2014 RANDOM TV THOUGHTS

[piranesi]

I mean fuck I'm still reeling:

 

 

Al:  They hold you down from behind, then you wonder why you're helpless.  How the fuck could you not be?!

Dolly:  I don't like it either.

Al: Another one that held me down, that fuckin' proctor when I tried to get to that ship. He fuckin' held me, fuckin' wouldn't let me go.  Fuckin' in my mind, you see, she was being restrained.  Couldn't get back off that had got on the boat to New Orleans to go suck prick in Georgia.  She changed her mind and...and I was being restrained by that fat bastard orphanage proctor.  Anyway, that's it.  That's the end of it.  That's the fucking conclusion.  Christ, I'd have wished to though probably she'd have thrown me overboard anyway, but I'd have wished to get to that fucking ship.  But I was being restrained.  I couldn't get from where she'd left me.  He held me to that bed, her calling from the ship that had changed her mind.

Dolly:  I don't like it either.

Al:       No, huh?  What?

Dolly:  When they hold you down.

Al:       I guess I do that, huh, with your fucking hair?

Dolly:  No.

Al:       No?  (She shakes her head, he smiles and holds up a shot)

 

Well, bless you for a fucking fibber.  (He drinks.)

[Control]

 

Olyphant is such a terrific actor. He played basically the same part in DEADWOOD and JUSTIFIED (violently angry lawman who is far less righteous than he'd like people to think), yet comes up with two distinctly different people.

 

 

Reminds me of an interview I heard him give on Q. The interviewer asked him if he was afraid of being typecast. His response: "As what, a total bad ass?"

[J.T.]

I'm really enjoying Crossbones, but I didn't expect it to find an audience in the US (even given the low standards of other Summer Friday night shows.

 

I gave Halt and Advance a try, but thought it was really plodding.

 

Anyone watched Musketeers on the BBC Network?  I want to get to that before too long.

 

Musketeers fucking rules.  They actually (gasp) specialize in using their muskets!

[Craig H]

I started watching Deadwood as well, but I'm not terribly interested in anything outside of Seth Bullock. Every time, I mean really, every damn time Olyphant is on screen he is seething and is like a volcano ready to explode. Al is a dick, most everyone else is a scumbag, but Bullock is basically written as Stone Cold Steve Austin and it's AWESOME.

[Petey]

The opening scene in last night's Leftovers was one of the most gruesome things I've ever seen on a television screen. The show is just emotionally draining to get through.

[Tabe]

Anybody watch the first episode of Manhattan?  Any good?

[Craig H]

I finished all three series of Sherlock and I pretty much loved it. I especially liked the third series. Sherlock's best man speech is really awesome and the moment that Watson has with Mary in the finale is something else as well. Such good stuff and it all made up for the finale having a really flat ending. 

[Control]

I just watched the first episode of RECTIFY. Anyone watch this? This first episode has got to be one of the best series' premieres I've seen. Pretty captivating.

[EVA]

I just watched the first episode of RECTIFY. Anyone watch this? This first episode has got to be one of the best series' premieres I've seen. Pretty captivating.

1st season of RECTIFY is excellent. It's kind of a throwback to early-era MAD MEN/BREAKING BAD. Very methodically paced, often times more poetic than narrative.

I haven't watched an episode of the 2nd season yet, which is airing now, I think. Guess I'm just going to wait to stream it.

[EVA]

Recap of THE STRAIN, episode 3:

A man's cock and balls fell into the toilet while he was taking a piss.

[Elsalvajeloco]

Recap of THE STRAIN, episode 3:

A man's cock and balls fell into the toilet while he was taking a piss.

 

And he seemed at peace when it happened. Totally unrealistic.

[EVA]

He was just like, "Well, I can scratch that appointment with the urologist off my to-do list."

[piranesi]

Funny thing tonight when watching DEADWOOD.  That drunk racist guy Steve was going on and on in the livery talking to a horse and my wife suddenly says: "God, that guy won't shut up!  I wish that horse would kick him in the head."

[Victator]

Maybe people shouldn't be lazy fucks. Go pick up another language. Nothing is stopping you from leanring Arabic. Or I guess you could read subtitles. It wont kill you.

Or watch one of the million other entertaining things in English and without subtitles. 

[piranesi]

Now I'm having a hard time coming to terms with Powers Booth in DEADWOOD.  

On paper, like in theory, what he's doing in every scene to every line, is absurd.  Like if you were an actor and told people "I'm going to read my lines like this" and then did what he's doing, snarling and huffing like some hack comedian doing a Dirty Harry impression, you would be mocked and fired and put on youtube to be mocked some more.  

What I can't figure out is why it works so well.  Every scene he's in is enthralling.  I look so forward to every line he says.  

My current theory is that it shows an interesting parallel between him and Bullock.  They seem to be totally opposite in terms of motivation, but as Eva pointed out, Bullock is driven by rage derived from some kind of self-loathing.  Cy Tolliver seems to have that too but has never stopped to think it through.  

Comparing those two and Al is interesting too.

We are eventually given enough of Al's backstory to understand what turned him into the man he is, the life-cycle of shit-kickings and eye-opening brutality visited on him.  One gets the sense that Cy has a similar series of horror stories from his childhood, but we never get to hear about them.  He swallows them all up in the tooth-grinding jawline of his.  He clearly hates himself and clearly takes it out on others.  At times, when he's lashing out at someone it almost seems like he thinks he's brutalizing himself.  

But unlike Al, that hatred and anger never turned toward the relief of building a safe area around himself of loyal lost dogs.  And unlike Bullock he doesn't have the illusion of righteous forebearance of "fighting the good fight" to reform himself.  He never even realized that was an option.

So it all just sits there in his face and voice, constantly swirling around his head looking for an escape but only coming out in snarls and sneers and brief fits of violence.

[Johnny Sorrow]

So basically you came to terms with it. That's Cy.

[peterien]

Anyone watching the 2nd season of Masters of Sex?? How does it hold up to the first season?

Thanks

[J.H.]

I think Cy's fatal flaw is that he want to be Al , in terms of power and respect inside the camp but lacks Al's ability to see the bigger picture. Cy wants everything all at once. The power, money and respect Al has came from building the camp and Cy sees himself as a mover and a shaker but can't take a step back and lacks that ability to play the long game. Everything with Al IS the long game. Even when he is recuperating from the stroke Al sees the bigger picture. The contrast between the 2 is incredible.

 

To put in terms of spy characters, Cy wants to be Bond while Al is already George Smiley

 

James

[EVA]

Anyone watching the 2nd season of Masters of Sex?? How does it hold up to the first season?

Thanks

Broken Record Time: I had to give up my Showtime, so I'm missing it, and it's killing me inside.

Fun Fact I Learned Today About MASTERS OF SEX: Paul Bettany was originally signed on as William Masters but quit when Lizzy Caplan was cast as Virginia. Apparently he didn't think she was a good enough actress for the part.

LOL

[Swift]

 

Recap of THE STRAIN, episode 3:

A man's cock and balls fell into the toilet while he was taking a piss.

 

And he seemed at peace when it happened. Totally unrealistic.

 

 

Well, the other guy appeared to be turning into Steve Buscemi, so I'm not sure who came off worse there.

[piranesi]

Two episodes left of DEADWOOD and I know I'm going to be disappointed at how it ends without anything tied up goddammit.  But, there was another amazing soliloquy in this episode that I'll just leave here:

 

 

Jane:   I dreamed last night I was clamoring up a fucking creek bank, which is often required of a drunk.  It was dark, and I couldn't tell where I was till I cleared the bank and came face to face with Charlie Utter's ugly mug.  Now Charlie is, as usual, on the lookout for Bill that's, as usual too, losing at poker inside the joint we're outside of.  "Where are we, Charlie?" And this could be any fucking place the last number of years.  And he said, "Jane, don't you know this is the Number Ten Saloon here in the camp where Bill's gonna fucking get killed soon?"  "Jesus Christ how do you know, Charlie?"  I asked him.  He said, "Don't you know,?" he says, "Some point we know these fucking things? Don't you know the world says its fucking name to us?"  "What the fuck?  What the fuck do I have to dream about this for,"  I say to Charlie, "Wasn't I miserable enough?"  "Jane," fucking Charlie says to me, "Don't you know this is the night you couldn't look out for that little girl when you was at Cochran's, and Swearengen come in and scared you and you went down to the creek to weep?  That's where the fuck you're coming from.  And, and, "Don't you know," he says, "This is the night you spirit that child from Cochran's, and to where our stock was outside of camp, and we watched out on that little girl and sung to her, and you, with the presence of mind to continue the fucking round when I was too fucking stupid?  And you said you would? (sighs) Row, row, row and I said row, row, row your boat and we had this?"  (She pauses) Now, Charlie says to me, "Don't you understand what I'm trying to tell you?  Any evenings in your life you made mistakes, remember where even evenings you was as most ashamed as you ever thought you could ever be are able to wind up, and don't fucking only remember the middle of the dream!

[Greggulator]

Why is Tyrant the best?

It's the only show on television when the leader of a country will kill his arch-political rival with his bare hands in a bathroom.

I would spoiler tag that but I don't think anyone else but me cares.

[EVA]

I think you've already wasted more words on TYRANT than most actual TV critics have bothered to.

[Greggulator]

I think you've already wasted more words on TYRANT than most actual TV critics have bothered to.

 

I haven't enjoyed watching a terrible show to this degree since Studio 60.

I love misguided sweeping epics.

Studio 60 was just absolutely bonkers to watch. It was just Aaron Sorkin at the ultimate ego trip and so great. The best was to see these comedy sketches allegedly the greatest ever written and they were completely awful. I also loved the blatant rip-off of Network at the start of the series (which they try and get around by saying "in a scene right out of Network"). And the Nevada episodes were fantastic, too.

Tyrant isn't that great. It's not a failure of ego. It's just something that should be awesome in the hands of people who don't know what they're doing.

[piranesi]

Finished DEADWOOD.  Kind of pleasantly surprised at how "complete" it felt.  I was fully prepared to scream a loud FUCK HBO at how many loose ends there were going to be with no 4th season (also by the way FUCCK HBOOOOO) but it was actually a pretty satisfying ending to the ideas they were exploring in season 3, in the sense that, yeah, there was a lot still up in the air for the small fries of Deadwood, but the larger issue was settled.  The fucking free hand of the fucking market strode through town.  Only the one hand free, though, so the other hand could hold the whip.  And it strode out of town to hit the next one.  Barely flesh-wounded and still feeling self-righteous and self-pitious and infallible.  George Fucking Hearst to Mitt Fucking Romney it's like a curse in our DNA.

Whatever else might have happened in the ensuing story to those particular small fries I had come to care so much about, they were once and for all just ants in the wall.  "Soldier ants and worker ants and whore ants to fuck the soldiers and the workers, right inside that wall, baby ants." said one ant to another ant who was about to die by the hand of another (particularly charismatic) ant..."The camp is galvanized.  People scurry about.  They've tasks to perform.  They feel important."

Lots of stories weren't finished but "The" story was.  And nothing in the followup was going to change its course.  It began in praise of freedom and wildness and then moved toward the embrace of "civilization" and "order" and then, once that safety was dangled, felt new words that follow:  "Law" which of course is followed by "Force." and then once those words are safely learned, "Amalgamation and Capital."

 

The ending, with Hearst riding off, was a little similar to the ending of ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST as the railroad continues its slow inevitable stretching-out while Cheyenne fades into darkness.  A vestige.  But that ending wells you up with a kind of optimism.  Sergio Leone wouldn't let his railroadman get away alive and so that movie's ending promises, for a moment, progress and civilization without "That cocksucker inside, Mr. Amalgamation and Capital."  Leone lets him "take the bullet in the head" that Charlie Utter promised him while DEADWOOD'S Charlie Utter shuffles helplessly on the bottom step of the Gem Saloon.  And Cy Tolliver huffs and puffs and pulls his gun and watches him ride away, choosing instead to kill some smaller ants.  And taking that shot?  Only causes more death to more sad small fries. 

 

In the end, "Listen to the Thunder" was right. 

 

 

Wild Bill: You know the sound of thunder, don't you, Mrs. Garret?

Alma: Of-of course.

Wild Bill: Can you imagine that sound if I asked you to?

Alma: I can, Mr. Hickok.

Wild Bill: Your husband and me had this talk. And I told him to head home to avoid a dark result. But I didn't say it in thunder. Ma'am, Listen, to the thunder.

 

 

At the time we thought he was talking about Al...but I'd like to think Bill saw farther than that...Farther even than Al proved able to see.  Everyone who propped up the widow Garrett in her righteous quest for simple self-reliance is equally to blame in their own suffering.  But especially Al.  He saw farther ahead than the rest of them and he made clear the episode before Hickock that he knew the sound:

 

 

See, I'm the simple type cocksucker that when he sees lightning, readies for thunder. And takes the thunder if it comes from part of the same fuckin' storm.

 

He could have convinced her to sell before Hearst even showed up, maybe?  But even he hadn't quite come to terms with the power of Amalgamation and Capital.  He managed to avoid it so long, the feeling of the free hand of the market on the back of his head, that he lost just a little bit of that famous pragmatism when it finally got to him.  He couldn't get past how much he hated that feeling "They hold you down from behind, then you wonder why you're helpless.  How the fuck could you not be?!"  He fought against it this time, for a little while, just a little too long, something he couldn't do when he was a child and probably shouldn't have this time.

 

A less satisfying side note:  In order to keep the vibe going after we watched TOMBSTONE, which I told my wife was really good based on having seen it years ago and on the rather legendary reputation it has nowadays...and man was it hokey as fuck.  I guess I get that they were trying to re-engage the old western look and story elements rather than make a gritty modern western...but shit I wasn't expecting that and it really grated. The constant two shots and awkwardly framed closeups and overdone 1990s tracking shots whenever anyone reacted to even the slightest emotional moment.  The romance scenes were endless and useless and kind of embarrassing to sit through.  The characters were straw-thin and apart from Kilmer everyone was acting like the most overwrought melodramatic hacks. 

 

I just couldn't go back to that...not after Ian McShane.