Currently watching...

[emily_shore]

--I got through seasons one to three of The Wire pretty quickly, and I still maintain that it's one of the best shows on television. Looking forward to seeing season four, whenever I can justify paying the money for it.

--On the recommendation of exactlyhalf, I gave The Way We Live Now another try. Watched about an hour and a half of it, but I still couldn't

Comments

[vescoiya]

I just wanted to say I saw an episode of pushing daisies on the plane on my way back and it was fantastic. So add me to the enthusing list.

[emily_shore]

Oooh, always good to hear another recommendation. :)

Pushing Daisies!

[ticketsonmyself]

I've watched the whole season and I recommend it, too! I should note that there are some fairly obvious (to me) issues with gender and race; I think they're most apparent in 1x03 "The Fun in Funeral" and 1x06 "Bitches." This is probably because those are the episodes that feature characters of color in roles which require specific characterization in order to further the plot. If I were rating episodes, the problems I had with "Bitches" would be enough to give that one a thumbs-down. The series creator, Bryan Fuller, was also responsible for Wonderfalls, another good show with a black character in the main ensemble. (His record on Wonderfalls with one-episode characters of color is not so great, either - I'm thinking of "Totem Mole," which despite its moments of awesome is pretty much the epitome of "What they need is a honky [to catalyze change]," featuring a bunch of stock NDN character types). As a whole, PD is fun, with sometimes-surprising emotional weight. I don't think this counts as a spoiler, so I'll tell you that I have a

Re: Pushing Daisies!

[emily_shore]

Huh. I haven't heard anyone write about racial issues in the show, which is odd because I read deadbrowalking regularly and try to keep up with these things. What a shame.

Well, I'll watch it and see what I think.

Re: Pushing Daisies!

[ticketsonmyself]

Oops, first comment deleted for typo. I thought about it some more, and "Bitches" is a lot worse with respect to gender than to race. The show suffers to an extent from comic black sidekick syndrome; this plays out on various occasions, but I'm thinking of a particular scene in "The Fun in Funeral" where the only major black character gets stuck in a window and the white female lead makes fun of him, etc. I also hate that episode a little because it presumes that a person who's visibly of East Asian descent can't be related to a Civil War general unless said person's ancestor first stole someone else's identity. Actually, I hate the whole flashback scene and the "crazy Asian guy with a thick [fake] southern accent and a sword = hilarious" shtick. Overall, the show is probably still above average with respect to how it treats "the black sidekick," who's mostly written on PD as the curmudgeonly, cynical foil to the major white characters.

I haven't seen anyone write much about race on PD, either.