So, I watched it. The whole thing. In less than 24 hours. Here is my review: True Blood is a pornographic soap opera with vampires.
Bill is a vampire- the Edward/Louie/Angel character. Sookie is the young woman who wants to be with a vampire. There is a cast of odd characters to make messes and keep you watching.
The most entertaining characters, in my opinion, are the grandmother, Lafayette, and that dude who was in Iraq. The grandmother is one of those awesome old ladies who says things you don’t expect, the guy who was in Iraq is simultaneously the craziest and most sane person on the show, and Lafayette is outrageous, badass, and and one of the smarter characters.
It may be a soap opera, the opening sequence may be the best part, but it’s still entertaining.
Yes, I am a dork. I am reviewing a single episode of White Collar. With spoilers.
The start of this season was awesome (which I would say if it had been Matt Bomer and Tim DeKay had been standing in front of a camera talking to a goat for an hour). The start of the show did a good job of explaining what the fuck happened after the explosive season finale. After that, things got a bit more confusing. I am not quite clear on why that chick from the pilot is seemingly permanently back, or how Peter, apparently on short rope with his superiors, managed to get Neal out of prison.
I was also amused to see Peter and Mozz conspiring to help Neal deal with the season finale’s traumatic event, although I do not think the episode did a very good job of showing Neal as being upset.
The crime was my favorite sort- a really smart criminal whose identity was established early in the show, which became about Neal and Peter trying to outsmart their suspect. The bad guy was clever, and the cat-and-mouse game he tried to play was fun to watch.
Overall, though I was happy with the episode, and was mostly disappointed to see so little of Elizabeth. Hopefully she will be a stronger presence in future episodes.
I finished watching the first season of Leverage on Netflix last night. Waiting for the first DVD of season 2 to arrive in the mail will be torture. Leverage is full of my favorite type of antihero: genius world-class thieves working toward the good of the world. There are funny moments in the hour-long format show, with some elements of a cop show in how the characters target their marks. The show also has an overarching plot.
The story of Nate and his family unfolds over the first season, making you want to watch. Tugging the viewer into the show a bit further is the introduction of an arch enemy in the beginning of the season. Leverage has clear evil, a big bad guy who must be brought down. As a show, Leverage works.
I like Leverage for many of the same reasons I like White Collar. The cast is made up of characters who can’t be trusted, but who you want to trust anyway. They are very smart, and very good at what they do (unbelievably good, but that is why it’s television). The characters know this, and employ the same method of trust, “I trust him until I can’t,” as Neal put it in one episode of White Collar.
The interactions between the characters on Leverage make up for their super-human thieving abilities. The inappropriately timed arguments between Sophia and Nate about a relationship they aren’t properly having feel real, coming up through the same snippy comments a dysfunctional couple made up of dysfunctional people have in real life (if they were planned to have a certain effect). The way the members of the team are reluctant to care for each other but still are willing to rescue one another from hostage situations and such is endearing.
The characters themselves also have a certain endearing quality. Parker draws you in and makes you want to hug her (and know what is wrong with that girl) the same way River does in Firefly. Hardison combines Mickey of Doctor Who and an Eddie Murphy character with someone intentionally competent, offering comic relief and absurd genius. Elliot hides is Chuck Norris martial arts skillz behind a quieter demeanor, making the outsider wonder why he is even there. Sophia is a little Daisy Adair, and a lot more femme fatal. Nate, of course, is the honest man amongst thieves- a drunk who wants to be better than his team, but has no idea what else to do.
Leverage also manages a few references to Doctor Who, which is probably one of the best television shows of all time (and space!). That means it has to be good.
I would say Leverage is 4.5 out of 5 stars.
Men Who Stare At Goats was not all it was cracked up to be. I got the DVD from Netflix last month, and had been waiting for the end of summer classes to watch it with my mother. It was not worth 3 weeks of excitement and missing out on the other DVDs in my queue.
The DVD skipped like a seven year old on sugar, my second or third such DVD from Netflix, so I may give Men Who Stare at Goats another try in the future. For the time being, however, I am not very happy with the movie.
That is not to say I am unhappy with Men Who Stare at Goats. The story had a Big Fish sort of feel, combining the insane tales of Lyn (the goat-staring dude) with a similar belief and disbelief held by the son in Big Fish. Big Fish was also a decent movie- but neither are exactly my sort of thing.
Men Who Stare At Goats also reminded me of Secondhand Lions, in the same sense. The uncles of Secondhand Lions flashing back on their exciting youth offered the same tone as the story of the New Earth soldiers, both stories tied to the film by an equally exciting and unusual present.
Ultimately, I think Men Who Stare At Goats would be a movie better watched awake (I was not the whole time) and in small bits, the way I watch Big Fish and Secondhand Lions, drifting in and out of the movie.
Last week, I finally finished Dead Like Me. It is an entertaining show, but I see why it was canceled. Dead Like Me certainly has its funny moments, but they are not frequent enough to be a sitcom, and even if they were the hour-long format keeps the show from falling into that category. The show is also too dramatic to be a sitcom, with characters actually dealing with real problems (losing children and failing marriages to name a couple). Dead Like Me is certainly not a sitcom.
Dead Like Me also fails as a long form show, because each episode can (more or less) stand alone, or be watched out of order. There are no story arcs stretching the season to make a person eager to see the next episode after they see the first, so why bother? (I bothered because I wanted to know why the show failed.) Hour-long shows without a larger storyline attached don’t work. The exception to that tends to be crime dramas like NCIS and Law & Order, but even those two have some running storyline.
Dead Like Me did have some moments that could have been developed into a season-long plot, with unanswered questions that made me watch, but the trail was left unfollowed. After watching the whole first season and never finding out what happened to Betty, and finding nothing particularly interesting in the season finale, I knew the show would have no resolutions of any sort. Without any resolution, the plot fails, and watching the show seems pointless. Dead Like Me, in my opinion, lasted two seasons because people watched the first expecting something to come together, and realized the show was an aimless wandering. The only shows that last in such an unresolved state are sitcoms, and so Dead Like Me failed.
