TV: End Of Season
We’ve been catching every episode of Justified as it is posted @hulu. It is a well-done throwback-modern-day cowboy drama. With so many eunuch-boys in the media and commercials, with so many males portrayed as imbeciles on everything from TV drama to movie comedy (not to mention their black belt rocket scientist girlfriends) the appearance on a TV show of a retrograde knuckle dragging macho guy is almost refreshing. The dialog in Justified can be very funny and the acting is uniformly solid. The level of violence doesn’t correspond to the sophistication of the characterizations, but I guess in an update of Gunsmoke, you’ve got to update the violence quotient as well.
We had been watching CBS nightly news but the story choices are beginning to fail. They had pretty much been the best of the network news shows, with more material and a somewhat more serious look at issues. CBS’s coverage of the oil spill has been excellent. Even with Couric, not a fave, they were better. But it is story choice and point of view that draws you to news shows and CBS is fading as NBC seems to be getting better again. Lehrer now known as something else, has stories that are too long — wannabe video magazine stories. The strength of shows like Sixty Minutes — being able to tell a coherent story — has almost completely been lost in media news coverage. From local to national news to the BBC, the flow of the story is dysfunctional — it doesn’t answer your questions as they come up in the story. It doesn’t help Lehrer that the reporters are boring and the whole enterprise appears adrift. I’d like to see more of Kwame Holman and Woodruff and less of everyone else. New producers and a new group of reporters would be just great. It is amazing the way PBS strives for diversity, wears it on their sleeves, and produces the blandest, most colorless broadcasts.
We missed the Smallville finale. It is probably the best TV has to offer in integrating computer effects with storyline. That means it is better than the movies actually. Video games have deeply influenced the look of TV shows. Many TV shows are beautifully photographed and well-edited. Writing is another matter.
The problem with Smallville is that it is acquiring Heroes Syndrome: character creep. Too many players, and with it, too many storylines. The finale to V was very good and we look forward to more. I don’t know if it is intentional, but the Queen lizard is looking more and more sinister in every episode. It’s good. Also most fine was the finale to Supernatural.
Having mentioned Hulu: Strictly Sexual and The Sex Monster were pretty good and are very popular. You think it might be subject matter and you might be right. But they are pretty well done TV-movie-sitcoms/melodramas really.
This is the Lost weekend where the networks show they are desperate and lost and looking for something, anything that is popular, and will squeeze every last ounce out of it, even if it is a conventional, juvenile show. Here is another viewpoint about why Lost is lost.
