Holding Up

The first disc of Deadwood was only moderately interesting. A friend urged me to give it another chance, I did and it pulled me in for the first two seasons. That's understating it a lot actually. It had me dying for the next episode. The dialogue was original in ways I just couldn't get enough of. Then the 3rd season came along and nothing made sense and it seemed all like they were just plugging random shit into some formula. I decided I will eventually re-watch the first two seasons and see how much of the fascination was just the newness of the concept and how much it still keeps my attention. This suburban dialogue in Deadwood style made me laugh out loud and reminded me of it.

I'm re-watching Entourage and Weeds first seasons. Weeds is only sometimes as hilarious as it continuously was the first time I watched it. I have a feeling the 2nd and 3rd seasons will hold up better over time because they really get into the theme of how many ways life in the suburbs is completely fucked. Entourage is awesome right out of the gate. One literature professor commented on how similar the culture portrayed in that show is to the Japanese Heian court culture of the 11th century and any other court culture really. And it just reminds me of how unforgiveably lame Tudors was. They could have had another Entourage, only with violence on top of sex. You can tell that's what they were going for. But they put zero effort into it. Just string the sex and violence together and hope those will carry the show seems to have been the approach and it's a huge waste of good material. With the Tudor court, you really have the material for something as good as Entourage or better. It's really a shame the way that they wasted it.

But the best show of all time is still Firefly, followed by The Wire. They are both shows you can re-watch a year or so later and see things you missed before and other things you're glad to have in your memory.