Battlestar Galactica, "Sine Qua Non": Grumpy old men

"Battlestar Galactica" spoilers coming up just as soon as I find out if dog food comes in algae flavors...

"Sine Qua Non" was a frustrating episode, and not necessarily for the designed reasons. No, we didn't get a single glimpse of the missing baseship (unless you believe the wrecked one that Racetrack and Skulls found was it), but that was the point of the episode: to show how such a calamity makes everyone in the fleet -- particularly its military and civilian leaders -- go nuts.

My problem is that, for an episode with a number of seismic plot developments -- Lee becomes interim president, Adama finally acknowledges his feelings for Roslin and gives up everything he cares about to find her, Tigh is placed in charge of Galactica shortly after finding out that he knocked up Caprica Six -- "Sine Qua Non" dragged in many spots, and didn't make a lot of logic in others.

The entire story with Lee and Romo Lampkin was particularly annoying. I think the "Galactica" writers like Romo a lot more than the guy deserves, as he's less a character than a collection of colorful tics. The amount of time it took for Romo and Lee to recognize that Lee was the best man for the interim president job felt entirely like an excuse to spend more time with the guy. Since everyone and his brother watching the show at home has probably figured Lee for the top job ever since he entered politics shortly after we found out that Roslin was dying for real this time, the story might have felt less drawn-out if Romo's very first reaction to Lee's request was "You," and then we spent the rest of the episode with Romo trying to convince a reluctant Lee to go for it. Instead, we had to wait most of the hour for Romo to figure out something we already knew (even Romo himself admits that after writing Lee's name on the white board), followed by the strange "Sixth Sense" rip-off where we find out that Romo's cat has been dead for the entire episode (dun dun dun!) and that the loss of the animal has made him go bonkers. I appreciate that the series never tries to forget the emotional burden all the people in the rag-tag fleet bear as survivors of a genocide, but the time for stories about people who can't deal with that guilt isn't in the middle of the epic, season-long arc leading up to the series finale.

Beyond that, I have a hard time believing Tom Zarek, and the rest of the Quorum for that matter, would just roll over and install Bill Adama's son as the new civilian leader of the fleet, particularly in the midst of a crisis where the civilian and military parts of the fleet are at such odds. Remember Baltar's comment to Chief Tyrol last season about how the fleet's military leader would always be somebody named Adama? Yes, Lee has a history of going against the old man, but to anyone worried about consolidation of executive powers -- particularly Zarek, who's been a Power to the People guy his entire life, and who basically brought Lee into the Quorum to be his lackey -- this plan would at the very least be something requiring a lot of loud debate, if not something to be outright rejected. Again, the amount of time wasted on the cat twist and on Lee and Romo not seeing the answer that was staring them in the face could have been devoted to something much more interesting, like Lee having to talk Zarek into surrendering power to him.

The senior Adama half of the episode -- and after a few weeks of getting most of the cast involved, this one was really a four-character piece, Bill with Tigh, Lee with Romo -- was better, if only because it's hard to screw up something that has Edward James Olmos and Michael Hogan playing off each other. Plus, is there anyone who isn't a sucker for an old man fight? Particularly one involving two old men who actually know how to fight?

Where I felt this one fell down was at the end, when Bill made the decision to turn over command to Saul. In some ways, there's no other choice if Adama is determined to carry out this romantic suicide mission (how many algae bars can you fit into a Raptor, anyway?), as Helo's been abducted, Lee has mustered out of the military, Kara's probably only trustworthy to a point, and Gaeta's singing opera with one leg. Who else is available? Dualla? (I think she was technically XO of the Pegasus during the New Caprica/Fat Lee period.) But I have a hard time jumping from Bill finding out that Cylon-hating Tigh has been having regular brig booty calls with a Six to Bill trusting the guy with the safety of everyone in the fleet, and that's even with the understanding that he has no idea Tigh just found out he's a secret Cylon. As with Lee getting the presidency, I don't necessarily mind the end result; I just think more time needed to be devoted to explaining how certain characters rationalized their choice.

Still, as mentioned above, Olmos and Hogan were superb as always, and the closing sequence of Adama alone in a Raptor, cracking open "Searider Falcon" one final time -- I have a feeling he's going to read the last chapter this time -- and waiting to see if the woman he finally acknowledged that he loves (just after she was kidnapped, and just before she's due to die of cancer, anyway) was beautiful.

But overall, this was the first real disappointment of what's been a superb season to date.

What did everybody else think? And, again, a reminder: do not discuss anything you saw in the previews. I finally learned my lesson a few episodes ago and stopped watching the things. Click here to read the full post

The Wire, season 1, episode 1: "The Target" (Veterans edition)

As discussed frequently, it's time to start revisiting the first season of the best drama in TV history, "The Wire." Because I know some readers will be starting the series for the first time, while others will be "Wire" die-hards not ready to let the show go just yet, I'm going to post two slightly different versions of each review: one for the newbies, with minimal discussion of what happens in later episodes (and seasons); one for the veterans, with a section at the end discussing ways that each episode ties into things that happened further down the line. The newbie edition will always be posted about a minute before the veteran one. Please confine any comments that would spoil later developments to the veteran post; anything too spoiler-y in the newbies comments will be deleted by me.

Veteran-friendly spoilers for episode 1, "The Target," coming up just as soon as I haggle over the price of wood...

David Simon likes to say that the first scene of each season of "The Wire" encapsulates the themes of that season. In the case of Detective Jimmy McNulty investigating the murder of one Omar Isiah Betts, known to friends and family as Snot Boogie, Simon gets to explain what the entire series will be about.

As a surprisingly helpful witness (by "Wire" standards) explains, Snot Boogie played in the local craps game every week, and every week after a few rolls, Snot would grab all the money in the pot and try to make a run for it, and someone would chase him down and beat his ass and take the money back. McNulty, being the inquisitive sort that he is -- and the series' symbol of what happens when you start asking the right questions of people who think they're the wrong questions -- has to interrupt his witness' narrative to ask what is, to him and to us, but not the witness, the obvious question: if they knew Snot would rob the pot every time out, why did they keep letting him play? And the witness, confused by the very premise of the question, lays out the basic message of the series:

"Got to. This America, man."

The America of "The Wire" is broken, in a fundamental, probably irreparable way. It is an interconnected network of ossified institutions, all of them so committed to perpetuating their own business-as-usual approach, that they keep letting their own equivalents of Snot Boogie into the game, simply because that's how it's always been done. It doesn't matter that it makes no sense. Only a rugged individualist/cocky narcissist like McNulty would even think to suggest that things could and should be run differently.

Without giving away too much about what's to come, the first season of "The Wire" is the story of two men on opposite sides of the drug war -- McNulty with the cops, D'Angelo Barksdale with the dope slingers -- and what happens when each one starts to notice that his bosses and co-workers are following a rigid and often nonsensical set of rules. When McNulty needles his partner, Bunk Moreland, for taking a Homicide call when it was someone else's turn in the rotation and, therefore, "giving a fuck when it ain't your turn to give a fuck," it's the last time he'll speak up for established department protocol. (Bunk takes no end of pleasure in turning the phrase back on Jimmy later in the episode.) The entire series, essentially, is about people who decide to give a fuck when it isn't their turn.

And the chilling thing about the show is that, when someone like McNulty decides to care out of turn, he's not confronted by corrupt or otherwise evil people. Bill Rawls, the middle finger-raising Homicide chief, isn't a bad guy, though he seems like one when he bitches out McNulty. He's just a guardian of the system. His job is to keep the murder rate down and the clearance rate up, which in turn helps the department get funding to keep doing its job, keeps cops on the streets, etc. You'll note that the thing that angers Rawls most is the fact that Jimmy dragged in the Gerard Bogue case, which happened in the previous year and therefore has no bearing on this year's stats. Bogue may have had family and friends who loved and miss him, but he is of no use to Bill Rawls in his quest to make the numbers look good, and therefore he doesn't matter. That's not evil, not "one bad cop ruining the system for everybody else." It's just cold, cruel pragmatism, the best way Rawls knows to do the job he's been given.

Even more ambiguous is our introduction to McNulty's temporary new boss, Lt. Cedric Daniels from Narcotics. Because we first get to know him through his relationship with Detective Kima Greggs -- who herself was introduced as a good and sympathetic cop, and who clearly likes and respects Daniels -- we take it that he's a decent guy. But we also see that he's a company men, one willing to take explicit and limiting orders from Ervin Burrell, the department's "deputy ops" (the number two man on the organizational flowchart) and loudly try to impress those orders on a renegade like McNulty. There's no obvious black-and-white, good-vs-bad conflict here. "The Wire" is all shades of gray.

Now, if you're brand-new to the series, you can be forgiven for not getting much, if any, of that from the experience of actually watching "The Wire" pilot. Though it has some roots in previous TV shows -- most specifically NBC's "Homicide," which was based on Simon's non-fiction book (and which Simon himself wrote for in its later years) -- for the most part, "The Wire" took a very different approach to narrative from any series in American history, so much so that it essentially had to teach you how to watch it. The cast is huge -- and the season one cast is tiny in comparison to later seasons, which would bring in new characters from the Baltimore docks, City Hall, schools, newspapers, homeless community, etc. -- and almost everyone you meet will play a key role in the unfolding storylines.

Back in 2002, I would say it took me at least three or four episodes to get even a tenuous grasp of who all these people are, what they're about, to whom they owe their loyalty, etc. (If you are, in fact, watching the series for the first time -- or even for the first time in a long time -- I'd strongly suggest watching at least that many in a concentrated burst before attempting to move to a weekly schedule, even though that's the rate at which I'll be doing these reviews.)

In the DVD commentary for this episode, in the official "Wire" companion book, and elsewhere, Simon has complained about the flashback at the end of the pilot, the glimpse of William Gant testifying against D'Angelo. HBO made him insert it, he said, because they were afraid that people wouldn't understand the significance of the dead body and why it upset D'Angelo so much. While I appreciate Simon's desire to respect his audience's intelligence and hope that they would get it, this was, again, the first hour of a series attempting a denser, more complex form of longform narrative than any drama that preceeded it, and one that, again, had to teach you how to watch it. The end of hour one wasn't the time to risk the audience not understanding the climax because they weren't able to keep track of the 50 or so characters wandering in and out of the narrative, you know?

Beyond the clumsy and/or necessary flashback, "The Target" doesn't do a lot of audience hand-holding. McNulty's there in the first scene and prominent throughout, so it's obvious he's important. Ditto D'Angelo, who gets to close the episode. After those two, the episode's a bit like a kid's game of memory match. You see a face and have to try to remember it as other faces are introduced, wondering who belongs with whom. But if you focus long enough, the picture starts to make sense. When we meet veteran junkie Bubbles (aka Bubbs) and his rookie partner in scamming Johnny, it's not clear what they have to do with anything that's happened before, and then Johnny gets beat up by D'Angelo's underlings (which sparks D's first questioning of the way things are done), and then we find out that Bubbs has worked as an informant for Kima Greggs, who's just been reluctantly assigned to the joint Homicide/Narcotics task force put together after McNulty started mouthing off to Judge Phelan, etc...

Still, you can be forgiven if you weren't clear on who was giving D'Angelo the lecture about talking in the car (that would be Wee-Bey Brice, lead enforcer for the Barksdale/Bell crew), or who outranks whom in the police and crime hierarchies.

(Interestingly, but on point, both the pilot and the series as a whole tend to give more screen time to each organization's number two man -- Rawls for the cops, profane cartoon-doodling Stringer Bell for the drug players -- than to the actual bosses, Burrell and drug kingpin Avon Barksdale, D'Angelo's uncle. It's a nice comment on who actually does all the dirty work in an organization, and "the Wire" features a whole lot of dirty work.)

Though Simon, writing partner Ed Burns (the real-world inspiration for McNulty), director Clark Johnson and the late producer Robert Colesberry for the most part hit the ground running as much as they could with something this sprawling and unusual, there are some definite growing pains evident in the pilot. D'Angelo's growing unease with the violence of the drug game -- specifically, his objection to the savage beating of Johnny after he got caught passing off the fake $10 bills -- doesn't really track with the guy who was laughing off beating a murder rap earlier in the episode. (It, and other complaints he'll voice, works better after this episode's end, when he realizes Gant was murdered simply for testifying against him, but I suppose there was a desire to establish D as an unorthodox thinker as early as possible.)

Meanwhile, when Rawls chews out McNulty, he complains that Jimmy is talking to Phelan about "some project nigger," which is phrasing that's too loaded for our introduction to a character who's supposed to be more nuanced (and smarter) than that. We hear politically incorrect and flat-out racist language from characters in all walks of life as the series moves along, but in that scene, this early in the series, it stacks the deck too much against Rawls.

Overall, though, "The Target" succeeds at the ambitious task it sets for itself in trying to introduce a huge cast of characters, a new model of narrative, and a more complex moral compass than viewers had any right to expect from a cop show.

But then, as anyone who watches the show for even a handful of additional episodes can tell you, "The Wire" is much, much more than a cop show.

Some additional thoughts on "The Target":

• In addition to Ed Burns as the inspiration for McNulty, the Barksdale/Bell crew is modeled on a number of Baltimore drug crews of the 1980s, most notably that of Melvin Williams, who would himself become one of the show's recurring players (as a church deacon) starting in season 3. The high-rises where Williams' crew worked were demolished before the series began filming, which is one of the real-world reasons why D'Angelo gets reassigned to the courtyard of the nearby low-rise housing project (aka "The Pit"). Whenever we see characters hanging around what are supposed to be the actual high-rise towers, you'll note that the scenes are shot in a way that keeps you from seeing how big the buildings actually are.
• A stylistic conceit introduced here by Johnson, and not really used again until the Johnson-directed series finale: scenes are frequently shot from the point of view of a mirror, or a window's reflection, or security camera footage, which suggests not only the number of ways people can be observed in Baltimore (and, therefore, modern America) but also the number of perspectives you can take on any person or situation.
• One of the mysteries of the show that I never quite cracked -- or, if I did, Simon never told me that I did -- is the symbolism of the train tracks where McNulty and Bunk frequently gather (as they do near the end of the pilot) to get drunk and complain about their jobs, their wives, etc. Just keep the tracks in mind as the season unfolds and we can make some more guesses again at the end of this project.
• Some fans complained that the fifth season featured dialogue that was too didactic and on-the-nose. To those people, I give you, from this first episode alone, Detective Carver's line about how the War on Drugs is misnamed because "wars end," or McNulty's line to FBI Agent Fitzhugh about how the War on Terror has superceded the War on Drugs: "What, we don't have enough love in our heart for two wars? Jokes on us, huh?"
• Though Carver and his partner, Herc, are introduced as complete lunkheads who can't even do a proper search of a vehicle for a weapon (which, in turn, quickly establishes Kima Greggs' bonafides as a natural police), they're great sources of comic relief. Here, I especially enjoy their debate about whether piss can flow downhill.
• Also very funny: Bunk cursing under his breath and threatening his corpse to not come back a murder, lest he get stuck with an unsolveable case. That moment is the first of many quintessential Bunk-isms that puts him near the top of every fan's list of favorite "wire" characters.
• Another questionable early element: Dominic West's American accent. It would get (slightly) better over the years, but it's especially shaky in the Snot Boogie scene.
• Though D'Angelo is presented as the leader and (relatively) wise old head of the Pit crew, you'll note that it's young Wallace who's the only one to know that Alexander Hamilton's the guy on the $10 bill, and that Hamilton wasn't a president, while D insists that only presidents get their faces on money. That scene is the first of many in the series to show just what a limited worldview the players on the west side of Baltimore really have.

And now, just a few thoughts on how things in "The Target" tie into things to come for all our fictional friends in Baltimore:

• The location of Gant's murder is the same parking lot where Kima and Bunk will be seen examining a dead body as part of the everything-comes-full-circle sequence from the series finale.
• Jimmy makes his first mention of the Baltimore PD's marine unit and how little he'd like to work there, information Jay Landsman will file away for future gambling purposes.
• D'Angelo's advice to Wallace about having separate people take the money and hand out the product will come up again in the season one finale.
• Given what we learn late in season three about Rawls' private life, isn't it interesting how often his tirades are filled with homophobic insults?
• While Kima's struggling with a typewriter and White-Out, Herc notes that the department has been promising to get them computers for years. Though the series' version of the Baltimore PD is for the most part FUBAR, you'll note that by season five all the Homicide detectives have been issued snazzy Toughbooks.
• When Stringer is telling Avon about McNulty's appearance in court, he says Jimmy tried to pin the Bogue case on Little Kevin. That couldn't possibly be the same Little Kevin who was working on Bodie's off-brand corner -- and became one of Chris and Snoop's many victims -- in season four, could it?

Up next: "The Detail," in which Lt. Daniels discovers just what a terrible hand he's been dealt with this Barksdale task force, while McNulty and Bunk look into Gant's murder.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

The Wire, season 1, episode 1: "The Target" (Newbies edition)

As discussed frequently, it's time to start revisiting the first season of the best drama in TV history, "The Wire." Because I know some readers will be starting the series for the first time, while others will be "Wire" die-hards not ready to let the show go just yet, I'm going to post two slightly different versions of each review: one for the newbies, with minimal discussion of what happens in later episodes (and seasons); one for the veterans, with a section at the end discussing ways that each episode ties into things that happened further down the line. The newbie edition will always be posted about a minute before the veteran one. Please confine any comments that would spoil later developments to the veteran post; anything too spoiler-y in the newbies comments will be deleted by me.

Newbie-friendly spoilers for episode 1, "The Target," coming up just as soon as I haggle over the price of wood...

David Simon likes to say that the first scene of each season of "The Wire" encapsulates the themes of that season. In the case of Detective Jimmy McNulty investigating the murder of one Omar Isiah Betts, known to friends and family as Snot Boogie, Simon gets to explain what the entire series will be about.

As a surprisingly helpful witness (by "Wire" standards) explains, Snot Boogie played in the local craps game every week, and every week after a few rolls, Snot would grab all the money in the pot and try to make a run for it, and someone would chase him down and beat his ass and take the money back. McNulty, being the inquisitive sort that he is -- and the series' symbol of what happens when you start asking the right questions of people who think they're the wrong questions -- has to interrupt his witness' narrative to ask what is, to him and to us, but not the witness, the obvious question: if they knew Snot would rob the pot every time out, why did they keep letting him play? And the witness, confused by the very premise of the question, lays out the basic message of the series:

"Got to. This America, man."

The America of "The Wire" is broken, in a fundamental, probably irreparable way. It is an interconnected network of ossified institutions, all of them so committed to perpetuating their own business-as-usual approach, that they keep letting their own equivalents of Snot Boogie into the game, simply because that's how it's always been done. It doesn't matter that it makes no sense. Only a rugged individualist/cocky narcissist like McNulty would even think to suggest that things could and should be run differently.

Without giving away too much about what's to come, the first season of "The Wire" is the story of two men on opposite sides of the drug war -- McNulty with the cops, D'Angelo Barksdale with the dope slingers -- and what happens when each one starts to notice that his bosses and co-workers are following a rigid and often nonsensical set of rules. When McNulty needles his partner, Bunk Moreland, for taking a Homicide call when it was someone else's turn in the rotation and, therefore, "giving a fuck when it ain't your turn to give a fuck," it's the last time he'll speak up for established department protocol. (Bunk takes no end of pleasure in turning the phrase back on Jimmy later in the episode.) The entire series, essentially, is about people who decide to give a fuck when it isn't their turn.

And the chilling thing about the show is that, when someone like McNulty decides to care out of turn, he's not confronted by corrupt or otherwise evil people. Bill Rawls, the middle finger-raising Homicide chief, isn't a bad guy, though he seems like one when he bitches out McNulty. He's just a guardian of the system. His job is to keep the murder rate down and the clearance rate up, which in turn helps the department get funding to keep doing its job, keeps cops on the streets, etc. You'll note that the thing that angers Rawls most is the fact that Jimmy dragged in the Gerard Bogue case, which happened in the previous year and therefore has no bearing on this year's stats. Bogue may have had family and friends who loved and miss him, but he is of no use to Bill Rawls in his quest to make the numbers look good, and therefore he doesn't matter. That's not evil, not "one bad cop ruining the system for everybody else." It's just cold, cruel pragmatism, the best way Rawls knows to do the job he's been given.

Even more ambiguous is our introduction to McNulty's temporary new boss, Lt. Cedric Daniels from Narcotics. Because we first get to know him through his relationship with Detective Kima Greggs -- who herself was introduced as a good and sympathetic cop, and who clearly likes and respects Daniels -- we take it that he's a decent guy. But we also see that he's a company men, one willing to take explicit and limiting orders from Ervin Burrell, the department's "deputy ops" (the number two man on the organizational flowchart) and loudly try to impress those orders on a renegade like McNulty. There's no obvious black-and-white, good-vs-bad conflict here. "The Wire" is all shades of gray.

Now, if you're brand-new to the series, you can be forgiven for not getting much, if any, of that from the experience of actually watching "The Wire" pilot. Though it has some roots in previous TV shows -- most specifically NBC's "Homicide," which was based on Simon's non-fiction book (and which Simon himself wrote for in its later years) -- for the most part, "The Wire" took a very different approach to narrative from any series in American history, so much so that it essentially had to teach you how to watch it. The cast is huge -- and the season one cast is tiny in comparison to later seasons, which would bring in new characters from the Baltimore docks, City Hall, schools, newspapers, homeless community, etc. -- and almost everyone you meet will play a key role in the unfolding storylines.

Back in 2002, I would say it took me at least three or four episodes to get even a tenuous grasp of who all these people are, what they're about, to whom they owe their loyalty, etc. (If you are, in fact, watching the series for the first time -- or even for the first time in a long time -- I'd strongly suggest watching at least that many in a concentrated burst before attempting to move to a weekly schedule, even though that's the rate at which I'll be doing these reviews.)

In the DVD commentary for this episode, in the official "Wire" companion book, and elsewhere, Simon has complained about the flashback at the end of the pilot, the glimpse of William Gant testifying against D'Angelo. HBO made him insert it, he said, because they were afraid that people wouldn't understand the significance of the dead body and why it upset D'Angelo so much. While I appreciate Simon's desire to respect his audience's intelligence and hope that they would get it, this was, again, the first hour of a series attempting a denser, more complex form of longform narrative than any drama that preceeded it, and one that, again, had to teach you how to watch it. The end of hour one wasn't the time to risk the audience not understanding the climax because they weren't able to keep track of the 50 or so characters wandering in and out of the narrative, you know?

Beyond the clumsy and/or necessary flashback, "The Target" doesn't do a lot of audience hand-holding. McNulty's there in the first scene and prominent throughout, so it's obvious he's important. Ditto D'Angelo, who gets to close the episode. After those two, the episode's a bit like a kid's game of memory match. You see a face and have to try to remember it as other faces are introduced, wondering who belongs with whom. But if you focus long enough, the picture starts to make sense. When we meet veteran junkie Bubbles (aka Bubbs) and his rookie partner in scamming Johnny, it's not clear what they have to do with anything that's happened before, and then Johnny gets beat up by D'Angelo's underlings (which sparks D's first questioning of the way things are done), and then we find out that Bubbs has worked as an informant for Kima Greggs, who's just been reluctantly assigned to the joint Homicide/Narcotics task force put together after McNulty started mouthing off to Judge Phelan, etc...

Still, you can be forgiven if you weren't clear on who was giving D'Angelo the lecture about talking in the car (that would be Wee-Bey Brice, lead enforcer for the Barksdale/Bell crew), or who outranks whom in the police and crime hierarchies.

(Interestingly, but on point, both the pilot and the series as a whole tend to give more screen time to each organization's number two man -- Rawls for the cops, profane cartoon-doodling Stringer Bell for the drug players -- than to the actual bosses, Burrell and drug kingpin Avon Barksdale, D'Angelo's uncle. It's a nice comment on who actually does all the dirty work in an organization, and "the Wire" features a whole lot of dirty work.)

Though Simon, writing partner Ed Burns (the real-world inspiration for McNulty), director Clark Johnson and the late producer Robert Colesberry for the most part hit the ground running as much as they could with something this sprawling and unusual, there are some definite growing pains evident in the pilot. D'Angelo's growing unease with the violence of the drug game -- specifically, his objection to the savage beating of Johnny after he got caught passing off the fake $10 bills -- doesn't really track with the guy who was laughing off beating a murder rap earlier in the episode. (It, and other complaints he'll voice, works better after this episode's end, when he realizes Gant was murdered simply for testifying against him, but I suppose there was a desire to establish D as an unorthodox thinker as early as possible.)

Meanwhile, when Rawls chews out McNulty, he complains that Jimmy is talking to Phelan about "some project nigger," which is phrasing that's too loaded for our introduction to a character who's supposed to be more nuanced (and smarter) than that. We hear politically incorrect and flat-out racist language from characters in all walks of life as the series moves along, but in that scene, this early in the series, it stacks the deck too much against Rawls.

Overall, though, "The Target" succeeds at the ambitious task it sets for itself in trying to introduce a huge cast of characters, a new model of narrative, and a more complex moral compass than viewers had any right to expect from a cop show.

But then, as anyone who watches the show for even a handful of additional episodes can tell you, "The Wire" is much, much more than a cop show.

Some additional thoughts on "The Target":

• In addition to Ed Burns as the inspiration for McNulty, the Barksdale/Bell crew is modeled on a number of Baltimore drug crews of the 1980s, most notably that of Melvin Williams, who would himself become one of the show's recurring players (as a church deacon) starting in season 3. The high-rises where Williams' crew worked were demolished before the series began filming, which is one of the real-world reasons why D'Angelo gets reassigned to the courtyard of the nearby low-rise housing project (aka "The Pit"). Whenever we see characters hanging around what are supposed to be the actual high-rise towers, you'll note that the scenes are shot in a way that keeps you from seeing how big the buildings actually are.
• A stylistic conceit introduced here by Johnson, and not really used again until the Johnson-directed series finale: scenes are frequently shot from the point of view of a mirror, or a window's reflection, or security camera footage, which suggests not only the number of ways people can be observed in Baltimore (and, therefore, modern America) but also the number of perspectives you can take on any person or situation.
• One of the mysteries of the show that I never quite cracked -- or, if I did, Simon never told me that I did -- is the symbolism of the train tracks where McNulty and Bunk frequently gather (as they do near the end of the pilot) to get drunk and complain about their jobs, their wives, etc. Just keep the tracks in mind as the season unfolds and we can make some more guesses again at the end of this project.
• Some fans complained that the fifth season featured dialogue that was too didactic and on-the-nose. To those people, I give you, from this first episode alone, Detective Carver's line about how the War on Drugs is misnamed because "wars end," or McNulty's line to FBI Agent Fitzhugh about how the War on Terror has superceded the War on Drugs: "What, we don't have enough love in our heart for two wars? Jokes on us, huh?"
• Though Carver and his partner, Herc, are introduced as complete lunkheads who can't even do a proper search of a vehicle for a weapon (which, in turn, quickly establishes Kima Greggs' bonafides as a natural police), they're great sources of comic relief. Here, I especially enjoy their debate about whether piss can flow downhill.
• Also very funny: Bunk cursing under his breath and threatening his corpse to not come back a murder, lest he get stuck with an unsolveable case. That moment is the first of many quintessential Bunk-isms that puts him near the top of every fan's list of favorite "wire" characters.
• Another questionable early element: Dominic West's American accent. It would get (slightly) better over the years, but it's especially shaky in the Snot Boogie scene.
• Though D'Angelo is presented as the leader and (relatively) wise old head of the Pit crew, you'll note that it's young Wallace who's the only one to know that Alexander Hamilton's the guy on the $10 bill, and that Hamilton wasn't a president, while D insists that only presidents get their faces on money. That scene is the first of many in the series to show just what a limited worldview the players on the west side of Baltimore really have.

Up next: "The Detail," in which Lt. Daniels discovers just what a terrible hand he's been dealt with this Barksdale task force, while McNulty and Bunk look into Gant's murder.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Lost, "There's No Place Like Home, Pt. 2 & 3": Dude, where's my island?

Okay, I sat down for 10 minutes, tried to wrap my head around all that had happened and how I felt about it, and now it's time for the for-real review. "Lost" season four finale spoilers coming up just as soon as I play some chess...

Like I said above, I'm still processing even as I write this (because I know I'm not going to be able to sleep until at least I finish this review), and I think the first thing to do is to chart the location and status of everyone, as best I can figure, at the end of this whole deal.

Out in the real world: Jack, Kate, Aaron, Hurley, Sayid, Sun, WAAAAALTTTT!!!!!, Ben, Widmore

In hiding: Desmond, Penny, maybe Lapidus (though he could just be kicking it in the Caribbean again, assuming he's too small a fish for Widmore's people to go after)

On the island: Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, Charlotte, Richard and the Others, probably Rose and Bernard (Rose was chiding Miles moments before we saw Faraday load up a raft filled with redshirt Lostaways, and I doubt Bernard would've left without her), potentially other redshirts (though their ranks are running pretty low at this point; the freighter explosion was like the "Lost" equivalent of the Moldavian Massacre)

Dead in 2004: Michael, Keamy and his mercenaries

Dead in 2007: Locke (aka Jeremy Bentham, the mysterious man in the coffin from "Through the Looking Glass")

Location known, status unknown: Claire and Christian (who are on the island but may be the walking dead)

Maybe dead, maybe lost at sea, maybe back on the island: Jin (who was on deck and could have miraculously jumped clear of the explosion), plus Faraday and the redshirts on his raft (and if any or all of these people weren't absorbed in the island-disappearing effect, then they're kinda screwed, as Penny's boat obviously didn't find them)

So now that we have that mostly cleared up, I find myself looking forward to season five more than I do reliving this conclusion to season four. At the risk of sounding like a total hypocrite -- considering how often over the years I've pounded my shoes against a table and demanded answers from Lindelof and Cuse -- "There's No Place Like Home" (all three parts) played fair with the audience 100 percent, answered most of the questions raised by "Through the Looking Glass" and then "The Beginning of the End," explained how the Oceanic Six got off the island, why they're lying, etc., etc., etc... and yet, as I did with the answer-laden "Cabin Fever," I feel ever so slightly disappointed by all of this.

Lindelof likes to talk about how they've set themselves up for failure, that the answers people have cooked up in their heads about Smokey, and the numbers, and all the show's other mysteries, will invariably seem cooler than what the show itself eventually reveals. And there may be something to that in my reaction here, but I don't think so. I think that the way Cuse and Lindelof structured this season and the Oceanic Six story at the heart of it, things were going to have the feel of inevitability by the end of it. By this point, we'd been given so many clues and nuggets of information about the Six's escape, the cover story, etc., that much -- but not all -- of "There's No Place Like Home" was largely taken up with filling in the remaining gaps in the story, like how Sun made it off the freighter but Jin didn't, the origin and motivations for the Oceanic Six lie (about which I will have more to say below), the identity of the guy in the coffin, etc. This episode reminded me in some ways of the "Dexter" season two finale, where the plot mechanics of that otherwise-thrilling season brought us to a finale that could only end one way, and which therefore didn't seem quite as special as what preceeded it. Until this season, the quality curve for "Lost" -- both within each episode and within each season -- has been an inverse bell curve, with the best stuff tending to come at the very beginning and, especially, the very end. I loved the hell out of season four, but I'd rank all three parts of "There's No Place Like Home" well behind "The Constant," "The Economist," "The Beginning of the End" and "Confirmed Dead," to name just four.

Which isn't to say I disliked the episode, or that it dashes all the optimism I've had about the series ever since "Through the Looking Glass," or that it makes me any less crazy about having to wait until early 2009 to see what happens next. I was just, based on how much I dug this season and how mind-blowing the show's finales usually are, a bit let down.

But there was still a ton of good stuff here, most of it outside the plot mechanics of the Oceanic Six stuff.

Start with the completely unexpected, completely tear-jerking, completely fabulous Desmond and Penny reunion. Did anybody see that coming this early in the series? Anybody? Screw the Jack/Kate/Sawyer/Juliet stuff (which, with Juliet and a shirtless Sawyer left on the island, is sure to be a full-on quadrangle by the start of next season); this is the true epic love story of "Lost," and it was a moment as well-earned as it was surprising. Yet as awesome as it was to see the dumbfounded look on Penny's face (even though she knew where to look for Desmond, she didn't honestly expect to find him that easily) or the joy on Desmond's, I have two separate yet equal concerns for these two: 1)That, having been granted their happy ending and been sent into hiding by Jack, they now disappear from the series for long stretches, at least until Ben can find them to make good on his promise to Widmore; or 2)That, having seemingly been granted their happy ending two seasons before the show's over, one or both of them is doomed.

Or consider yet another edition of Sayid Jarrah: Breakdance Fighter. Seriously, they need to have Sayid beat people up with his feet at least three or four times a season, because it's always splendid, as was the entire fight sequence with Keamy and the mercs, from Kate running towards the chopper right up to Richard shooting him in the back and, like the Libyans in "Back to the Future," not thinking to check for a bulletproof vest.

Or, for that matter, there was the entire sequence with Keamy dying, the chopper running out of fuel, and people scrambling on and off of the freighter. As I've said many times in the past, for all that we like to dwell on the mysteries, this show is at its best when it's about the characters and their emotions, and that sequence was packed with great character beats: the realization that Locke, in spite of his obsession with protecting the island at all costs, still cares about the survival of Jack and the rest; the look of pure happiness on Michael's face (the first such expression he's shown since before Tom Friendly kidnapped Walt) at learning Sun's good news; Hurley again feeling guilty about his weight as the chopper began to plunge, and Sawyer deciding once again to sacrifice himself for the sake of his friends; Sun screaming for Jin (whose death I don't want to believe in; it's enough that Sun believes he's dead); and the eerie appearance of Christian, currently acting as Jacob's proxy (and therefore the island's), to tell Michael it was finally okay for him to die, because he had served his purpose to the place.

Now, when Locke first broached the idea of lying to the outside world with Jack, I rolled my eyes at his logic, and at the idea that Jack would buy into it. Jack cares as much about protecting the island and its secrets as I care about Jack's love life or his tattoos. But by the time they were on the raft and the boat was approaching, it made more sense. First, he knows (or hopes) that at least some of the Lostaways are still on the island, and he finally appreciates just how obsessed and deadly are the people who faked the Oceanic Six crash and financed Keamy and company. The lie is to protect whoever's left behind on the island (which wasn't a factor when Locke first discussed it, as Jack assumed everybody but Locke would get off just fine), but it's also to protect the Six. So long as they maintain this lie that's in some way consistent with the lie that Widmore and his people created, it becomes a mutually assured destruction scenario: Widmore can't go after the Six, because the Six are playing along in a very public fashion.

(That said, I still don't understand all the details of the lie, which they had a week on Penny's boat to craft. Kate as the heroine of the crash and as Aaron's mother is for the benefit of making Kate look good when the time came for her to stand trial, but what about that business of three other people -- identified, in the expanded version of the press conference scene from Part 1 that ABC showed immediately before the finale, as Boone, Charlie and Libby -- who survived the crash but didn't make it off the island? Was that just to make the story seem more plausible, because the odds of everyone making it off the plane and then surviving on the island would be too slim? If so, why those three? And does this mean that we may one day find out what the hell Libby's backstory is?)

If "There's No Place Like Home" wasn't the game-changer that "Through the Looking Glass" was, at least it opens myriad story possibilities for next season. We obviously have the story of Ben and Jack teaming up to get the Oceanic Six (plus the corpse of Locke, and quite possibly Walt, now that the timeframe gibes with Malcolm David Kelley being eight feet tall and bursting with testosterone) back to the island. But we also potentially have three year's worth of island stories to tell, depending on exactly where and when the island disappeared to. For all I know, by the time Jack drags everybody back to Craphole Island, he'll find out that, from Sawyer's perspective, only a couple of days have passed, but Locke/Bentham's story about how bad things got on the island after the Six left implies there's a lot of story to tell there. I like the idea of an island setting with no Jack to play leader, Kate to play damsel in distress, or Ben to play pathological liar mastermind. Plus, within the real-world setting, we have the question of where Desmond and Penny are hiding -- and whether Sayid, as Ben's hired gun, would be willing to knowingly try to hurt the two of them -- what exactly Sun is doing with Paik and Widmore (and if she ever finds out that Ben killed Keamy, leading to what she assumes was the death of her husband, Ben-allied Jack is going to have some 'splainin' to do), how many former characters Hurley's playing chess with (Mr. Eko shout-out!!!!), what Abaddon's deal is, etc.

So even though this one wasn't all I might have hoped it could be (even as I should have realized, by the nature of what had come before, that it couldn't have been much more than this), I'm still very psyched to see what comes next, and frustrated as hell that it'll be another nine months or so until we find out.

Some other thoughts:

• A couple of things were possibly ignored, or at least not explained well: Claire never got in the chopper, per Desmond's vision (though, as with the Naomi/Penny confusion, there's precedence for Desmond's visions being wonky), and I'd argue that nothing so terrible happened as a result of Hurley going with Locke in the premiere to justify him apologizing to Jack about it. I suppose you could say he blames himself for all the redshirts who went with him and Locke and then died when Keamy moved in on New Otherton, but that would presume that anyone on this show cares about the redshirts (who in this episode got to wear red life vests), and given how disinterested the main characters all were in getting anybody extra onto the chopper, I can't see Hurley beating himself up too much about that.
• I have to mention it again: Mr. Eko shout-out!!! God, I miss Mr. Eko.
• Another bit of full-circle, playing fair information-revealing: we now know, for the most part, how Ben wound up in the Tunisian desert sometime in 2005 wearing a bloody Dharma parka. Question: given how extreme that situation was, with him activating the Orchid, moving the frozen gears, etc., should we assume that, when he's gotten off the island previously (in the surveillance photos taken by Widmore's people), it was by other means?
• The entire sequence of Locke watching the Candle/Halliwax video (which was very differen from the "raw footage" version that team "Lost" screened at Comic-Con last summer) while Ben casually threw metal junk into the chamber was hysterical, topped of course by Ben's "If you mean time-traveling bunnies, then yes." I also liked that, given how most of the Dharma tech on the island seems to be circa the late '70s, the effect of putting that junk into the chamber reminded me of what happened when I didn't listen carefully to my dad's instructions and put food wrapped in tinfoil into our first microwave oven.
• I'm glad that Miles and Charlotte stayed on the island, and not only because Ken Leung's one of the best additions to the cast over the run of the show. I still want to find out what Abaddon's Plan A was that required him to assemble a team including a mercenary (Naomi), a mentally-ill physicist (Faraday), a medium (Miles) and an anthropologist who may or may not have been born on the island (Charlotte).
• I don't know if it was because this episode was rushed through production due to the strike, but some of the special effects work -- notably the green screen of the airport behind Jack in the opening scene, and the shots of the freighter wreckage below the chopper -- looked much shoddier than usual.
• On the other hand, I never tire of Michael Giacchino's score.

That's all I've got for now. A lot of you have weighed in already, but for tradition's sake, what did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Top Chef: If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any peanut butter mashed!

Haven't written about "Top Chef" in quite some time, but seeing as we're almost to the end of this oddly unsatisfying season, I'll offer up some spoilers just as soon as I pat down my scallops...

So why hasn't this season been doing it for me? The chefs have, for the most part, seemed quite talented, and other than the continued, cockroach-like presence of Lisa, the top 4 contains the people you would have expected to make it there all along. (In fairness to Lisa, Spike absolutely deserved to go home last night; it's just that there were so many other times where Lisa should have been gone, notably last week when she was at least as bad as Dale and didn't have his prior record of impressive challenge performances to serve as a tie-breaker.) As a believer in meritocracy, I should be okay with how this has all played out, but instead, I'm watching out of habit. Among my complaints with this year:

• 7 out of the 12 elimination challenges have involved people working in teams, or at least in pairs. I haven't gone back to previous episodes to break down whether the total was roughly the same, but it's certainly felt like there have been fewer opportunities for the chefs to shine individually than there were, say, last season. Not only has that led to people succeeding or failing based on the work of others (again, see Dale getting knifed because he was executive chef on a lousy team), but it's prevented the chefs from really standing out on their own. I get that Stephanie's clearly been one of the best chefs, for instance, but I really have no sense of what kind of food she likes to make.
• Along similar lines, these chefs haven't taken a lot of chances. There haven't been many spectacular failures or amazing successes. When they fail, it's usually a matter of poor execution than someone's ambition exceeding their abilities, and when they succeed, it's usually a matter of them executing a recipe they're already familiar with. Richard's gadgeteering is the closest we've come to something really memorable either way, but he hasn't used the gizmos in quite some time (mainly because they didn't always work well), and you got the sense that he was using them in ways he had used them plenty of times in his own restaurant.
• Not a lot of interesting interpersonal dynamics among the chefs. Having the lesbian couple in the house together didn't amount to much because neither of them was very good. The frat guy bonding of the Spike/Andrew/Mark triumverate was briefly amusing, but beyond that, most of the relationship stuff we saw was of the more sour personalities (primarily Dale and Lisa) cursing each other out with such venom that it was just unpleasant rather than entertaining.
• Tom Colicchio seems to be mailing it in. Too many weeks, Chef Tom gives off the impression that he doesn't really want to be judging these same challenges again, doesn't want to have to listen to Padma try to appropriate the other judges' opinions and make them sound like things she thought up on her own, etc. Sometimes, that leads to him seeming bored; other times, he comes across as excessively nitpicky with his complaints. (There are Judges Table interrogations where you can tell he's going to jump down the chef's throat no matter what answer s/he gives, and no matter which of two bad options s/he had to choose during the course of the challenge.)

Still, I'm hopeful for the finale, because the top 4 will have been away from the hamster cage for a while and should have their creative batteries recharged. (See how much better Dale was in the season 3 finale than he had been at any point during that season.) I'm assuming the winner's going to be one of Stephanie or Antonia, both because they've clearly been two of the season's three strongest contestants and because it would allow Bravo to put that "Can a woman win Top Chef?" question to bed, but Richard could smoke up some plate so amazing that he'd make it impossible for the judges and producers to stick to what I assume is the script.

What does everybody else think? Has this season been more appetizing to you? Who are you pulling for in the finale?

Click here to read the full post

Mad Men premiere date

Everything's comin' up "Mad Men," folks. Today, AMC announced the following:

• "Mad Men" season two will debut on Sunday, July 27th, at 10 p.m., the show's new timeslot.
• "Mad Men" season one will come out on DVD on July 1.
• "Mad Men" season one, for those of you who don't buy DVDs but do have On Demand, will be available On Demand in both standard and high-def versions starting June 30.
• "Mad Men" season one, for those of you who don't buy DVDs and don't have On Demand, will be rerun in an all-day marathon starting at noon Eastern on July 20.

Good news, though late July is longer than I want to wait. (I blame the strike.) Smoke 'em if you got 'em. Click here to read the full post

"Dude, you've got some...Arzt...on you."

Only breakfast, plus a full workday, plus dinner, plus the first hour of primetime(*) until the "Lost" finale, boys and girls! Are you excited? I'm excited.

(*) Per last week's podcast, apparently the 8 o'clock hour will feature a slightly modified rerun of part one of "There's No Place Like Home," featuring different questions at the Oceanic Six press conference that deal with other details of the cover story. Sneaky ABC programmers. I'm assuming a combined version will be on the DVDs.

Because we've been promised something as mind-blowing, game-changing and cliche-invoking as last year's "Through the Looking Glass," my plan is to get up a temporary blank post at 11 o'clock (or as soon as I finish the episode, if I'm time-shifting slightly) to allow comments while I work on writing the actual review. Assuming I'm not a complete chimp, the full review should take the place of the blank post without displacing any of the pre-existing comments.

In the meantime, to get you in the mood, you might want to check out these dueling lists of the 15 best "Lost" episodes ever. (List spoiler alert: both authors are clearly Desmond/Penny fans. As well they should be.) I'll admit that it's been so long since I've seen a lot of season one and two episodes that I wouldn't feel confident in making such a list myself (though I know "Through the Looking Glass," "Walkabout," "Man of Science, Man of Faith," possibly "Exodus" (if you can take away the horrible ending) and a good chunk of this season, notably "The Constant," would be on it), but feel free to suggest, here or there, your own list of the best of "Lost." Click here to read the full post

Sepinwall on TV: 'In Plain Sight' review

Today's column reviews USA's fun new drama, "In Plain Sight," which debuts on Sunday. Think a blonder "Karen Sisco," if Karen transferred to the witness protection part of the Marshal service, and you've got the idea. Click here to read the full post

Pilot Watch stuck in holding pattern

Still getting back into the swing of things after my Memorial Day adventures took up an extra day on the backend. I'm hard at work on the first "wire" review and gradually starting to watch new summer fare. ("In Plain Sight": as much fun as expected. "Swingtown": ugh.)

Ordinarily, this would be the time of year on the blog where I'd be offering up my initial impressions (but not reviews) of the network pilots, but that's proving problematic this year, because there aren't that many pilots yet.

ABC pushed back all of its series development for mid-season, with its only new scripted pick-up being a show they developed last year, "Life on Mars," and where the pilot is going to be redone enough (with a brand-new creative team) that it would be all but worthless for ABC to send out a pilot, much less for me to watch it. NBC picked up their new shows without going through the pilot process, which means they don't have completed first episodes of anything yet. And while Fox has pilots, they haven't sent them out yet, and in the case of "Fringe," they may not send it out until right before press tour.

Even CBS, which boasted during upfront week of a relatively stable development process, only sent out four of their six new series, with only clip reels for "Harper's Island" (because it's being recast and shot from scratch; the clip reel was just a sales tool) and "Eleventh Hour" (for reasons unknown). I dipped into a couple of the CBS shows before I left for the holiday weekend, and when I find time to watch the rest, I'll write them all up. (In the meantime, Fienberg has offered up his take on the CBS drama pilots, and his take on the two sitcoms.) But that may be it for Pilot Watch '08 for quite some time, if not rendering the concept completely moot. Click here to read the full post

Are you ready for the summer?, take two

Okay, so after pondering this over Memorial Day weekend (when I wasn't busy with best man duties at my best friend's wedding, or with beating Guitar Hero III), I've decided on a few things for the summer plans:

1. Because the original, bare bones "Sports Night" DVD is out of print, and because the nice people at Shout Factory! won't be releasing a spiffy, extras-laden new set until the fall, I'm going to table those reviews (again). Maybe instead of waiting until summer of '09, I'll sprinkle them throughout the season during dead spots (December, for instance).
   
2. Though I can't promise I'll always be able to stick to this schedule (especially during press tour in July), I'm going to attempt to post my reviews of "The Wire" season one every Friday morning, starting this week.
   
3. After I struggled with the question of how to tailor the reviews -- and the comments that follow them -- to be inclusive to both "Wire" newbies and fans of all five seasons who are just looking for a little nostalgia, someone in the comments to the previous summer post came up with a brilliant, non-labor intensive solution: two posts, nearly identical, save that one will have a bonus section at the end where I comment on foreshadowing (ironic or otherwise), and where anything goes in the comments, while the newbies can have their own spoiler-free environment.
   
4. With "Sports Night" off the table, I'm not sure yet whether I'll be taking on a second DVD rewind project this summer. Let's see how my schedule starts playing itself out over the next few weeks, whether there's a SAG strike (which would scuttle press tour), etc.
   

That is all. Resume partying. Click here to read the full post

Grey's Anatomy, "Freedom": Mojo circus

Last post until after Memorial Day, most likely. "Grey's Anatomy" season finale spoilers coming up just as soon as I alphabetize my M&Ms...

Mission accomplished -- mostly.

Shonda Rhimes said the strike gave her the opportunity to take a look at what needed fixing om the show. Most of the stories written about this epiphany implied that it mainly had to do with the need to finally get Meredith and McDreamy together once and for all, but "Freedom" suggested that Shonda is aware that the problems went far deeper than her main couple, and that she was determined to fix as many as possible to start next season with a clean slate.

I don't care about Mer and Der at this point (if I ever did), and their reunion ended on an odd note, with Derek leaving temporarily to break up with Rose. (It's an honorable decision for the character, but it sucked some of the air out of the episode's final moments. Better that Derek had already broken the bad news to Rose, even off-camera, beforehand; he already seemed to want Meredith back even before she made her big speech.)

But I did, at one point, like George and Bailey and Cristina and some of the other characters, and Shonda finally recognized that an entire season of watching them mope was a terrible miscalculation. So Cristina gets her confidence back (and, as an added bonus, finally realizes she should be teaching her interns, albeit in cold Cristina style), George fights to get promoted to resident status (no idea if it's possible in mid-year, but it's not like anything else on the show is realistic), and Bailey gives up the clinic so she can focus on surgery and getting her family back together. (And while I hated seeing her marriage fall apart, a story where Miranda tries to fix it should be a much better use of Chandra Wilson's talents than the clinic, which was always just an excuse to give her something to do since Shonda didn't know how to write personal storylines for the character in the healthy marriage).

Add to those developments some very good guest star acting (especially by Jurnee Smollett as the surviving brain patient; I've had my eye on her since she was a 10-year-old on an "NYPD Blue" episode, and she's going to do great things as she moves into adulthood), a hell of a performance from Justin Chambers (Karev being one of the few characters I didn't grow to hate this year), and some good humor (Bailey's Star Wars monologue) and I could definitely see myself watching a show like this next season for more than masochistic reasons.

That said, some caveats. First, I'm already on record that I don't want Callie and Hahn to be a couple. Not to ruin the stereotype about guys loving to watch girls make out and all that, but this seems much less a natural progression for Callie than, like the clinic was for Bailey, something the writers came up with for an underused character to do. Also, I don't care how many speeches the writers have Bailey or Webber or any other authority figure give about how much Izzie has grown over the years and how she deserves a responsibility like the clinic; too much damage has been done to that character for me to respond to her with anything but white-hot hate.

But this was at least a step in the right direction, something more than just lip service to all the things we've been complaining about for a long time now.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

American Idol: Final results, minute-by-minute

"American Idol" finale spoilers, minute-by-minute (or thereabouts) coming right up (though I'll admit the picture above kind of gives a big hint)...

7:58: So, last night Randy dialed up some molten lava hot praise for young David, and Simon said that L'il Archie scored a knockout over David Cook. Yet DialIdol predicts Cook winning in a landslide. To quote the great Mike LaFontaine, wha happen? Well, either DialIdol's way off (which wouldn't be a surprise), or else at this stage of a season fanbases matter a lot more than how anyone does on the final night (also not a surprise), or else Simon throwing Cook under the bus for three very good performances riled up the Cougars for Cook and the casual voters enough to get the rocker the win. We'll see.

8:00: Ryan Seacrest is hushed as he asks, "What happens when a nation is gripped by the closest competition it has ever seen? What can you expect when two ordinary people achieve the extraordinary? What does it look like when the country's number one show reaches its critical mass? Well, it looks like this. And this... is the 'American Idol' season finale!"

For the record, I'd put both the Lakers vs. Celtics rivalry and Bush v. Gore just a little bit ahead of Cook v. Cook in terms of closest American competitions of my lifetime.

8:01: Ryan declares that if every single person in Canada, Spain, Ireland and Australia voted last night, it wouldn't have matched their vote totals. 97 and a half million votes came in. "You didn't just break the record for the show; you smashed it by over 23 million." He says one David received 56% of the vote; the other David, 44%. Which, if I've done my math right, roughly matches what Dial Idol says about Cook's alleged landslide victory.

8:02: Matt Rogers! Did you know he played in the Rose Bowl? And were he and Mikalah really the two best "Idol" alums they could get to host the two hometown remotes?

8:03: the top 12 team up with the stars of "So You Think You Can Dance?" for our evening's first group song, opening with "Get Ready." Our dance-averse finalists seem to actually be moving with something vaguely resembling choreography. (At the very least, it's "Brady Bunch" Silver Platters-worthy choreography, though the "SYTYCD"ers predictably outshine them.) What's up with that? Also, why is Kristy Lee Cook front and center for the Motown song?

8:10: Cook and Archuleta dueting on Chad Kroeger's's "Hero" -- or, rather, Cook singing "Hero" with occasional kibbitzing from Archuleta. It's not quite like the bit in the season five finale where Mary J. Blige barely tolerated Elliott Yamin's presence on their "duet" of "One," but you can definitely tell which of the two finalists picked this particular number.

8:12: Seacrest tries to lead the Davids (or, rather, Cook, as it's tough to get anything coherent out of Archie on live TV) into an extended plug for an upcoming movie starring a former "Saturday Night Live" player who has decided that little people are inherently funny. I used to really like this particular "SNL" alum. Again, I ask: wha happen? Go back to making Scottish-accented jokes about oversized heads, guy!

8:16: And now they've brought the "SNL" alum out onto the stage? Isn't this a Paramount movie? Why are they devoting this much time to pimping some other company's studio? Or did Paramount buy out NewsCorp this afternoon while I wasn't paying attention?

8:18: Seal comes out to duet with Syesha on "Waiting For You." After what Constantine Maroulis and other contestants have done to "Kiss From a Rose" over the years on this show, I admire his willingness to associate himself with this show. Then again, Heidi and the baby Seals gotta eat. Not a bad number, really.

8:25: Seacrest says interviewing Jason Castro was like pulling teeth, but listening to him was very pleasant. Are we sure he's not talking about Archuleta? Castro at least answered in something resembling complete sentences, even though he always sounded stoned while doing so. Good on them for letting him sing "Hallelujah" again and remind us why we all liked him before all the nonsense about "Michelle, my bell" and Paula traveling through time and the shooting of sheriffs.

8:27: The season's final product-placed car commercial, to "Let the Good Times Roll," splicing together outtakes from all the different product-placed car commercials, leading to the annual presentation of two product-placed cars to the two finalists. Despite having watched the show for years, both make a convincing display of being surprised by the gesture.

8:29: The female finalists, dressed all in red, do a Donna Summer montage. Amanda Overmyer, God bless her, still looks like she had no idea how she wound up on this show with these people. Brooke White, God bless her as well, still looks like her legs are being operated by remote control. And is it wrong that I had completely forgotten Ramiele existed until this number?

8:31: Donna Summer herself comes out to plug/sing her new single. Again, I give her props for appearing on a show where many of her tunes have been previously massacred (including only moments ago by Amanda Overmyer, whom I love but who should never be asked to sing disco). Plus, she throws in some "Last Dance" at the end, and I also have to applaud golden oldies artists who recognize that, while they have new product to promote, people really only want to hear the classics.

8:39: Michael and Carly get a very special Early Shock Boots Duet of The Box Tops' "The Letter." They're exactly as you remembered them: Michael with the smoldering looks (and the occasional missed cues), Carly with the saucy dancing and constant threats to shout, but they sound really good together. Did I mention that I'm still bitter about randomly picking Michael in my "Idol" office pool and then seeing him go out so early? Or should my bitterness be about the fact that Chikezie went home even earlier than Michael, and therefore likely won't even get a duet showcase tonight?

8:43: Jimmy Kimmel (did ABC buy out NewsCorp as well? Or is Rupert Murdoch going around and scarfing up all the other media companies?) comes out and tells a Sanjaya joke that cracks up the actual Sanjaya much more than anyone else in the theater, also throws in a random Chris Sligh sight gag and mocks Paula's adventures in fortune-telling. Setting all of Simon's insults to "Pop Goes the Weasel" was a nice touch, though.

8:45: Guys medley this time, doing Bryan Adams. Somewhere, Robin from "How I Met Your Mother" is giddy. The runners-up version of "Summer of '69" segues into the top 2 doing "Heaven," which as I recall, Archie sang in the Hollywood round. Does he realize the song is about post-coital bliss?

8:47: The real Bryan Adams! I think Robin from "HIMYM" just had a heart attack.

8:54: Jordin Sparks plugs a new "Idol" attraction at a product-placed theme park that is also not in the NewsCorp empire. What's going on here? Where's the synergy?

8:55: Cook teams up with ZZ Top to perform "Sharp-Dressed Man." I wouldn't have pegged the baddest beards in rock 'n roll as among big David's influences, but he looks like he's having a swell time up there, even busting out a little bow-legged dance during the instrumental portion.

8:59: Brooke and Graham Nash (of classic rock supergroup Crosby, Stills and Nash, for you young'uns) duet on "Teach Your Children." Brooke can't really harmonize, but it's still like the ultimate Nanny Brooke song.

9:03: David Cook, in his underwear, gets to channel his inner Tom Cruise circa "Risky Business" in a Guitar Hero ad. Is this the first time we've seen a finalist get a product endorsement before the season's officially over? And how glad are we all that they didn't ask Archuleta to do that one? (I'm suddenly having horrific flashbacks to John Stevens IV and Diana DeGarmo in towels.)

9:07: Hi. I'm old. I think those are The Jonas Brothers, but I can't say with 100 percent certainty.

9:09: Time for the parade of the freaks. Yippee! How is it that I only watched one or two audition episodes and yet I recognize all these people? And is it wrong that I'm more excited to see the return of Renaldo Lapuz than I am about half of the Best Top 12 Ever? On the other hand, I'm guessing this makes the possible Chikezie solo even less likely, dammit.

9:17: Hi, I'm still old. One Republic comes out to sing "Apologize." Oh, wait. I'm only old in that I didn't know the name of the group or song. I've heard this before. Never mind. Plus, Archie gets to perform it with them. So Cook gets the literal graybeards while Archuleta's paired with a current act? Is this the "Idol" producers' way of trying to combat the perception that big David's a contemporary artist while little David can only sing 80-year-old spirituals?

9:23: Jordin's on the stage this time to remind us that she won last season. Nothing against Philippi's daughter, but season six began and ended for me with Melinda Doolittle.

9:31: Last year, we got Celine Dion dueting with Zombie Elvis. This year, we get Zombie Gladys Knight with the cast of "Tropic Thunder" -- including Number One Star In the World Robert Doweny Jr. -- as The Pips. I'll never complain about a chance to hear Iron Man sing (dude has serious pipes), but why do we need Zombie Gladys if the real Gladys is among us?

9:35: And now it's time for Carrie Underwood, aka The Last Successful Winner We Had. (And, no, none of us bought last night's attempt to slip Chris Daughtry into a montage of former winners. This ain't "1984," guys, and you can't write Taylor out of history just because you hate him.) It's really amazing how well her handlers have coached up Carrie. When she was on the show in season four, she had all the stage presence of a lox, and now she's totally plausible as the biggest star in country music.

9:41: God help us all, they did an Archie version of the Guitar Hero ad. At least they put him in boxers. But I'm still having those unfortunate JSIV/DeGarmo/towel flashbacks.

9:43: Our final group song of the season, a George Michael medley. As always, Amanda's mic seems to be turned off except for her bizarre solo. And now it's George Michael himself. Is this an "Eli Stone" plug? Who the hell owns the Fox network right now? Don't make me go all Jack Bauer on this show and start shooting people in the leg until I get an answer, people. TELL ME WHO YOUR CONGLOMERATE IS!!!!

9:51: As George Michael continues to sing, two thoughts occur to me: 1)We're late enough into the show that we'll almost certainly be doing without the lame Golden Idol awards (though I would arguably have preferred them to the bit with the "SNL" alum), and 2)It feels wrong to have a George Michael on the Fox network who isn't working at a banana stand.

9:57: We're back from the final ad break. Ryan asks the judges for final thoughts. Randy trots out the Clay/Ruben-esque "You're both winners" theory. Paula gives us a Zen koen. Ryan asks Simon about what it was like on second viewing -- which gives him a chance to apologize and backpedal from the Cook bus-throwing from the night before. Is this a sign that Dial Idol called it right and Simon doesn't want to look stupid? Or just Simon trying not to make the co-winner look bad?

9:59: The accountant certifies the results, Ryan wishes them both luck, and the winner, by 12 million votes, is David Cook!!!!!! Sorry, gonna be impartial for a second. Yes!!!! A total breaking-the-mold choice, proof that you can show actual musicianship and creativity on this show and succeed, and, perhaps best of all, a repudiation of Randy Jackson.

10:01: David fighting back tears. his mom and brother are on stage with him. David calls all the finalists up as he sings the actual coronation song, "Time of My Life." The song is predictably artery-clogging, but Cook's emotions and his affection for his fellow contestants (including David A., who's taking his defeat admirably well) are so palpable that, like Fantasia on "I Believe," I'm okay with it. Justice is served. How 'bout that? Click here to read the full post

Are you ready for the summer?

Tonight marks the end of the official 2007-8 TV season, though that distinction is becoming more and more meaningless as everyone moves to year-round programming. (It's especially meaningless this year because the strike pushed back things like the "Grey's Anatomy" (tomorrow night) and "Lost" (next Thursday) finales past the Nielsen-mandated end date.)

Still, a good chunk of the shows I regularly write about won't be back until the fall, and so once again it's time to talk about what the summer months will bring for the blog. Tentative plans coming up just as soon as I clean off my propane grill...

Obviously, we still have the aforementioned "Grey's" and "Lost" two-hour finales to deal with, plus additional episodes of "Battlestar Galactica" (3 left) and "Doctor Who" (6 left), though both are, like me, taking Memorial Day weekend off.

While the strike disrupted some summer programming, "Mad Men" and "Burn Notice" will both be back in July (no specific date yet for the former, July 10 for the latter), "My Boys" is back on June 13, HBO's David Simon-produced miniseries "Generation Kill" bows on July 13, CBS' "Swingtown" (which I haven't watched yet) is on June 5, and USA's "In Plain Sight," which I have high hopes for, starts on June 1. There are probably a few other new and returning shows that will work their way into the rotation before the summer's out.

In addition, I'm finally going to attempt two projects that I originally mentioned in the early days of the strike: revisiting the first seasons of "The Wire" and "Sports Night." Last summer, I ran through the entire run of "Freaks and Geeks," and I spent the strike watching the original version of "Cupid" on YouTube, so these will be continuing that trend.

The "Wire" reviews are a definite; I've already gone back and watched the pilot and will attempt to do them on at least a weekly basis (give or take some disruptions for press tour and/or vacation) starting some time late next week. (I'll announce the exact day ahead of time; I just wanted to put the thought in people's heads so they'd know to make sure they had DVDs handy.) I don't want to 100 percent commit to "Sports Night," simply because it's 22 episodes and I don't know that I want to be doubling up on them. Once I figure out the logistics, I'll make an announcement.

That's what I have in my head so far. As always, I'm open to suggestions, though, as always, I reserve the right to not use them. Click here to read the full post

Reaper, "Cancun": A death in the family?

"Reaper" season finale spoilers coming up just as soon as I get rid of a mold stain...

Hmmm... I'm a little conflicted on how that all played out.

On the one hand, the finale introduced a whole bunch of interesting new angles for season two: Sam is now marked for death (or worse) by all the non-Tony rebel demons, Sam believes his father to be dead even though his father somehow (by being a demon himself?) survived being buried alive, Sam is either the harbinger of the Apocalypse or an important part of God's plan, etc. To trot out the now inevitable "Buffy" comparisons, this is the sort of territory that "Buffy" was heading into by the end of its uneven first season, which led to its kick-ass second season.

On the other hand, I don't know that this show, with this particular assemblage of talent in front of and behind the camera, is really up for much weightier material. Bret Harrison's a talented comic actor, but he doesn't seem up for the more serious moments, as evidenced by how flat the few scenes were in between the apparent death of Sam's dad and the revelation that he was alive and well. I don't know if that's on Harrison, or on the producers not wanting to go to a very dark place knowing that, within minutes, they'd be telling us that it all was a lie, but Sam seemed mildly bummed-out, at best, at the thought that his father (biological or adopted, he was still Sam's dad) was dead, that he was now Demon Enemy #1, that he could be Satan's son, etc. The idea to have Sock try to help Sam cope with his grief in the only way he knew how -- acting juvenile and blowing stuff up -- could have been both funny and moving at the same time if the moments leading up to it seemed more tragic, but instead it came across like the show itself only knows how to deal with tragedy by being juvenile and blowing stuff up.

I remain glad that the show got renewed and will be back at midseason, and that Fazekas, Butters and company got away from the tedious Soul of the Week format that was killing the show in the early going. I just wonder if they've maybe bit off more than they can chew here.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post