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TV Review – Deadwood Season Two

Deadwood Season Two (HBO)
Written by David Milch, Jody Worth, Elizabeth Sarnoff, Ted Mann, Victoria Morrow, Steve Shill, Regina Corrado, Sarah Hess, and Bryan McDonald
Directed by Ed Bianchi, Steve Shill, Alan Taylor, Gregg Feinberg, Michael Almereyda, Tim Van Patten, and Dan Minahan

For those who like to think about the Old West as a time of genteel masculine honor, a show like Deadwood will disappoint you. This is not a cowboy show about the white hats taking down the black hats. David Milch had no interest in making a show that propped up myths of that sort. That doesn’t mean Deadwood is a dead-accurate show; it is still a piece of fiction. However, I suspect it may be one of the closest things we’ve ever had to detailing what life was like in the lawless places of America once upon a time. This is a visceral show that doesn’t shy away from the grotesque nature of a world where medicine was not commonplace and bodily fluids flowed as much in public as in private. The Old West was a filthy disgusting place. People who romanticize it wouldn’t be able to handle it if they were sent back there. Remembering what a shithole it was helps us understand why it is so vital that we move the needle forward on the human race.

TV Review – The Last of Us Season One

The Last of Us Season One (HBO)
Written by Craig Mazin & Neil Druckmann
Directed by Craig Mazin, Neil Druckmann, Peter Hoar, Jeremy Webb, Jasmila Žbanić, Liza Johnson, and Ali Abbasi

Media has conditioned us to think the “end of the world” will be explosively catastrophic. Think of the movies of Roland Emmerich or the Skynet awakening of James Cameron’s Terminator films. The reality is collapse is a rolling event; it begins in the corners of the developing world and inches its way toward the imperial core. This could take place over any amount of time, but it is guaranteed that all civilizations collapse at some point. The Biblical story of Noah’s flood, an event that also pops up in various other cultures, was probably just a localized flood that devastated the region. Over time it was exaggerated, and details were added. If the collapse hasn’t reached you yet, when it does, you might not even notice it. When you take in the weight of it all, you may wish for some big explosive moment instead of the dull, soul-crushing march that lies before you.

TV Review – Deadwood Season One

Deadwood Season One (HBO)
Written by David Milch, Malcolm MacRury, Jody Worth, Elizabeth Sarnoff, John Belluso, George Putnam, Bryan McDonald, Ricky Jay, and Ted Mann
Directed by Walter Hill, Davis Guggenheim, Alan Taylor, Ed Bianchi, Michael Engler, Dan Minihan, and Steve Shill

On one level, Deadwood operates as a white dude character actor showcase. I guarantee you will spend time proclaiming some variation of “It’s that guy from that thing.” I have always been a huge fan of character actors, which is why The Coen Brothers and Paul Thomas Anderson are some of my favorite filmmakers. They can find great actors with unique looks and give them fantastic scripts to perform. The exact same could be said of Deadwood, one of the early “children’ of the success of The Sopranos on HBO. Once that series made its big splash, the network invested a lot more money in developing unique dramas with some of the most substantial writing in the industry. David Milch honed his skills on Hill Street Blues & experienced a controversial hit with NYPD Blue. Deadwood would serve as a tribute to his love of the Western genre, populating the television series with actual figures from the historical Deadwood but infusing it all with an air of Shakespearean gravitas.

TV Review – Somebody Somewhere Season One

Somebody Somewhere (HBO)
Written by Hannah Bos, Paul Thureen, and Patricia Breen,
Directed by Jay Duplass and Robert Cohen

“Real America,” they call it. The immense middle vastness of the United States, I suppose. Though it isn’t actually real. What they mean by that idea is exclusionary, shorthand for people “like you” who aren’t welcome here. It’s not entirely that simple, though. It’s a clash of the way of thinking in urban environments versus rural environments, which makes it more complicated because “Real America” is peppered with cities. Rural resentments towards cities are not totally unfounded; they are certainly misguided. These perceptions all come from a place that says there’s a limited amount of life in the world, and things unfamiliar to them threaten that sustained existence. If you step back, you can see that any sense of scarcity on the most basic human level of reality is a joke at this point, with excess wasted every day from sea to shining sea. There is room enough for everyone and plenty to keep them alive. Yet, we keep coming up with ways to ignore that.

TV Review – The Best of Star Trek Part Four

The Enterprise Incident (S03E02)
Original air date: September 27, 1968
Written by D.C. Fontana
Directed by John Meredyth Lucas

The paradox of making good television: You need to make the episodes as high quality to attract viewers, but you have to make sure you can cut costs at the drop of a hat when the studio executives demand it, but if you lose viewers as a result, you will need to make more cuts as advertisers go, but if you can’t do that your show gets moved around the schedule which means you lose more viewers because they cannot find you. This curse plagued Star Trek going into its third season, relegated to the “death slot” of 10 pm Eastern on Fridays. As a result, Season Three has fewer great episodes than Season Two, and even this season’s strongest episodes don’t match up. However, there are some worth watching.

TV Review – The Best of Star Trek Part Three

Amok Time (S02E01)
Original air date: September 15, 1967
Written by Theodore Sturgeon
Directed by Joseph Pevney

By the end of Star Trek Season One, the audience had come to a realization: Spock was fucking cool. Another person also realized this, Leonard Nimoy. The actor realized his role as Spock held just as much importance in each episode as William Shatner’s Captain Kirk and demanded a pay increase. He got it. Desilu Studios, who produced Star Trek, did hire a backup actor just in case Nimoy walked. Amok Time features that actor Lawrence Montaigne as Stonn. This is also the season two premiere and the first & only episode of the original series to bring the crew to Vulcan. We dig deep into their culture as Spock experiences a critical time in every Vulcan’s life: Pon farr.

TV Review – The Best of Star Trek Part Two

Balance of Terror (S1E14)
Original air date: December 15, 1966
Written by Paul Schneider
Directed by Vincent McEveety

Balance of Terror marks the first appearance of the Romulans and surprised me in many ways. This is not one of my favorites, but it is a solid standard Star Trek episode with exciting twists. The first is that no Federation member has ever seen a Romulan. I’m not big on detailed Star Trek lore, so this was my first time learning about the brutal nuclear conflict between these powers, which happened without either side ever seeing someone from the other. This is even more surprising because the Romulans look nearly identical to the Vulcans. I had been under the impression the Vulcan-Romulan connection was something known for centuries, but it’s within the context of Star Trek that it is even discovered.

TV Review – The Best of Star Trek Part One

There is absolutely no need for me to introduce Star Trek to you. Instead, I will share my connection with the series. I have never been anywhere close to a Trekkie, but I grew up appreciating many nerdy things as a nerdy guy. I regularly watched reruns of the original series that aired on our local Fox affiliate in Tennessee in the late 1980s/early 1990s. They were part of that late afternoon/early evening block of old shows. I loved the movies featuring the original crew, with Star Trek III: The Search for Spock being my favorite for some reason that eludes me. I’ve rewatched it in the last few years, and it does not hold up. In late 2019, Ariana and I watched the thirty highest-rated episodes on IMDb of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was a lot of fun and her first time ever watching any of the series. In the same way, this was her first time watching the original Star Trek, and part of my enjoyment was seeing her reactions to things I knew were coming. So starting this Sunday and continuing through every Sunday in March, I will share my reviews of the episodes we watched.

TV Review – Better Call Saul Season Six

Better Call Saul Season Six (AMC)
Written by Peter Gould, Thomas Schnauz, Ariel Levine, Gordon Smith, Ann Cherkis, and Alison Tatlock
Directed by Michael Morris, Vince Gilligan, Gordon Smith, Rhea Seehorn, Melissa Bernstein, Giancarlo Esposito, Thomas Schnauz, and Michelle MacLaren

Growing up in America, you often hear the refrain of “Be Yourself” on children’s television and at school. Their idea is to encourage kids to embrace who they are and be proud of these things. It’s a beautiful sentiment. However, with most notions fed to children in the States, it has a common contradictory concept fed to kids at around the same time. You need to change, you need to figure out how to “fit in,” and you need to adapt. It’s no wonder the United States has reached a zenith of mental health collapse after every generation since at least post-WWII has been churned through this tug of war. What even is the Self is not an accumulation of experiences processed through your unique psychological processes, with even them being influenced by a barrage of input from the external world. Who is good and evil in a world where those terms exist with the utmost flexibility in definition? Is it better to change or to embrace who you are and try to do something good with it?

TV Review – Better Call Saul Season Five

Better Call Saul Season Five (AMC)
Written by Peter Gould, Alison Tatlock, Ann Cherkis, Gordon Smith, Heather Marion, Thomas Schnauz, and Ariel Levine
Directed by Bronwen Hughes, Norberto Barba, Michael Morris, Gordon Smith, Jim McKay, Melissa Bernstein, Vince Gilligan, and Thomas Schnauz

Did we really think Jimmy McGill’s story was going somewhere good? If you had watched Breaking Bad, you knew he hadn’t gone down his darkest path yet. In Season Five, we’re headed there. This is when Jimmy goes that little bit further than he should have, deals with the wrong people, and seals his fate. He cannot take old friends reaching out to check in on him; it wounds his ego. But he will accept dangerous jobs from some of the worst clients he’s ever handled, which could get him killed. Kim continues to let it sink in that this man will not change; she’d be foolish to believe she could change him. Instead, she finds a way to accept who Jimmy is and still loves him despite the heartbreak he will clearly bring to her life one of these days.