"When I went out this morning to get the newspaper I saw a pizza on our roof! Would you know anything about that?!"

Last night's episode begins with an show down between a meth manufacturer and law enforcement. Fortunately for Walt, the aforementioned meth cooker, he is only pulled over for having a broken windshield. He explains to the officer that the windshield was damaged by falling debris from the plane crash. Unmoved, the officer writes Walt a citation, to which Walt reacts with a conniption that results in him being pepper sprayed and hauled back to the station. Luckily Hank pulls a few strings and Walt is released without charge.

From the opening moments and through the entire episode Walt appears to be completely shell-shocked. His face is blank and expressionless, except when he is lecturing a police officer about the first amendment. I don't know if it is the plane crash, or the separation from his wife, or the fact that he is coming to grips with the fact that now that he has beaten cancer he has to live with all of the terrible things he has caused, but it seems like he is suffering from some sort of PTSD.

Meanwhile, Jesse appears to be doing pretty well, all things considered. He drives past his old house and sees his father there fixing the place up. His father treats him coolly and tells Jesse that he plans on selling the house. Jesse, now thinking with a sober mind, formulates a plan to both screw over his parents, who he still seems to resent, as well as get his home back. He enlists Saul, who brokers a deal with Jesse's parents to sell the house at half the asking price as long as the fact that there was at one point a meth lab housed in the basement stays buried.

Walt also meets with Saul in this episode. Saul tries, unsuccessfully, to talk Walt into rejoining the meth cooking fraternity. Unlike Jesse, who admits to "being the bad guy" in the previous episode, Walt appears to still be in denial about all of the pain he has caused. He tells Saul he can't get back into the meth game because he "can't be the bad guy". When will he realize, like Jesse has, that he already is the bad guy? Saul attempts to convince Walt that Skylar has too much to lose to ever rat him out to the police, but just to be sure Saul, without Walt's knowledge, hires a man to keep surveillance (or is he up to something more sinister?) on her.

The bad ass Mexican dudes, who it turns out are cousins, reappear as well. This time they have made their way into the U.S. and are right in Walt's neck of the woods. After a strange scene involving an old man in a nursing home and a Ouija board, the cousins learn the true identity of the man they are a after, Walter White. (It has been awhile since I have watched any of the episodes from the older seasons, but is the old guy in the nursing home someone I should recognize? How does he know Walt?)

After a slow-burn for most the episode, things get pretty intense in the last couple of minutes as a confluence of danger comes to a head at the White residence. Walt arrives at the house only to discover that Skylar has changed the locks. While Walt is busy trying to break into his own former residence, the guy that Saul has hired to keep surveillance on Skylar is bugging the phones and house. Walt successfully gains entrance and hops in the shower. Meanwhile, as Saul's man watches from across the street, a car pulls up and the Mexican cousins, wielding a large axe, step out and head toward the door. The man watching across the street makes phone call to Gus Fring, the guy at the chicken restaurant. Before Walt steps out of the shower and is, presumably, chopped to bits, one of the Mexicans gets a text message that reads, "POLLO" and Walt is saved for the moment.

So things are bit more clear now, but just barely. We know that the Mexican cousins know that Walt is Heisenberg. We know that Fring is connected to the cousins, but we don't know how and to what extent. We also don't know why they are after Walt or what Saul has in mind for Skylar. Lastly, we still don't know what the significance of that eye Walt is always carrying around. I expect the pace of the season to pick up considerably next week. Needless to say, I'm pretty pumped.

Leftovers:

Flynn now would like to be referred to as Walter Jr. again.

There is something going on in this show with pools. There are always shots of pools, Walter is always pulling something out of or throwing something into a pool. Any guesses as to what the symbolism of the pool means? If I had to take a wild guess, I would say that in the last episode of the show Walt dies in a pool...

Marie, Skylar's sister, seems to know something fishy is going on with Skylar and Walt's separation. If she were to find out the truth, would she tell Hank? And even if she did, would Hank take Walt down? I think he would.

I would probably still eat that "roof pizza".

Justified = Law and Order: East Kentucky?

We are two episodes in and I cannot figure Justified out. After episode one, I wondered how the writers would squeeze an entire season out of Raylan's feud with Boyd and the white-supremacists. Well now it seems like they aren't even going to bother to try to squeeze a whole season's worth of material out of any one plot-line. The evidence now points towards Justified employing an "episodic" plot structure (think Law and Order) in which Raylan and company take on a different fugitive each week and wrap everything up neatly in a bow by the time the ending credits roll (as opposed to a "serialized" approach in which each episode builds off the next). If that is the case, it would be a bit of a mixed blessing. On the positive side, I wouldn't really have to watch the show each week to be able to follow it. On the other hand, shows that use an entire season to develop a overarching plot tend, to me at least, to be infinitely more gratifying.

The episode starts with Raylan visiting Boyd in a prison hospital as he recovers from the gun-shot wound Raylan left him with at the end of the pilot. Sounds strong so far, right? Well unfortunately this is the last we see of Boyd for the remainder of the episode. We are also only given single scene with Ava on screen. Raylan's ex is completely absent What gives? The writers set up these story lines in the first episode and completely abandon them in favor of generic cop-show fare.

Any thoughts?

BREAKING NEWS: Google accuses T.V. blog readers of drug abuse, righteous indignation ensues.

Breaking Bad is Back!

Even for show about a guy dying (well, not anymore...) of cancer, the first episode of Breaking Bad's highly-anticipated third season struck a decidedly somber chord. The action picks up a month or two after the conclusion of second season. Walt has been kicked out of his house by his suspicious wife Skylar, Jesse is in rehab recovering from the heroine and meth addiction that his girlfriend left him with after her overdose and Albuquerque as a whole is still reeling from the tragic plane crash that rained carnage down on the city (Hank puts the accident on par with 9/11 in terms of level of tragedy). Meanwhile, two sinister Mexican guys (cartel hit-men?) are making there way north towards the border with their sights set on Walt, who reluctantly turned down an offer of 3 million dollars for three months of his meth-cooking expertise.

More to come next week when there is a little less "set-up" and a little more to sink teeth into.

FX's Justified- Pilot

A few days before FX premiered its new show Justified (which I was really excited about) I learned that the show was an adaptation of an Elmore Leonard book. I had mixed emotions about this because I used to be a big fan of his books but sort of abandoned them mainly due to the bad taste the recent string of awful adaptations left in my mouth.

Aside from Get Shorty, the sarcastically self-aware style of Leonard's prose seems to get lost in translation when it is moved from the page to the screen. Disappointingly, the first episode of Justified, for the most part, continued this trend.

The show started strong enough, with a scene featuring Tim Olyphant, as U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens, in the midst of a standoff at a table in a fancy restaurant with, the always welcome, Peter Greene (they bad guy from the Mask, Redfoot from Usual Suspects) as a "gun-thug" from Miami. It is clear that only one of the men is going to walk away from the table, and since Olyphant is the star of the show, it is safe to assume that it would be him. The gun-thug makes a move towards his weapon and Raylan blasts him from under the table before he can cock the hammer.

After this initial action, the show begins to take on the "cartoonish" quality that pervades many of the Leonard adaptations. Raylan, who personifies this cartoonishness with the silly hat that he insists on wearing both indoors and out, is punished for the restaurant shoot-out by being transferred from the Miami office to his home state of Kentucky (I have been to Kentucky, they don't wear cowboy hats there, for the most part).

His assignment in the Bluegrass State is to bring down a crew of way over-the-top white-supremacists with a penchant for explosions and bank robbery. (This storyline involves one of the more annoying TV show cliches in which law enforcement has to
"catch the bad guys in the act" in order to arrest them. It is as if all of the TV writers, other than David Simon, have never considered that an actual investigation might be a good way to catch a criminal.) The leader of Aryan gang is a old acquaintance of Raylan's from his coal mining days named Boyd (played by The Shield's Walton Goggins, in what should, on paper at least, be the perfect role for him). The plot thickens when Boyd's brother is murdered by his own wife, Ava. It turns out that Ava and Raylan might be old flames and Boyd has always had a thing for his brother's wife.

FX is usually successful at creating TV shows that exist in their own worlds; worlds that share characteristics with the real world but operate by their own set of rules. Sons of Anarchy is a perfect example of this. Of course it is completely unrealistic for a biker gang to control an entire town with impunity, but in the world of Charming the audience can buy it. I had a more difficult time buying the world of Justified. In the past I have compared the characters is SOA to comic book heroes and I have generally meant that to be compliment. In the case of Justified, the same can be said, but in this case I would argue it is a negative thing. From Raylan's goofy hat, to his cliche of a catchphrase ("You make me pull, I'll put you down") to the extremely brazen (bordering on just plain dumb) behavior displayed by the Nazi gang, the whole vibe of the show was way over-the-top and difficult to identify with. Are we really supposed to believe that in a single week, in a tiny Kentucky town, the following events occurred without resulting in a single arrest, much less a call to the National Guard: A terroristic hate crime involving a military-issue rocket-launcher, a shoot-out involving Nazi's and federal agents in the middle of the street in broad daylight, a domestic violence related murder, a dead body found in a car, a bank robbery, and police-involved non-fatal shooting.

Olyphant is very good as the leading man in the show. Barely contained rage is evident in his eyes, and even more evident because the other characters are constantly pointing it out. The only real issue I had with his performance is he seems to slip in and out of his accent (even when he is using it, it doesn't really sound like a Kentucky accent). I was a bit disappointed in the work turned in by Walton Goggins. The Boyd character is so much in his wheel house that I would preferred a bit more subtlety and bit less wacky-violence and empty threats.

While it would hyperbolic to say that the premier of Justified absolutely sucked, I think it is fair to say that it did not live up the expectations associated with an FX program. I guess a fair description of my feelings after the show would be "underwhelmed". Stay tuned and cross your fingers that the show can make some serious improvements.

Worst. Fucking. Bracket. Ever.

This is just humiliating...

HBO's The Pacific is finally here!

I usually try to keep the content of this blog as light as possible, but last night's premier of HBO's The Pacific, a follow-up to the groundbreaking mini-series Band of Brothers, deserves to be treated seriously and respectfully. Like Band of Brothers, The Pacific is produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, and tells the stories of several groups of Marines fighting for their country and for survival in the Pacific Theater of World War II. The episode begins with a short introduction, voiced-over by Tom Hanks, explaining the significance of the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent U.S. retaliation against the Japanese on the island if Guadalcanal (which is where the Marines in the show are being sent to fight) which, like Band of Brothers, included footage of interviews with the surviving soldiers. Like the show itself, I would like to begin this review with a bit of a preamble, so please bear with me. Here it goes.

I am, by no means, a history buff or a WWII expert but movies and shows about this particular conflict are always particularly resonant with me. I think it has something to do with the simplicity of it all. Unlike any of the military conflicts that I (or even my parents, for that matter) have been alive for, there seems to be no moral dilemma (aside from the dilemma inherent anytime men are tasked with killing other men) at play. The good guys (us) and the bad guys (the Nazis, the Japanese) are so well defined that even the current citizens of the countries who were the bad guys would admit that their grandfathers were in the wrong. Unlike Vietnam, or Iraq there is no question who was right and who was wrong. And this concept allows for the men who fought this war to be considered to be, and portrayed as, true heroes (which makes for great television). As much as I respect and commend the service of my peers who are currently fighting in the name of our country, the fact that the reasons for their sacrifice are so ambiguous, and very likely morally deficient, will keep them from being remember by history as the same type of hero that we remember the men who fought in Europe and the Pacific to have been. By no means is this our soldiers fault, it is clearly the fault of our government and of our society as a whole for putting them in this situation (although, it is now an all volunteer military....anyways I am digressing). The point of all this is: movies and TV shows about WWII have the luxury of a sense of good vs. evil in our collective psyche that movies about Iraq just don't. I would take a movie about a bunch of Americans scalping Nazis over one about a group of guys trying not to get blown up by IEDs in Baghdad any day of the week.

(Just a quick aside: I think I might be the only person on earth who didn't like The Hurt Locker. I thought it was tense and suspenseful, but it lacked any coherent story arc. They could have taken any of those scenes in the middle of the movie and swapped the order in which they were shown and it wouldn't have affected the movie one iota. Plus, and maybe I am stupid and just missed it, but what the fuck was the movie saying about the war? What was the point? Bigelow could have followed some soldiers around for 6 months, video taped them, provided absolutely no context to what she was showing us, and came up with nearly the same movie. If anyone who reads this agrees with me, please let me know, because I am starting to think I am crazy for not fawning over this movie.)

Now that I got my thoughts about WWII, and shows about it, out of the way, let's move to The Pacific. I will keep this part short and sweet, with a paragraph summarizing what little plot we have been shown so far and follow that with a sentence-long review.

As I stated before, The Pacific is about a bunch of Marines, who are tasked with stopping the Empire of Japan from expanding to Australia. A powerful scene at the beginning of the episode features a commanding officer addressing a room full of non-commissioned officers. He sums the premise of the show up better than I ever could by saying, "The Pacific will be our theater of war. We will do battle with the Japs on tiny specks of turf that we have never heard of...Merry Christmas, Happy 1942". The first half of the episode introduces the audience, without much fanfare or back story, to a handful of the Marines, that include PFC Robert Leckie, Sgt. J.P. Morgan, PFC Sidney Phillips, Sgt. Basilone and Sgt. Manuel Rodriguez. We see Basilone eating a celebratory dinner with his family in New Jersey. Leckie is praying in a church before he runs into his neighbor Vera, who he promises to write to while he is overseas. We meet Eugene Sledge in Alabama after he is diagnosed by his doctor father with a heart murmur, which initially keeps him from joining his friend Phillips in combat. The remainder of the episode deals with the soldiers landing on the island of Guadalcanal and surviving (and, in some cases, not surviving) the first week or so of the war. The Japanese Navy has beaten back all of the US Naval ships from the coastline, stranding the Marines with little supplies and back-up.

I don't even really think any review of the episodes will be necessary, because I am sure they will all, like the premier, kick ass. The only criticism I can come up with is that all of the characters were introduced so quickly, it is a little tough to keep track of who is who when the bullets start flying and their faces are obscured by dirt, blood and helmets. I have a suspicion that The Pacific, like Band of Brothers, will be one of those shows that you have to watch a few times to get the full effect. That said, I can't wait for the second part of the mini-series and I will update you all as soon as it airs.

Parenthood continues to stumble out of the gates

After being bombarded with characters and story lines in last week's premier, I was relieved that the pacing of this week's episode of Parenthood slowed considerably. Unfortunately, the "buzz-kill factor" was still in full effect.

The plot of episode two basically just took the stories presented last week and built upon them, without adding a whole lot of new material, which I appreciated. Adam, who we find out is some kind of shoe industry executive or something, is still, at least partially, in denial about his son's Aspergers. Determined to get a second opinion, he seeks out a specialist, a doctor referred to as "the Bob Dylan of Aspergers" who confirms his fears, Max exhibits the tell-tale symptoms of the syndrome. To make matters worse, Adam discovers a bag a weed in his backyard and spends most of the rest of the episode trying to find its rightful owner.

Meanwhile, Crosby uses Max's Aspergers as an excuse to break a date with his girlfriend. Initially this sounds like a totally dick move, but the reason he doesn't want to hang out with his girlfriend is because he would rather hang out with his new-found son and his ex-girlfriend/baby-mama, who have decided to move back Berkeley (which, as we find out, is where the show takes place).

Sarah's family suffers a series of defeats, starting with her attempt to land a fantasy job as a logo designer (or something like that). Adam uses his connections (who knew a guy in the shoe business had so many hook-ups in unrelated industries) to get her an interview, which goes really well initially. The interview scene was one of the few lighthearted moments and Sarah's chemistry with her would-be boss, a much younger Asian dude, is pretty strong. Unfortunately, I don't think we will be seeing anymore scenes with the two together because after the interview Sarah is informed that the job requires a college degree, which she is lacking. After receiving that tough news, she finds out that her daughter is being held back a year because some of the credits from her former school won't transfer to her new school. By the way, is it just me or does Sarah remind you a whole lot of Nancy from Weeds? I'm just waiting for Sarah to say, "Fuck it," and start selling bud to UC Berkeley students to support her kids.

Speaking of Weeds, or weed in general, the episode ends on a high note, literally, with the adults of the family huddled together outside a school play (or something like that) smoking the bud that Adam found in his backyard (which, as it turns out, belonged to his formerly goody-two-shoes daughter). It was nice to finally have a scene that was lighthearted and showed a family just hanging out being a family, not dealing with super heavy issues. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately (I haven't quite decided) I think this scene may spell disaster for the show having any sort of longevity. Networks, historically, do not look too kindly on TV shows that depict recreational drug use in an honest and non-judgmental fashion.

I caught a little bit a flack last week for being so harsh on the show, but I still contend that Parenthood has some major problems. The biggest and most obvious one is the scenes that are supposed to by funny just aren't. Granted, there were a couple that made me chuckle a little bit, like when Max was listing recording artists with number one records. I can't help comparing Parenthood with Modern Family because the premises of the two or so similar (large extended family dealing with issues of parenting and growing up), but the difference between the shows is that when Modern Family ends I feel good about myself and life in general, and when Parenthood ends I just sort of feel depressed. I'll give it a few more weeks to see if Parenthood is able to find its voice, but I'm starting to think that maybe this just isn't the show for me.

Can anyone say, "Butt Cised"?

Various sources are reporting that the Raven's have signed WR Anquan Boldin to a 4 year deal worth 25 million dollars. Aside from adding a top-tier playmaker, the best thing about this deal is the fact the Raven's got him for little more than a song. All they had to give up was a 3rd and 4th round draft.

I can't tell you how excited I am about this deal. I was worried when they signed Stallworth that Ozzie would give up on grabbing another big-name pass catcher. With the addition of Boldin, we are looking at the possibility of having one of the most solid receiving corps in the AFC, if not the whole league. If Mason decides to return, we will probably see Boldin and Stallworth spread wide and Mason in the slot with option of inserting Kelly Washington for 4-wide sets. Does that, or does that not sound fucking sweet?

I think this signing could mean the end to Mark Clayton's tenure in Baltimore, which is more than fine by me. It also spells an end to the horrible rumors flying around that the Ravens could pick of T.O. Thank god that didn't happen.

Also, the fact that the Ravens have bolstered their wide-receiving depth frees the team up to go after players in the draft that help fill other holes, particularly in the secondary.

Lastly, in an unrelated development, Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger has again been accused of sexual assault. Could this day get any better?

NBC's Parenthood Premiers, Everyone Who Watched Contemplates Suicide

As anyone who watched more than 15 minutes of the Winter Olympics was aware, NBC's new family drama Parenthood premiered last night. The show, which is produced by Ron Howard, depicts the trials and tribulations of a large extended family in California. Like a thousand shows of its kind before it, Parenthood seems to be as much about "issues" as it is about people. This series really interested me because, well, I'm gay for family television shows, plus I don't think Ron Howard has ever been involved with a project I disliked.

Here is a cursory breakdown of the characters and the major plots taking form in the first episode:

Zeke- The patriarch (pronounced with a "ch" sound, wink, wink) of the Braverman clan. He seems to want his grandchildren to be raised the way he raised his own children which causes a bit of friction. He might be a Vietnam vet and has the misfortune of delivering the episode's weakest piece of dialog in which he compares parenthood to war.

Camille- Zeke's wife. She strikes me as kind of a aging flower-child. She didn't receive a whole lot of screen time in the pilot, so there isn't a bunch to be said about her for the moment.

Adam- Zeke and Camille's oldest son. He is sort of the Michael Bluth of the family, the guy the other family members rely on to solve their problems.

Kristina- Adam's wife. She and Adam find out late in the episode that their son Max, who they had always assumed was just a little weird, actually suffers from
Asperger's Syndrome.

Sarah- Zeke and Camille's eldest daughter. She and her two teenage kids are forced to move back in with her parents after her marriage to a drug addicted musician collapses. In the pilot she reconnects with a high school boyfriend, played by Mike O'Malley. Her daughter is a rebellious trouble maker and her son, who appears to suffer from depression, puts his deadbeat father on a pedestal.

Crosby- The Braverman baby brother, played by Dax Shepherd (who is not as annoying in this show as he typically is). He is a slacker who works as some kind of music producer. His girlfriend is baby-crazy (going as far as keeping a canister of donor sperm in her freezer), but Crosby is not ready for children. Eventually he relents, agreeing to have children with her in three years. In the most unexpected twist of the first episode, Crosby discovers that he is already a father when his ex-girlfriend pays him a visit with their son, Jabbar, in tow.

Julia- Zeke and Camille's youngest daughter. Julia is a high-powered lawyer who is jealous of her toddler's preference for her husband.

My initial reaction to Parenthood's inaugural episode, aside from being amazed at shear volume of characters and stories thrown at the audience, was "Goddamn, that was surprisingly serious and borderline depressing". It seemed like the family just took one blow after another. Adam's kid has Aspergers, Sarah's kid ran away from home to try to live with his drug addict father, her other kid gets arrested for weed, Julia's daughter loves her father more than her, Zeke's son doesn't want to raise his boy the way he was raised, etc., etc. There wasn't even much comic relief from all the misery. Don't get me wrong, by no means do I need my t.v. families to all be Cleavers or Cunninghams, but for fuck's sake, can't we lighten the mood up a bit? I know being a white, suburban parent is hard, "Oh no, my kid has autism! What are we going to do now?". Doesn't pretty much everyone have autism these days? It's this generation's ADD. Since when are dressing like a pirate and sucking at baseball symptoms of a mental handicap? Granted, the scenes feature Mike O'Malley provided a bit of levity, but all that was negated when Sarah's son walks in on them during post-coital 'fridge raid and freaks out (sounds funny on paper, not so much on the screen).

That said, I didn't hate the show (my girlfriend, who I was watching it with seemed to, but she pretty much hates everything) and I am not ready to give up on it so soon. I look forward to seeing each of the individual characters fleshed out over the course of the season and I can see myself continuing to watch it. I just wish I felt a little more positive when the episode ended.

Review of HBO's new series How To Make It In America

Last month HBO quietly premiered a new show called How To Make It In America. I have hesitated to write about it over the last couple of weeks mainly because there isn't exactly a whole lot to be said about the show. That said, please continue reading the following handful of paragraphs...

...Still with me? Ok, cool.

The show is based around the lives of two twenty-something Brooklyn pseudo-hipsters, Ben and Cam, played by Bryan Greenberg and Victor Rasuk, who have to "hustle" to survive. And by "hustle" I mean, they have to sell home-made skateboard decks, work at Barney's, attend fashionable parties and rail hot chicks. Sounds pretty tough right?

Ben and Cam's real goal in life is to strike it rich in the denim jeans game. Yes you read that sentence correctly. HBO's new show is about two dudes whose dream is to become the next Levi Strauss (I know, I know. Levi and Strauss might be two different people, but the fact that I'm not really sure and don't care proves my point that no one cares about two dudes that make jeans).

There is a secondary and, for my money, more interesting plot about Cam's cousin Rene, played by Luis Guzman, who has been recently released from prison and is embarking on a (possibly legitimate?) business venture involving an energy drink called Rasta Monsta.

Beyond the inherent problem with a show about wanna-be denim manufacturers is the fact that it doesn't seem to be sure about what kind of show it wants to be. I have read comparisons between HTMIA and Entourage, but I don't really see it. Entourage, for all its faults, is a comedy. Is HTMIA a comedy? If so, where are the jokes? Is it a drama? If so, why is it only a half-hour? HBO has had a lot of success with hour-long dramas. Speaking of the show being on HBO, where is the cursing? Where are the titties?

The performances in the show are relatively solid. Bryan Greenberg is pretty good, I think I might be the only person who liked Unscripted, but I wonder if he has enough personality to be a truly reliable leading man. I find the Cam character to be a bit annoying, but I guess Victor Rasuk does a decent job. Luis Guzman continues his run as a world-class scene stealer and I am most interested to see where the show takes his Rene character. Kid Cudi was advertised as having a major role in the series, but so far he has only appeared in a couple of scenes (which doesn't bother me that much. Lonely Stoner sucked and you will never convince me otherwise), although I have heard that his on-screen time increases later in the season.

To be honest, one of the most enjoyable parts of the show through three episodes is the into. The opening credits feature still shots of Brooklynites and other New York themed items and places while a pretty damn good song by a guy named Aloe Blacc called "I Need a Dollar" plays in the background.