Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Rescue Me, "Torch": A burning in his loins

Spoilers for tonight's outstanding episode of "Rescue Me" coming up just as soon as I polish my coin collection...
"The only thing he can feel is heat. Only thing that gets through that thick Irish skin of his is fire. And even goddamned flames ain't gonna make him cry." -Tommy's dad
Damn, that was good, wasn't it?

It's easy to dwell on the negative with "Rescue Me," but episodes like "Torch" are a reminder of how brilliant the show can be, and why it's worth suffering through the sloppy, self-aggrandizing moments.

Where even the better episodes of the series often appear to be a randomly-assembled series of vignettes, some stronger than others, nearly all of "Torch" (with the exception of the Garrity stuff, which was isolated comic relief, but fairly well-executed comic relief, so no biggie) felt very much of a piece, all of it tied to that amazing shot(*) of Tommy wrapping the little kid's corpse in a blanket. Every scene afterwards -- from Franco at the gym to Lou with Candy to Tommy burning himself after another round with the ghosts -- keyed off of the crew's response to seeing the burned child, and to Tommy's guilt over Connor.

(*) Major kudos to director John Fortenberry and anyone else in the crew involved with the decision to frame that as a static shot, with Denis Leary popping in and out of frame as he worked, occasionally looking directly at us in a way that didn't break the fourth wall, and the other firefighters looking on sheepishly, just out of focus. It lent an immediacy to what Tommy was doing at the same time it deliberately kept our eyes off the horror in the same way that Tommy was trying to hide it from the media and cameraphone gawkers.

"Rescue Me" is often guilty of deifying Tommy past all reason or dramatic interest, not just in the way that every attractive woman in the five boroughs throws herself at the guy, but in the way that he always seems to have the moral high ground on any subject that doesn't involve his personal life. With Leary a producer who has a hand in every script, it's easy to view the series as some kind of massive ego trip. And maybe some weeks it is. But here, Leary and Peter Tolan's script turned Tommy's super-competence and unassailable machismo on their heads.

Yes, he's the only guy from the truck who can bring himself to deal with the little corpse, and the one who can bring himself to enter the pediatric cancer ward and put on a happy face for the kids. But we see through the episode -- particularly when the ghosts come out again (in maybe the series' best use of that device since very early on, if not ever) -- that Tommy's armor comes with a cost, and in many ways is as un-admirable as his drinking, his inept parenting, his clumsy relationships and the rest of it.

Tommy may be as tough as his old man suggests, but so much of his pain in this episode comes from his realization that he's thought so little of Connor in the years since he died. Some of this seems self-corrective on Leary and Tolan's part -- the show killed off Connor at the end of season two, then ignored him as soon as it was convenient to do so -- but the end result of watching Tommy listen to his father, brother and best friend taunt him for being tougher than they are is still devastating, and wonderfully played by Leary.

Even the Sheila sex scene, ordinarily a cue to lunge for the remote or flee to the kitchen for a snack, fit. Though Sheila's concern about the burn being gross was superficial, overall Callie Thorne got to play her as an adult again, which she hasn't done since the 9/11 monologue near the start of the season. And the sex between the two of them was as raw and ugly as the wound on Tommy's leg.

Hell, the dead kid storyline even kept me from rolling my eyes at Lou and Candy for once, even though I suspect I'll be back to that pretty soon.

Strong, strong episode. Best of the season by a long stretch, I think, and that includes the more 9/11-intensive stuff.

A few other thoughts:

• Anyone with experience in makeup and/or special effects want to wager a guess on how they pulled off the thigh-burning effect? There's obviously a cut from a full-body shot of Tommy to a close-up of the thigh, but that still looks like someone's real leg.

• I don't begrudge Leary and Tolan wanting to showcase Steven Pasquale's song-and-dance skills, but these fantasy numbers are starting to feel a bit less special each time they do them. But at least this one ended with a funny payoff to the otherwise pointless storyline of Teddy playing Dr. Kevorkian at the VA hospital.

• That "New York, New York" cover at the end was by Cat Power.

What did everybody else think?
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Reader mail: TV shows not on DVD & reality show teases

Another reader mailbag column today, with questions about why "Ed" and "LA Law" aren't out on DVD yet, and why reality shows seem to recycle the same clips over and over in an episode. Click here to read the full post

Monday, June 29, 2009

Nurse Jackie, "School Nurse": Black and white problem

Spoilers for the fourth episode of "Nurse Jackie" coming up just as soon as I color-correct a drawing...

"School Nurse," the first of back-to-back episodes directed by Edie Falco's old "Sopranos" co-star Steve Buscemi, has children on its mind. Jackie gets into it with the teachers at her daughter's school when they suggest Grace is suffering from an anxiety disorder. Dr. O'Hara reveals, not surprisingly, a complete lack of any maternal side, while Mo Mo shows his first real signs of depth when he bonds with a little kid who reminds him of the twin brother he lost at age 1. And even Zoey, who's a grown woman, spends a large chunk of the episode acting like a kid and pouting over missing all the interesting cases, only to get some perspective after experiencing her first patient death.

I liked the parallel at the end of the episode of Zoey and Jackie both trying to improve a picture by coloring it in. But where Zoey understands that she's lost this patient, even as she performs the kind post-mortem gesture of giving her back her eyebrows, Jackie's insistence on adding color to Grace's gray drawing(*) shows that she's in denial about the problem.

(*) True story: Day after my wife and I watch this episode, I come home from work and my wife excitedly shows me a landscape drawing that our daughter did in kindergarten that day. "Look at all the colors!" my wife told me, beaming. Cable drama: always an easy way to remind yourself of all the ways your life is better than theirs.

But then, Jackie's in denial about a lot of things, from the Vicodin use to the balancing act she has going with Eddie and her husband, at one point simultaneously fielding calls from both men and telling them, "Can't talk! Love ya!" It's treated as a joke here, but Jackie's willingness to use the word "love" in connection to Eddie brings us back to last week's discussion about how much of that relationship is about the pills and how much is about genuine feelings she has for the guy. Maybe it's just because Falco and Paul Schulze have such obvious chemistry together (as you'd hope they would after knowing each other since college), but I find it hard to watch their scenes together and believe that it's just about the pills. Maybe it's somewhat, perhaps even mostly, about the pills, but Jackie does have affection, if not love, for her drug connect.

Keeping in mind once again that we're sticking with the air schedule, and therefore not going to talk about the content of the fifth episode, which went up On Demand today, what did everybody else think?
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Band of Brothers rewind, episode 9: "Why We Fight"

We're in our final week of looking back on "Band of Brothers," with spoilers for the penultimate episode, "Why We Fight," coming up just as soon as I borrow your lighter...

There are essentially two halves to "Why We Fight" -- one of the finest episodes of this damn fine miniseries -- that seem unrelated at first by anything but chronology, but which turn out to be inextricably linked in the final moments.

The first half focuses on Captain Nixon quest for Vat 69. To this point in the series, Nixon's role has been primarily to offer exposition (as a battalion strategist, he knows more about the big picture than Dick Winters does), and to function as a kind of Greek chorus (suggesting that Sobel is a better training officer than the men want to admit, reminding Winters of how much good he did at Brecourt Manor). We've learned that he's a drunk, but also that he's brave (he declines the 30-day pass home in "The Breaking Point") and that Winters obviously thinks the world of him, but because he hasn't been a member of Easy Company since before they left America, this is his first real spotlight.

And the Nixon of "Why We Fight" is burnt out. Like all the men, he's been at war too long, has started to forget why it is this all started, and with the lack of action post-Hagenau, he has a lot of time to do nothing but think, and stew, and drink. And because he's not just an alcoholic, but a discriminating alcoholic, he's running out of the one thing he's willing to drink. And when he's one of the few survivors of the doomed jump, he gets to stew some more about what all those boys in the plane died over.

There's this amazing weariness to Ron Livingston's performance. Like Scott Grimes in "The Last Patrol," he's so much older and frailer than he was at the start of the series (when I praised Livingston for this at an awards event, he gave all the credit to the makeup department for making him look so jaundiced). And while he's always going to look and sound like Peter from "Office Space," he has a gravity and haunted quality here that works perfectly in a scene like the one where Nixon gets the Dear Lewis letter from his wife. And that, in turn, leads into the marvelous scene where the entire convoy sings "Blood on the Risers," the unofficial paratrooper anthem, and Nixon reluctantly joins in, then starts singing louder than everyone else because he's so sick of it all.

The episode's first half also offers vignettes of other characters suffering a similar level of bitterness towards their time in the Army. Perconte rants to replacement O'Keefe about how long it's been since he saw America. Webster flips out at a passing convoy of surrendered Germans: "You have horses! What were you thinking?" Replacement Janovec tells Luz that he's reading an article about how "the Germans are bad," and Luz reacts like this is the most hilarious thing he's ever heard. With few exceptions -- like Captain Speirs, who seems delighted to be able to loot everything in sight now that they're in Germany -- the Toccoa veterans are all desperate to get home, and wondering why they wound up here in the first place.

Then we come to the second half, in which the episode's title goes from being ironic to explanatory. Whether the men of Easy Company knew it or not, stopping the kind of people responsible for the concentration camp they find outside of Landsberg is exactly why they fight -- why they've given up years of their lives and risked those lives repeatedly. As the real Dick Winters (who had fewer problems with his resolve to begin with) said to himself after getting a look at that nightmarish place, "Now I know why I am here!"

As good a job as the makeup department did on Livingston, their masterpiece is their work on the camp survivors. (Amazingly, they lost the Emmy to the TNT fantasy miniseries "The Mists of Avalon.") I don't know exactly how they made some of those extras look the way they did, but the sight of them never fails to hit me in the gut, to fill me with horror and despair that this kind of thing can happen -- and I say this as the son of a teacher who specializes in Holocaust education and who frequently brought her work home with her(*).

(*) And who has asked me to put in a plug for her college's Holocaust education center.

The visceral impact of the camp sequence is just amazing. All the little beats are devastating, from the man carrying his emaciated, possibly dead friend to the prisoner who starts showering his terrified rescuer with desperate kisses.

But the most brutal part of all involves Liebgott. The earlier scene with Webster in the truck is there primarily to remind us that Liebgott is the lone Jew in Easy Company. Because he's also the German translator, he winds up in the position to be the first to discover what this camp really is, and that smacks him -- and us -- extra hard. And then an even tougher blow comes when he's asked to order the prisoners back into the camp even temporarily, for their own good. Ross McCall isn't mentioned often among the best performances of this series, but he owns those two moments.

So here's what I'm most curious about, in terms of your reaction: how do you read the faces of the German townspeople in the sequence where they're being forced to dispose of the bodies? Specifically, how do you read the German officer's widow whom Nixon had met earlier when he broke into her house looking for booze? She's furious and disgusted and mortified, but is it at the Americans for forcing her to perform this horrific task, or at her own country's leadership for creating this place (and making her husband die for this)? Or is it a bit of both?

Some other thoughts:

• I'm again going to break the who lives/who dies rule here, as we're so close to the end that it's more or less pointless, but skip ahead to the next bullet if need be. The level of Speirs' looting -- and the other soldiers' awareness of it -- becomes one of the better running gags of these final two episodes, but the miniseries doesn't have room for the big real-life punchline: Speirs was sending all the looted merchandise not back to America, but to a "war widow" he had married during his time in England, and with whom he fathered a son. One problem: the woman's first husband turned out not to be dead, but a POW, and she chose him over Speirs -- and kept every bit of loot Speirs had sent her.

• Webster's command of German in the scene with the baker seems far shakier than it was in "The Last Patrol," and his bloodlust in that scene is in marked contrast to how he'll behave in a similar moment in the series finale. (Let's save discussion on that till we get to "Points," but I wanted to bring it up now so we have it in mind in a few day's time.)

• Don't Luz and Perconte in the opening scenes feel like they could be either supporting characters in a '40s war comedy, or maybe the leads on a '50s or early '60s Army sitcom?

• In case you haven't seen it by now, HBO has released a trailer for "The Pacific," the long-awaited follow-up to "Band of Brothers" that focuses on the Pacific theater of WWII in the same way "BoB" focused on the European theater. A couple of readers expressed concern that the trailer makes it look like "The Pacific" is going to be filled with the kind of war movie cliches that "BoB" avoided, but to that I would point out that some of the promos for "BoB" featured the scene from this episode where Winters tells Nixon what to write to the families of the boys who died on the jump. In context, "You tell them they died as heroes" is about the messiness of war and the necessity of telling noble lies about it. Out of context, in a trailer, it just sounds corny, even with Damian Lewis saying it.

Coming up on Thursday: We come to the end of the line with "Points," in which the war in Europe comes to an end, and yet the men of Easy Company can't get home.

What did everybody else think?
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Sunday, June 28, 2009

Hung, "Pilot": Tool, shed

Spoilers for the premiere episode of "Hung" coming up just as soon as I refine my search engine terms...
"Here's an idea: you want to be a millionaire, why don't you go market your d--k?" -Tanya
"She definitely meant it as an insult, but somehow, I couldn't get the idea out of my head." -Ray, narrating
I talked a lot about the reasons why I like this show in my review on Thursday, so I just want to hit a few points here and see what you all thought of it.

The first is the charming, utterly self-deprecating performance by Thomas Jane as Ray. Not many actors could make a guy this pathetic -- even someone who recognizes and even embraces his own pathetic nature -- as likable as he does, nor could many make him seem as human even as he's being such an imbecile in so many ways. He and Jane Adams (and the double-Jane thing is going to get confusing in future blog entries, I fear) work very well together, and I loved his reaction to her excessive climaxing, and then having to listen to her post-coital poetry.

The second is that patience is going to be required here. Again, look at "Breaking Bad" as the model, and not just because both deal with high school teachers resorting to a life of crime to pay the bills. "Hung" is going to take its time getting Ray's career as a male prostitute(*) -- and Tanya's parallel career as a pimp -- off the ground. As "Breaking Bad" has shown (and as "The Wire" has, though I'm not yet prepared to set the bar remotely that high), series that show a little patience in depicting people learning how to do their jobs can reap big rewards as their characters get better at them. I've seen Ray make some progress in his man-whoring in later episodes, and it feels much more satisfying than if things had worked out just fine with the lady in the hotel who slipped the 50 under the door for his trouble.

(*) And if you're of a certain age, you can't hear that phrase without thinking of Dan Aykroyd as the decidedly less-glamorous Fred Garvin: Male Prostitute.)

The third, which I didn't have room to deal with much in the column, is that Ray's ex-wife and maybe his kids are on probation for me. Anne Heche is usually an acquired taste for me (while I didn't like "Men in Trees," it at least seemed to dial back her quirks a bit), and the role of Jessica seems to play to her more annoying qualities.

But for me, the show is about the reluctant partnership between Ray and Tanya, and the interplay between our two acting Janes, and I look forward to seeing more.

Keep in mind that the show isn't on next week because of the holiday weekend. (Which makes premiering it tonight odd, other than that the extra length would mean "Entourage" might need to be pushed back another week.)

What did everybody else think?
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Saturday, June 27, 2009

Doctor Who, "The Next Doctor": Double vision

I offered up my thoughts on the latest "Doctor Who" movie in Friday's column (and if you didn't see it before, don't miss my Russell T. Davies interview), but I'm curious what your opinion was. The only thing I'll add to the original column is that the Mercy Hartigan character was terribly underwritten, and I say that having watched the original British cut.

Same rules as always applies to "Doctor Who": talk only about the episodes that have aired here in America. So no discussion about "Planet of the Dead," which ran in England back in April. Anything I consider questionable gets deleted. Clear? Click here to read the full post

Friday, June 26, 2009

Virtuality: Is that all there is?

Okay, I wrote about "Virtuality" in Wednesday's column, but what did you all think? If this winds up being the only episode ever, are you glad you watched, or frustrated that there's nothing resembling an ending? And in the unlikely event that this rises from the dead, would you watch? Would you want to tweak anything? Click here to read the full post

Russell Davies Q&A on 'Doctor Who' and 'Torchwood'

In conjunction with tomorrow's American debut of "Doctor Who: The Next Doctor," the first of five "Doctor Who" specials that will conclude the tenure of both star David Tennant and producer Russell T. Davies (you can read my review here), I spoke with Davies about saying goodbye to the character he helped resurrect, and about the upcoming miniseries "Torchwood: Children of Earth," which BBC America will be airing July 20-24.

Davies called me as I was finishing up the third episode of "Children of Earth" -- an exciting, epic story in which Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) and his team deal with alien invaders who can make our world's children do whatever they want -- and so our discussion begins with that.

What was the impetus behind telling this particular "Torchwood" story?

The main impetus came because in Britain, we were shifting channels. We'd been on a smaller channel as a sci-fi cult show, but this is moving it onto BBC1. It's the main primetime channel, so we needed to do something bit. Also, although I created "Torchwood," I'd been away from it for a while. I wanted to do something new, a different type of storytelling, to give it a big kick and stretch myself as well. So all of that thinking led to a new format. They've been doing this (miniseries) format quite a bit in Britain, where you'll do five shows in five nights. It's a new form of storytelling that I loved, and when the offer came to make "Torchwood" part of this five nights a week thing, I jumped at it. I loved it.

So do you think, if BBC orders another series, you'll stick with this format?

I think it's hard to revert to the previous format having done this, but if BBC1 says, "We want to do 13 weeks like before," of course we're going to do 13 weeks. We can do all sorts of things. The six-part weekly thriller is another standard British format that we haven't tried yet. That's what's nice in this digital world: the platforms change, the digital tier gives you new options, and "Torchwood"s been at the forefront of it, since we started on a digital channel.

"Children of Earth" seems more epic, both in its scope and in the production values, than anything you did in the first two series.

Glad you said so. That was the aim. "Epic" was one of the keywords that we used. And it's quite important for newcomers to the show to know they can watch it from scratch. We're going to give them this big huge story where they can understand everything important in the first five minutes and go from there. I love telling stories about scale, and it's a big international story. But at the same time, even if you make things epic, no matter how big the threat is, you've got to have great characters, great actors at the center of it, so everything works on a personal level. So we've got John Barrowman doing wonderful work as Captain Jack, Eve (Myles) as Gwen Cooper, and everyone.

But when you're making an event, five nights a week, it would be wrong to tell a small, detailed domestic story. It's a brilliant production team, because we didn't have any increase in budget. It just looks like we did because they simply worked like dogs. The cast have worked hard, and it's made by people who love this, and with real passion. And the end result shines through.

You said before that you love stories about scale, which anyone watching your version of "Doctor Who" would already know. Every year, it seemed like the finales got bigger and bigger. Is one of the reasons you're leaving that you realized you couldn't top yourself anymore?

There's always further to go. I don't just increase things in scale because I'm mad. With "Doctor Who," every year the finale got bigger, and every year the rating got bigger. We were adding, like, 2 million viewers every year. That's been a great joy, and part of the whole game of "Doctor Who" is that the public joins in, word spreads, and more people watch. Increasing the scale of the program has literally paid off. If the viewers had been deserting the show, I would have done something different. When we get to David Tennant's finale, you will not believe the scale of it. But it's all about the acting in the end. Wait till you see David Tennant in his last episode, and John Barrowman in his last episode of "Children of Earth."

I'm unclear on the timing of this: were these five specials always designed to end David Tennant's time in the role, or did that happen after you started doing them?

No, we always knew they were going to be his last specials. It was his choice. When Steven Moffat took over the show, of course David wondered if he should be continuing, because of course Steven will be the most brilliant showrunner in the world.

It's funny, we've now all moved on, for the most part. We all feel that we've done the right thing. There's not one moment where we'd want to use a TARDIS to go back in and do over again. It's been good, it's been healthy, no regrets. If the handover had gone wrong, I would have felt terrible. We've protected the show, and kept it enshrined for the people in the UK.

I've only seen two of the specials so far, but there's this recurring theme about The Doctor not wanting to take on a new companion because of what happened in "Journey's End."

Poor Donna Noble.

You're a bastard, by the way.

Ha ha ha! He just called me a bastard. Ha ha ha ha!

Well, is there a specific character arc to these specials?

It's what I love about "Doctor Who." It's 46 years old, and now in my final year, we discover there's still a brand new way of telling the stories, which is The Doctor traveling on his own, which was done only once in the old years, Tom Baker with "The Deadly Asssassin." it gives us a chance for him to have a different companion every time. In "Planet of the Dead," we have Michelle Ryan, and in "The Waters of Mars," we've got Lindsey Duncan as the companion; she's almost 60 years old, quite a brilliant actress, a different way than we've gone previously. In the finale, it's Bernie Cribbens, who played Donna Noble's grandfather.

The bigger picture is why The Doctor's traveling alone -- because he's heartbroken, because he loses too much in the end (each time). This is an arc over these last few specials, gradually, especially in "Waters of Mars," which comes up in November, we discover that he travels with a human because he needs a human. He's too powerful, and without that (human with him), he can become a dangerous man. Donna pointed that out to him in her very first story, "The Runaway Bride." That is a story we're telling. We're sort of all heading towards series 5 and the new Doctor and the new companion, played by Karen Gillan. I think it's a nice set-up for her, in that The Doctor needs a companion and we're going to understand why.

Given what you said before about the lack of regrets, I'm guessing the answer's no, but are there any stories you wanted to tell with this series that you didn't get to?

Not really. Obviously, because I knew almost two years ago that I was leaving, I started thinking about stories. Other dramas I wanted to tell. Every now and then an idea will come into my head, though. I think there's a very good "Doctor Who" story to be told about Twitter, about the idea of communicating in 140 characters. There's a story somewhere, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone on the (new writing) team is thinking of that. They don't need me anymore. And I cannot tell you how much I'm looking forward to being a viewer. Other than the movie (1996's American-produced "Doctor Who" pilot), the last time I got a chance to sit down and watch a brand new series was 21 years ago. So I'm dying!

So have you asked Steven not to tell you anything about what he's doing?

I can't help overhearing little things. I already know far too much. And one or two things he had to check with me to make sure we could overlap material. What I do know is so exciting.

I want to go back to when you took over the franchise. What was the mandate you had in mind for yourself?

Simply, the one very clear thing I wanted to do at the beginning was to get a new audience, and a permanent audience. Because of "Doctor Who"'s long history -- he ran on BBC1 for so many years -- I knew we would get some old viewers who remembered the character fondly, but that simply wasn't enough for me. The BBC is funded by the public in Britain. So we're making a very expensive show, paid for by the public, so I thought I had a duty to spend that money well, and get as many of the public watching as possible, This wasn't a time to make a niche show, and that's so foften what British science fiction is. I knew it had to be lifted out into the mainstream. There was no precedent for that ever happening in Britain.

I wanted children watching. I thought if you're going to bring back this character, you want him to appeal to children; you want a child who, in 40 years time, will be me, bringing the character back again. It deserves the status of being like Robin Hood or Merlin or James Bond -- those rare British cultural figures who just run and run. I worried that, if I'd fumbled it on this reusrrection, it would have been fumbled for a few decades.

And we got lucky in the timing, If we'd been five years later, we would never have been able to afford the program I wanted to make. I wanted it to be expensive. I'm not saying all good television is expensive, because I've worked on some of the cheapest shows in trhe world. But the ambition, and the big picture, and the epic intimacy demanded that. And then all of this was theory, and none of us knew if it would work, but we got on air, and it worked, and it's been wonderful.

And all of that money is very clearly there on the screen, where the original series always looked so incredibly cheap: lots of stories with only one or two settings and minimal movement, where you're all over the place with the action and the special effects.

I so respect those old production teams because having made the show, I can't imagine how they made it on 1/10th of the budget that I had. And they made something I loved all my life. They found different ways of launching themselves into children's memories.

Was Christopher Eccleston always only going to do it for a year?

That was always the plan, and then the plan got fumbled because the newspapers found out about it. Can you imagine what a shock that regeneration would have been if they hadn't known? We got better at that over the years, found ways to keep other secrets. Nonetheless, Chris Eccleston is just a blazing comet of talent, and we are lucky to have had him for even a short time. I'm so grateful to have had him.

And then you got David Tennant, who many people insist is the best Doctor ever.

We cast Chris, and we thought, "Brilliant, but what the hell do we do next? Surely, there's no one who can be on a par with Chris." And the gods were smiling with us when we found David. Just to see him do this, at the same time he's doing "Hamlet" at the Royal Shakespeare Company, I'm so lucky just to have caught hold of that man for a short while.

Was it a coincidence or by design that all of the major companions during your run were women?

It's by design, to be honest. The show has had male companions in the past, and there have been times when he's had three or four companions at the same time, but if you strip the show down to its essentials, it's one man, and one woman. I don't think I would have been happy if it was just two men in the TARDIS. In the year 2009, still, there aren't enough lead roles for women, anyway. At the same time, we introduced Captain Jack, who was a companion for a time before we put him in "Torchwood."

There was that moment where you revealed that Jack would eventually live so long that he'd become the Face of Boe. Was this something you planned all along with the character?

It wasn't exactly planned. I did spend a long time thinking about Jack's immortality, and one day it occured to me there was another immortal character on the show. It made me laugh. To be honest, on the screen, it's couched in terms that are not absolute gospel. There are these spin-off books and comic books, and every now and then I'll see a script for one where they say definitively that he's the Face of Boe, and I always stop those from being printed. I have my own personal theories, but the moment it became very true or very false, the joke dies.

In general, though, how much long-term planning was there in the series? You got a lot of mileage out of cutting off The Doctor's hand in "The Christmas Invasion," for instance.

I did, didn't I? It's hard to say. Some things are planned. There was never a rigid plan that I followed for five years and never deviated. But the important thing is, I was thinking about "Doctor Who" more than I should have every day. Even the strongest fan of "Doctor Who" will think about "Doctor Who" a lot, then go on to their regular job, and I was thinking about "Doctor Who" all day, every day.

It's like having a great big play shop, I would introduce things like The Doctor having his hand cut off, and I realized I could bring it back in "Torchwood." What you don't notice are the things I introduce that I don't bring back. It's a more ruthless process than it is whimsical. Actually, it's very diligent about what makes sense, and I'm very careful about not losing an audience. If their enjoyment depends on them emorizing a bit of dialogue for 40 episodes earlier, you're in trouble. But we cut his hand off in a special that aired on Christmas, that almost ten million people in Britain watched at the time, and I thought they'd remember that. I can't say that I ever knew that three years later it would end up saving his lfie, but the potential was there. I know my own mind and it's always prodding the idea and finding ways to push it forward. If "plan" means having everything constantly in flux, then that is what we had.

In terms of an idea that you introduced and didn't bring back, it's implied at the end of "Journey's End" that Martha and Mickey are going to join "Torchwood," but they're not in "Children of Earth."

That was genuinely a potential idea. We did actually investigate that, and we did plan to use Martha and Mickey, and then Freema (Agyeman) was cast in "Law & Order: UK," and she was absolutely fantastic in it, and this was before we could confirm the commission of "Torchwood," and it's 13 episodes a year instead of five besides, so lovely, lovely Freema has got a job for life, so of course she went and did that. We're friends, we're in constant contact, and we were able to adapt, so we brought in Cush Jumbo as Lois Habiba, who's kind of the Martha figure. She doesn't act like a Martha clone at all, she's much more innocent and out of her depth. It's plate spinning, it's like that, you just keep things spinning. It was a possible plan, didn't work out, but if there's a "Torchwood" 4, and Freema's available, maybe we could use her again.

Getting back to the idea of scale, one of my favorite "Doctor Who" episodes that you wrote was sort of the opposite of that: "Midnight," which was this low-budget but extremely creepy story with The Doctor stuck on the train with the woman who kept repeating everything and the paranoid passengers.

You'd be surprised by how not low-budget that is. That set is four walls, and a very robust set, and we had to book a whole cast every day for two weeks, because they had to be there all the time. Actors are normally split up, and that was very actor-intensive. We didn't do it to be cheap, but I thought with the great big epic arias at the end of that series, it was time to be more intimate right beforehand. I thought of that idea as I was coming to the end of my time on "Doctor Who." That idea had been in my head itching away -- "What if you spoke to someone who repeats everything you've said for the whole episode?" -- and I had to do that episode before I left. I had to see if it worked. And it worked. That's a great big token of the freedom that the BBC gives us. On a great big popular expensive show, they allowed me to experiment.

If you had to pick a moment, or several moments, from your tenure that you're especially proud of -- that exemplify what you were trying to do with "Doctor Who" -- what would you pick?

The problem is, there's hundreds of them. Because I was so stepped in the show, it's very interesting to go back to the very first episode -- and to be blunt, we hit the ground running with it. That episode is the template for everything we did since. It has the companion being as strong as The Doctor, it brings back an old monster. It's in modern-day urban London. The companion's family is important, the emotion is at the forefront, but there's comedy and chase scenes. Normally, you look at episode one of a long-running series and it seems ancient, and I'm very proud of it because I look at it, all your favorite (kinds of) moments are in episode one.

But there are so many. It ranges from Lesley Sharp in "Midnight" giving the most brilliant performance with David Tennant, to when we won the BAFTA Award. When they played the clips of the nominees for Best Drama in this big posh ceremony, those clips are very often people crying in the rain about serious issues -- Iraq war, or illness, or drug addiction, because that's what usually wins awards -- and in the middle of all this, the "Doctor Who" clip played of thousands of Daleks flying through the air, and then we won the award! It just showed that a program that is so much fun and has so many children watching and so much fantasy, to win a big proper televiison award like that was genuinely wonderful.

Can you go back and watch episodes that you wrote and produced and appreciate them as a "Doctor Who" fan? Or are you too occupied thinking of how the sausage got made?

I don't know if this is good or bad, but I've always been able to sit and watch my own stuff and enjoy it. Sometimes, I'll sit down and I'll just catch an episode by chance. I caught the Shakespeare episode ("The Shakespeare Code") by chance the other night and I thought it was magnificent. I really, really can watch it as a viewer. I always cultivated that in my head, you have to train yourself to watch it as brand-new, so you can see its faults and its strengths, so I've always been good at it. So I can watch it on repeats. I still love them. And thankfully, I love watching the old show as much as I did. I can still watch the old classics from the 70s and be as happy as I was when I was a kid.
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'Doctor Who: The Next Doctor' review - Sepinwall on TV

In today's column, I review "Doctor Who: The Next Doctor," the first of the five "Doctor Who" specials that will bring an end to the David Tennant/Russell T. Davies era of the series.

As both "The Next Doctor" and "Planet of the Dead" have already aired in England -- and have also therefore been illegally downloaded by many fans in America -- I'm going to remind you of the usual rule about how we're sticking to the American broadcast schedule in terms of spoilers. So no talking about any plot specifics of this movie (or the next one) in this post. I'll have a separate post up tomorrow night for discussion of "The Next Doctor" (and "Planet of the Dead" will still be verboten there). And you can read the transcript of an interview I did with Davies about "Doctor Who" and the upcoming "Torchwood: Children of Earth." Click here to read the full post

The Wire, Season 2, Episode 5: "Undertow" (Newbies edition)

Once again, we're revisiting season two of "The Wire" in two versions: one for people who have watched the entire series and want to be able to discuss it from beginning to end, and those who aren't all the way there yet and don't want to be spoiled about later developments. This is the newbie post (click here for the veteran version).

Spoilers for episode five, "Undertow," coming up just as soon as I take the Fifth Commandment...
"It's just business. Everything is just business with us: Buy for a nickel, sell for a dime." -Vondas
The Sobotka detail gets moving in "Undertow, but while they don't need to learn each other's strengths and weaknesses the way they did last season, they don't really have the first clue what kind of opponent they're going up against.

Herc suggests that the port guys must be involved in drugs -- because what other kind of major crime is there in Baltimore? -- and while we learn in this episode that Vondas and company are involved in that trade, we also know by now that their interests range wider and deeper than dope. And we know by now that they're far more ruthless, and efficient, than even the mighty Barksdale/Bell outfit. Sobotka isn't who the detail should really be after, and drugs shouldn't be their primary focus, but it's going to take them a while to recognize the magnitude of the problem before them.

"Undertow" features a lot of characters underestimating their opponents. Ziggy again gets in way over his head trying to play dope dealer, letting Frog rip him off and then letting Cheese steal (and later torch) his beloved Camaro. Nick thinks he can out-clever Vondas by having Ziggy look up what the chemicals might be used for, and while their deduction about drugs seems to be right, they really have no way of knowing. When Nick asks Vondas if it's drugs, he more or less invites Vondas to lie to him, and we've seen by now what kind of a poker face that guy has -- a poker face he puts on display when he talks a reluctant Frank into staying in business with The Greek. (Vondas also knows how to twist a metaphorical knife, as he does by pointing to the defunct steel factory and reminding Frank of how easily a Baltimore industry can disappear.)

None of the Sobotka men understand what kind of people they're putting themselves into business with, and you don't need to have seen the first season to suspect this will end badly for some or all of them.

Even Avon seems stuck in circumstances more dire than he cares to admit. Avon doesn't want to acknowledge how bad things have gotten with the Atlanta package, or how strained his relations are with D'Angelo, or even that Stringer seems eager to be done with D.

Stringer, on the other hand, is more than aware of the state of the operation. While he's not quite the pure capitalist that Vondas and The Greek are (he has his passions and pretensions, where they're all about the cash and nothing but), he's still a cold enough businessman to want to cut D'Angelo loose, and to realize that something has to be done about their pathetic dope supply.

The latter problem leads to another inspired "big business meets dope business" comedy set piece, as Stringer's macroeconomics professor (not recognizing what his prize student's real business is) teaches him about Worldcom, and Stringer in turn tries to pass the lesson along to the likes of Bodie and Poot. To the crew's credit, they seem to grasp an outside-the-box concept more easily than they often do, but it's still hilarious to watch these worlds collide.

And speaking of thinking outside the box, with Lester assigned to Lt. Daniels' detail -- and Daniels adamant about not taking on the Jane Doe murders unless they're gift-wrapped as clearances -- Bunk finally starts coming around to Jimmy's way of thinking about Homicide's way of doing things (instant gratification) and the right way to handle a sprawling case like this. He's one of the few characters in "Undertow" (other than Vondas and The Greek themselves) who seems to recognize exactly what he's up against -- he just has no way to adequately deal with the problem.

Yet.

Some other thoughts on "Undertow":

• Before this season of "The Wire," my only significant exposure to Paul Ben-Victor was as hustling snitch Steve Richards on "NYPD Blue" -- possibly my least favorite recurring character in the history of one of my favorite shows. Ben-Victor's performance as Steve was so mannered, so cartoonish, that when I saw him turn up on a completely unmannered show like "The Wire" -- and realized how well he was fitting in -- I was stunned. His portrayal of Vondas is such an economical performance, saying so much with so little, that I remain kind of in awe that a man who could be so irritating and over-the-top on one show could be so quietly menacing on another.

• Method Man makes his first appearance as Ziggy's new nemesis Cheese. David Simon told me at the end of the series that many rappers tried to get parts on the show over the years, "and this was the only guy who walked into a casting office and (auditioned) and said, 'Okay, tell me about the part.' We didn't take him because he was Method, we took him because he was the best read for Cheese."

• Once again, we see that Ziggy is pretty good with computers (or, at least, better than Nick), and it makes me wonder how differently his life would have been if he hadn't been raised by a stevedore who didn't want to prepare him for anything else.

• And speaking of computers, this episode offers the kind of scene you never would have gotten with the detail's season one target, as Frank himself offers to show Beadie and Bunk how the checker computer system works. There are many key differences between Frank and Avon (really, the comparison should be Avon and Stringer with The Greek and Vondas), but foremost is the fact that Frank has a legitimate career and is only dabbling in crime.

• And Beadie starts to demonstrate that, whatever her initial interest in policework may have been, she's both willing and able to learn from Bunk, as she turns her former fling (and Ziggy hater) Maui into her own confidential (if unofficial) informant.

• Lots of good comedy moments in this one, from Herc with the toothpick (which amuses Carver and Kima at first, then slowly drives them nuts) to Jimmy taking Omar clothes shopping. ("It's a look." "No, it ain't.") For that matter, I love Omar's reaction to Ilene Nathan's confusion when Omar mentions another of Bird's murders: "Fish gotta swim, you know what I'm saying?"

• And still more hilarity: Carver listens to the white drug dealers trying to sound black and complains to Kima, "Thieving motherf--kers take everything, don't they?"

• While Nat Coxson is terrified of the grain pier being turned into condos, Nick gets a first-hand look -- courtesy of Jimmy's ex-wife Elena, who turns out to be a realtor -- at how gentrification is already affecting his neighborhood. A house that belonged to Nick's aunt, and that he might have been able to afford a few years back, has now been fixed up enough -- down to a fancy new nickname for the neighborhood -- that he has no shot at it.

• Also, Nick mentions that he gave Aimee money to get furniture at Little Pages, a real-life Baltimore store that was also mentioned by Beau Felton in the "Homicide" pilot.

• Speaking of "Homicide," the grand jury prosecutor is played by Gary D'Addario, who was the shift commander when Simon was following the real Baltimore Homicide unit to write his first book. (D'Addario also played the head of the QRT team in a number of "Homicide" episodes.) Oddly, Bunk refers to him as "Charlie" here, when in later appearances, the character will be named Gary DiPasquale. A rare continuity flub, or Bunk using an odd nickname?

• Is this the first time Kima has referred to Lester as "Cool Lester Smooth"? The nickname doesn't come up often, but it's so perfect that it's hard not to think of the guy that way.

• So bizarre -- and more than a little scary -- to see Stringer Bell with a small child.

• Jimmy's attempt to identify his own Jane Doe more or less hits a dead end in my own backyard of beautiful Newark, NJ. Probably the most interesting part of that subplot in this episode -- and very fundamentally "The Wire," in the same way as Carver's "same as it ever was" line -- is the bit where the Baltimore INS office gets its logo converted to Homeland Security office and the agent sarcastically asks Jimmy if he feels any safer.

Coming up next: "All Prologue," in which D'Angelo gives a book report, Maury Levy goes up against Omar, and Sergei helps Nick with a problem.

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

The Wire, Season 2, Episode 5: "Undertow" (Veterans edition)

Once again, we're revisiting season two of "The Wire" in two versions: one for people who have watched the entire series and want to be able to discuss it from beginning to end, and those who aren't all the way there yet and don't want to be spoiled about later developments. This is the veteran post (click here for the newbie version).

Spoilers for episode five, "Undertow," coming up just as soon as I take the Fifth Commandment...
"It's just business. Everything is just business with us: Buy for a nickel, sell for a dime." -Vondas
The Sobotka detail gets moving in "Undertow, but while they don't need to learn each other's strengths and weaknesses the way they did last season, they don't really have the first clue what kind of opponent they're going up against.

Herc suggests that the port guys must be involved in drugs -- because what other kind of major crime is there in Baltimore? -- and while we learn in this episode that Vondas and company are involved in that trade, we also know by now that their interests range wider and deeper than dope. And we know by now that they're far more ruthless, and efficient, than even the mighty Barksdale/Bell outfit. Sobotka isn't who the detail should really be after, and drugs shouldn't be their primary focus, but it's going to take them a while to recognize the magnitude of the problem before them.

"Undertow" features a lot of characters underestimating their opponents. Ziggy again gets in way over his head trying to play dope dealer, letting Frog rip him off and then letting Cheese steal (and later torch) his beloved Camaro. Nick thinks he can out-clever Vondas by having Ziggy look up what the chemicals might be used for, and while their deduction about drugs seems to be right, they really have no way of knowing. When Nick asks Vondas if it's drugs, he more or less invites Vondas to lie to him, and we've seen by now what kind of a poker face that guy has -- a poker face he puts on display when he talks a reluctant Frank into staying in business with The Greek. (Vondas also knows how to twist a metaphorical knife, as he does by pointing to the defunct steel factory and reminding Frank of how easily a Baltimore industry can disappear.)

None of the Sobotka men understand what kind of people they're putting themselves into business with, and you don't need to have seen the first season to suspect this will end badly for some or all of them.

Even Avon seems stuck in circumstances more dire than he cares to admit. Avon doesn't want to acknowledge how bad things have gotten with the Atlanta package, or how strained his relations are with D'Angelo, or even that Stringer seems eager to be done with D.

Stringer, on the other hand, is more than aware of the state of the operation. While he's not quite the pure capitalist that Vondas and The Greek are (he has his passions and pretensions, where they're all about the cash and nothing but), he's still a cold enough businessman to want to cut D'Angelo loose, and to realize that something has to be done about their pathetic dope supply.

The latter problem leads to another inspired "big business meets dope business" comedy set piece, as Stringer's macroeconomics professor (not recognizing what his prize student's real business is) teaches him about Worldcom, and Stringer in turn tries to pass the lesson along to the likes of Bodie and Poot. To the crew's credit, they seem to grasp an outside-the-box concept more easily than they often do, but it's still hilarious to watch these worlds collide.

And speaking of thinking outside the box, with Lester assigned to Lt. Daniels' detail -- and Daniels adamant about not taking on the Jane Doe murders unless they're gift-wrapped as clearances -- Bunk finally starts coming around to Jimmy's way of thinking about Homicide's way of doing things (instant gratification) and the right way to handle a sprawling case like this. He's one of the few characters in "Undertow" (other than Vondas and The Greek themselves) who seems to recognize exactly what he's up against -- he just has no way to adequately deal with the problem.

Yet.

Some other thoughts on "Undertow":

• Before this season of "The Wire," my only significant exposure to Paul Ben-Victor was as hustling snitch Steve Richards on "NYPD Blue" -- possibly my least favorite recurring character in the history of one of my favorite shows. Ben-Victor's performance as Steve was so mannered, so cartoonish, that when I saw him turn up on a completely unmannered show like "The Wire" -- and realized how well he was fitting in -- I was stunned. His portrayal of Vondas is such an economical performance, saying so much with so little, that I remain kind of in awe that a man who could be so irritating and over-the-top on one show could be so quietly menacing on another.

• Method Man makes his first appearance as Ziggy's new nemesis Cheese. David Simon told me at the end of the series that many rappers tried to get parts on the show over the years, "and this was the only guy who walked into a casting office and (auditioned) and said, 'Okay, tell me about the part.' We didn't take him because he was Method, we took him because he was the best read for Cheese."

• Once again, we see that Ziggy is pretty good with computers (or, at least, better than Nick), and it makes me wonder how differently his life would have been if he hadn't been raised by a stevedore who didn't want to prepare him for anything else.

• And speaking of computers, this episode offers the kind of scene you never would have gotten with the detail's season one target, as Frank himself offers to show Beadie and Bunk how the checker computer system works. There are many key differences between Frank and Avon (really, the comparison should be Avon and Stringer with The Greek and Vondas), but foremost is the fact that Frank has a legitimate career and is only dabbling in crime.

• And Beadie starts to demonstrate that, whatever her initial interest in policework may have been, she's both willing and able to learn from Bunk, as she turns her former fling (and Ziggy hater) Maui into her own confidential (if unofficial) informant.

• Lots of good comedy moments in this one, from Herc with the toothpick (which amuses Carver and Kima at first, then slowly drives them nuts) to Jimmy taking Omar clothes shopping. ("It's a look." "No, it ain't.") For that matter, I love Omar's reaction to Ilene Nathan's confusion when Omar mentions another of Bird's murders: "Fish gotta swim, you know what I'm saying?"

• And still more hilarity: Carver listens to the white drug dealers trying to sound black and complains to Kima, "Thieving motherf--kers take everything, don't they?"

• While Nat Coxson is terrified of the grain pier being turned into condos, Nick gets a first-hand look -- courtesy of Jimmy's ex-wife Elena, who turns out to be a realtor -- at how gentrification is already affecting his neighborhood. A house that belonged to Nick's aunt, and that he might have been able to afford a few years back, has now been fixed up enough -- down to a fancy new nickname for the neighborhood -- that he has no shot at it.

• Also, Nick mentions that he gave Aimee money to get furniture at Little Pages, a real-life Baltimore store that was also mentioned by Beau Felton in the "Homicide" pilot.

• Speaking of "Homicide," the grand jury prosecutor is played by Gary D'Addario, who was the shift commander when Simon was following the real Baltimore Homicide unit to write his first book. (D'Addario also played the head of the QRT team in a number of "Homicide" episodes.) Oddly, Bunk refers to him as "Charlie" here, when in later appearances, the character will be named Gary DiPasquale. A rare continuity flub, or Bunk using an odd nickname?

• Is this the first time Kima has referred to Lester as "Cool Lester Smooth"? The nickname doesn't come up often, but it's so perfect that it's hard not to think of the guy that way.

• So bizarre -- and more than a little scary -- to see Stringer Bell with a small child.

• Jimmy's attempt to identify his own Jane Doe more or less hits a dead end in my own backyard of beautiful Newark, NJ. Probably the most interesting part of that subplot in this episode -- and very fundamentally "The Wire," in the same way as Carver's "same as it ever was" line -- is the bit where the Baltimore INS office gets its logo converted to Homeland Security office and the agent sarcastically asks Jimmy if he feels any safer.

And now it's time for the veterans-only section, where we talk about how developments from this episode will play out over the rest of the season, and the series:

• From such humble beginnings is one of the series' more loathed characters born in Cheese Wagstaff. I guess you had to figure they wouldn't cast Method Man in a walk-on part, especially once he auditioned well.

• How differently would things have gone for the Sobotka men if Frank and Nick had both declined Vondas' offer in this episode? The detail was only able to follow the cans and the rest of the trail because Frank kept working for The Greek, and Nick's going to wind up getting caught up in the dope trade -- which, in turn, will only fan the flames of Ziggy's resentment, leading to the explosion with Double-G.

• Ilene Nathan should have been more specific than "anything with a tie," shouldn't she? Not that Omar will need to suit up, as it turns out.

• Though Avon doesn't want to admit his distance with D to Stringer, you can see in that scene that he's preparing himself to let go of his nephew -- not to kill him off, obviously, but to cut him off. And Stringer more or less reads the latter as license to do the former.

Coming up next: "All Prologue," in which D'Angelo gives a book report, Maury Levy goes up against Omar, and Sergei helps Nick with a problem.

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

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Burn Notice, "Fearless Leader": Stacy's mom has got it going on

Spoilers for tonight's "Burn Notice" coming up just as soon as I deduct a mojito...

After the awesomeness of last week's Westen-Brennen II rumble, a letdown was inevitable, and while I enjoyed parts of "Fearless Leader," it played to disappointing type.

Detective Paxson remains something of a dud character (and I think that's on the writing as much as it's on Moon Bloodgood), so an episode in which she was more central wasn't as much fun as I suspect the producers were hoping. And for a character sold as being so tough and smart, Erik Palladino's Matheson made a real rookie mistake by letting Nick Turturro's Tommy (whom he viewed, rightly, as an untrustworthy loser) and his random new crew play such a big role in his next heist. (I assumed at first he was setting Tommy up to be humiliated or worse while he went off and did a job elsewhere.) And because Michael had such an easy time evading the police tail, we had an episode where neither of Michael's adversaries were nearly as potent as they were being sold as.

And yet there was a real charm to Michael's interactions with Tommy, to seeing Michael have to carry this guy while making it seem like he was buttering him up, and then to see him realize that both he and Tommy were better off if he turned Tommy from sap into ally. Admittedly, I have a soft spot for Nick Turturro due to his time as Flying James Martinez on "NYPD Blue," but I thought he and Jeffrey Donovan worked well together.

But the real highlights of "Fearless Leader" were the personal subplots, both the comedy of Sam suffering through an audit from what turned out to be the grown-up son of one of his old flames (though was the headache in his eye from the audit, or from Madeline's inedible cookies?), and Fiona's frustration at everything Michael has been up to, from screwing up the gig at the start to his insistence on getting back in the spy game. When you see what a soft touch Michael was with a guy like Tommy, you understand where Fi's coming from. He's not cold enough to be a spy anymore, not that he seems to realize it.

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

Farrah Fawcett, RIP

Over at NJ.com, my Farrah Fawcett obituary. Click here to read the full post

NBC fall premiere dates announced

Over at NJ.com, I have details on NBC's fall premiere dates. Of note is that most of the Thursday comedies will debut a week before the season starts, and "30 Rock" will wait until Oct. 15. Click here to read the full post

Band of Brothers rewind, episode 8: "The Last Patrol"

Getting very close to the end of our trip back through "Band of Brothers" -- close enough, in fact, that I'm going to break my rule about who lives and who dies to discuss the fate of the episode's central character -- so know that there are bigger-than-usual spoilers for "The Last Patrol" coming up just as soon as (and I mean that) I divvy up the PX supplies...

We're close enough to the end of the series -- and Easy Company is close enough to the end of the war, with "The Last Patrol" offering up the last significant combat action we'll see -- that I'm going to violate the "who dies" rule. There are still some casualties to come, but I don't think I can properly discuss "The Last Patrol" without saying that David Kenyon Webster did, in fact, survive the war, but died decades before Ambrose's book was written.

Webster was a would-be author himself, and while he never found a publisher for his combat diaries while he was alive (though he did put out a book about sharks), Ambrose was so enamored with his writing that he helped get them published in the early '90s, under the title "Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich." And before that, Ambrose liberally quoted from Webster's unpublished manuscripts in "Band of Brothers" (several passages of which are turned into voiceover narration here), and talks quite a bit about Webster beyond that -- arguably moreso than any other Easy Company soldier who wasn't with the company for either Normandy or Bastogne.

I say all of this because it's obvious Ambrose had some affection for the Webster he met in those unpublished pages, no doubt finding a kinship with the Harvard-educated English major, and I have this feeling that he looks on Webster more fondly than the men who actually served with him. Ambrose doesn't judge Webster for his refusal to be promoted above Private First Class, or to volunteer for any kind of hazardous duty, or to bolt out of the hospital early to get back to the men -- as we've seen Popeye Wynn, Joe Toye and others do in previous episodes. (Toye lost a leg as a result.) And Ambrose's account of the Hagenau patrol doesn't in any way mention the hostility that Liebgott and others show for Webster upon his return. (Nor does it deal with the switcheroo in who got to lead the patrol, which was actually led by Ken Mercier, who's not a character in the miniseries.)

The way I see it, there are two possibilities: 1)Erik Bork and Bruce McKenna needed an easy way to illustrate how much Bastogne changed the men who were there -- and how much they resented those who weren't there -- and Webster was an easy choice, given the timing of his return from the hospital; or 2)The survivors didn't much like Webster, and when they were talking to the producers, they gave them more dirt than either Ambrose knew or wanted to get into.

Now, I suspect little to none of this matters to your appreciation of "The Last Patrol." But given that Webster will be fairly prominent in these final three episodes, and is one of the more unusual characters of both book and miniseries, I'm curious about which portrayal is the more accurate one.

Either way, "The Last Patrol" works as a sequel of sorts to "Replacements," only instead of showing how the newcomers were in awe of the tested and heroic Normandy veterans, we see how an actual veteran could become so disconnected from the company because he wasn't in Bastogne. And, through Webster's eyes, we see just how devastated the company was in those months while he was away.

Compare the welcome Webster gets when he returns (surprised, begrudging, irritated) to the enthusiastic one given to Perconte, who was not only present for the Battle of the Bulge, but has busted out of the hospital to rejoin the company only a few weeks after getting shot at Foy. Or compare the way Webster still reacts to exploding mortar rounds to the way the Bastogne veterans just shrug them off, because they heard and felt worse out in the forest. Or compare the Malarkey from even as recent an episode as "Crossroads" (where he's giddy to show off his gambling winnings to Skip Muck) to the shell of a man he is after losing so many friends in the Ardennes.

(Though this is primarily Webster's episode, Malarkey is the one who has to symbolize the sorry state of Easy after the Bulge, and Scott Grimes and the hair and makeup team do a terrific job of capturing that. He looks so much older, and emptier -- particularly in the shower scene -- and all the red color has vanished from his hair. He's seen too much, and lost too much, to resemble the enthusiastic, foolhardy kid he was in the early episodes.)

In addition to the depression of the men, what "The Last Patrol" shows is that, despite Speirs' appointment as the new company commander, not all is right with Easy's leadership. Speirs is in charge, but with Lipton sidelined by pneumonia and Harry Welsh not returning until episode's end, they're still so short on experienced officers to lead the platoons (since Colonel Sink kept promoting the best ones to batallion or regimental staff) that newbie Lt. Jones gets sent on the patrol to secure prisoners -- and even Jones has the perspective, after an initial burst of enthusiasm, to realize he's not qualified to do anything but observe.

As the real-life Easy veterans talk about in the introductory piece, they were now close enough to the end of the war that everyone was particularly self-conscious about not being in a position where they could get killed. (Or, in the case of Jones or the soldier from the PX who asked to be put on the patrol, concerned about seeing some action before the war stops.) So "The Last Patrol" focuses more on combat fatigue, and on paranoia, and on the careful preparation each man puts into so minor an action as the combat patrol.

Again, this is the last major action set piece of the series, and it's a good one, suitably chaotic and intense, with the ante upped by Pvt. Jackson's screams as he dies slowly from his own grenade.

And in the end, we find out that Dick Winters continues to look out for Easy Company even though he's no longer their direct commander, as he disobeys Col. Sink's order for a second patrol because he knows it would be as dangerous as it would be pointless. In real life, Winters' promotion to major didn't come for another couple of weeks, but it feels appropriate to see him getting those oak leaf clusters immediately after one of his braver bits of leadership in the war.

Some other thoughts:

• The miniseries isn't exactly consistent on how well Webster speaks German. He can make basic conversation and shout out commands here and in "Replacements," while his command of the language seems far less (if not non-existent) in "Why We Fight" and "Points." And Wikipedia (I know, I know) suggests he didn't speak it at all.

• As with the Jimmy Fallon cameo in "Crossroads," I find Colin Hanks' presence as Lt. Jones much less distracting this time than I did in 2001 -- though in this case, it's because I've seen Hanks do enough good dramatic work elsewhere (most recently on "Mad Men") that I can accept that, while nepotism undoubtedly got him the part, he fits it well.

• Ambrose writes that Webster and another private tried and failed repeatedly to use grenades to kill the wounded German on the opposite bank, before Cobb (who, again, gets the short end of the stick in this episode and is depicted as a cowardly bully) got sick of the wheezing and killed the German with a more accurate throw.

• Rick Gomez has some fine comic moments throughout the series as George Luz, but none may be better than the scene where he's dealing with the chocolate bars and the order to blow up a house across the river.

Coming up next (probably on Monday): "Why We Fight," in which Nixon runs low on his preferred brand of booze, while Perconte makes a horrifying discovery.

What did everybody else think?
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'Hung' review - Sepinwall on TV

In today's column, I review HBO's "Hung," the new comedy with Thomas Jane as... well, I want to avoid making the obvious jokes:
It's difficult to write about "Hung," HBO's new comedy about a well-endowed gym-teacher-turned-male-escort, without making an accidental double entendre or 12. After I watched the first episode, which runs about 42 minutes, and the second, which was only 26, I started asking questions about its length (it's a half-hour with a super-sized debut), and the first draft of this paragraph began with a synonym for "difficult."

Not helping matters is the way "Hung" itself embraces every joke you could make about its premise. Main character Ray Drecker (Thomas Jane), for instance, is inspired to join the world's oldest profession after attending a get-rich-quick seminar where the teacher advises each student to identify their "one winning tool."

If "Hung" were just a lot of obvious punch lines about the male anatomy -- and about the mortification of an aging jock having to sell his body and work for a female pimp -- well... well, then it would still be a funny, albeit completely juvenile comedy about the state of 21st century American masculinity.

But "Hung" has more to offer than just John Thomas jokes. Amidst all the sniggering humor about how Ray has been taught to "do your best with the gifts God gave you" is some smart comedy about the state of 21st century America in general, as well as a superb lead performance from Thomas Jane.
You can read the full "Hung" review here.

As the review suggests, I'm a fan, and this will be working into the regular blog rotation starting Sunday night (or Monday morning). Click here to read the full post

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

The Philanthropist, "Nigeria": This guy walks into a bar...

I offered up my own thoughts on "The Philanthropist" pilot -- specifically, that James Purefoy is so damned charming that I liked it more than I expected to -- in Tuesday's column, but what did you guys think? And was I the only person distracted by the stunt double's shoes? Click here to read the full post

CBS fall premiere dates announced

Over at NJ.com, I have details on CBS' fall premiere dates. As per usual, nearly all of the shows are premiering during the first week of the official 2009-10 TV season. Click here to read the full post

Sports Night rewind: "Mary Pat Shelby" & "The Head Coach, Dinner and the Morning Mail"

Okay, I'm going to give this another try and review two "Sports Night" episodes in one go. Spoilers for "Mary Pat Shelby" and "The Head Coach, Dinner and the Morning Mail" coming up just as soon as I take a vacation from my values...
"I sent her there on purpose." -Dana
I don't know that I want to keep reviewing these episodes two at a time -- particularly since the next two, "Dear Louise" and "Thespis," are both unrelated and good enough to deserve their own reviews -- but as these particular episodes are more or less a two-parter (no "to be continued..." at the end of the first, but a "previously on..." at the start of the second), I'm okay with it here.

More than sports, or politics, or wacky romantic misunderstandings, "Sports Night" is first and foremost about work -- about the kind of workplace many of us would like to have, and about the challenges of keeping it as idealized as we want. Frequently, the threats to the sanctity of Sports Night(*) come from above, in the form of Luther Sachs's minions, but here the problems come from within, which makes the conflict feel that much more potent. Most of the time, the people at Sports Night are as much friends as colleagues, and these episodes -- "Mary Pat Shelby" in particular -- show how tricky things can get when you need a colleague to do something you would never ask a friend to do.

(*) For the sake of my sanity -- and/or to avoid using the phrase show-within-the-show 8 million times this summer -- I think I'm henceforth going to use italics to refer to the CSC version of it, and quotes to refer to the ABC version.

While Sports Night is supposed to be this wonderful place to work, filled with eccentric but supportive people, they're not saints. They make mistakes, or they make bad choices for ostensibly noble reasons, or they put their faith where they shouldn't. And when that happens, we get a fiasco like Dana sending Natalie to interview Christian Patrick in the hopes of sparking a controversy which will be good for the show -- and we have Natalie going along with it because she trusts Dana a little too implicitly.

While Natalie is Patrick's victim in "Mary Pat Shelby," and continues to suffer the emotional fallout of the incident in "The Head Coach, Dinner and the Morning Mail," these episodes feel like more of a showcase for Dana than for her. It's Dana who makes the choice to do the Patrick interview even with the restrictions from his lawyers, it's Dana who sends Natalie instead of Jeremy, it's Dana who kicks Patrick and his crew out of the studio, and it's Dana who tells Natalie that -- unofficial family or no -- she needs to get her act together, or else. And Felicity Huffman is wonderful throughout.

"Mary Pat Shelby" is the stronger of the two, and not just because it's the first episode of the series to ditch the laugh track.(As I recall, Sorkin and Schlamme got ABC to relent as a one-time experiment to see how viewers responded; obviously, response wasn't good enough, and it was back the next week.) The conflict is greater in "MPS," but it's also a better illustration of what "Sports Night" could be at its best. Like "The Apology," it contrasts a fairly dark main storyline (Christian Patrick assaults Natalie) with a subplot that seems fairly goofy (Dan wants to grow a goatee), then finds a way to combine the two at the end to create a moment that's simultaneously funny and moving, as Dan and Casey have Dana's back by standing up to Patrick's lawyer in this exchange:
"This is a third-place show on a fourth-rate network." -Evans
"Yeah, but that's all about to change once I grow a goatee." -Dan
"He's just crazy enough to do it." -Casey
It's not quite "Can I just say one more thing about the Starland Vocal Band?," but it's awfully close.

"Morning Mail" is, by design, a less intense episode. We're now a little removed from the Patrick incident, and everyone but a distracted Natalie and a sleep-deprived Jeremy has more or less moved on from it. Dan is trying to get Casey to stop talking about Rostenkowski, and Casey in turn is obsessed with Gordon -- until, in a nice moment, Gordon tries to bond with Casey over their shared hatred of Rostenkowski, and inadvertently makes Casey realize he's being too hard on the coach -- and so things are a bit lighter throughout.

But Sabrina Lloyd and, especially, Joshua Malina (who by this point has left the over-the-top mannerisms of his pilot performance long behind) both do fine jobs of playing their characters at the end of their respective ropes. And while Sorkin will drag out the Dana/Casey stuff past all reason, I like that he more or less puts Jeremy and Natalie together by the end of the sixth episode, and does it in an unusual way. These are two people getting together at their worst, not their best, and yet being together (even if, right now, Jeremy's just napping at their newsroom picnic) seems to make the bad stuff feel okay.

A lot of good stuff to discuss here. And speaking of which, some other thoughts:

• In my quest to keep track of recurring Sorkin-isms that will continue to pop up in his other series (and/or ones that had already appeared in the likes of "A Few Good Men" and "The American President"), I couldn't help but notice the use in "Mary Pat Shelby" of the gag where a character gives a long speech and the intended audience retorts with, "I wasn't really listening." It's Sorkin's way, I suppose, of trying to self-regulate his tendency to write these long-winded, preachy monologues in the first place.

• More recurring Sorkin devices: Natalie rattles off her resume near the end of "MPS." And Jeremy runs down some of his credentials -- including a degree in Applied Mathematics -- in "Morning Mail."

• While you would assume Ray Wise is great enough that he would have become a Sorkin repertory player, he didn't turn up on the "West Wing" until years after Sorkin had left.

• The Boston reporter Natalie is referring to in "Mary Pat Shelby" is Lisa Olson, who was more or less driven out of town after she accused several players on the Patriots of sexually harassing her. She wound up moving to Australia to work for a sister newspaper, though by the time this episode aired (or maybe a little bit afterwards), she returned to the States as a columnist for the New York Daily News. (She left that job last year after allegedly getting sick of dealing with Mike Lupica.)

• The other ripped-from-the-headlines aspect of the story is that Christian Patrick is undoubtedly named after Christian Peter, who, during his time as a defensive tackle at Nebraska, was arrested and/or convicted of multiple crimes, and most infamously was accused of raping a freshman girl twice in two days. The Patriots drafted Peter, then freaked out after he was convicted for trying to choke a woman in a bar, and refused to sign him. At the time of this episode, Peter was a backup for the Giants, who signed him on the condition that he attend counseling for alcohol abuse, anger management, etc.

• Patrick is played by Brad Henke, who was causing trouble on "Lost" towards the end of this season.

• I love the "MBS" scene where Dana tries to convince Dan and Casey that she's right to trade Natalie's story for Mary Pat Shelby's, and Dan hits her with "You had me until the last part." It's so rare to see characters on television having an ethical debate like this where no one's getting too upset or arguing the point too much -- these are just adults trying to convince each other of their position.

• Dan has some fine moments in both episodes, but I particularly like the scene in "Morning Mail" where he talks to Jeremy about the majesty of New York, which perfectly sets up the use of "Someone to Watch Over Me" -- written, of course, by the Gershwins -- at the episode's end.

• The running gag in "Morning Mail" about Casey's conversational anal-retentiveness is very funny.

Coming up next: Definitely "Dear Louise," and maybe "Thespis" as well. Gonna play that by ear.

What did everybody else think?
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'Virtuality' review - Sepinwall on TV

In today's column, I review Fox's "Virtuality" -- and wonder what, if anything, is behind the network's decision to air the pilot for a show (created by Ronald D. Moore and Michael Taylor from "Battlestar Galactica") they declined to order. Click here to read the full post

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Rescue Me, "Disease": Veggie heaven

A quick review of tonight's "Rescue Me" coming up just as soon as I say Grace...

"Disease" wasn't as strong as last week's "Mickey," though it featured an even more elaborate Garrity fantasy musical number, this one complete with Busby Berkeley choreography that has to be viewed from overhead to be truly appreciated.

(And did I miss the explanation for why Sean was in a coma? I know surgery can have complications, but I don't recall hearing them mentioned at any point in the episode.)

It wasn't a bad episode, necessarily, but it felt like there was way too much of Tommy and Janet, and Tommy and Sheila, at the expense of everything else, other than the musical fantasy and more inexplicable time with Lou and Candy the hooker. (And should we take Tommy's comment about how Lou should have kids as foreshadowing that Candy is trying to tell Lou that he's her baby daddy?) Given that my brain starts to tune out any lengthy scene with Tommy and his women, as a defense mechanism, when I got to the end of the episode it felt like it was only 10 or 15 minutes long.

Hope there's a point to all of this, and/or that we get a significant change in direction soon.

What did everybody else think?
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