(no subject)
I have been busy the past few days but after tomorrow I'm hoping to get some writing done. I went to the store and picked up JT's album yesterday, and I managed to catch him on Letterman, but I've missed so much of the promo -- now that I'm not in my own apartment with a DVR, it's hard to stay caught up! I am looking forward to trying to catch up on all of it via lj over the next few days. In the meantime, I did manage to watch a little TV, so here's a few brief things about
The first episode of the season is never the best, and this one felt a little bit too much like, "see what your old friends have been doing on their summer vacation!" I mean, I enjoyed it, and I was so sad I didn't have a DVR so I could watch the 'next-week-on-the wire' part twice, and I'm really excited for the rest of the season. But my brother, who hadn't seen it before, watched it with me, and that really brought out how much of the episode was devoted to checking in with our old buddies. (And sadness: my brother, who's read a little about the show, said at one point while we're watching, Wait, which one of them's Stringer Bell? And I was like, um, he's, uh, not in this episode.) That said, the before-the-credits scene was fantastic and totally creeped me out.
I'm looking forward to more of the school plotline and less of the mayoral race. One of the things that bothered me about the beginning of S2 and the whole Sobotka plotline was that (in addition to cutting out the characters I'd become so involved with) one of the things I love about the Wire is how you see a real spectrum of people and how their lives are affected by the drug war. It's not just that you see cops and dealers, but on the cop side you see everyone from the mayor, chief and ops (esp. in S3) to the middle like Daniels and his team to the cops banging heads on the streets. In the same way, you see the kingpins like Stringer and Avon, as well as the middle like D, Bodie (and Omar), to the hoppers on the corner and the addicts like Bubbles and Johnny. It's that sweep and spread of humanity that is one of the drawing points of the show to me. And in S2, on the Sobotka side we just didn't see it. The chief smugglers remained ciphers, and at the end of the season we still didn't know them anything like the way we knew Stringer by the end of the first episode. And we also didn't see anyone on the other end -- all the girls were dead, and treated more like product in the drug story lines than people. It was basically just about Sobotka and his family (even the plotline about the other union guy who was supposed to take over never really meant much) and you can see that sort of thing on so many shows. Anyway, the point of all this is that I'm somewhat heartened by the fact that the schools storyline seems to be setting out to give us this sweep, to let us know the mayor/candidates, the principal, the teachers and the students intimately.
SCIENTOLOGY? ROCK ON! This storyline makes me totally giddy. I can't believe this season we get Christian's homosexual panic AND scientology -- it's like Christmas! I'm also very happy to get so much Matt, and I can't wait to see how this plays out. I was also pleased to see Julia & Sean's other kid, whose name I forget which tells you something. I'm hoping that some of this drama with her won't just be part of the our-special-needs-baby plotline, but will actually involve her and her reaction to the baby and, oh, I don't know, maybe her reaction to the fact that her parents don't really seem to remember she's their kid 95% of the time. This is completely a family in which bad behavior = attention. Also, man, Sean is such a bad idea as a father for this new kid. It's interesting how Christian is portrayed so much more openly as part of the plastic surgeon who demands physical perfection in the people around him (not that he's a stereotype, but that idea is), but Sean seems to have an even more virulent strain. And finally, I nearly had a heart attack when Christian broke into Kimber's house and was so physically intimidating -- that's so not on with anyone, but given what she's been through it was horrifying.
The first episode of the season is never the best, and this one felt a little bit too much like, "see what your old friends have been doing on their summer vacation!" I mean, I enjoyed it, and I was so sad I didn't have a DVR so I could watch the 'next-week-on-the wire' part twice, and I'm really excited for the rest of the season. But my brother, who hadn't seen it before, watched it with me, and that really brought out how much of the episode was devoted to checking in with our old buddies. (And sadness: my brother, who's read a little about the show, said at one point while we're watching, Wait, which one of them's Stringer Bell? And I was like, um, he's, uh, not in this episode.) That said, the before-the-credits scene was fantastic and totally creeped me out.
I'm looking forward to more of the school plotline and less of the mayoral race. One of the things that bothered me about the beginning of S2 and the whole Sobotka plotline was that (in addition to cutting out the characters I'd become so involved with) one of the things I love about the Wire is how you see a real spectrum of people and how their lives are affected by the drug war. It's not just that you see cops and dealers, but on the cop side you see everyone from the mayor, chief and ops (esp. in S3) to the middle like Daniels and his team to the cops banging heads on the streets. In the same way, you see the kingpins like Stringer and Avon, as well as the middle like D, Bodie (and Omar), to the hoppers on the corner and the addicts like Bubbles and Johnny. It's that sweep and spread of humanity that is one of the drawing points of the show to me. And in S2, on the Sobotka side we just didn't see it. The chief smugglers remained ciphers, and at the end of the season we still didn't know them anything like the way we knew Stringer by the end of the first episode. And we also didn't see anyone on the other end -- all the girls were dead, and treated more like product in the drug story lines than people. It was basically just about Sobotka and his family (even the plotline about the other union guy who was supposed to take over never really meant much) and you can see that sort of thing on so many shows. Anyway, the point of all this is that I'm somewhat heartened by the fact that the schools storyline seems to be setting out to give us this sweep, to let us know the mayor/candidates, the principal, the teachers and the students intimately.
SCIENTOLOGY? ROCK ON! This storyline makes me totally giddy. I can't believe this season we get Christian's homosexual panic AND scientology -- it's like Christmas! I'm also very happy to get so much Matt, and I can't wait to see how this plays out. I was also pleased to see Julia & Sean's other kid, whose name I forget which tells you something. I'm hoping that some of this drama with her won't just be part of the our-special-needs-baby plotline, but will actually involve her and her reaction to the baby and, oh, I don't know, maybe her reaction to the fact that her parents don't really seem to remember she's their kid 95% of the time. This is completely a family in which bad behavior = attention. Also, man, Sean is such a bad idea as a father for this new kid. It's interesting how Christian is portrayed so much more openly as part of the plastic surgeon who demands physical perfection in the people around him (not that he's a stereotype, but that idea is), but Sean seems to have an even more virulent strain. And finally, I nearly had a heart attack when Christian broke into Kimber's house and was so physically intimidating -- that's so not on with anyone, but given what she's been through it was horrifying.