The Remote Island : Deadwood

Wake Up And Smile: Kids In Douchebag Costumes Are Hysterical

Bryan Christian — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:30:00 GMT

-- Maybe you saw this clip of Bill O'Reilly and Barney Frank going at it over the sub-prime meltdown a few weeks ago? Well, if you haven't, take a look -- and then click through for the Funny or Die version, which we're pretty certain is going to scar its underage co-star for life.

PLUS: the latest on Deadwood's Ian McShane and Brian Cox, Starz's failed new series Crash, Will Ferrell reprising his George Bush impression one final time, is someone leaving The View -- and is it the end for The Hills?

-- A few weeks ago, we got an opportunity to take look at Crash, Starz's new LA-set drama based on the Oscar-winning film of the same name. We took a pass. Apparently, this was a good idea.

-- Elizabeth Hasselbeck is *not* leaving The View, so don't think that Sherri Shepard is gonna have to carry all that show's "weird" on her own.

-- Best way to ring out the Bush Adminstration Mark II? Will Ferrell as W on Broadway.

-- Deadwood fans, good news: Brian Cox and Ian McShane will be together again!

-- Maybe there's a reason for that rumored spinoff of The Hills -- OK Magazine is reporting that OMG srsly no one can stand each other on the original show, like, even more than you know.

"Sons of Anarchy": Do As I Say, Unless You Don't Wanna And Someone Gets Hurt

Bryan Christian — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:29:00 GMT

"I know what you're thinking, and you're right. This show does need more me."

Apparently there's a sign up in SAMCRO HQ that says "Brains before bullets". So how come last night's episode of Sons of Anarchy seemed so senselessly violent? Is this what we can expect?

First things first: let's say you got this plotline with those two Mexican gals that were killed in the fire at the wirehouse. (The first warehouse fire in the pilot we mean; not the second.) When you got the law from two counties sniffing around, and you're worried about them tying the warehouse (which had been full of guns) to your club, it's no great position to be in. And that goes double when one of your boys -- let's say Tig, who seems to be a potentially scary dude -- might have left a little, erm, evidence of his own inside those aforementioned dead gals.

OK, that's a jam. But what we wanna know is where, exactly, does it say in the SAMCRO bylaws that the solution to this problem is to buy some bodies from a horny funeral home attendant who's got a thing for one of your club honeys so that you can fake a whole other murder across town to get the fuzz out of your hair long enough to steal the bodies of those Mexican gals and dispose of them as you please.

Hey, look at that, we just summarized like half the show in a single sentence. A single, wholly preposterous, needlessly crass sentence.

Are we beginning to rethink this whole Sons of Anarchy thing? A little. This was a pretty underwhelming second ep to a series, and one filled with too much non-gritty, non-quirky violence and a number of obvious plot complications that just kind of rose and fell out of nowhere: Tig's relationship with the dead Mexican ladies, Tara's suddenly knowing that Gemma tried to kill Wendy, Jax beating the crap out of some guy just because he cut him off in traffic. They're all developments that have something to do with character, and yet they don't really hang together all that well.

Also kind of half-baked is the story of Opie and Donna, who continue to have money problems, so much so that Opie's angling for more work in the club -- of the parole-violating sort, dum-da-dum!, that won't complicate things later on... So Donna's too proud to accept charity from Gemma. We get it, she's a toughie, and she'll have to be since he's probably got a target on his head. But maybe if there was just a hair more context for this story, like Opie having something to say about being passed over as heir to the club in favor of Jax... something to give these sadsacks some gravity! But we got nothing, so they're kind of chugging along, and we're supposed to feel bad for people we barely know who aren't going to dinner with the rest of the club? Meh.

The only satisfying plotlines this week had to do with Clay and his attempts to hold the club's finances together in the face of this whole warehouseless situation. The gun deal with the 'Niners apparently went off smoothly -- there were even celebratory muffins! -- but a few days later what first seems like business as usual -- a protection run arranged by the outgoing police chief, Unser, played by Dayton Callie (aka Charlie Udder from Deadwood) -- turns out to be a bold power play by Clay. Instead of making the protection run as promised, and keeping Chief Unser happy, Clay hands the shipment of [we don't know, we weren't paying attention] to "Uncle Jimmy" and the local mafia, making a percentage of the profits -- and putting Chief Unser in his place. Kind of an awesome move, but for some reason it had less screentime than Jax's corpse/booty snatching. We can't help but say: The Sopranos would have given this storyline serious play. We'd have been on that "protection run" so much we'd be picking insects from our teeth at home.

So hey, SoA, as our hero would say: You're on notice. Take it slow, ditch the Tarantino-esque, well, anything, and more Clay. If he's our Uncle Junior or Al Swearingen, we gotta get inside his head more. Ron Perlman can handle whatever you throw at him and besides, Clay might have much to teach us. Anybody who can make a little scratch and keep their local in-the-pocket-lawman from retiring in the same move belongs on The Apprentice!

Top Ten New Shows: #2 - "True Blood"

Bryan Christian — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:30:00 GMT

The new fall season is almost here. Starting next week, the cable and broadcast networks will begin rolling out their new shows to see if they take off like castaways on an island or singing casino managers. Here, then, are the top ten new shows we're most looking forward to seeing.

Loyal readers will know that we've been skeptical of HBO's original programming department the last few months. But we hope you understand: we'd really like for them to get back on track. Is True Blood gonna get 'em there? We think maybe. If we were to line up our favorite HBO dramas -- Sopranos, Deadwood, The Wire – we'd say that the most important thing they share in common isn't crime or profanity. It's their obsession with how criminals and outlaws mangle and subvert the language. Remember all those half-finished jokes on the corners and in the squad cars of Baltimore, or those misheard references marblemouthed by agitated Jersey hoods? There's an angry intelligence behind those gags, one that wants to know what makes you so smart that you talk like a normal person, huh? We love that, and it something that's been sorely missing from the HBO lineup of late.

Which leads us back to True Blood, a series that not only promises some kick-ass vampire effects and a showrunner who was responsible for assembling one of the finest and most surprising acting ensembles of the decade – but also holds the slim possibility that vampires will become the next subculture we find ourselves obsessed with every Sunday night. As fans of the "Southern Vampire" novels will already know, in the world of True Blood, many vampires are basically trying to go straight, living publicly in the world and surviving on a Japanese-produced synthetic blood substitute – and occasionally being hunted for their own blood, which produces narcotic effects when ingested by humans. That's a complicated setup, playing on what we know about junkies, criminals, and any number of other subcultures. We got high hopes that their take on the culture clash between humans and the undead comes with plenty of blood, sure... but maybe it's own juicy patois to boot.

True Blood (Sundays at 9PM EST) premieres Sunday, September 9th at 9:00 PM EST on HBO

TOP TEN NEW SHOWS 2008

#1. "Fringe"
#2. "True Blood"
#3. "90210"
#4. "Life On Mars"
#5. "The Mentalist"
#6. "Sons of Anarchy"
#7. "Do Not Disturb"
#8. "Eleventh Hour"
#9. "Kath & Kim"
#10. "Knight Rider"

Top Ten New Shows: #6 - "Sons of Anarchy"

Bryan Christian — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:49:00 GMT

We think it says something about how starved we are for a particular kind of show that we're excited to see Sons of Anarchy. Best case scenario: FX's new biker drama, which comes to us from a writer from The Shield, turns out to be a sort of Deadwood on wheels, with Ron Perlman -- an actor long deserving a juicy role of the non-latex-and-prosthetics variety -- as its scary, unpredictable, black heart.

Worst case, the show winds up more like that another David Milch/HBO production, John From Cincinnati: an aimless, gratuitous, sundrenched mess more in love with its own eccentricities than anything else. Or, it could surpises

Sons of Anarchy (Wednesdays at 10PM EST) premieres Wednesday, September 3 at 10PM EST on FX

TOP TEN NEW SHOWS 2008

#1. "Fringe"
#2. "True Blood"
#3. "90210"
#4. "Life On Mars"
#5. "The Mentalist"
#6. "Sons of Anarchy"
#7. "Do Not Disturb"
#8. "Eleventh Hour"
#9. "Kath & Kim"
#10. "Knight Rider"

TV Guide Sez No "Deadwood" Movie; We Heard Otherwise

Bryan Christian — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:32:00 GMT

So, the venerable Matt Roush at the venerable TV Guide reported last week that amid all the news of HBO doing those shows about Washingtonian bloggers, post-Katrina musicians, and a jazz-era Atlantic City serial, there was one sad bit of news.

With David Milch now off working on his pilot about New York police in the 1970s, “I think it’s safe to report to you that the likelihood of the Deadwood movie happening is slim to none,” said HBO co-president Richard Plepler.

Ah, that's too bad. Except... we heard totally different this weekend.

It's just a rumor, but we heard from, you know, a friend of a friend who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night, that they just lined up contracts for all the major players -- McShane, Olyphant, Parker, and, for the sake of iambic pentameter, we're hoping Sanderson -- to return and, if not finish, at least extend the story of the South Dakotan settlement. Of course, if true, HBO would need to rebuild the sets, as according to Al Swearingen himself, the entire town -- yeah, that slowly expanding town actually kind of existed -- was demolished last year. And of course, there's also the possiblity that our source was drunker than we thought and was feeding us total lies.

But if it's true, remember: you heard it here first!

"Sopranos" Fever, Over "The Wire", Hits "Mad Men"

Bryan Christian — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:32:00 GMT

We hope that Matthew Weiner, creator of AMC's New Frontier-era advertising potboiler Mad Men, has a big-ass box ready for all the superlatives that are about to be thrown at him and his show. Because now that the paper of record has given Mad Men the official "[Blank]est Show on TV" treatment, he can probably count on everyone short of Tom Shales' mother to chime in.

Everyone, that is, except us.

Don't get us wrong: we're not cynical about the show, which full disclosure, we've never seen but are expecting to like a lot. (We didn't have cable when it came out, and were planning to Netflix it before the second season started this July.) No, what we're cynical about is the whole "It Show" phenomenon -- let's call it Sopranos Fever -- that struck HBO's gangster soap first, and then moved on to The Wire, and now seems poised to fix itself on Mad Men. We're not generally cynical or suspicious about this sort of thing, and let's be clear: we love Sopranos and The Wire. But don't expect to see us participating in this sort of thing until The Powers That Be deign to bestow such lavish hosannas on a show that takes place, oh let's say, in space, or in the Old West, or on a remote island (hah!) and not within a hour's train ride from where we presume their offices to be.