- Peter Dinklage and Jane Espenson: a match made in snarky-fantasy-TV Heaven. (I'll also add props for Arya's excellent "bitch, please" asides when Sansa talks about how much she wants to stay in King's Landing and bear Joffrey's babies.) Of all the show's characters, I think Tyrion's voice is losing the least in translation from the original book, and Dinklage is doing a bang-up job. When I read A Clash of Kings, I kept thinking that if that material made it to the show relatively intact then he'd probably end up with an Emmy, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if he sneaks up and becomes a frontrunner for the award this season.
- I have mixed feelings about having read (most) of the books before watching this show. (I don't know that I've mentioned before that I'm in the middle of A Feast for Crows. It's slower going than the first three.) On the one hand, knowing who dies when and how terribly tinges some scenes with an air of tragedy that's hard to shake (the different combinations of people who don't know they'll never see each other again in the departures from Winterfell in the second episode made me unexpectedly burst into tears - I didn't realize before then that I cared that much). On the other, it does occasionally give things a bit of "yelling-at-the-screen-during-a-horror-movie" flair. Like that scene where Sansa made up with Joffrey - sometimes it's an "Oh, Sansa," sometimes it's a "Girl, RUN," sometimes it's a "Ooh, honey, this is not going to work out in your favor." Good times.
Glee - 2.22, "New York"
This episode ended up seriously frustrating me, and I'm trying to put a finger on why without devolving into a pure rant. I just still can't believe that they tried to play off Rachel and Finn kissing as the reason that the club didn't make it past the first cut at Nationals and not their unformed, unfocused, bullshit "rehearsal" "process." It seems insulting to a) songwriters and b) actual glee clubs who actually work to prepare themselves for competition to suggest that a group - even with the "pluck" and "determination" of the New Directions - would show up at a competition like this with barely a day's work on their performances and not be repeatedly and dramatically shown up. (Sure, they didn't make the cut, but twelfth? Seriously?) I haven't been in a chorus in over a decade, but chunks of songs I sang then surface out of my mind all the time. You know why? Because we practiced them - ad nauseum. As much as the show tried to sort of place Jesse in the non-dreamer villain column in critiquing the club, he was also mostly right. There have been enough song performances that have landed more in the "flight of fancy" realm than the "actual performance" one this season for me to think must be some way for this show to show the club taking the competition structure as seriously as they pretend to and still showcase a variety of songs.
I keep thinking about this show in comparison with Friday Night Lights - last season, I kept thinking that Will is the kind of character who imagines himself to be someone like Coach Taylor, but is actually more like Assistant Coach Stan. (Except I actually wish FNL would follow up on that one time when Julie awkwardly ran into Assistant Coach Stan at that gay bar, and never want to see another story about Will's romantic life ever again.) FNL lets the structure of the competitive season shape the show, and even though its characters are sometimes underdogs, it never pretends that the team's success happens without focused hard work. I wish Glee had enough confidence in its storytelling to do the same.
Other Shows:
Oz
- The first three seasons felt like some of the most human television I've ever seen, asking the viewer to consider people and society and how they're all held together in a way that felt truly unlike any other show I've watched. It's a fascinating snapshot of domestic politics in the United States in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and I doubt that another show will ever offer as thoughtful a portrayal of the issues involved in the death penalty. The later seasons devolve a bit into sensationalism, more melodramatic storytelling and distractingly prominent guest stars, but it remains a singular show. I can see seeds of the cable TV revolution in Oz, though I can also see why the show may not have received a lot of awards attention even with its superlative acting ensemble. I'm even more intrigued now to watch The Sopranos and The Wire.
- The fact that nearly every character on this show is a Bad Dude or Lady has given an unsettling air to so many things - Criminal Intent, Fringe, those Farmer's Insurance ads with J.K. Simmons...I'm not sure I could go back to watching Dexter even if I wanted to. I think the only media that doesn't feel adversely impacted is Dean Winters' set of "Mayhem" ads for Allstate. That being said, that ubiquity just reinforces the feeling that the casting directors who work with HBO's shows don't get nearly enough credit as star-makers, or even just as discoverers and highlighters of talent. (In my dreams, next year Vanity Fair devotes one of their excellent photo spreads to 15 years of HBO dramas.)
- It was interesting to finish watching this show in the same week when Christopher Meloni's decision to leave Law and Order: SVU was announced, as Oz repeatedly made it dramatically clear that SVU was wasting Meloni's boatloads of God-given charisma.
- This was the first full series I watched via HBOGo, and while I'm not overly fond of watching things on the computer I was pleasantly surprised by the streaming service. While the actually streaming software (or maybe just the site's bandwidth, I don't know, I'm not a techie) still seems to need some tweaking (it's not as consistent for me as, say, the Netflix player), the selection of series in particular is great - the streaming counters the main frustration of watching HBO dramas through Netflix, where the breakdown of episodes-per-disc means that watching multiple seasons can move at a snail's pace. It's verrry tempting to blaze through the relevant remaining entries on my "best of the 00s" wishlist (four down in the last 18 months - holla!) - for now I'll settle for figuring out how it can best supplement the reading I'm starting to work on for comps.
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