i had the irl equivalent. not that good tbh!
i am in thrall of Industry on HBO.
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I finished The Wire (three weeks ago). Yeah itâs a little silly/hopeless to say this or that is The Greatest Television Drama of All Time, but despite stumbling here and there it is pretty good. Leaving the superlatives behind this is certainly the kind of American TV I like.
I stand by my gripes about season 3, but thankfully it was more or less anomalous in its weird focus on âcomedy.â S4 is great like everyone says. I donât get the hate for season 5, which admittedly I canât find much actual articulation for aside from vague reddit posts and listicle trash, both of which argue S5 doesnât âreach the emotional heightsâ of S1-4 or somethingâa goofy criticism of a show whose strengths reside more or less outside the register of melodrama. I liked the serial killer thing, but I especially enjoyed the newsroom settingâobviously something Simon has strong feelings about. Iâm not usually big on newspaper drama movies, but I would watch another season of this particular writing team doing a show about the news.
Interested to check out The Deuce although am just now reading it stars James Franco as not one but two peopleâŚ
This is sick
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you should watch the shield
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Weâre now on the home stretch for True Detective Season 3, and itâs still pretty good, if more understated and a bit more like watching embers fade out (in a good melancholic and dramatic way, not a boring way) as opposed to Season 1âs corrosive tire fire long-yet-fierce burn. I really like how they seemed to get a sophisticated touch back into the whole True Detective gimmick of crime and corruption and evil being generational/inherited/timeless or perhaps occurring in and out of time/rooted in social ills and threats with deep histories and base desires. Mahershala Aliâs age-up makeup is phenomenal and he plays all 3 layers of his role with elegance and a deep emotional core. Dorff is kinda the same guy, a real Good Olde Boy, but in a way that makes sense and despite being less compelling is still entertaining.
To repeat myself I can definitely see why True Detective is widely considered to have one anomalously bad season, but yeah, Season 3 is for sure a return to form.
âŚyouâll never guess what Iâve been watchingâŚ!!! Iâm part way Season 2 at the moment.
Itâs more sitcom-y, even soap-y and episodic-y, than I was expecting. Like, it kinda does a bit of the Monster of the Week thin that leads it into not having the sort of glacially satisfying pacing as something like The Wire, itâs very non-prestige, feels like it really comes from that transitional era where perhaps the showâs creators would hope that youâd get invested in some kind of overaching narrative, but they also arenât going to hold it against you if you come in part way through Season 3 or whatever and arenât going to have a practical means for catching up from the beginning of the series.
Itâs not a bad thing, itâs just probably not my preference and never has been, even before it was convenient to be able to watch an episodic television show in release sequence. So The Shield, so far, isnât endearing itself to me on quite the same level as something like an HBO production, where even during the same time period they were definitely producing television that expected you to watch it all, in sequence, and to pay attention.
All that being said, that more episodic focus does kind of lend itself well to a more eclectic tone, which is kinda neat. This is especially relevant in terms of the whole question of media about cops being copaganda, and, let me tell you, if that question is a complex one with The Wire because it puts in time and effort to depict cops in their best light and their worst, The Shield has been even more of a rollercoaster in that regard. Like, you most certainly get depictions of The Cops Saving The Day And Being Good For The Community And Society, which is kind of a consequence of that more episodic structure (which compels it to often pick up and resolve narrative arcs in the span of a single episode, which usually means smart/resourceful/persistent cops are solving a B or C plot within the span of a single episode) but also kind of a consequence of, you know, the creators probably not necessarily hating cops (as is correct and just and good).
At the same time though to dismiss it as copaganda is even more difficult than it is with The Wire, cause like, the degree to which the Cops Are Bastards is⌠I hesitate to call it more florid and explicit about how it depicts cops being bastard, because that would imply that the depictions of Bastard Cops in this show are outlandish and clearly heavily dramatized. And although it does make it feel obvious that the Bastard Cops in the show are loosely based on a real scandal in a real L.A. police unit, at the same time even as itâs more lurid about it, it also feels more honest about why and how cops are bastards? Itâs like, in The Wire you get a more complicated and sobering introspection about how individual cops can be good and individual cops can be bad, and on the whole most cops are more one than the other, but most of them are still a mix of both. The Shield much more explicitly makes the good cops and bastard cops separate internal factions within the same overall institution, and theyâre all forced to collude with one another, especially the good cops need to collude with the bastard cops, because the institution itself is just built on shaky moral foundation to begin with. Like, I think there are probably more Vic Mackeys and Shane Vendrells in real world police departments than there are Jimmy McNultys or even Holland âDutchâ Wagenbachs for that matter (though if The Wire did get something more right about how I imagine Actually Good (People Who Are Temporarily Embarrassing Themselves By Acting As) Cops are treated in the real world, it would be how viciously obstructive and undermining the institution can be towards them).
At any rate, itâs certainly an entertaining and enjoyable watch even if it doesnât nourish and captivate in the same way that other police (spits on the ground cursing their name) procedurals have for me. Maybe it will find more of that kind of narrative ambition in later seasons? I can see that happening. For now Iâll just continue to enjoy the more snappy-if-also-less-satisfying episodic pacing.
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well said. without saying too much, i think youâll find the show actually does establish a definite through-line while still keeping a more episodic format. itâs a strange hybrid that likely is a result of itâs age. in a yet-to-be-post-sopranos world, tv was still figuring out what it wanted to be. the result works well for me. my favorite shows are the ones from that era.
i hold that the shield is a more accurate depiction of policing than the wire is, but i agree that itâs not clear the writers have an explicit agenda. in fact, i think by lack of agenda the shield is a far realer representation of the perception of policingâs reality than the wireâs more calculated, literary (derogatory) ambivalence. even the rougher, more amateur aspects of the shield work better for me than the wire. storylines and side plots get dropped wantonly, unlike the wireâs more knowing and coy âyou never know.â
i also think it asks better questions than the wire, at least for a paranoid and angry america (not sure if this translates to canada). i think it was either michael chiklis or walton goggins who said in an interview that vic mackey was a bad guy, but knowing that people like that are out there, donât you want them on your side? my answer is no, but the question is compelling.
just to be clear, i like the wire. i just think itâs a bit silly. i also think the shield is silly, but it is both better tv imo and also uses that silliness to tread into darker and more tangible themes than the wire.
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Thereâs one other very important comparison we can make between The Wire and The Shield, hereâif The Wire was truly the better television show, why didnât it have an officially licensed PS2 game?
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One time in The Shield when the Mexicans were playing both Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting as well as Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike
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My wife got a new phone and it came with apple+ or whatever their streaming service is called and we watched Ted Lasso.
I think I always assumed Ted Lasso would be obnoxiously terrible, but I wish people who kept recommending it to me for three years had just told me that it was done by the guy who did Scrubs. Because then I would have watched it three years ago.
The show is surprisingly good but gets worse as it goes. I think the more it got critical acclaim and was treated as something important rather than a silly show about masculine friendship and positivity, the more it got sort of high on its own supply, to put it one way. It manages to mostly be good through its three season arc, and I think the ending is actually quite incredible, but it makes some very peculiar narrative choices in the second and especially third seasons.
We also watched Severance because someone here or maybe Tim on the podcast recommended it two years ago. This show is pretty dang good. I like how itâs both a silly office sitcom and a strange SF melancholic dystopic thriller. Not sure how they managed to pull off such a balance but Iâm excited for more.
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Just started the second series of Almaâs Not Normal. Itâs set in Bolton (near Manchester in the U.K.) about a woman whoâs unemployed, her mum was a heroin addict, and she wants to be an actress. But to make money she becomes an escort. Itâs hilarious and genuinely touching at times. Recommended.
Not sure where itâs on in the US. Itâs on the BBC iPlayer here so if you use a VPNâŚ
Plus, Bolton is one of my favourite accents
It was me! I was the one who was shouting about Severance (maybe also Tim, I donât know). Iâm glad you watched it. The second season is set to premier on my birthday next year, but I have no idea how theyâll possibly follow up that first season, especially because they apparently did not have a plan in place for any further seasons when making that first one!
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I realise now that I made this sound more depressing than it is. Itâs very funny, frequently silly, and hopeful.
Ok be honest bro, how much of you liking The Shield so much is because of the hilarious tone set by the Latin Rap Rock theme song
Iâm about halfway through Season 3, got to the part where Captain Aceveda finally did some extreme police brutality to the man who sexually assaulted him. It was an interesting narrative overall and a compelling character move for him over the course of the season to go all machismo about it and be so reticent to even tell his wife about it at all, which seemed⌠not necessarily out of character for him, but kind of out of character in a way where it was an exception that could either prove the rule, or signal an eventual fall from grace. Good stuff and a pretty interesting place to take that character specifically.
I think I can see what youâre saying about The Shield more and more cause I genuinely canât tell precisely how the showrunners want me to perceive this, and even I canât fully decide how it is I feel about it. Is this, like, some kind of acceptable upper limit for some kind of honourable gentlemanâs police brutality? Does the show want me to like and respect this character more, or does it want me to understand this is still something I should be perceiving as morally unacceptable? The Shield is still goofy in the sense of how much it goes between extremes on that question but I canât say that it is presenting any of it in a straightforward way.
Still enjoying the episodic feel of it but I do hope the later seasons culminate towards some kind of overall dramatic arc, even if it is gonna mostly waffle around to get there. Please tell me this show didnât get shitcanned in an ungraceful way and there was some intentionality to it having 7 seasons and not 8 or moreâŚ
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I guess I am kinda repeating myself from my earlier impressions, so, yeah, itâs still doinâ its thing I guess.
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It definitely gains a lot of narrative momentum towards the end. Iâll spoiler tag this in case you donât want to know, but the season where that really ramps up is 5. I like the whole show but thatâs where it really starts to gain its reputation as one of the goats
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somewhat ironically, for as episodic as the shield is, the ending/final seasons make it one of the most comprehensive and neatly tied shows iâve seen.
a lot of what youâre saying is also why i like the show so much. it constantly had me being like âdamn youâre going there?â like all good shows, sometimes those interesting choices would work, sometimes they wouldnât, but i always appreciated how bold the choices were. some of the character choices, like what you mentioned with aceveda or some stuff that happens later on with julien or dutch affected me in a powerful way even if it didnât necessarily fit the show as an object.
also be ready for maybe my favorite limited-run performance of all time in season 5 by way of forest whitaker
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@MoH Dodging the most important question, I seeâŚ
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if it helps, i literally know the name of the song off top
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