I'm supposed to be working on a paper, but I figured that this was not entirely useless as a stalling tactic as it gets me writing something, which is better than writing nothing even if it's not germane to the task at hand. I keep starting weekly posts and then having them sort of fade into the ether as I get farther and farther into each successive week without posting, so this is sort of a multi-week commentary compendium including the various cable shows that have concluded their seasons in the past few weeks.
- When I do the Dream Emmy Ballot in the summer, the supporting drama categories are always the ones where I end up with about twenty performances that I love, and BE added some great actors there. Michael Kenneth Williams never seemed to get enough to do, besides that unbelievably excellent scene with Chalky and the guy from the Klan, but still used every second he appeared on screen to radiate a kind of simmering menace that made Chalky seem like the greatest badass of all time. Similarly, Jack Huston made a lot out of relatively little screen time, particularly in selling Richard's war wounds as more than a gimmicky period flourish.
- Try as I might, I just cannot bring myself to care about Angela and her problems. The whole "drifting along ineffectually, letting oneself be swayed by whomever happens to be physically closest" thing is likely very true to the way a fair number of people go through life, but it's terribly boring to watch. And unlike, say, Mad Men, where I think the writers made a decent case for Betty's continued presence by emphasizing the degree to which Don places importance on his children, the same can't really be said here for Angela in relation to Jimmy. The writers made me care more about Pearl in two episodes than they did about Angela through the whole entire season.
- I honestly wasn't sure for much of this season whether I would be excited for the next when it wrapped, but the finale sold me - I'm genuinely interested to see where the alliance between Jimmy, Eli and the Commodore goes. It seems like BE has all the tools necessary to pull out a superlative second season, and I'm looking forward to seeing whether they stick the landing.
The Walking Dead
Conversely, I don't know if I'm just that into The Walking Dead. It wasn't bad, but the first six episodes didn't feature the kind of character development or plot advancement that makes a show feel like vital viewing. (This post from io9 delves really well into the differences between the show and the comic - which I started reading over the summer, then tapered off - and how those differences tended to make the show a bit shallower.) Depending on how many shows I'm watching next fall, I may pick it back up again when the second season starts, but at present I'm not burning to see more.
Gossip Girl
Last week's episode concluded what is easily the best-executed narrative arc the show's ever done. (Considering the entire Schwartz/Savage oeuvre, it may be the best-executed narrative arc on GG or The O.C.) Eleven episodes must be some kind of record for them as far as sustaining a storyline, and the writers managed to make Juliet's motivation logical (as logical as Gossip Girl ever gets, anyway) and to resolve the story with a decent payoff. The only disappointment is that Juliet and Serena ended on good terms - Katie Cassidy could've made a stellar recurring villain for the show.
Glee
While watching both "Special Education" and "A Very Glee Christmas," I was struck by how little I cared about the seeming dissolution of the relationships between Rachel and Finn and Will and Emma. For all of the show's emphasis on the pairings of characters, there isn't a huge degree of chemistry among any of them. Some work well plot-wise, but there's no real, say, Matt Saracen/Julie Taylor or Chuck Bass/Blair Waldorf in this group. That said, I will observe that Artie and Brittany seem to be shaping up to be a great example of the Dream Relationship - that being when one finds someone who takes in the various things about them that are maybe a little nutty, crazy, flaky, whatever, and finds those things charming.
Sons of Anarchy
- I'll be interested to see how this season plays back on DVD. I watched both prior seasons within the span of about two weeks, so this season was going to feel like slow going no matter what happened, and I suspect that the trip to Ireland will play better within a shorter span of time and that the way it eventually circled around to bring John Teller's history in will fit better with the show's mythology as it's been laid out so far. Regardless, it's difficult to quibble with the story's denouement in the finale. If you're going to dispatch with a pair of villains who've outlived their narrative usefulness, best to do so with extreme badassery as the culmination of an epic triple-cross. The potential for a degree of narrative resetting with Jax, Clay and company coming out of jail (presumably) at the beginning of next season seems really promising - why is next fall so far away?
- I so hope that this season's finale, like the prior two, appears on the DVDs with a cast commentary. Kurt Sutter gathers together a giant group of cast members, then they proceed to basically ignore whatever gravity the plot would seem to dictate and replace it with a lot of catcalling, insults of each other's stage fighting and motorcycle riding abilities and general raucousness. I really, really want to rewatch the moment when Chibs slices Jimmy up with a cast commentary soundtrack.
- I found him kind of one-note in his early appearances, but I have to say that Chucky is growing on me. Once they minimized the masturbation jokes and focused on his potential as an odd-but-game friend of the club he became a great figurehead for the community built around SAMCRO.
Terriers
Between the time when I initially planned to write about this and now, Terriers was officially cancelled by FX. As was frequently true throughout the season, I find myself at a loss for words to encapsulate what was so good about Terriers. There were the perfect marriages of character and actor with Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James. The ensemble of smart female characters like Katie, Maggie and Steph, truly unlike any other on TV. The marvelous frayed-edges and lived-in-ness of the universe of Ocean Beach. The push and pull between laid back amiability and tangible danger that somehow never seemed to tip the balance too far any one way. I wasn't surprised that the show got cancelled - all I could really do was shrug and sign up for an Amazon update when the DVDs are available - but man, will I miss it.
I suppose the other side of the coin as far as The Walking Dead is that in the past six months alone we've had both Rubicon and Terriers come and go, and while I feel like I'll miss the characters and their universes and chase down other work by the actors from the latter two, right now I feel like I could quite contentedly never watch TWD again.
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