The Devil Makes Us Sin

Aaaaaa Luther is back aaaaaaa!

(I know, that screenshot is from Season 2, but I like it.)

I love this show so much, and it's a bit hard to explain why. It's much darker and more violent than most of what I watch. A one-sentence summary of the show makes it sound like the most cliched thing ever: "A cop sometimes needs to break the rules in order to bring criminals to justice." And yet, the incredible performances, tight pacing, and surreal crimes makes it a mesmerizing work of art.

I've noted this before, but the show benefits immensely from its adhesion to British show norms. An American cop show with the same concept would quickly devolve into a procedural that presses the reset button at the end of each episode, or else a soap opera. With only four or six episodes a season, though, Luther can't NOT shake things up, radically changing its cast list, mood, and character arcs each season. It ends up being much more like a really entertaining series of films than a television drama.

That movie analogy has been even more pronounced as the show continued. The last two seasons (of three total!) have each essentially been two two-hour-long movies, each divided in half into two hour-long episodes. I've also increasingly noticed some very fine direction and practical effects that elevates the show above the occasionally-cheesy production values that plague other BBC productions. This isn't QUITE up to the levels of Sherlock, but it's in the same zone of visual quality.

As a side note - one of my little fascinations with Luther is its portrayal of British attitudes towards crime, crime-fighting, and civil duties, and how different they are from those in America (both in reality and as portrayed in our own cop shows/movies). I'd remarked before in S2 how odd it felt to watch scenes where a bad guy was running through a heavily crowded area, while being chased by police, and see that absolutely nobody would make an effort to stop the bad guy. It felt like the civilians had a clear understanding of their role in life, which was to keep their heads down and ignore anything that does not directly involve them. In contrast, any American show would have at least a couple of impromptu heroes jump in to try and help out. (Depending on the show, they might get shot for their troubles.) I've wondered if this might be directly traceable back to the difference between the British concept of "Duty to Retreat" versus the American focus on concepts like "stand your ground." In fact, a recurring concept in Luther is that of the vigilante, and the London police have no tolerance for them. Batman need not apply. The final two episodes of this season tackle that concept head-on, particularly in Episode Three, and we get some charismatic words in favor of a more muscular, American-style active citizenry. Anyways. We're obviously not meant to support this, but I'm very curious if American and British viewers have different reactions when confronted with the idea of an armed vigilante interrupting crimes with extreme violence, and if the British find it less tolerable than we would.

One of my few hesitations (I won't say complaints) about S3 is its use of social media as a plot device. It isn't actually bad, but does feel a little too trendy. I get the feeling this is something that will date these episodes in a few years, while the earlier episodes are more timeless. Still, for what it is, it's done rather well. It's hardly original to worry about the blood appetites of an anonymized public, and the show ties in concepts that seem borrowed from American Idol, Running Man, and The Hunger Games, casting a pretty bleak view on our current culture. I would expect no less from this show.

SEASON 3 MINI SPOILERS

I'll get the bad news out of the way first: there's entirely too little Alice. There's a subtle and very welcome nod to her early in the first episode, which makes me miss her a great deal. Luther is still a great show without her, but she provided such an incredible, unique energy that hasn't been replicated since she left for America. (I remember reading a while ago about a proposed spin-off featuring Alice, which I absolutely would have loved, but am pretty sure won't happen. I'm also probably never going to see my desired incarnation of the show where Luther and Alice join forces as super-criminals, traveling the world, stealing priceless artifacts, and befuddling police everywhere.)

Season Three finally crosses that vague line separating thrillers from horror. It's skirted close to that line for the show's entire run, notably in episodes like Season 1 Episode 3, but it now embraces full-on bogeyman mode. Of course, it all stays scientific and realistic, and I can't decide if that makes it more or less frightening.

This season has stepped back a bit from S2's interesting angle of featuring villains who appeared absolutely ordinary, the sort of people you'd never look at twice if you passed them on the street. The second villain is pretty tapped into the public, but sees himself as more of a martyr or a demagogue, and not "the spirit of London" in the way that a character from S2 seemed. Anyways. The big S3 villains are all very different from one another, and also different from the characters we've seen previously on the show.

Compared to earlier seasons, there's a much stronger institutional adversary against Luther from within the force this time around. Schenk kind of played this role in S1, and Erin Gray in S2, but both were, frankly, a bit ineffectual... enough to raise tension, but not enough to seriously threaten Luther. This time around, Stark is a huge danger, mostly because, unlike past opponents, he isn't content to merely confront Luther on a professional standing. Stark is ready to wage total war, meaning he's willing to fight as dirty as Luther and strike out at vulnerable targets when he can't reach the man himself. Watching him was infuriating, exactly as the show creators must have intended.

MEGA SPOILERS

This whole season was pretty good, but by far my favorite episode was #4, for the obvious reason that it marks the return of Alice after being gone for pretty much the second half of the entire series. I felt like cheering when I saw Ruth Wilson's name pop up on the opening credits. I was a bit nervous before she appeared: could she possibly match my ridiculously high expectations? Would a show that thrives on so much change feel compelled to irrevocably damage her relationship with Luther? After getting used to the new look of her shorter hair, I was once again beguiled by this awesomely unhinged woman. She gets the best lines of the episode, which are some of the best of the series. "Some little girls grow up wanting ponies. I always wanted to be a widow" was one of my favorites. She's possibly even more capable than during her season-one heyday, single-handedly saving Mary with incredibly cool aplomb.

Oh, yeah, Mary! I was pretty impressed with how well the show handled her. Zoe is such a huge figure in Luther's psyche, and I wasn't really expecting him to ever get a new love interest. Their initial meeting is a bit contrived, obviously, but I thought they did a good job at creating a believable scenario that would show how these two could fall for each other. I got pretty invested in their relationship, even while continuing to mentally ship Luther and Alice. Anyways. I liked Mary throughout the whole season, but thought she was particularly great in the finale: she's obviously under unbelievable stress, having never been in a situation like this before in her life, and yet she's able to struggle through her terror and do what needs to be done. Her final little sacrifice is one of the most admirable things I've seen on the show.

Little mysteries: what was on the sheet of paper that Benny handed Luther? I don't think we find out, but I think it can't be anything other than "Meep meep!"

I was really glad to see that Erin survived. I had assumed that she died, based on Marwood's previously demonstrated willingness to murder police officers. (It was hard with Ripley, but seems to be getting easier, which is a terrifying thought.) But, given how the shot happened off-screen, I should have anticipated it would be non-fatal. I'm left wondering if he shot her in the leg (mimicking his earlier disabling of Luther), or if he tried for a fatal shot and missed the vitals. Probably the former, given his survivalist training. And... well, given Marwood's motivation for embarking on this crusade, I imagine that he's less likely to kill women than men. Well. I'm curious if anything happens with Erin in the future (if there is a future to this show), but I can see her following a trajectory like Schenk, passing through an adversarial role to eventually become a loyal supporter of Luther.

Oh, but Ripley... poor Ripley! What a shame. I don't want to say "waste," since it worked very well, both from a dramatic sense (it was fully earned and gave an incredible propulsion to the finale), as well as an in-story sense (by sacrificing his life, Ripley single-handedly branded Marwood as a cop killer, instantly robbing him of his public support and putting an end to his campaign). That was still really hard to watch, though. Ripley has been such a constant in the show, and had such a great arc each season. He will be missed.

All in all, I was pretty happy with this season, and particularly with how it ended. Season One had a particularly powerful cliffhanger, and I would have hated it if the show had ended there. S2 and S3 have each ended at good spots, where there's still room to tell more stories in the future, but also would be a decent spot to end the show. I say that in spite of the huge ambiguities left at the end of the finale. Most particularly, will Luther choose to go with Alice, with Mary, or neither? Will he finally leave the force, as he's talked about wanting for the last two seasons? If so, where will he go? If not, how will his career progress in a post-Stark, post-Ripley world?

END SPOILERS

I do hope we get to see more Luther, in one form or another. Idris Elba is deservedly becoming more famous and popular, and I expect this will make it increasingly difficult for him to do additional series of the show. But, based on the little I've heard, it sounds like both he and series creator Neil Cross are very interested in doing a movie, which could possibly be a sort of prequel/origin story taking place before Season One. That would be pretty cool, even if it means no Alice character. And there still are periodic rumors of a spinoff, which could be very good indeed depending on who was involved. We'll see! This show has continued to be edgy, unpredictable, and darkly entertaining, and with luck we'll see that continue in the future.

Here's what happened

I recently finished watching "Monk." Um... all of it. I completely missed the show when it was first running; I was vaguely aware of the basic idea (a detective with OCD), but, for example, I had no idea that it was set in San Francisco. My parents fell in love with it, I decided I had to check it out, and, eight seasons later, here I am!

It's a little unusual for me to do this for this kind of show... well, catching up with a whole series after the fact is my favorite way to watch good, modern TV, but I think all the previous examples of mine have been for serialized drama. Watching them late is fine, but they demand to be watched in order to really understand what's happening and get the most out of it.

In contrast, Monk is highly episodic, not serial. There is a sort of over-arching plot, but it's only important at the very beginning of the series and towards the very end. They do try to maintain continuity, but it's much more in the style of, say, "The Simpsons" than "Arrested Development": some characters come and go, but each episode ends with things pretty much where they were at the beginning.

That isn't a criticism, of course, and Monk succeeds in being a terrific show. A lot of this is thanks to Tony Shalhoub, the phenomenal lead role; he nailed Monk early on, and kept up an excellent portrayal throughout. It's a very challenging situation: not only to depict an extreme introvert with a laundry list of personal failings, but to depict a character who fundamentally resists change of any sort, and yet keep him interesting throughout four years. I think that latter bit is what's most impressive: we basically understand everything we need to know about Monk after the first four episodes, and yet we continue to enjoy seeing him time after time.

Shalhoub doesn't hog the spotlight; the show features a small core of dedicated supporting characters. I'll treat these more at length below, but for now, I'll just note that Shalhoub (who was also a producer of the show) is extremely generous. Even though his character is the star, he gives some great moments to all the people around him.

The show is EXTREMELY formulaic. There is always, always, always a murder. Most of the time it occurs before the opening credits, although occasionally the murder comes later. Most of the time Monk is brought on as a consultant to help the San Francisco Police Department solve the crime. The neat twist for this show is that, despite being a murder mystery, it's rarely a whodunit: often they'll show us the murderer before the opening credits, and if not, Monk usually figures it out early on. Rather, the show is a HOWdunit: Monk needs to prove just how the suspect managed to commit the crime.

This leads to a lot of great scripts. One of Monk's many trademark lines is "[S]He's the guy... I don't know how [s]he did it, but [s]he's the guy." Similarly, the suspect often knows that Monk suspects them, and they'll taunt him to prove it. They often have a "perfect" alibi, that seems to make it impossible for them to have committed the crime; Monk's job is to disprove that alibi, and place them at the crime.

There are a couple of instances where this formula gets to be a little repetitive; they rely just a little too heavily on making crimes seem to have occurred at a different time than they actually did. Still, it's a solid angle, and I can't fault them for running with it.

The set design and scenery are gorgeous. After all, this is the Bay Area! I absolutely love all their exterior shots. Some of these are the requisite big-impact shots, like the Golden Gate Bridge or the Transamerica Pyramid. Some of my favorites, though, are the street-level shots: I look at them, and I can't place the exact block, but I know that it's San Francisco. The 20-degree grade, the Victorians with Bay windows, those parking meters... there's no other place where it can be.

The music is quite good. They switch around the opening song fairly early on in the show, and I much prefer the latter, Randy Newman version to the earlier Caribbean-esque tune. The incidental music is fine, not too memorable but well-done.

Hm, let's move on to some

MINI SPOILERS

Was it just me, or did they get much less reliant on guest stars as the show went on? I remember seeing Jason Alexander and Kevin Nealon and Willie Nelson and some other kinda-famous folks early on, but that seemed to drop off after the first few seasons. I'm curious if this was mostly a financial decision, or an aesthetic one.

For the most part, I approved of the changes that did happen in the show. As noted above, I like the new theme song way more than the old one. (Sorry, Sarah Silverman!) Also, once I got used to the change, I liked Natalie more than Sharona. Both were good characters, and I did really appreciate how the writers kept them quite distinct; even though they're superficially similar (both are single parents who act as Monk's personal assistant), their personalities are extremely different, and I don't think you could have Natalie fill any of Sharona's scripts or vice versa. That said, Natalie was perkier, cuter, and more empathic, and I really enjoyed the tone she brought to the show.

This was a shorter thing, and I might need to re-watch the beginning to be sure, but I feel like Randy's character shifted the most over the opening episodes. For most of the show he was the clown, comic relief, pure incompetency behind a badge; I think that in the pilot and first few episodes, though, he was a fairly straight supporting man.

Stottlemeyer was fantastic; next to Monk, he was my favorite character. He was world-weary, but in a wry kind of way; he had a great quiet sense of humor, almost never laughing, but you could tell when he was amused. Actually, he probably had the broadest range of emotion of anyone on the show. Unlike Monk, who only emotes within an extremely narrow range, Stottlemeyer can fly into a rage, throw things around, get in peoples' faces... and cuddle with a lover, bond with a son, blow a whistle at a chimpanzee, even cry. I usually felt kind of bad for him; the show put him through a lot, and he lost a lot over the run.

I think that this may be the only television show I've seen, and one of very few pieces of media, to really focus in on the subject of grief. I forget now which episode it was, but there's one show that ends with Monk holding a picture of his dead wife and sobbing uncontrollably. That isn't the sort of thing one sees often, especially on prime-time television. The show also seems to be making an unusually large space available for grief. In much of our media culture, the general message regarding grief tends to be, "It's a natural process, and you should take time to express your emotions at your loss. However, grief is something to be gotten over. You should put it behind you and move on to newer thing in your life." "Monk" explicitly treats this topic, and allows Adrian to defend why, in his particular case, there is no moving on, there is no comfort, there really is no future, just a shadow that lies ahead of him.

I've been lucky enough to have not lost the most important people in my life, but I have lost people I've loved, and I have to say that the "Monk" experience rings true for me. Not that that's how I handle loss, but grief is a very big emotion, a very real emotion, and one can expect it to take years or more to address. And one never really "gets over" it - it may be less crippling and debilitating, but the loss permanently becomes a part of your own life, and in some way it continues to shape the future actions you take and choices you make.

MEGA SPOILERS

I did appreciate how the show wrapped things up at the end. They seemed to be making a conscious decision to try and provide happy endings for the people we cared about. Randy finally connected with Sharona (and, once again, I'm glad that the writers didn't try to rekindle the Randy/Sharona love/hate dynamic with Natalie). Leland, after a lot of really awful letdowns, met, wooed, and married a good woman. Natalie's situation is left a bit more open, but she saw her daughter accepted to UC Berkeley, and seems to be interested in picking up romance again.

And Monk? That seemed like the trickiest thing of all, finding a way to give him some kind of comfort while still honoring the character's integrity and devotion to Trudy. They find a great way to do this, along the way nicely tying together a bunch of small moments from throughout the show's run (the six-fingered man, Trudy's last present to Adrian, etc.). The transformation the Monk goes through in the last few minutes of the finale is just amazing; throughout the entire show, we've almost never seen him laugh, and now... he's happy! He's laughing! He's changing! He's still an odd guy, still noticeably Monk, but it's so cheering to see him reach his peace.

The daughter makes this all possible, of course. It's the only time that Monk has found a way to let his love for Trudy escape the past. By re-investing that love into her daughter, he can carry her memory forward into the future, remaining devoted to Trudy while finally escaping the rut he's been in.

And, man, what a rut... they didn't dwell on this too much, but it's incredibly dark to think that Adrian wasted so many years with that box under the Christmas tree. At any point, he could have opened it up and solved the case. Even worse, we learn from the video that he was inadvertently thwarting Trudy's wishes the whole time: all along, she had assumed that if she died, he would simply open it and learn what happened. His devotion to her memory was the thing that kept him from solving her murder.

Like I said, they don't dwell on that, and I'm glad for it. Finding an appropriate ending for a long-running TV show is an incredible challenge, and I'm always extremely grateful when the creators find a good way to end it.


END SPOILERS

That was that! Monk isn't the kind of show I typically watch, but obviously, I liked it plenty enough to watch every single episode. The character-driven quality of the show, and the quality of the characters, make it surprisingly addictive; even though you know the outlines of each episode before you start watching, the level of execution is incredibly high. It's an excellent show. Unless I'm wrong... which, you know, I'm not.

Lots

Just finished watching the "Lost" series finale.  It was going to take way too long past my bedtime, so instead I got set up to get a copy of it, went to bed, and then woke up an hour earlier this morning so I could see it before coming in to work.  Ordinarily I wouldn't have bothered, but with a series event like this, the risk was just too great that I would get spoilered in the 24 hours between original airtime and when I would have seen it.

I've been a pretty faithful fan of "Lost" throughout most of its run.  I started watching it partway through the first season.  I was initially attracted to it in the ads on ABC, or, more specifically, by Dominic Monaghan's infamous line reading: "Where are we?"  "That's Merry!" I thought.  "Gee, I miss those hobbits.  That show could be good!"  After I missed the first few episodes, I figured I'd take a flyer, but I kept on hearing about how good it was, so, thanks to the miracle of the Internet, I got caught up.  Back then, getting caught up meant a weekend, not months of nightly viewing.

At the time, I thought that those first few episodes of "Lost" were some of the most compelling television I'd ever seen.  The overarching sense of mystery, the incredible tension that filled the episodes, the fact that nobody was safe and anybody could be killed at any time - those things all made Lost more than any other drama I'd seen before, elevating it to a level of quality that I tend to associate with movies. 

Of course, it turned out to not be such an outlier.  I firmly believe that the past decade has produced some amazing television, and that TV can now actually make an argument for being a legitimate art form.  There's a lot to be said for why this is so, but I think a big part of the reason comes down to technology.  Shows like "Lost" and "The Wire" and "Battlestar Galactica" are so complex, so deep, so interwoven, that even if you watch every episode it can be hard to keep up with the plot.  If you miss an episode, you're, well, lost.  In the old days that would be it; now, thanks to the Internet, and Hulu, and Netflix, it's possible to get into a show after a few seasons, or to get caught up after missing a night.  That gives writers the courage to demand more of their viewers, trusting them to keep pace, instead of needing to spoon-feed them pablum.

"Lost" started in mystery.  It moved into reversal.  From about midway through the first season through the end of the second season, pretty much everything about the show was devoted to revealing that everything was the opposite of what it had initially seemed.

MINI SPOILERS

Sawyer seems like a hardened criminal.  Guess what?  He's really a sweet and loyal guy.  Kate sure seems nice.  Guess what?  She's a murderer!  Wait, hold on, double-reversal: the victim deserved it!  Boy, I can't believe that the sweet Sun is stuck with that awful husband Jin!  Uh-oh... turns out that Jin is an amazing guy who sacrificed everything for Sun, and she's an unfaithful betrayer!

In case you can't tell, it was around this time that I started to lose a little faith in the series.  This was largely due to the practical reason that they were taking everything I liked about particular characters and destroying it.  Hurley was no longer a fun-loving, good-natured dude; Locke was no longer the serenely confident prophet of the island.  And, biggest of all, the series was turning from its early mysterious, frankly occult sensibility, into a boring fourth-grade science class.  "Oh, supernatural forces had nothing to do with us getting here - it's because of these gol-darn magnets!"

Fortunately, they turned it around, and how!  After the mystery phase and the reversal phase, the series eventually settled into what I like to think of as the complexity phase.  The writers embraced the mythology that they were creating, and just ran with it.  Instead of getting stuck with the choice between explaining mysteries or not explaining mysteries, they dug deeper, actually telling a story instead of stalling, but at the same time expanding their horizons and pulling more threads into the weave.  One of the most amazing things about "Lost" is how fluid its cast has been.  Early on I was impressed by how many major characters died; later, I was impressed by how many major characters were added in late acts.  Some of these, especially Desmond and Ben but also Miles, Daniel, Jacob, and Whitmore, became incredibly important.


MEGA SPOILERS FOR THE LAST SEASON

I keep on remarking to people about how impressed I was at the show's final turn.  For a long time the distinctive narrative trick of the show was the flash-back; each episode continued the story on the island, but also included a wrapped story about a castaway's prior life.  There was an amazing shift when the show started presenting flash-forwards, presenting what happened to characters after they left the island.  After you've gone back and you've gone forward, well, you've done everything, right?

Nope!  Only if you're thinking of time as a one-dimensional axis.  The final season started to flash SIDEWAYS, into a parallel existence.

Early on, I (and probably most other people) assumed that we were seeing a parallel timeline.  The previous season's finale ended with the detonation of an atomic bomb in the 1970's, which was supposed to have undone the chain of events that led to the plane crash.  The characters remained on the island, so it seemed to have failed; but, they were also safely on the ground in the flash-sideways, so it seemed to have worked.  It seemed reasonable to think that we were seeing two diverging views of reality, depending on whether or not the bomb had worked. 

As the season progressed, though, that view became less and less clear.  We gradually learned that there were deeper changes in the characters beyond the plane crash.  Sawyer was no longer a con man; he was now a cop.  Locke was still in a wheelchair, but instead of his injury being the result of a confrontation with his awful father, it was from a plane crash with his wonderful father.  I began so suspect that something else was going on.

MEGA SPOILERS FOR THE FINAL EPISODE

In the end, it turned out that we weren't seeing a parallel timeline, but a parallel existence.  In the tension between science (quantum theory) and mysticism (afterlife), I think mysticism finally won out, but there ended up being a great unity between them.  As best as I can make it, we were seeing an afterlife, a sort of purgatory after characters had died and before they moved on.  Hurley, who has become the guardian of the Island, uses his powers (which, as we know from watching Jacob, expand past the island's borders) to comfort them, reunite them, and bring them forward.

This is all delicious, because, of course, people have been speculating from the very first season that the island is a purgatory; I don't think people were expecting it to be the prelude to purgatory (at least, I wasn't).  The last episode was filled with several of these great, semi-winking references for fans.  One of my favorites was when Sawyer says to Jack, "So, you're the new Jacob?  Don't you think that's kind of the obvious choice?"  Of course, that's what people have been saying all over the Internet for the last five days; and, of course, all the writers knew that that's how people would react.

On the whole, I'm deeply satisfied with the final episode.  It was emotionally satisfying, ended on my favored mystical note, resolved a lot, and left a few things open.  Some of these we can puzzle out ourselves, others may continue to be mysteries.

The show wasn't too explicit about exactly what happened with Black Smoke, for example, but I think it's relatively straightforward to figure out.  When Desmond pulled out the stone, the Island lost its special powers.  Hence the earthquakes and storms and such.  However, Smokey got his powers from the island, and so Desmond's action also made him mortal.  It turns out that both Smokey and Jack were right: Desmond can destroy the island, and Desmond can destroy Smokey.  I love it when two seemingly contradictory positions both end up being true.  And that's really the major theme of this show, isn't it?  Both science and magic are real; they're just different perceptions of actual events.  The same act can both betray and save.  You can deny someone and love them at the same time.

My biggest bummer from the finale was not seeing Walt or Michael.  I'm especially puzzled by why Michael wasn't there, since the actor was obviously available for an earlier undead appearance on the island.  As for Walt, I'm guessing that his absence was a production decision; maybe he was unavailable or asking for too much money.  On the other hand, I have a secret thought that they may be saving him for a movie or a spin-off.  Walt was the only member of the original castaways who actually did have special powers, some sort of latent ability prior to landing on the island.  It's possible that his story might be even bigger than the island's; the island couldn't hold him, he's going to have adventures of his own.  At least, that's what I like to think.

I loved, loved, loved the final scene of the show.  I'm a big fan of unexpected symmetry.  Ending it with the same shot as where the series opened was a great grace note.  There's something vaguely Finnegan's Wake-ish about it, except that instead of a loop, it's a return; a reset to the original state.  I like that.

Random thought: boy, that sure is an interfaith church, huh? 

Favorite character:
At their most awesome moments, still Locke.  Averaged over the whole series, Ben.

Least favorite character:
Still Shannon.  So glad they killed her off early on.

Favorite season:
Tough call... probably this last one, although the third was also really good.

Best villain:
Ben.

Favorite location:
Man, there sure are a lot.  I like the idea of the Temple a lot.  In practice, the Dharma stations are the coolest-looking.  Probably The Orchid station.

Favorite time:
The 70's, dude!

Favorite number:
23

Favorite canned Dharma food:
A1 Steak Sauce

Favorite tailie:
Mr. Eko

Favorite mainlander:
Um... I forget if we ever learn his name, but the guy who played the Lieutenant on The Wire.  Penny's also sweet.

Favorite Whitemorian:
They were a great bunch, weren't they?  Overall I'd have to say Daniel, but Miles made a really strong showing in the last season.

Favorite Other:
If I can't count Ben again, then Richard.

Favorite song:
"Catch a falling star" grew on me.  Particularly the sinister, minor-key variation that we hear during Claire's insanity.

Favorite weapon:
The atomic bomb.

Favorite vehicle:
Dharma van.

Favorite flash-back:
Locke's outback adventure.

Favorite flash-forward:
The first one was awesome for the shock value.  Otherwise, probably Sayeed's bloody quest.

Favorite flash-sideways:
Hurley the chicken king.

Favorite line:
I'm not sure, but it's gotta be one of Sawyer's.  That man has the best collection of one-liners in the history of the universe.  My favorite from the last episode was from Miles, though: "I don't believe in a lot, but I do believe in duct tape."

END SPOILERS

Good bye, Lost!  Thanks for all the great television!

Got to Keep the Devil Way Down in the Hole

I'll cheerfully admit that I'm often a follower.  If enough people who I respect recommend the same thing, I'll eventually check it out.  I keep it up because it keeps on working - people tend to enjoy things because they're really good.

The latest incarnation of this trend is The Wire.  It seems like most people had heard of it, but nobody actually had watched it, during its run on HBO.  When the show was wrapping up, suddenly there were loud accolades everywhere about how this was possibly the greatest show on television.  People began watching the DVDs, and the praise continued to flow.  I eventually checked it out myself.  It's pretty darn awesome.

First off, I think you can make a strong case that this is the most talented ensemble cast of any televised series.  That isn't meant to short anyone else - there are a surprisingly large number of well-acted shows this past decade - but The Wire is simply jaw-dropping.  A few particular characters are so perfectly magnetic that they can captivate you by just raising an eyebrow or twitching a jaw muscle.  Everyone is just perfect.

The most impressive part of The Wire, to me, is its scope.  I'm only partway into the second season, and it's already dizzying.  Most televised shows, even big-budget ones, focus on a few particular locations, a handful of characters, and a couple of plot lines.  The Wire simply sprawls.  A single episode will take you from a dirty crack-house filled with druggies and needles to a political fund-raiser in a swank hotel to a quiet suburban street to a courthouse.  Even something that I would often think of as a single setting, like a police station, becomes incredibly complex.  I think that it's the very first episode where you first get to see where the various characters work, and can contrast the crummy, dingy space that the Narcotics unit occupies to the brightly lit, corporate-style floor filled with Homicide detectives.  You see - and it needs no comment - that Narcotics is using old 1950's style typewriters and metal folding chairs while Homicide has modern computers and swiveling office chairs.  Details like that give the series a great sense of realism.  Continuing on the tour of the police building, you grow amazed at the palatial offices occupied by the department's top brass, and realize that they have nothing in common with the people at the bottom of the totem pole.

There is a single amazing shot somewhere early in the series that I think encapsulates the goals and artistry of the show.  You see a drug deal go down, as the goods are passed from one hand to another.  Then the camera goes WHOOOSH!  It pulls back and you see the courtyard these two people are standing in, then the block, then more and more of the city, until it rests on a picture of all Baltimore, lights twinkling.  You have the feeling that this show has created an entire city, and is showing you a fraction of its stories, but could just as easily be showing you anything else.

I get the feeling that I toss around the word "epic" too easily, probably because I love things that are epic.  When I talk about The Wire to other people, I find that I keep on using words and phrases that for the past few years I have reserved for Battlestar Galactica: "epic," "best show on television," "best cast," etc.  Some of these are just because it's hard to judge the relative merit of two shows that are at the top of their class.  I'd like to dig a bit more deeply into the "epic" label, though.

Both The Wire and Battlestar Galactica feel huge, but for very different reasons.  I think BSG feels huge in large part because of its setting.  I mean, come on - it's a show about the nuclear near-annihilation of an entire species; the handful of people who survive and must try to keep surviving in a universe filled with insanely powerful robots trying to kill them.  That's pretty epic.  Add in ancient prophecies, a long journey, and massive evolutions in plot and character development, and you've got a winner.

If BSG is huge by its setting, The Wire feels huge by its detail.  Everything coheres, everything hangs together, and every piece seems utterly believably, more realistic than life itself.  Tiny offhand comments or gestures prove to have enormous ramifications, and you believe that this is not because a bright writer set it up, but because those comments and gestures betrayed reality.  Now, the technical scope of The Wire isn't as grand as in BSG - we are talking perhaps dozens of deaths at most compared to billions, and drug deals in a single American city rather than a war raging across the universe - but it seems to speak more directly to the human condition, to illumine facets of ourselves that we typically just don't see.

If I can be permitted a poor analogy, I think that The Wire is epic in the way Hamlet is epic.  It's filled with passion, with marvelously drawn characters, tight plotting and action, and by its skill the author can draw out timeless truths and improve our lives.  I think that BSG is epic in the way Paradise Lost is epic.  It's a grand, amazing, sprawling story, filled with outsized personalities, enormous struggles, and a scope so large that it allows the author to talk about absolutely anything.  I don't think one is better than the other; both have their place, and both are amazing.

So, other than the scope (actually, related to the scope), the part of The Wire that impresses me the most is how it shows society.  Again, it reveals the peaks and the troughs of our cities, from people living in misery in slums to comfortable couples and the wealthy and powerful.  The camera moves with ease between these extremes, but you get a palpable sense for the different worlds occupied by these characters.  They're all part of the same city, but a kid from the projects will never see the inside of the Deputy Commissioner's office, any more than a white politician will hang around with Bubs.

MINI SPOILERS

So, for the first couple of episodes, the show sets out the prejudices and stereotypes, and you start to get a feel for the characters.  On one side you have the  criminals, on the other the police.  As the show goes along, though, they keep on tweaking our perceptions.  As in real life, people and situations are more common than you initially may believe.  How should a drug kingpin behave?  Brutal, efficient, smart-talking, okay.  How about attending night school so he can pick up an economics degree and learn how to expand and price his market?  Sounds weird, but the more you think about it, the more sense it makes.

Tangent - another thing I love about the show is how it de-mystifies the drug trade.  You've probably heard about a study done that compared the corporate structure of McDonald's with that of a drug gang, and found that if you show the relative salaries and remove the job titles, they're virtually identical.  The men at the top of the organization are smart, flexible, incredibly talented, and make a lot of money and oversee large organizations.  The bottom rungs are staffed by poorly skilled people doing crummy jobs for minimum wage.  Some people can, through hard work and talent, climb the middle rungs of some responsibility and incentive rewards, but the overall structure is clearly pyramidal.  The Wire gets this to a T.  A lesser show would have mainly focused on Barksdale, or on the couch, and just sketched in the other extreme.  The Wire shows everything, every stage, every rung, every transaction, how each dollar moves from the welfare check to Barksdale's safe to real estate.  It's easy to point a finger and say, "Tsk tsk, drugs are bad."  It's a much harder and much better thing to show what drugs ARE, what they do, how they work, who buys, who sells, who loses, who wins. 

Back to society - there's this ongoing crumbling in the show.  The characters feel locked into their worlds - many of them have never even left Baltimore - but we gradually realize that those worlds are more complex than we initially believed.  As the show continues, you start to gradually realize that the division between the ghetto and City Hall is not as solid as it first appeared.  A character will show up in a place where they don't belong, you'll kind of shake your head - "What's going on?" - and then start re-processing, updating your view of the world based on the new information you've received.  There are many layers to this onion, and everything is connected.


END SPOILERS

And I'm less than halfway through season 2!  Pretty amazing, and I get the feeling this will be even more epic by the time it's all done.

No way, myte, too much blood to be just a vein. No way, izzy. If it were an artery, he’d still be bleeding. Actually, he'd be dead.

The season finale of "House" was AWESOME. I've blogged about this before, but I really dig the show. It has transformed from being something I watched only for Hugh Laurie and Massive Attack, into a very well-written, sharply funny, and clever show that's willing to take on some pretty meaty issues.

I've read a couple of interviews with the stars and creators that discuss the fact that House is the marriage of a procedural and a soap opera, two genres that have absolutely no interest for me. And I don't think the combination sounds that great on paper. When you have a lot of talent behind a project, though, even tired tools can be put to good use, and I feel like they've been successful at mining the possibilities of the genre. The procedural is an excellent framework for the show, both providing the raw material for them to talk about and engaging the viewer to join in the problem-solving. Not on a medical level, since we haven't even heard of many of these conditions, but over the course of two seasons we've been well-trained in the important questions. Were the tests right? What was the patient hiding? Do we trust the family's statements? It's this detective work that engages our minds.

Every once in a while, though, the writers let themselves slip from the procedural a little. Every time, the result is a masterpiece. Both last season's "Three Stories" and this finale do keep elements of the procedural in place - there's a lot of discussion about diagnosing a condition - but the script takes a step up and starts looking at the process of diagnosing, what it means to be looking for the truth. If they did this every week it would probably lose its potency, but as it is, the result is an episode that can define an entire season.

MEGA SPOILERS

I loved, loved, loved this episode. It's very hard to displease me when you start plumbing the depths of sanity, and the hallucinatory whirl that House is caught up in utterly delighted me. After he first skipped from the rails a little, everything was fair game, and I immediately began to wonder if anything that was happening was real. At the same time, though, the story told within the hallucinations is compelling in its own right, so there was plenty to do besides ponder.

One of my favorite scenes was when House was walking down the stairs with his team, then asked "How did I get here?" We, the viewers, saw the beginning of the conversation in his room, and the continuation in the stairs, but as regular watchers we are accustomed to seeing changes in scenery. In the real world, though, you can't move from Scene A to Scene B without crossing the space between them. Anyways, I loved that because it forces the viewer to examine their own relationship with the show; we're projecting our own reality on it, and House's question really shakes that foundation.

One thing I did NOT enjoy was the main case. I'm a bit of a wuss, and often will close my eyes or turn my head during a particularly gruesome scene. So, yeah, the exploding eyeball... not the highlight of my day. It was interesting, but also sickening.

As Pat points out, the scene at the Mexican place where House impersonates his team was wonderful. I need to watch it again. And what's really funny, of course, is that he's ALREADY impersonating them - throughout the entire episode, everything they say is coming from him. Just brilliant.

The very end of the episode was fantastic. I'm reminded of Waking Life, one of my all-time favorite movies; one of the characters talks about how you can have fantastic dreams that seem to go on for hours, even though you've only been asleep for a minute or two, and speculates that a single second of dreaming prior to death could occupy your entire lifetime. This episode felt like a treatment of that idea. As a rule, I detest "Oh, it was all just a dream!" endings, but they absolutely earned it. The whole episode is about thought, and reality, and the relationship between the two, so the ending was absolutely a part of the episode, rather than a cheap way to get an ending.

I keep saying "ending," even though clearly it's a cliffhanger. What do you think will happen? I don't know... the tongue guy is probably a much simpler case than House predicted, the shooter was probably arrested without being injured, and for House... maybe now he'll have two limps? I'm guessing the premiere will be his recovery, and maybe he'll have some additional long-term pain. We'll see. I'm already looking forward to the fall!