On 08/27/2012 05:56 AM, turquoiseb wrote:
Aaron Sorkin's new show started by being attacked mercilessly
before it even aired. I took a stand when it finally *was*
aired, and I got to see the first episode. I've just watched
the tenth, and final, episode of the year. I stand by my
original stand.
It's good writing, it's good entertainment, it's good acting
and direction, and it's got a pair of balls the size of Mars.
And I'm still betting on it sweeping the Emmy awards, and
sending an enormous FUCK YOU to all of the people who ranked
on it because...because...well...because they have balls the
size of peas, and brains to match.
It's difficult to make entertainment while conveying a useful
and needed message. It's even more difficult when the very
people who should be cheering that message on are so petty
and green with envy that they play shoot the messenger, too.
This was the rap rattled off by Jeff Daniels' Will McAvoy
during the wrap-up of his last news broadcast of the season,
over a bottom-of-the-screen bannerline that said Republican
In Name Only:
* Ideological purity
* Compromise as weakness
* A fundamentalist belief in scriptural literalism
* Denying science
* Unmoved by facts
* Undeterred by new information
* A hostile fear of progress
* A demonization of education
* A need to control women's bodies
* Severe xenophobia
* Tribal mentality
* Intolerance of dissent
* Pathological hatred of US government
They can call themselves the Tea Party, they can call
themselves conservatives, and they can even call them-
selves Republicans, though Republicans probably shouldn't.
But we should call them what they are, the American
Taliban.
This is the message that real news stations in America
should have been airing as real news last night as the
Republican Convention opened. Instead, it had to be
aired on HBO, on a show that even Democrats and liberals
tried to kill. This is one of those days that forces me
to think about America and remember the lines to a great
Bob Dylan song:
And you ask why I don't live there
Honey, howcum you even have to ask me that?
It indeed (as people who saw the season finale) came full circle or
what writers call bookend. I thought that last night's Breaking
Bad was the half season finale but they seem to have one more episode
left which I think will also bookend the opening since Gilligan is a
fan of that device. After all it makes your story symmetrical. And as
Syd Fields would say Walt is now further up the tree. We have a lot
of tree climbers in TV shows.
Sunday night overload got worse with BBC America moving Copper, a show
about the NYPD in 1864, to Sunday nights. The pilot was great and last
night was episode 2.
