Here we go again...

In the interest of full disclosure I have to admit that it has been a long time (at least a season and a half) since I have found Entourage to be genuinely funny. That isn't to say that the show sucks or isn't entertaining because it is. However, it is entertaining in the way an episode of Cribs is entertaining. Sure, it's fun to see all the big mansions, sweet rides and hot chicks; I just wish the show made me laugh the way it did for the first couple of seasons. At times last season it got to the point where I started to wish that the show would drop Vince and the guys completely and reboot with Ari representing a new up-and-coming star (although it would be nice if they figured out a way to keep Drama involved somehow). An even better idea would be a buddy-cop show with Ari and Lloyd as partners on a very socially progressive police force (maybe Sawyer and Miles from Lost could co-star).

Unfortunately, the first episode of season seven is not any funnier than seasons five and six were. While watching the episode I kept a running tab of the number of times I smiled, chuckled or laughed. The score card reads as such: Three smiles, one chuckle, ZERO LAUGHS. The lone chuckle came, of course, during a scene with Drama and Lloyd (two of the show's saving graces). Drama visits Lloyd (who is now a full blown agent) for career help, explaining to him, "This is my livelihood, Lloyd. And my dream." Lloyd responds sweetly, "You think I don't know that?" and tenderly grabs Drama's hand. Drama wrenches his hand away with a look of pure disgust on his face. Chuckle-worthy, right? But if this is the funniest scene in an episode of a show that is supposed to be a comedy, there is a problem.

Recapping the plot of the episode is almost an exercise in redundancy. If you are at all familiar with the show, than you already know what happens. Vince has a problem with the director of his current movie so he calls E for help. E can't get the job done so he calls Ari. Ari berates a couple of underlings. Drama is out of work so he goes to Ari for help, but Ari is too busy with running an agency to help. Turtle drives around a lot and embarrassingly strikes out with a chick. Vince has a close call on set, but ends up fine and everyone is happy by the time the ending credits roll. However, the episode did end on a high note with one of my all-time favorite songs, Gangstarr and Inspectah Deck's "Above the Clouds" playing as Mark Wahlberg's name flashed onto the screen.

Am I totally off base for not liking this episode more? What did everyone else think?

HBO Releases New Boardwalk Empire Trailer

HBO has just released a new trailer for its upcoming prohibition-era gangster series Boardwalk Empire. We have had a few glimpses at the show previously, but this trailer is the first to include any dialogue or indication of a particular story arc.

Boardwalk Empire, which stars Steve Buscemi as Atlantic City crime-boss Nucky Thompson, is written and produced by Terence Winter, a Sopranos alum, with direction from Martin Scorsese. Both sets of fingerprints are all over this trailer. Apparently, Boardwalk is the most expensive project HBO has ever undertaken (which is surprising, given the expense of Rome), and it shows. The look of the show is very crisp and cool, the costumes and sets look great. Winter's and Scorsese's Atlantic City is both glamorous and dangerous.

Boardwalk Empire makes its debut this fall, so as we get closer expect to see more in-depth trailers hit the web.

Preview Trailer #3

David Simon's New Show Treme Debuts on HBO

To say David Simon's new HBO show, Treme, is about music would be like saying his old HBO show, The Wire, is about drugs. You would be correct to say so, but you would be leaving out much of the show's essence. Treme is about the city and people of New Orleans as much as it is about anything. And if it is about anything, it is about everything. Simon has a real talent for using micro-level story telling, to make macro-level observations. In The Wire, he used the stories of alcoholic cops, gay stick-up artists, dope fiends, corner boys, drug kingpins and political aspirants to paint a picture of an American city in decay. In Treme, the stories of dead-beat musicians, stoned disc jockeys, Mardi Gras Indian chiefs, disenchanted lawyers, and frustrated chefs are combined to paint a picture of a city struggling to rebuild.

Despite the similarities between the underlying social forces that steer the characters' lives (poverty, crime, lack of quality education, gentrification, inequality, political corruption, mistrust of law-enforcement), Treme and The Wire are very different shows. Don't get me wrong, the feeling of "grit" that pervaded The Wire is still present, but the hopelessness and gallows humor are toned down. Fortunately, the trombones and trumpets, and the hope that their sounds inspire, are cranked way up. It is hard to be completely depressed when you have such good music drifting into your open windows from the parade marching down the street.

For all of you Wire die-hards out there who thought that you might be disappointed by Treme, rest assured, you won't be. The show is good, the characters are easy to care about, the setting is dynamic and the acting is top-notch. It isn't preachy or accusatory like Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke, but it also doesn't appear to let anyone off the hook either.

Last night's episode begins with a parade and ends with a funeral. And the only real difference between the two is the tempo at which the band plays. This is the spirit of the city of New Orleans that Simon captures perfectly: no matter what happens, the band plays on.

In the premier episode, we are introduced to seven main characters and slew of people that may turn into main characters:

Wire alum Wendell Pierce (Bunk) plays Antoine, a down-on-his-luck trombonist who has to scam cab drivers for rides to his gigs.

Antoine's ex-wife Ladonna runs a neighborhood bar that serves as a de facto town hall for the remaining residents of Treme.

Ladonna turns to attorney Toni for help finding her brother, who has been missing since the levees broke.

Toni's husband Creighton, played by the always fantastic John Goodman, is some kind of authority on the hurricane who spends most of his scenes doing interviews about Katrina with various media outlets. Thus far, he is my favorite character by a mile. Seeing Goodman in this role makes me wish that Simon had been able to convince him to be in The Wire. He would have been absolutely perfect as Jay Landsman, McNulty's portly, foul-mouthed Sergeant. During an interview with a swarmy BBC reporter he rails against the government, calling the disaster "man made catastrophe, a federal fuck up of epic proportions". When the reporter asks him why the American tax payers should have to foot the bill for reconstruction, Creighton responds with, "Since when don't nations rebuild their great cities?". The guy from the BBC then has the stones to call into question whether New Orleans is indeed a great city, while simultaneously dissing the city's music and culinary traditions. Creighton goes Walter Sobchak on his limey-ass and throws his microphone and camera equipment into the canal. Later, after going on a tirade against the federal government during an NPR phone interview, Creighton fires off an classic zinger, screaming "This ain't Lake Wobegon, god dammit" before slamming the phone down. I slapped my knee repeatedly. Public Radio shtick gets me every time.

Speaking of public radio, Steve Zaun plays the role of Davis, a DJ fed up with having to spin overplayed records for pledge drives. When he isn't smoking bud or breaking into record stores, he is sleeping with Janette, a chef who is struggling to keep her restaurant staffed and stocked with food to due the flooding.

Clark Peters, another veteran of The Wire (Lester), plays Albert, a Mardi Gras Indian chief who returns to the city to find his home completely flooded and mold-ridden. He abandons his house and sets up shop in a corner bar. Can someone please explain to me what a Mardi Gras Indian is? Clark Peters is black, not Native American, so I don't think Mardi Gras Indians are real Indians, right? All I know is he has a wild-ass costume that he throws on to convince a neighbor to help him clean up the bar he is living in.

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.

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.

The Sheild REWATCH Intro

I am off work for the Holidays for a few days, my girlfriend is out of town and pretty much all of the good shows are on hiatus until next year. Perfect timing for me to catch up on some shows that I missed out on when they originally aired. My XBox recently broke and I was unable to watch my Netflix Instant Watch movies and shows, but my girl came through for me and got me a new one for Christmas. When I got onto Netflix, I was pumped to find the last two seasons of The Shield were available for instant viewing.

Before I get to writing about any specific episodes, I would first like take a moment to discuss the show in general. I loved The Sheild when FX introduced it. To me, prior to The Wire premiering, The Shield was the ultimate cop drama. Better than Law and Order, better than NYPD Blue, and certainly better than any of the bullshit CSI spin-offs the networks have been peddling for the past decade. (By the way, I know there has been some confusion over what this past decade will be known as in the future. Will it be called the aughts? The zeros? I suggest calling it The Decade of Shitty Network Crime Dramas with Acronyms In Their Titles. Catchy right?) But for some reason, I stopped watching somewhere in the middle of the sixth season. I can't remember the exact reason, but I suspect it had something to do with The Wire being aired around the same time. My thought process was probably, "If I can watch a cop drama that a. Airs on HBO and allows cursing and nudity, b. Takes place in my fucking backyard, and c. Is arguably the very best show ever to grace a television screen, why would I waste my time with The Shield?"

Looking back, I was wrong to think this way. It is unfair to hold The Shield, or any show for that matter, to the standards set by The Wire. The next spate of postings will be dedicated to analyzing season seven, the final season, of The Shield and will serve to keep my mind nimble as I wait for the new season of shows to start as well as to pay tribute to a great show that, as the show drew to a close, did not garner enough credit from this viewer. I am sorry, The Shield, I hope these posts make up for me abandoning you on your death bed.