can do with it. But, I’ll give it another look tomorrow, and ultimately, that’s a pilot’s biggest goal, to get you to the next episode. Perhaps the saddest thing about the show is thinking how perfect a partner it would have been for Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. Damn the strike and its continued existence!

Best of 2007: Top 15 Albums

A bit late on this, but I’ve been busy. Anyway, here’s the top 15 albums for 2007.

15. Kanye West – Graduation
People talk a lot about the sophomore slump, but I think it’s the third album that’s really problematic. Most artists do the same, but more for the second album, but then were do you go for the third? This album has some of Kanye’s best tracks, but also a couple of duds, most notably “Barry Bonds” and “Drunken Hot Girls,” which just don’t work. Still, the good stuff far outweighs the bad. While “Stronger” got a lot of attention, and is a great track, it’s “Flashing Lights” that stands out as his best dance track. “Homecoming” is also fantastic, with a killer piano line.

14. Jay-Z – American Gangster
The master beat the apprentice with a really great album that presents a time spanning journey between Jay’s past, present and imagined life as Frank Lucas. The lyrics tell a really interesting story, and the beats match it with a great 70s soul aesthetic. The opening, with voiceover courtesy of Idris “Stringer” Elba is wonderfully over the top, but it’s the back half of the album that really shines. “Ignorant Shit” and “Party Life” are the highlights.

13. Tori Amos – American Doll Posse
This album was frequently criticized for being too long. At 80 minutes, it is a bit daunting, and cut down to 45 or 50 minutes, it would be a lot easier to endorse. But, there’s no real bad tracks here, and a lot of great ones. I love the ethereal pop of “Bouncing Off Clouds” as well as the haunting closer “Dragon.” And, she thankfully ditches the adult contempo aesthetic of her past couple albums with the rocking “Big Wheel” and “Teenage Hustling.”

12. Bruce Springsteen – Magic
Springsteen’s popularity peaked during the arena rock Born in the USA era, but unlike a lot of other ultra-popular artists, he’s managed to remain artistically vital for over thirty years. This album has a lot to say about the world we live in today, and manages to sound contemporary without reaching for techno beats or something like that. Born to Run feels like it could have come out this year, so keeping that aesthetic works. The standout here is “Girls in their Summer Clothes,” but the record goes deep. Every track has something to say, and does so in an interesting way.

11. The Colour – Between Earth and Sky
They’ve broken up after only one album, which is a shame because The Colour did a great job of reviving 60s style blues rock for today. Recalling Zeppelin and The Doors, this album rocks pretty hard throughout. The songs can bleed together a bit, but “Silver Meadows” and “Save Yourself” are as good any rock songs out this year.

10. Rilo Kiley – Under the Blacklight
A hugely controversial album, I really liked the new direction. It’s 70s soft rock, crossed with dance beats and the occasional hint of Fleetwood Mac. I like bands that change their aesthetic and explore different sounds and styles. “Moneymaker” is a killer single, and even though I like what’s come before, I’m glad that they’re branching out. My guess is this album is the equivalent of Belle and Sebastian’s “Dear Catastrophe Waitress,” a total departure in style that will eventually be integrated into what the band was doing before on their next album. But, this album really stands up, and just because it’s easy to listen to, doesn’t mean it’s not great.

9. Amy Winehouse – Back to Black
I’m glad I saw Amy play back in March because it seems like she’s gone completely off the deep end, into tabloid land and away from the musician who put out this album. She manages to use retro style without sounding like pastiche, this is a really emotional album. While the two big singles are great, the highlight for me is the pop epic “Back to Black,” a flawless piece of work.

8. The National – Boxer
A fixture on best of ’07 lists for a reason, this album creates a world, drawing you in with the great opener “Fake Empires,” then lingering for mini suites of songs that make up the album. They have a very specific sound, the piano and strings bulking up the sound and making for some really unique songs. These are fantastic songs, and the album has a tangibility that few others do.

7. The Polyphonic Spree – The Fragile Army
As with Kanye, the third album presents something of a problem. I loved the massive epics on Together We’re Heavy, but this album scales things back a bit. The songs are still great, and few bands can match the scope of what they can do when all their instruments are in the mix. But, these songs are generally more closed in, avoiding the epic sweep of Heavy, and focusing on more concise arrangement. It’s still a great album, that sounds like nothing else out there, but it didn’t hook me like their previous albums did. But, considering how much I loved those albums, not quite matching up isn’t a huge problem.

6. Timbaland – Shock Value
An album that the critical establishment knocked even as it continues to produce a litany of top singles. People criticized the album for skipping from genre to genre without any sort of clear aesthetic. I don’t think that’s a criticism, I love that an artist can make an album that takes us from 50 Cent to Elton John. The songs are arranged in sections that flow together well, listened to on random, it would be disorienting. But, the sequencing takes us seamlessly from rap to pop to rock, with great songs all along the way. “Way I R” is a distillation of everything Tim can do well in the rap field, and probably the best track, but really, there’s a lot of highlights on here. “Scream” is fantastic, as is “Time.” Like Handsome Boy Modeling School’s White People, it’s a deliriously kaleidoscopic album, but you’d think skipping between genres and styles wouldn’t be a problem for the IPod generation. Listen to this album and you don’t need to shuffle anything, Tim does it for you.

5. The New Pornographers – Challengers
Even as their weakest album to date, this is still an amazing piece. Like the Spree, they tone down the over the top pop and joy of their previous work, going a bit more melancholy. That gives Neko Case some of her finest showcases, particularly “Go Places.” The epic “Unguided” is one of the most emotional songs they’ve ever done, and “Spirit of Giving” is a perfect distillation of the unique, poppy aesthetic of the band. It sounds like nothing else out there, but I wish that everything sounded like this.

4. Justice – Cross
The big dance hit of the year, Justice produced the album a lot of people wanted Daft Punk to make with Human After All, a fusion of hard rock riffs and poppy synths. “DANCE” stole the show, justly, but it’s a top notch album throughout. The beats are heavy, the hooks colossal, it’s a joy to dance to. “Stress” and “Phantom, pt. 2” are two of the album’s best.

3. Daft Punk – Alive 2007
This was a tough one to rank. My memories of the amazing live show are wrapped up in the disc, so I can’t judge it objectively. However, it’s pretty undeniably a fantastic mix. This should have been their greatest hits album, cobbling together pieces of nearly every song in their catalogue into a monster mix. There’s so many classic moments here, the fusion of “Harder Better” and “Around the World,” the mix of “Da Funk” and “Steam Machine,” and the crawling vocal from “Harder” over the base line from “Face to Face.” Throw this on as high volume as possible and just get lost in it.

2. !!! – Myth Takes - Another fantastic dance album, this album represents a huge jump for the band. “Heart of Hearts” and “Must be the Moon” were killer singles, perfect fusions of rock and dance, but the album didn’t stop there. I love “Break in Case of Anything” and the epic “Bend Over Beethoven” really tears things down. The dance rhythms give the music an energy and vibrancy must rock is lacking, their live show at Studio B in May was one of craziest I’ve ever been to, a mess of jumping and dancing. I’d love to see them live again.

1. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
Funeral was already a great album, but this is a quantum leap from that. The scope of their orchestration is amazing, you hear things on this album you won’t hear from any other band. Think of the huge pipe organ intro on “Intervention,” or the wordless vocal breakdown on “Anti-Christ Superstar.” The album just makes me so happy, so charged. There’s a sense of deep emotion here, some regret and sadness all overwhelmed by the sheer power of the music. “No Cars Go” is the band’s opus, a climax for everything that’s come before, and “My Body is a Cage” is a haunting closer, building from nothing to an epic organ line that puts a perfect cap on the album. This isn’t just the best album of the year, it’s an all time classic. People will be listening and talking about this album thirty years from now.

The Wire: "Unconfirmed Reports" (5x02)

It’s always weird watching a show on a weekly basis after seeing all the previous seasons on DVD. The DVD experience creates a total immersion in the work, for a short time, it’s all about The Wire. With The Wire, each season is structured as a single story, so what lingers with you when it’s done is mostly stuff from the end of the season. Looking at season four, most of the big moments are in the last two episodes, the emotional payoffs for an entire season’s worth of stories.

Watching it on a weekly basis, you’re able to savor each episode more, and have more chance to speculate on what will happen. However, it can also be a bit frustrating. It’s hard to go a week without Herc or Carver, and I really want to see where things go. It’s a great testament to the show that the only complaints I have about this episode are what it’s not doing, that I want to see more of the world. Watching on DVD, it’s cool to lose characters for a week, or even most of a season, but weekly, their absence jumps out.

Still, it makes more sense to focus on what’s actually in the episode instead of what’s not, and there is a lot of great stuff here. The biggest development is the final moment, where McNulty’s frustration leads him to invent a serial killer in Baltimore. In season three, Colvin was presented as an older, wiser version of McNulty, someone who’s always tried to challenge the system, whose unconventional ideas have gotten him into trouble. Colvin used unconventional methods that would never be approved by the bosses as a way to get the right thing done. That’s essentially what McNulty is doing here, exploiting the system as a way to achieve his goals, and we’re left wondering if the ends justify the means.

McNulty’s frustration is rendered well. He had everything under control last year, and was the healthiest we’ve seen him during the series’ run. He had given up on changing the system and consigned himself to an easy, domestic life. But, the promise of a “new day in Baltimore” brought him back to Major Crimes, and into a spiral of self destructiveness. I’m not sure whether he really was happy in patrol, as he said. I’m guessing he was just waiting for an excuse to get back into homicide, telling himself that this time it would be different. He’s addicted the same as those drug addicts at NA. He can say he’s not going to drink, not going to fool around, but everything he says he won’t do is what he does. In a way, I’m glad that we skipped over the backslide because it would have been painful to watch him cause so much pain for Beattie. That said, I’m sure there’s still plenty of pain ahead for the two of them.

It’s notable that we’ve never seen McNulty and Russell together this season. If McNulty’s to remain sympathetic, we can’t connect Beattie to all his catting around. We see things from McNulty’s perspective, he’s just going along, and it’s only the other characters who talk about Beattie. I’m guessing everything will crash down around him soon, and Russell will confront him about what he’s been doing. McNulty’s back on a martyr kick, and what he’s done with this body is going to have potentially disastrous consequences for him.

The question now is what will happen if the higher ups find out. If McNulty is able to create a crisis and get more city funding for cops, they may be inclined to over look the lie. It’s like the end of Watchmen, to expose the lie will destroy the credibility of the department and city hall, and that would cripple the city.

The other advantage of this storyline is that it will involve the press directly. So far, they’ve been off in their own world, running parallel to the main stories, but not integrated. The show’s only misstep, the port storyline, didn’t work so well because it felt totally disconnected from everything else, and if the press keeps going like it does, we could run into that same problem. It’s not that the story is bad, it’s entertaining, but it’s hard to get to know all these characters five seasons into the show. Emotionally, the bond isn’t there. Last season, they built incredible characters with the four kids, but I don’t know that we’ve got the time for that this year. The fact that there’s only eight episodes left hangs heavy over everything.

The other issue with the press storyline is that it brings Simon’s pettiness to the story itself instead of the commentary track. Intentional or not, the pitch about the schools seemed like a self congratulatory boast, a fuck you to all the haters out there who said you can’t examine these kids’ lives in context. The reference to seeking prizes instead of quality seems like another one of his “I don’t care if we get an Emmy, but let me mention we’ve never won one yet again.” There’s nothing inherently wrong with going meta, but this isn’t The Invisibles, it’s a show that’s been incredibly realistic and never self reflexive, and I don’t think that kind of reflexivity fits well with the show’s aesthetic.

But, the press will fit perfectly with the serial killer storyline. Scott will likely see this as the piece to make his career, but will someone’s investigative reporting reveal the truth behind what’s going on? I’m not as opposed to the press stuff as a lot of other people, but it’s feeling more and more like the port storyline, which stayed in its own world, and never successfully integrated into the show as a whole.

That said, elements of the port storyline are back in the foreground this year, so I should probably clarify that it’s the Sobotka stuff that never integrated. I liked the story, parts of it were great, but it didn’t fit into the show as well as the politics or school stuff did. Still, it’s nice to see that it didn’t just disappear. The Greeks were the only characters nastier than Marlo, and there’s potential in a teamup between the two groups.

The interesting new layer here is the return of Avon. It’s great to see him back, even though he’s played as almost a comic character, flashing the West Side “W,” and just generally being very enthusiastic. My guess is he’s just glad to see another West Sider, and have a chance to exert some influence out on the street. He’s been on the sidelines for a while, and this is his chance to get back in the game. However, doing so from prison could be tough. Marlo isn’t much of a collaborator, and any attempts to mess with the Greeks could be disastrous. Ultimately, I see Avon getting knifed in prison and winding up in a bodybag.

Over with Marlo’s crew, we start to see some weak links in the machine. First is the guy who wants to go “all West Coast” and winds up screwing up the hit. Snoop cleans up his mess, but it’s that sort of showy wannabe gangster mentality that took down Avon’s organization. Not everyone’s going to have the discipline of a Snoop or Chris, and the bigger the organization gets, the more likely someone’s going to mess up.

Another major question mark is Michael. For the first time since the end of last season, we see him crack. The reality of what he’s doing with Chris becomes apparent, and he’s not so sure how to feel about his new mentor. Michael does have morals, and the more he becomes aware of how Marlo operates, the less he’s likely to go along with it. Chris and Snoop will kill that security guard, or the civilian woman in Andre’s without qualms, but will Michael? I don’t think so, and we’ve got to wonder now whether he’ll become like them, or rediscover his morality.

Again, I have to commend Simon and crew for the job they did with those kids. Michael and Dukie are arguably the most compelling characters on the show. Everyone else has found their place, and has to live with their choices, but Michael and Dukie are still inventing their identities. It’s not too late for Michael to get out, but he needs help. If you compare the person he is now to who he was back in the season four premiere, it’s an amazing evolution. I particularly love how he has moved from his own world with the kids and become integrated with the show as a whole.

There’s a quick glimpse of Cutty in the On Demand promo, as one of the only characters to get out of the game, he could be a potential guide for Michael. The scene where Michael lets the kid run away echoes what Cutty did for Fruit back in season three. Michael could also find a potential guide in Namond, who’s off somewhere with Colvin. I’d love to see the two of them again, and find out what happened to him. There’s so many people I’d love to see again, it’s sad to think there’s only eight episodes left. If we do see Colvin again, it will probably be for a farewell moment, he’ll not get another major storyline.

The other major storyline is Bubbles’ trouble with his new life. Without the dope, he’s got no direction in life and just drifts aimlessly along. I like how they’re not doing the obvious will he go back or won’t he drama. There’s nobody there for him most of the time, he’s just lost in his head. It’s hard to watch him so bereft of the life energy he had in the previous years.

That pretty much covers it. This is definitely a get the gears moving episode. Plots are being set up and things will likely start to spin together next week, once the news about the serial killer came out. And by next week, I actually mean Monday. But, as much as I like having the episode a week early, I really think it hurts the show to lose the zeitgeist of that single moment when everyone who watches the show sits down and sees what happens. They get their extra $5 out of me for the On Demand, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Farscape: 1x01 & 1x02

The first few scenes of Farscape’s “Premiere” did not have me optimistic. The father/son relationship between Crichton and his father felt clichéd, and the entire launch sequence reminded me of the worst episode of The X-Files: “Space.” I got no sense of these characters as real people, and the dialogue was firmly in movie world, with little connection to reality.

However, the show’s not about our world, it’s about the fantastic world Crichton finds himself transported to, and once he goes through the wormhole, the show picks up and becomes a really solid adventure. Most of the big sci-fi shows from the past few years, Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5 most notably, are all about big political ideas and galaxy spanning conflicts. They’re shows with a cerebral edge, that only occasionally verge into pulpy adventure. They draw from the Star Trek school of sci-fi.

After watching the first two episodes, it seems like Farscape is the descendant of Star Wars. The myriad weird aliens and general focus on a serial adventure tone reminded me a lot of what those films did. There is some of that Star Trekky trouble of the week thing to the second episode, but it seems like the series’ mythology is tied back to the trilogy. Hell, Crichton even makes a reference to Yoda in the second episode, a bit odd considering we’ve got a guy who looks like Yoda’s cousin up on the ship.

Let me first cover the issues I’ve got with the series. At this point, I just don’t really care about standalone episodes. The second episode wasn’t particularly bad, but after watching countless Battlestar, Buffy, Babylon 5 and X-Files standalones, it’s hard to find new ground. I’m not particularly looking forward to going through a whole bunch of standalones on the way to the good stuff. Now, standalones can work really well, as long as they are used to explore character and not just tell the story of the week. Season five of The Sopranos, the series’ strongest, has very little arc per se, but the stories are so tight and revealing of character, it feels like everything is building to something. That’s a luxury that a late season show has, here, it’s tougher.

The second episode reminded me of an early Buffy standalone, entertaining enough in spite of the story, not because of it. I want to get to know these characters more, and the story seemed to get in the way. Not to mention, how many different planets can they encounter along the way? I liked the moment where Crichton kissed the woman, but I just didn’t care that much about these people.

And, there is a bit of goofiness to the goings on. It’s not the muppets, they’re really expressive and fun to watch. Rather, the over the top acting of D’Argo kills the scenes with him. He reminds me of Olaf the Troll from Buffy, and that lack of subtlety doesn’t work for a long term character. Aeryn, John and the blue lady are likable, but on the whole, the acting doesn’t have the immediate intensity of recent great shows. Now, maybe this will be a Buffy situation, where we get unforeseeable depth from the players. Hopefully it won’t be like Babylon 5, where the acting is serviceable, but with a few exceptions, not particularly inspiring.

So, that’s what’s bad, what’s good? I really do like the main two characters, and they’ve got great chemistry. John is a bit of a blank slate, classic pulp hero, but he’s fun to hang out with, and a good straight man for the various wacky goings on. And, in the second episode, you get a strong sense of his conflicted feelings. He’s excited to be in this new world, but also sad when he realizes he might never get home again.

Aeryn is my favorite so far. She reminds me a bit of Starbuck, though less self destructive. I can see some good potential in John helping her discover more of her humanity, and opening her up emotionally. It’s pretty clear a romance between them is getting set up, and that should be fun to watch. When the two of them are together, the show is always solid, it’s only when they get split up that things can get a bit slow.

In the first episode, I really liked the Peacekeepers, and I think they’ll be a strong villain. They definitely recall the Empire from Star Wars, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Freedom vs. oppression is an eternal conflict, and one well suited to the kind of stories they’re telling here. The space battles in that episode had a majesty, and there were moments that just hit me on a deep level. That’s what a great show does, touch something deep in the subconscious.

The other moment that did that for me was Zhaan taking the ship’s pain in episode two. I love that metaphysical stuff, and the scene had a real magical quality. The power of that moment made up for any of the other goofiness going on in the episode. As long as the standalones deliver enough good moments like that, I’ll stick with the show.

So, I’m going to seek out some more episodes, and see where things go with the show. I’m not completely sold yet, but I’m liking it so far and hopefully things will get even better. We shall see.

The Wire: 'More with Less' (5x01)

I caught The Wire’s season premiere on On Demand today. Even though I’m glad to see the episode a week early, I really don’t like having the episodes released early. While it’s increasingly becoming a thing of the past, I like having a work released at the same time everywhere, to emerge in a single cultural moment. In Before Sunrise, Jesse talks about a study which showed that people who do crossword puzzles a week after they’ve been released do better, presumably because the answers are somewhere out there in the collective subconscious. The same is true of having the episodes show up a week early, they’re just sort of floating there, and there’s no single moment when the episode emerges. I’d imagine this will be a particular issue with the finale, as The Sopranos shows, a finale can be a galvanizing cultural moment, but The Wire finale will just show up on On Demand at some point, there will never be that shared sense of watching the finale with everyone else who loves the show.

Both The Sopranos and the recent Radiohead album release show the fun of watching people struggle to catch up with something right as it emerges. But, we won’t be getting that with The Wire this season. I’ll be watching the episodes as early as possible, but I’d rather wait for everyone to see them at the same time.

Broadcasting issues aside, the episode itself is fantastic, quickly bringing us back into the world and conflicts that will guide the final season. One thing that’s significant about the season is that for the first time in Wire history, one season is directly continuing what happened in the previous one. You could easily view seasons one through three as a continuous arc, but there were significant tonal shifts between the seasons, most notably with the jarring introduction of the Frank Sobotka crew in season two. Season four set up the post Barksdale status quo, and we’re continuing that story here. The central conflicts of the season are Marlo’s feud with the co-op, and the police attempt to bust Marlo for the bodies.

Because we don’t need to spend a lot of time setting up the status quo, this season premiere feels a bit more accessible than previous year’s. Rather than being chapter one of a thirteen part story, it’s chapter fourteen of a twenty-three part one. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of new stuff going on, it’s just most of the changes are tending towards what we used to know rather than something new.

I’ll start off by talking about the new element of the season, the newspaper. With only ten episodes in the entire season, I’m a bit worried about how they’ll resolve the myriad character arcs in play, and fit in this newspaper stuff. Now, the show probably won’t give everyone a definitive conclusion. More likely, everyone will reach some kind of stasis point, and life will go on. The central plot conflicts have been in development for a while, so it shouldn’t be too tough to close them out in the ten episodes, and the newspaper will probably play a significant role in that storyline.

After the first episode, it seems like the newspaper will be used more as a pawn/catalyst in the conflict between Carcetti and the police, and the police and Marlo. Already, we’ve seen Haynes link city politicians to drug officials, and their reporting will likely dovetail with Freamon’s investigation into the Clay Davis money. Avon will be returning at some point during the season, and it would make sense that he would feature in the corruption scandal. I’m not sure what happened to Avon’s landholdings, but donated a lot of money to the Davis campaign, and could be involved should a trial happen.

I don’t think the press people will be developed as in depth as the kids were last year. We pretty much know all we need to already because we’ve seen similar people in the other institutions. As the parallel dialogue makes clear, it’s always hard to fight the good fight against the bosses. Haynes is just as disrespected as Lester or McNulty, but he’s going to keep fighting for small victories, like the one he gets in this episode.

I’m thinking that McNulty will leak the news that the police have halted the investigation into the bodies, which would put him in contact with the press characters. I’m also thinking that McNulty will have his eye on Alma, as the target of his returned wandering eye. I think The Wire is the only show on television that would send their attractive female reporter on a mission to a strip club and not even show the scene. HBO probably read that script and told Simon this is the reason you only get a ten episode renewal.

Either way, the press attention is going to be another pressure on Carcetti, who is already getting it from all sides. I’ve talked before about how Carcetti sold himself out at the end of season three, when he shut down Hamsterdam then gave a speech about how they need a new approach to stopping crime. His justification then was he could do a better job stopping crime as mayor, so the loss of Hamsterdam was worthwhile. As mayor, he’s been doing everything in service of the notion that he can make more change if he’s governor. That’s what led him to pass up federal money for the schools at the end of season four, another damning moment that has lingering consequences this season, as he finds the police force getting more and more out of control.

Even though I hate Carcetti the character, I love what Simon and co. did with his story. Carcetti started out as a somewhat annoying, but goodhearted character. You got the impression he really did care about protecting witnesses when he write Royce the letter in season three. There, his political ambition meshed with his desire to do good and all was well. However, as the series has progressed, we’ve seen the way any hopes of doing good are gradually extinguished by his immersion in the system. He’s beholden to so many special interests as mayor, it would be near impossible to really change anything. The budget crisis is similarly vexing, preventing him from any serious bureaucratic restructuring. The system is designed to maintain itself, and real change is near impossible.

But that still doesn’t excuse Carcetti’s awful behavior. He created a problem when he passed over the money, and creates another one when he passes on federal funds here. He didn’t think things through and now has a mutinous police force on his hands. Norman is the one voice of reason in his cabinet, the rest are just feeding his deluded further political ambitions. Carcetti will likely compromise the Clay Davis investigation because a major takedown there could enhance the political reputation of the states’ attorney. He is sabotaging his own people to ensure his position, and around him corruption like the drug dealer move continues to happen. As Daniels observes, the new day in Baltimore is most definitely over.

In general, the change we’ve seen over the course of the series has proven futile. At this point, we’re basically back to the season one status quo. The detail has been reassembled and is using the same surveillance techniques that got Barksdale to track Marlo. However, Marlo is a smarter, more evolved form of gangster. It’s fascinating to watch the one upmanship over the years, the move from beepers to burners to personal communication only. Marlo doesn’t take any risks, and that’s kept him and his crew out of prison. But, eventually they all slip, and the detail needs to be there when it happens.

That’s why it’s such a problem that they can’t get the overtime to track Marlo. The constant police presence will reduce violence, but once it’s gone, the bodies will start piling up again. From a dramatic point of view, I’m not sure why they brought everyone back into the detail only to tear it down an episode later. However, I’m guessing the point is to show that Carcetti’s grand ambitions were not realistic, and crumble in the face of the city’s financial troubles. Carcetti is more loyal to his party and Clay Davs than to the people of the city.

Along with the slip back to season one, we get McNulty’s return to drunkenness. He’s combined his addiction to alcohol with his addiction to the job, and in slipping back on one, he slips back on the other. It’s hard to watch the scene with Russell alone at the house, knowing that she still trusts McNulty on some level. The problem is much like the one faced by Nate on Six Feet Under. McNulty can play at being the good husband and father for a time, but in doing so, is he destroying the real him? Was everything he was in season four a lie? Maybe, or maybe that’s just how he justifies his current behavior to himself.

Either way, it’s good to see McNulty back in a prominent role. In season one, he was the spark that ignited everything that would follow. He got Freamon back to real police work, and helped to set up the whole Barksdale takedown. His role on the show diminished as time passed, and I think there’s a tendency to write him off as the white leading man put in to appease network demands. But, he’s a fascinating study, and a great presence. Dominic West always brings it, and it’ll be nice to see him leading things forward again this year.

The episode is saturated with callbacks to the past. The best is Chris going to City Hall to get information about the Greeks. It’s amazing to see that storyline coming back to the fore. After season two, I assumed it was just a standalone piece, but it’s returning to the fore here, and I love the fact that Marlo is using McNulty’s investigation to support his own. It’s a great use of continuity, a great example of how the show really is one unified long work, broken into five chapters, but all connected. In addition to that great moment, there’s some funny callbacks, like Sydnor reminding McNulty he wasn’t on the port investigation, or the talk about McNulty’s undercover mission in the brothel.

The series has always made parallels between the drug dealer organizations and the government bureaucracy, and this episode did some great work by showing Prop Joe in a similar position as Carcetti. He is facing a challenge from Marlo, and trying to sure his power base. It’s interesting that Joe actually runs a more fair operation than Carcetti, trying to help out his people who have been negatively impacted by the Hopkins expansion. While he obviously does a lot of wheeling and dealing in his interest, Joe sees the benefit of the co-op and is legitimately committed to supporting his fellow dealers.

Part of that is that they are all weaker than him, and the co-op gives him a way to keep control. Marlo threatens that because he’s the only one who offers a real challenge to power, and attempts to sow discontent by pointing out how Slim Charles was passed over for territory. Simon usually talks about the show in the context of its sociological message, but he can make a hell of a story. Over the past season, we’ve been set up for a war between Marlo, Prop Joe, the Greeks, and Omar and the Hispanic gangs, with the police on top of all that. It’s been a perfectly paced build, and if Avon gets involved, it could synthesize all the seasons together for the final climax. I felt like it would be impossible to do something as epic as the Stringer/Avon conflict at the end of season three, but things are building and building here, and this show always pays off its plot points. That meeting was full of ill portent, and it’s only a matter of time before Omar makes his move.

One of the things I love about the co-op scene is the way the police are so close to finding out about the whole co-op, but Marlo brings a girl with him and they look no further. All the acting on the show is phenomenal, but I want to give some props to Robert Chew as Prop Joe, who brings the huge charisma that Stringer and Avon used to carry. Method Man is another fantastic presence, it’s weird to talk about Method Man acting in one of the best works of art of the twenty-first century, but he nails it every time, and looking at his glare at the end of the episode, it’s clear he’s not happy with the way things are.

The thing The Wire does better than any other show is to tell a story in the most efficient way possible. In two scenes, not even three minutes total, we learn exactly where Dukie and Michael are. Michael is emulating Chris, the first adult he can trust as a father figure. He’s trying to be like him, and is apparently moving up in Marlo’s organization. Dukie has no respect on the corner, a couple of lines of dialogue and the shot of him on the stoop convey this. He’s been playing at drug dealer, but isn’t able to do it yet. The entire story of his move to the corner, and failure to succeed is told in two shots basically. The show trusts the audience to follow things, we don’t need a lot of details, just the single shot in the montage at the end of season four, and this pickup here tells the whole story. That’s a testament to the fact that the characters are so well realized, we already know what will happen if Dukie goes out on the street, and can fill in the blanks of what happened for ourselves.

Dukie’s future remains uncertain. Michael cares for him, and is willing to give him an easy life as Bug’s nanny, but Dukie doesn’t want to just take his charity. Michael recognizes the damage that Dukie’s parents did to him, and he also sees Dukie as his last tie to the life he used to have. It’s so sad to think that a year ago, these kids were starting school, that their lives are already so far gone.

Can Dukie come back from this? I hope so, I could see him getting arrested and calling Prez for help, possibly turning witness. Or, Prez might tell him not to say anything, after Randy got totally fucked over last year. But, The Wire always surprises. We know Dukie will fail in his initial venture to the corner, but over the course of the season, he might harden up and become more like Michael. Either way, that storyline is one of the most interesting on the show right now, and I’m eager to see how it develops.

Another of the show’s best strengths is the way they are able to reinvent characters to suit the needs of the story, and rather than feeling contrived, it fits perfectly with the character arc. Look at Prez last year, I think of him as a teacher more than a police, like he finally found his true calling in that last year. It’s not so much that he was turned into a teacher to suit the story, it’s that the person found what he really should be.

This year it’s Herc who gets the fantastic reinvention. I felt like they had exhausted him by the end of last year, when he screwed over everyone in his path. But, he has found a way to fuck up even worse. Probably my favorite moment of the episode is the reveal that Herc is working for Levy. It’s such a perfect twist, and knits everything closer together. He’ll now be using police resources to help out the very drug dealers they’re trying to prosecute. Watching those scenes, and the episode as a whole, made me feel like David Simon had the whole five years in mind from the very start, that he knew where all these people would wind up and expertly navigated them through the years. That Herc, seemingly a comic throwaway character, could become so significant in the overall plot is amazing. It’s a perfect development.

The only major thing I haven’t touched on is Bubbles’ struggle to recover. Again, Simon assumes we’ve seen the whole show. Bubbles went to his sister’s in season one, he’s back here without much explanation because he knows we remember what happened before. And, we get the subtle reveal that Bubbles stole her stuff last time and pawned it. This year, we get the dichotomy between ‘Reginald,’ the person he is without the drugs, and ‘Bubbles,’ the legendary street figure. We’ve never even heard him called Reginald, who is that guy? What kind of life will he have without the drugs, and can he ever get people to trust him again? It’s hard for us to watch his sister throw him out because we know he’s really trying to change, but for her, this is one of many attempts to get clean, and who knows if his resolve really means anything?

It’s jarring to see him all cleaned up, and so much more subdued. He doesn’t have that energy he used to have on the streets. Part of him is missing, and I think that is one of the major troubles people have getting clean. The drugs make you into a different person, and what if people like that guy better? Certainly the death of Sherrod changed him too, forced him to look back and see what his life had become. I really hope that Bubbles doesn’t relapse, that he makes it to at least a somewhat happy ending. After what he went through last season, it would be too hard to watch things get any worse.

No show on TV is as dense as The Wire. This post is 3,000 words, about one episode, and I feel like I only scratched the surface. The show is back and as good as ever, though I do still have some doubts about everything getting wrapped up in nine episodes. We shall see. But, they’ve never let me down before, I’m sure things will go out on a good note.

Best of 2007: Top 10 Films

10. Shoot ‘Em Up - This is one of the most underrated films of the year, primarily because its schlock genre appeal isn’t the kind of thing that most film critics respond to. The thing I love about the movie is the sheer excess of the piece, taking these gun battles to ridiculous extremes turns common action movie tropes into grand comedy. It’s a movie where you’re laughing not so much because it’s a joke, more because the movie is just so excessive, you’ve got to react in some way. I prefer a movie like this to a more grounded ‘realistic’ action movie because it embraces the pop craziness of genre and continuously goes for broke. This is the kind of movie the Quentin Tarantinos of tomorrow will be reviving.



9. Knocked Up - A movie that’s become the first victim of the Judd Apatow backlash, Knocked Up is actually a near flawless mainstream comedy that is both funny and heartfelt. I occasionally get into debates with people about how most people just want to watch movies to be entertained, that’s why an Adam Sandler movie has value. I don’t have any problem with wanting to be entertained by movies, every movie I watch I hope to be entertained by, but most of these movies that are supposedly entertaining are just awful and repulsive both cinematically and intellectually. Why is entertaining synonymous with shut your brain off? That’s why I like Apatow’s stuff, he’s able to make movies that are accessible, but still have a unique, off kilter sensibility. You can watch this movie without wondering why the filmmakers think the viewer is mentally deficient.

I do have some issues with the same Peter Pan narrative cropping up in countless works this year, but Knocked Up makes it work. You believe in the characters, and the actors just nail the film. Beyond the obvious comedy stuff, I love the bizarre digressions, like the acid trip scene, or the wonderfully executed women go to the club scene. It’s a shame that shit like Alvin and the Chimpunks and Transformers keeps making so much money, but at least Knocked Up shows that originality and being good isn’t going to turn the audience away.



8. I’m a Cyborg, but That’s OK - Park Chanwook’s new film doesn’t match the grandeur of his past two movies, but that’s ok. This is still a fun, inventive movie that has some really fantastic moments. I love how he just runs with the bizarre premise, not commenting on the girl’s psychosis, instead letting you get drawn into her world. Scenes like the speech with the vending machine recall the slightly goofy, but still incredibly touching stuff with Tony Leung and the towel in Chungking Express. I don’t think the film ever fully congeals, but as a palette cleanser after the Vengenace Trilogy, it’s a success.



7. Across the Universe - This is another movie that’s flawed on a lot of levels, but has so many dazzling images and moments, it ends up a wonderful experience. The major issue with this film is that it’s another spin on the classic 60s narrative, suburban kids become hippies, get radicalized, get violent, go to Vietnam and come out the other side radically altered. It’s by no means an original story, but a story need not be original to work. The purpose of narrative in cinema is to produce an emotional reaction in the viewer. That reaction can range from laughter to tears to simply trying to wow you with action and effects.

So, even though the film was surely less original, and a less engaging story than something like No Country For Old Men, the movie had me more emotionally engaged. That’s primarily due to the image based storytelling, which produced some truly astonishing moments. I love the avant garde trippy interludes scattered throughout the film, and I really admire the way that, with only a few exceptions, music was used to advance the story, not just exist as spectacle on its own. There’s certainly some goofy stuff in here, but there’s also some of the most beautiful images of the year. People usually judge films on which have the least bad, when they should be looking at which are the most good. No Country is an essentially flawless film, the only flaw was it just didn’t hit me emotionally. This film did, and despite its flaws, it’s still a fantastic work.



6. Sweeney Todd - Todd is a thankful return to quality for one of my favorite directors. Probably his darkest film, it’s a wonderfully sealed experience. He creates a world, and the very simple narrative allows us to dwell in the deluded minds of these characters for the time they’re on screen. Depp is great as always, but the star of the film for me was Helena Bonham Carter, who played the whole film is a bizarre, immoral haze. She stole the film, and her exit was the movie’s most shocking moment. I’d love to see Tim tackle another musical since he clearly has a lot of aptitude for the genre, and making films that are simultaneously visually grand and emotionally focused.



5. Southland Tales - Another movie that’s far from perfect. There are sections of the movie that are just baffling in their meandering pointlessness, but there’s also sections that are so perfectly on, so beautiful and singularly odd that the movie demands attention. By no means does the film match the emotional preciseness of Donnie Darko, however its incredible ambition demands attention, as does its sheer bizarreness. The Justin Timberlake sings The Killers musical interlude is but one of countless scenes that just sort of happen as the film goes along. It’s a film that feels like a whole bunch of ideas, not a finished script, but many of those ideas are so fascinating, it’s not a problem.

What got the film this high on the list was the astonishing finale. The last 45 minutes or so of the film all work, and it goes out on a high note. The strange dance between The Rock, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Mandy Moore is probably my favorite scene in any film this year, and the score by Moby throughout the film is fantastic. It probably could have used another pass at both the script and edit stage, but I think it’s encouraging that a film this bizarre made it out into theaters. The only sad thing is that it was so thoroughly rejected by both critics and audiences.



4. Planet Terror - Robert Rodriguez has made a lot of films that were really close to great, but just couldn’t quite make it. But, this one is outright brilliant, an incredibly fun pop movie that puts on a free clinic for horror filmmakers bogged down in torture porn and self importance. There’s a lot of things working here, but one of the most important is the characters. Freddy Rodriguez is a lot of fun to watch as El Wray, putting Six Feet Under’s Rico out of my mind. Jeff Fahey as J.T. also nails it, with the fun barbecue sauce subplot. But, the person who owns the film is Rose McGowan, who finally gets a role to match her wonderful work in Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation. It’s like those seven years on Charmed never happened. The machine gun leg was a concept so genius, it really doesn’t need to be expanded on. Most importantly, the film wasn’t just about cool concepts, I really bought these characters as real people and cared about what happened to them.

Along with that caring was the fantastic camera work and score from Rodriguez. From the opening frames, you knew this would be a good movie. I can see why Rodriguez left his wife for Rose McGowan, the opening go go dance is as close as you can come to fucking someone with a camera, and equally great is when he has her literally burn up the film during her sex scene with El Wray. Throughout, Rodriguez used slightly over the top, but effective zoom ins and tight framing to raise the tension. The Grindhouse premise gave him the freedom to do these over the top things without being criticized for it, and to be honest, I’d love to see him do this in every movie. I loved the craziness of the movie, Rodriguez used the genre and style to enhance our experience of the characters. Probably the best compliment I would have been happy to just hang out with these people for 90 minutes, even if there were no zombies.



3. Death Proof - Tarantino just barely tops his Grindhouse counterpart with a totally unique, and extremely fun movie. I think this is a really misunderstood piece. People talk about how Tarantino is retreating more and more into genre and away from realism when this movie is arguably his most real. What can you relate to more, six thieves whose heist has gone bad, or six girls who drive around going to bars and hanging out with people? Yes, the car chase stuff is a genre thing, and some of the style is a pastiche of 70s films, but the first half of the film feels totally true to me. I’ve been at bars like that, and Tarantino creates such fully realized people that it’s a joy to hang out with them for the time they’re on screen.

As with Rodriguez’s movie, the Grindhouse brand gives him the freedom to do some over the top emotional stuff we wouldn’t see in a ‘regular movie,’ most notably the scene where Julia gets a text message and the bar’s music is drowned out by this incredibly melodramatic piece of score. Yes, it’s a bit over the top, but it also tells you exactly how she feels using the language of movies. Despite consisting almost entirely of people talking, Tarantino makes the film visually dynamic and full of momentum. Again, I don’t even need the car chase stuff, I would have been cool if the film just spent the whole movie at the bar with the first set of girls. But, the car chase is admittedly pretty damn cool, and I absolutely love the absurdity of the film’s final moments. It’s a joyous pop confection from start to finish.



2. Daft Punk’s Electroma - Daft Punk show that they’re as skilled at cinema as they are at music, crafting an entire odd world in their debut feature. The movie is very simple, but shot with such gorgeous precision it lulls you into another mental zone. The images they present are as dazzling as anything you’ll see in cinema, from the stark white transformation zone to the gritty, nasty public bathroom scene. It’s abstract art, less about telling you something than about giving you ideas and concepts you can bring your own meaning to. But, that doesn’t mean it’s not emotionally potent. The apocalyptic finale is devastating and powerful. What Daft Punk do here is revive the midnight movie tradition of filmmakers like Jodorowsky. It’s never going to cross over to the mainstream, but for a certain audience, it’s a truly powerful, challenging film.



1. I’m Not There - Todd Haynes confirms his standing as one of the best filmmakers working today with this kaleidoscopic, innovative feature. Not so much a movie about Bob Dylan as a film about the formation of identity and process of reinvention that we all go through, it’s the most metaphysically significant work of the year. Haynes reminds me a bit of Grant Morrison in the way he uses existing pop culture icons as a way to explore the issues that are significant to him and humanity in general. Is making a film about Bob Dylan to explore the nature of identity any different than using Superman as a way to explore mortality? Both are pre-existing icons who serve to enhance the thematic points behind the project.

This film has a dizzying mix of styles and narrative approaches. While Cate Blanchett has been justifiably lauded, no one section jumps out over the others. I loved the Heath Ledger/Charlotte Gainsbourg stuff and the Richard Gere town of Riddle section just as much as Blanchett’s. It’s a really heartfelt, emotional film and one that’s quite substantial. It’s a film about the very nature of human existence, the way we live and how we evolve our concept of self to deal with the world. That makes it by far the best film of the year.

The Corner

While listening to some of the commentaries on The Wire, I heard much talk about the miniseries The Corner, so I decided to give it a look. The show isn’t as ambitious or totally successful as The Wire itself, but it’s still great in its own way, and from a fan point of view, it’s a lot of fun to see many familiar faces from The Wire in completely different roles.

At the beginning of the show, that was the main appeal for me. The first really striking thing about the show is the look, shot on 16mm instead of 35mm, it feels a lot more ‘real.’ When the show opens with Gary walking the streets, talking to the camera, I wasn’t sure if that was the real Gary or the actor.

The first episode of the show is undeniably harsh, the hardest thing to watch in the whole series. A half hour in, I said that this was like The Wire minus everything that’s entertaining about it. Ronnie is the most annoying character on the show, and it’s hard to watch her and Gary scramble around, desperate for a fix. The show isn’t as story based as The Wire, so the opening is pretty much just people going around getting high. That’s probably an accurate representation of the way these people live, but it’s still hard to watch. You don’t have the emotional or narrative hook yet, so I found myself sort of adrift, looking for a character to latch on to.

In this sense, The Wire actors both help and hurt the show. When things were uncertain and discomfortingly ‘real,’ I could look over and see Freamon or Norman, and find something familiar. The realism of the show has been hurt by having these guys we know from the other show in it, but I think it does make it easier to watch.

All of this isn’t to say it’s an unwatchable show. By the end of the first hour, after we get glimpses at what Gary’s life used to be like, things start to come together. The goal of the project is to give you a window into this world, and it helps to know that a dope fiend is made, not born. Gary never wanted to be like this, but a whole bunch of things happened, and now he’s on the street.

A movie like Requiem for a Dream gets criticized for being anti-drug, but in a lot of ways, this is an even more powerful critique. The Requiem characters still look good, and get joy from doing drugs. These guys don’t get joy from doing drugs, if they don’t do drugs, they’re in pain, if they do drugs, they’re just okay. The settings are just so run down, there’s absolutely no glamour in what they’re doing. The total breakdown of Gary’s life is as strong a reason not to do drugs as anything.

As the show goes on, it gets better and better. Once the drug milieu is established, we see characters struggling to get out and turn their lives around, even as De’Andre gets pulled more and more into the game. Unlike The Wire, these people are not involved in high end operations, De’Andre is like a younger version of Bodie, proud to hold his corner with his crew. Knowing what we know about Gary, it’s hard to watch De’Andre go down that path.

One of the things I found interesting about the show is that nearly all the characters do know they have a problem. With the exception of Rita and Scalio, everyone seems to know that on some level, they’ve got a major problem, they’re just so enmeshed in the lifestyle, they don’t see a way out. That’s the point made at NA meeting, getting off the drugs is the easy part, after that you have to live with the fact that you’ll always be an addict, and treated as such by society.

But, they also make the interesting point that being a dope fiend is the hardest job. Certainly, watching these guys hustle all day for ten dollars, I’m tempted to ask why they don’t just get a job to support their drug habit. But, as we see, that’s tough. Things are going well for Gary when he works at the crab restaurant, but when that job ends, he can’t get anything else. Similarly, De’Andre just isn’t socially adapted for work at anything but the corners. His plot illustrates where a lot of the Colvin material in season four comes from. What Colvin’s class was meant to do was help the corner boys get socially adjusted, so they could function at regular jobs. If De’Andre had gotten that kind of instruction, he might have been able to deal better with the authority figures at his job.

But, he has a lot of authority issues to begin with, what with the fact that both parents are drug addicts. When Fran tries to turn things around, she reasserts her authority over De’Andre’s life, but has to deal with the fact that he thinks she’s going to relapse at any minute. Because of what she used to do, she can’t be an authoritative parental figure in his life.

Fran’s struggle to get and stay clean forms the backbone of the series’ backhalf. It’s hard to say what’s writing and what’s reality here, but I like the fact that Fran succeeded in getting things together. The ending was already depressing enough, with the news that nearly everyone on the show died, so seeing the real Fran there at the end, keeping things together, was fantastic. It’s a struggle, but she resolved to change things, and was able to do it. That seems to be what’s needed to get off drugs and turn one’s life around, an iron will and resolve. Gary may say he’d like to quit, he knows what he’s doing is bad, but he never fully commits to turning his life around, and as a result, he winds up in exactly the same place he was at the beginning of the film when we reach the end.

It’s interesting to consider the way the real people behind the characters perceived the film. It must be really hard to watch ‘yourself’ doing some of these things, particularly for Fran. They seemed to film in the same locations where these things really happened, and I’m sure a lot of neighborhood people were involved. Much like The Wire, it feels very real and credible, though the 1993 setting does date things a bit. It’s weird to hear Coolio’s ‘Fantastic Voyage’ dropped at a non-hipster party in 2007.

The difference in style between this and The Wire is also really interesting. Charles S. Dutton directed, and is presented as the primary authorial voice. Yet, for me, it’s primarily David Simon’s work. What Dutton brings to the film is a more documentary style, with a lot of handheld camera work, and that grainy, 70s film look. I think it works for this story, but I’m glad The Wire has a more sedate look. With The Wire, there’s so much going on, and it feels so real already, you don’t need these signifiers of realism. But, The Corner is presenting itself more as a documentary, so it’s logically going to use this style.

Watching the show also makes it clear why there’s so little focus on the addicts themselves in The Wire. Bubbles is our representative in that world, but Simon probably feels like he already told that story here. This could easily be placed as The Wire: Season Zero, and it does give you a much better understanding of a lot of the themes and assumptions inherent in The Wire.

On the whole, it’s a very successful film. I don’t think it comes close to the best of The Wire, but it’s still emotional and a nice way to warm up for the final season. I’d definitely recommend it to any The Wire fans, though unlike The Wire, I can certainly see why people wouldn’t necessarily enjoy it. It’s not as fun a work as The Wire, but once you get into it, it’s got a lot to offer.

Best of 2007: Top 10 Songs

10. The National – “Fake Empire”
The song opens with a rolling piano line that is just mesmerizing and that tentative march forward underlies everything that comes after. Boxer has been rightly hailed as one of the best albums of the year, and for me, all the tracks kind of blend into each other. But, this one stands out, the overture to the entire piece and a wonderful song on its own, particularly during the majestic interplay of trumpet and guitar at the song’s conclusion.



9. The New Pornographers – “Unguided”
A departure from their usual modus operandi, this song stretches over six minutes and has more of a build than their usual concise power pop songs. However, the song is just as emotional as anything they’ve done. Backed by a beautiful tinkling percussion line, the interplay of male and female vocals all builds into the ecstatic, driving chorus. Some songs just beg to be used in a movie, and listening to this one, I can see the scene in my head. It’s the ecstatic reunion of our heroes, hard fought and well earned, a happy ending after all kinds of trouble.



8. Kanye West – “Flashing Lights”
“Stronger” got all the attention as Kanye’s move toward techno and dance, but it’s this track that impressed me the most. The keyboard line is incredible, both danceable and emotional. The strings are haunting, and Kanye’s delivery is strong as well. Much like “My Love” last year, the song would work just as well in a club as it would in a silent, introspective moment. I first heard the song on the radio and was instantly impressed, I didn’t even realize it was Kanye at first, I just knew it was great. This song should have been a massive hit, I’d still like to see it get a big single push.



7. Rilo Kiley – “The Moneymaker”
Huge controversial upon its release, I loved this thing from the first listen. The video perfectly captures the sleazy funk vibe of the song. I could image the band playing this song in the Canadian club from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, accompanying the decadent drinking and drugging of a bunch of dirty people. The riff underlying this song is fantastic, and Lewis’s vocals are among her best. The whole album was great, but it’s this opening salvo that really sticks with me.



6. Timbaland – “Way I Are”
I know a lot of people have gotten a bit tired of Timbaland, but I thought Shock Value stands up well with his two fantastic albums from last year. This song is probably the most typical Timbaland song on the album, but it’s also a flawless pop song. Fusing elements of “My Love,” “Sexy Back” and “Promiscuous,” he creates a kind of uber-Timbaland song. This is the equivalent of David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr., it might not innovate as much as his other work, but it fuses much of his previous work into a singularly successful work.



5. Amy Winehouse – “Back to Black”
The greatness of this album has been largely overshadowed by her tabloid antics, and that’s unfortunate. The whole album is great, but this is the high point, a perfect example of the way she makes 60s sounds relevant for today. The song builds on the percussion line before taking off into the swirling surf guitar backed chorus. I love those tambourines in the background, and this is her most emotional vocal on the album.



4. !!! – “Must Be the Moon”
One of the greatest dancerock songs of all time, this track does not stop bringing it. The bassline is relentless and I love the robotically heavy drumming. I love the rap-style vocal on the chorus, the stripped down nature of that makes the return of the entire band even more powerful. Back at college, when I was responsible for dropping music for our pre-parties, this track was a fixture. It’s one of those tracks you just can’t not like.



3. Daft Punk “Around the World/Harder Better Faster Stronger”
The best moment I’ve ever experienced at any concert is commemorated at 2:48 in the live recording of this song. Both these songs are already colossal hook machines that would have killed live, combined, they become a mutant pop song that just destroys everything in its path. Listening to the track, I’ll sometimes latch onto the “Around the World” bassline and ride that, sometimes hook onto the “Harder Better” vocal, and other times just stick to that crazy synth line. The song just keeps building as it goes on, even during the b-section, which drops some of the heaviest bass I’ve ever heard. This is a track that’s exponentially better the louder it is, only the live experience can do it justice, but put that record up high and you’ll get close. If this wasn’t based off two existing songs, it would easily rank number one on this list, and be a strong contender for the greatest song all time.



2. Justice – “D.A.N.C.E”
While Daft Punk made a resurgence, their protégées at Justice dropped a track that rivals their best. “D.A.N.C.E” is an insane fusion of Jackson 5 and house music, one of the most exuberant pop songs I’ve ever heard. Odds are strong that this track was played at every single party in Williamsburg, Brooklyn this year, and it just never gets old. This was another one that was omnipresent on my college DJ mix, and it never failed to go over. I love the disco style bassline and Goblins sounding synths. It’s a flawless pop song, and should survive on dance floors for a long time.



1. Arcade Fire – “No Cars Go”
This song is extremely special for me, an absolutely exuberant rallying cry, it’s just bursting with energy and dreams, a desire to break free and become something else. The Arcade Fire have a lot of might behind their sound, and no song showcases it better than this. It sounds like there’s a hundred trilling instruments underlying the chorus, and it only builds as it goes into the crazy breakdown in the middle of the song. Win’s shout fo “No Go!” is amazing, but the real highlight of the song for me is the segue between “Well we know!” and the instrumental solo that follows. The song is all about those transitions, taking things down to nothing, then building again to an ecstatic pace. The song’s majesterial finale is like very few things I’ve heard in music. I think the people who lived with me last year hate this song. There were a bunch of nights when I was like “I need to hear ‘No Cars Go’,” and at 2 AM, I’d play this thing real loud, and just get lost in it. It might have woken them up, and I’m sorry about that, but the final minute of this song just left me feeling cleansed and renewed, and maybe that’s worth a wake up.

Sweeeney Todd

Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd is a comeback for Burton, not quite matching his late 80s to early 90s golden era, but it’s easily his best film since Ed Wood. For most of his career, Burton has making musicals in one form or another, the fantastic Elfman scores for Edward Scissorhands and Batman Returns turn them into operas, but this is his first full fledged live action musical, and he handles it well.

I’m a huge fan of musicals. Film is inherently unrealistic, and it’s odd that people will buy giant monsters, ridiculous action sequences, but a character singing is too much. It’s inherently melodramatic, but some stories have emotions that big. As we watch Benjamin Barker’s story unfold in the past, music building, I needed to have a big emotive moment from Todd, and his songs provide that. If anything, the music doesn’t go quite big enough sometimes. I wanted something absolutely massive, and in its best moments, the film achieves a sinister grandeur, the beautiful songs shadowing its darkest moments.

While Depp is indisputably the lead, Helena Bonham Carter steals the film. She’s the one you leave the theater talking about. I love her total lack of morals, and hilariously sinister nature. Not having seen the original show, I may not be the best judge, but I thought she nailed all her songs, as did Depp.

Burton styles them both to look like live action stop motion characters. The exaggerated pale makeup and dark eyes are striking, echoing the film’s almost black and white palette. Visually, the film is stellar. The only misstep is the awful CG effects in the opening travel through London shot. The trip through a city over opening credits is a Burton staple, but the CG in this and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is just appalling. It’s like watching a cartoon, and that takes you out of the film. However, once the film starts, the design is fantastic. The actors and sets and integrated and everything is stylish. I particularly like the incongruous trip to a beach scene, which manages to give even a sunny day some goth visual flair.

There’s not that much to say about the plot. It’s a simple story, and as in most musicals, is generally besides the point. There’s a fantastic tension in the buildup to Sweeney’s killings, every time that straight razor goes near a neck, you’re fearing and anticipating a gush of blood. The most shocking, and probably best, moment of the film is when Sweeney hurls Mrs. Lovett into the pie oven. It’s a crazy visual, and the film’s most over the top moment.

The major issue with the film for me was that there wasn’t a really coherent emotional build. While it was fun that the characters were so unaffected by the murders they do, it also means the characters have basically no arc. Sweeney killing his wife was a bit contrived, and didn’t hit on a particularly emotional level. It’s tricky to bring humanity to something so over the top, but I feel like a deeper emotional engagement would have made the end emotionally devastating, instead of just shocking. It’s only in the kid’s story that we get a sense that what is happening is real and matters. Part of that may be compression from the stage show, but I would have liked to see either Sweeney or Lovett exploring the issues that arise from what they’re doing.

But, the film still works and is full of wonderful, exciting moments. The songs are generally stellar, the performances are great, and the film is visually dazzling. Burton still hasn’t matched the open wound emotion of Edward or Batman Returns, but this is a definite step up for his recent work.

Side note, was it just me or did the kid in this film look exactly like McNulty?

Best of 2007 and The Future of the Blog

Over the next week, I'll be putting up all my lists for 2007. You'll be getting...

Top 10 TV Shows
Top 10 TV Episodes
Top 10 Songs
Top 15 Albums
Top 10 Movies

Along with this, there'll also be a 2008 preview, exploring what we've got to expect next year. Unfortuantely, the strike is throwing everything into question, shows like Dollhouse and True Blood won't premiere when expected and no previously unannounced movies will pop up for a while. In film, 2009 will probably be hit harder, but TV is going to be sinking quickly next year, the only thing I've got to look forward to is the new season of The Wire.

In terms of the blog's future, you've probably noticed I haven't been posting as much the past few months as in the past. The reason for that is that I'm working full time, and it's hard to blog during the week. Part of that is that I just don't have the time to watch as many movies or TV shows to write up.

I've only been writing up stuff that's worthy of a really deep look. I'm not going to write a review to say I kind of liked something, or that it was pretty good. I'm writing up about stuff that I love and demands analysis, like The Wire, or about stuff that doesn't quite make it, to explore where it fails and succeeds, like There Will Be Blood. There's so many people writing their opinion, but how many people online are really delving deeper into a work, to examine not just where something fails or succeeds, but why. People don't necessarily want to approach works in that way, if they did, John From Cincinnati would probably be a bigger hit. But, I don't read reviews until I've seen a movie, and after I've seen it, I don't need to know if it's worth seeing, I want something deeper. Hopefully the reviews I do provide that, at least it's something different.

But, 2008 will bring week by week Wire writeups, and more on whatever I come across that's worth writing up. I'm sure there's plenty of good stuff waiting out there.

Best of 2007: Top 10 TV Series

10. 30 Rock
Best Episode – Greenzo
The second season was a bit uneven, but this show was still anarchic and hilarious in a way not seen since Arrested Development. It’s comedy was occasionally stupid, but always in a smart way, and the cast is consistently stellar. And, David Schwimmer’s guest appearance in “Greenzo” was better than the entire run of Friends.

9. The Office
Best Episode – The Deposition
Another show where the year started out uneven. The goofy race episode nearly killed it for me, but the abbreviated season ended very strong with the devastating “The Deposition.” This episode is the closest the American version has gotten to the original’s blend of dark, dark darkness and uncomfortably funny humor. For me, the darker the show gets, the funnier it is and the more emotionally affecting it is. So, go darker like that episode, not goofy.

8. Flight of the Conchords
Best Episode – The Third Conchord
The best new comedy of the year, Conchords never failed to entertain thanks to the fantastic songs in each episode. The songs were both goofy and funny, and genuinely good songs, surveying a variety of genres over the course of the series. Some felt awkwardly shoved into the episode, like “Frodo, Don’t Wear the Ring” and “Bowie’s in Space,” but generally they fit well. And, on top of that, the non-singing parts of the show were fun, if a bit repetitive. I’m not sure how well it will hold up in year two, but this year was a lot of fun.

7. Gilmore Girls
Best Episodes – Lorelai? Lorelai?
The show was far from what it was under the Palladinos, but Lauren Graham is such a strong presence, she, and the actors surrounding her, keep the show entertaining. Lorelai is the series, and even though I’m not a fan of the season on the whole, it was nice to see her get a happy ending. This wasn’t an X-Files level collapse, even slightly off Gilmore Girls is still strong.

6. Big Love
Best Episode – Take Me as I Am
The first season of Big Love had its moments, but didn’t ever really click for me. The second takes a big leap, going deeper into the characters’ lives and exploring the darker side of what it means to polygamist. The stuff at the compound is still hit or miss, but Barb’s arc, Rhonda’s arc and Ben’s arc all more than made up for it. The show grew a lot, and I’m eager to see where they go in season three.

5. Battlestar Galactica
Best Episode – Crossroads: Part II
This calendar year was not a particularly strong one for BSG. We got a bunch of weak filler episodes after the stellar opening run of year three. However, the two part season finale was amazing, primarily because of the final ten minutes, as bizarre and invigorating as anything I’ve seen on TV. The spiraling camera shots and surreal battle to “All Along the Watchtower” made up for what had come before, and even as I pondered the nonsensicalness of the cylon revelation, I was awed by its execution. But still, they’re going to have to do better next year. A great season opener and closer does not make up for phoning it in the rest of the year.

4. Friday Night Lights
Best Episode – Mud Bowl
If the show had not been picked up for a second season, it might be ranked even higher. The end of year one was fantastic, particularly the emotionally devastating “Mud Bowl” episode, as powerful as anything I’ve seen on television. However, the second year fumbled a lot of that opportunity with some really poor writing. The Landry murder plot is the most obvious target, but there was a lot of other lazy plotting along the way. The cinematography is still some of the best in TV history, and the acting’s stellar, but the writing is going to have to get better. Still, there are moments in the show that are almost unspeakably beautiful, the aforementioned mud bowl, the team’s trip to Dallas stadium in the season finale, and Lyla’s baptism in the season premiere. That baptism was at a Malick level of beauty. Why not tone back on the meth dealers, murders and underage relationships and get back to telling simple stories about a football team and the town it inspires.

3. Mad Men
Best Episode – The Wheel
The loss of The Sopranos left a big hole in the TV landscape, where would we find the adventures of a morally conflicted hero who cheats on his, gets drunk with his male coworkers and has many unresolved psychological issues? If HBO was smart, they would have put this show on after The Sopranos’ finale, not John From Cincinnati. The show picks up on much of what made The Sopranos great, the barely there stories which exist primarily to bring character tension to the surface, and the marvelously subtle characterization. There are so many fantastic performances here, Jon Hamm as the inscrutable Donald Draper, Christina Hendricks as the gorgeous manipulator Joan and my favorite, January Jones as the psychologically disturbed housewife Betty. The show really grew on me as the season went on, each episode adding more layers to the world and characters. The evocation of period look, and sensibility, is unlike anything attempted on television, and I’m eager to see the show move forward through the 60s and the change it will bring to our characters. There are certain shows you enjoy in spite of the fact that you know on some level it’s not good, this is not one of those, it’s challenging art all the way through.

2. John From Cincinnati
Best Episode – His Visit: Day 6
It’s been tough to watch this show pop up on countless worst TV of 2007 lists. While it might not be for everyone, JFC was a challenging work that showed how much wonder and joy can be found in everyday life. Milch continued the work he began on Deadwood, showing how social networks and community can be built, but added in the spiritual component, which took everything to a new level of philosophical interest. In future years, people will be analyzing JFC in universities, writing books about it and generally hailing it as a lost masterpiece. If you take the time to understand the series’ cosmology, it’s not that hard to understand, and along with this philosophical stuff, there’s some fantastic character development. Butchie’s transition from selfish junkie to caring man is inspiring, and the supporting cast went deep with great performances. I loved this show, I loved its message and I loved its execution. Give it a look when it comes out on DVD, it’s Milch’s masterwork.

1. The Sopranos
Best Episode – Walk Like a Man
It’s indisputably one of the best, and most influential TV shows of all time and this final nine episode run was probably its strongest season. Say what you will about the finale, the four episode run leading to it was the show’s strongest run. There was a crushing sense of doom hanging over the entire season, which delved deeper into Tony’s psyche than ever before. In the twin tales of his two ‘sons,’ Christopher and AJ, we recognize simultaneously how warped Tony is and how ordinary he is. The beauty of that last scene for me is that it takes Tony out of the mob world and puts him into the everyday world. Those people at the diner aren’t all potential killers, they’re people like you and me, he is part of everyday American life, and the blood it takes to uphold that dream is quickly forgotten if it’s spilled in the service of ‘family.’ My favorite arc of the year was Christopher’s dissolution, captured most wonderfully in “Walk Like a Man,” which sends him on such a spiral that his death in the next episode is a mercy killing. The season is a masterwork, and a perfect conclusion to one of the greatest TV shows of all time.