Recently in Television Category

By way of Megg, BSG fans marvel at the visual and thematic comparisons between the McCain-Palin and Roslin-Tigh tickets. To be fair, Sen. McCain -- while clearly a patently unstable fellow and a fake maverick who flips into sleeper agent mode whenever he hears His Master's Voice -- didn't actually kill his first wife (Ellen) and bed down with a younger, well-connected Cylon woman (Six). Not quite, anyway. And Gov. Palin, while as pro-life and fundie-delusional as Roslin can be on her bad days, hasn't actually tried to steal the election...yet.

"'He was a hard man and he made no apologies for that,' Childress said. 'When it came to me and my mother and my daughter he was the softest.'" Bernie Mac, 1957-2008.

And, if that surprising bit of news wasn't sad enough, Isaac Hayes, 1942-2008. "They're standing on our shoulders. Some of them don't realize [it] because they sample me so much."

Detectives Bunk and Freamon, y'all's transfer has come in: The Wire's Wendell Pierce and Clark Peters will rejoin David Simon for his new NOLA show, Treme. "Pierce will play Antoine Batiste, an accomplished jazz trombonist who is now scratching for gigs, trying to support a live-in girlfriend and a new baby, while still carrying a torch for a failed marriage...Peters will play Albert Lambreaux, a big chief of the White Feather Nation trying to bring the tribe's members home."

The boys are back in town, but the times they are a-changin'... Mad Men Season 2 starts tonight on AMC, 10pm EST (or, in this household, right after Generation Kill.)

"[T]he cameo of a red pack of Skittles in the opening scene of David Simon's new HBO miniseries, Generation Kill, was a welcome sight, because it signaled that the program was going to be faithful to the smallest detail of the invasion I had witnessed...It wasn't until later episodes that I realized this miniseries is so realistic it should be used as an educational tool for troops going to Iraq and Afghanistan." In Slate, former embed Peter Maass sings the praises of Simon & Burns' (and Evan Wright's) Generation Kill.

While the ass-hattedness of the hick Sgt. Major obsessed with grooming standards, the Howard Zinn-lite ruminations of the Mexican Sgt., and Ziggy's wry way with the perfect quip all seem a little overdone, I've found Generation Kill interesting and compulsively watchable so far, and particularly enjoy the "Situation Normal" bungling of the officers. (I would so not want to get stuck in a firefight with the likes of "Captain America" on my six.)

"I've not seen any recent comic book films, but I didn't particularly like the book 300. I had a lot of problems with it, and everything I heard or saw about the film tended to increase [those problems] rather than reduce them: [that] it was racist, it was homophobic, and above all it was sublimely stupid." As a companion to their Watchmen story, EW has a wide-ranging sit-down with Alan Moore, wherein he discusses Zack Snyder, 300, magic, the afterlife, DC Comics, and his favorite television show: "The absolute pinnacle of anything I've seen recently has got to be The Wire. It's the most stunning piece of television that has ever come out of America, possibly the most stunning piece of television full-stop...So yeah, everything else looks pretty lame next to The Wire."

Speaking of Moore's critique of Snyder, I felt a similar unease after reading Snyder's EW Q&A. Says Snyder of Watchmen: "Everyone says that about [Christopher Nolan's] Batman Begins. 'Batman's dark.' I'm like, okay, 'No, Batman's cool.' He gets to go to a Tibetan monastery and be trained by ninjas. Okay? I want to do that. But he doesn't, like, get raped in prison. That could happen in my movie. If you want to talk about dark, that's how that would go." Hrm. Ok. I'd have more faith in Snyder's Watchmen if he didn't persist in sounding like one of those "Totally Extreme!!" meathead whiteboys from Harold & Kumar.

In advance of ComicCon, the preview poster for J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot hits the tubes. (That's Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), Uhura, (Zoe Saldana), and the Big Bad (Eric Bana) -- click through for the individual one-sheets.) Still unseen: Bones (Karl Urban), Scotty (Simon Pegg), Sulu (John Cho), and Chekov (Anton Yelchin).

Hmmm. I'm only a casual Trekkie at best, and everything I've ever seen with Abrams' name on it (MI:3, Cloverfield, the occasional episode of Alias and Lost) has been underwhelming. And I can't say frontlining Uhura as the eye candy or introducing yet another putty-ridged-forehead baddy (He's meant to be Romulan, apparently) gives me much enthusiasm for this. But I'll probably see it nonetheless.

The 60th annual Emmys nominees are announced, with plenty of justifiable love for John Adams (23 nods) and Mad Men (16). But, really, The Wire was overlooked again? No Mary McDonnell for Galactica? 2 and a Half Frickin' Men(?!) over Flight of the Conchords for Best Comedy? I just can't take these media monkeys or their plastic pantomime at all seriously anymore.

"I can start the story fresh, and at the same time there will be all these events that happened in between that will provide additional storytelling energy." Don Draper's destination? 1969. Apparently, Matthew Weiner and Mad Men have a five-season, ten-year mission, and will jump a year or so ahead after every season. (As noted here, Season 2 picks up on Valentines Day, 1962.)

Also in TV news, HBO announces its upcoming slate, which includes Treme ("Trah-May", a.k.a. David Simon in Nola), True Blood (Alan Ball does Southern Gothic), more Curb, a Scorsese project, and -- alas -- absolutely no Deadwood.

"'After months of speculation, I think we have finally figured out for sure that we are indeed doing an Arrested Development movie,' Tambor told EW.com at the premiere of Hellboy II on Sunday. 'I am very excited about that. I love that cast and crew and I felt like we had more to say.'" Is the AD movie actually happening? So says George Bluth...or Oscar Bluth. Hard to say, really.

Rumors were floating around a few weeks ago, and an earlier attempt with Christopher Eccleston failed...but now it's confirmed. The classic British sci-fi show The Prisoner will return as a six-episode miniseries for AMC and ITV, with Jim Caviezel as Number 6 (Patrick McGoohan) and Ian McKellen as Number 2 (Leo McKern, most memorably). "While the original show worked as a metaphor for the paranoia of the Cold War, AMC says the remake will reflect 21st-century stressors such as constant surveillance and the conflict between liberty and security."

"Garland, what do you fear most in the world?" "The possibility that love is not enough." Character actor Don Davis (probably best known in genre circles as Major Garland Briggs from Twin Peaks and Scully's dad on The X-Files -- he was also on Stargate), 1942-2008.

"Knowing that these unsuspecting sexists and bigots sit on the brink of their doom is all part of the fun. It is also perverse entertainment of a sort (Weiner calls it pornography) to watch them smoke like chimneys (including pregnant women), drink like extras from 'The Lost Weekend' and eat steak, cheesecake and creamed corn without consequences. Or mostly.'" In the NYT magazine, Alex Witchel catches up with Mad Men showrunner Matthew Weiner, and teases some aspects of the second season (starting July 27.) "The first season ended on Thanksgiving 1960, and the fact that I knew that the second season picks up [Spoiler] on Valentine’s Day 1962 horrified him."

“'Lawrence Spivak, who founded ‘Meet the Press,’ told me before he died that the job of the host is to learn as much as you can about your guest’s positions and take the other side,' he said in a 2007 interview with Time magazine. 'And to do that in a persistent and civil way. And that’s what I try to do every Sunday.'" Moynihan man turned pundit-king Tim Russert, 1950-2008. Now, that's a surprise. Russert was a guy I actually met a few times during my Carville days (in fact, I once inadvertently hit him with a whiffleball bat...long story), and he always seemed a genuine, amiable sort, particularly by DC talking-head standards. Obviously, his unique brand of political interrogation left something to be desired in many circles. Still, he was taken relatively young (and before his father), which is always tragic. Rest in peace, Russ.

"My entire career has been a Secret Plan to get this job. I applied before but I got knocked back cos the BBC wanted someone else. Also I was seven." Arguably the reincarnated show's best writer, Stephen Moffatt will take over as head of Doctor Who for Season 5 (or Season 31, depending on how you're counting), replacing Russell Davies. That's a perfect choice...so long as it doesn't screw up Spielberg and PJ's Tintin trilogy.

Some amusing pilfered links: Via The Late Adopter, watch every opening Simpsons couch gag, in just under 5 minutes. And, by way of all over the place (see Ted, The Oak, Supercres, Web Goddess, PCJM, etc.) do you know what Velcro, slinkies, Alaska, and Scientology have in common...?

Her 41 supermarket moment? As if I needed another reason not to vote Clinton: Though she may knock back boilermakers like us regular joes, the Senator has in fact never heard of Red Bull, the fantabulously addictive breakfast beverage which more often than not constitutes the best moment of my day. (This also means Clinton has lost another excuse for voicing her obliteration-happy nuclear ambitions last week...It wasn't the taurine talking.)

In other key findings: "Her fantasy date would be with President Abraham Lincoln [to which Sybil says back off!] She refused to choose between comedians Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, said she likes both wine and beer, and wouldn't select either 'American Idol' or 'Dancing With the Stars'; she said her mother -- who lives with the Clintons -- keeps her up to speed on both programs." (The answers, as everyone not running for office knows, is Fey, beer, and neither -- both are garbage, not that I'd expect someone who prefers Grey's Anatomy to The Wire (as per Obama) and spends her free time trying to ban Grand Theft Auto to pick up on that.)

Via What's Alan Watching?, and much like these Battlestar Galactica images from two years ago, David Simon's Baltimore goes Springfield. (That's McNulty & Bunk down at the tracks above, but you probably already figured that out.)

Speaking of BSG, does anyone else feel like Battlestar is on the verge of entering late-season X-Files territory at this point? (Or as Starbuck (and MC Hammer) might screech, WE'RE GOING THE WRONG WAY!!!) I was never sold on the Watchtower Four or all the Vision Questing at the end of Season 3, but figured i'd see where the show goes thereafter...maybe the Cylons really do have a plan. But this season to me, the Cylon civil war notwithstanding, has seemed mostly meandering and purposeless, and last episode (particularly the Tigh-Ellen-Six stuff) bordered on incoherent and self-parodying. I'm not giving up on Galactica just yet, but the show is definitely starting to lose me.

Fire up ORAC and break out the funky, funky eyepatch, man: Blake's 7, a classic British sci-fi show i was hyping here just last month, is now set for its own BSG/Doctor Who-style revamp, albeit by Sky Television, who recently tried and failed to bring back The Prisoner. (Rumors were circulating of a B7 return five years ago, but that particular Liberator never got off the ground.)

At any rate, it'll be interesting to see if a new Blake's 7 can find its niche in today's crowded sci-fi market, particularly given that Farscape and Firefly both borrowed liberally from B7's original "band on the run" premise, and that the new incarnation of Battlestar has appropriated much of the darkness and misanthropy that lingered around Roj Blake's crew, three decades ago.

To give credit where it's due, tonight's installment of John Adams went in exactly the direction I'd hoped, spending much more time on the political and less on the personal than previous episodes. We had Hamilton and Jefferson fighting over Federalist fiscal policy, Jefferson and the Adamses debating revolution and the health of France, Citizen Genêt, the Jay treaty, the consternation of Washington over the Republican-Federalist divide, and the first transfer of presidential authority, all of which I greatly enjoyed.

I have only two minor quibbles: Some mention of the Whiskey Rebellion would've been grand (and could've been used to further dramatize Adams' fear of the Mob, as soon to be represented in the Alien and Sedition Acts.) And, more importantly, the forgotten Founder in the series thus far has been James Madison, who -- unless he's been one of the backgrounders -- has yet to appear. Even the good Doctor, Benjamin Rush, has had more screen time (although that's probably due to his reconciliatory role in Episode 7.) Madison was in the House while Adams presided over the Senate, so shoehorning him in might've been unwieldy. Still, I'd have been content to have seen even a tiny nod to the writer of the Constitution -- Instead of screen time, they could've just "cast big" a la Rufus Sewell for Hamilton, signalling Madison's importance with a decent-sized cameo. (Now that I think about it, they should've done the same with Tom Paine earlier on.)

But, like I said (and my fondness for Franklin's Parisian shenanigans notwithstanding), this was probably my favorite episode since part 2, on the Continental Congress. Heck, I even made my peace with Morse's putty nose tonight. “I am fairly out and you are fairly in! See which of us will be the happiest!"”

"'He United the States of America' is the miniseries’ motto, giving credit to Adams for everything. Franklin (Tom Wilkinson) is a rascal; Washington (David Morse) is a sapskull. Jefferson (Stephen Dillane) is distracted and, finally, deluded. And poor Thomas Paine seems never to have been born...“John Adams” is animated as much by Adams’s many private resentments as by the birth of the United States. It is history, with a grudge." Speaking of Jill Lepore, her review of HBO's John Adams appeared in The New Yorker a month or so ago. Now that we're four weeks in, I'll say that John Adams has worked as a decently acceptable Sunday night methadone for early Wire withdrawal. I particularly enjoy Stephen Dillane's Jefferson, and (like many Americans of the early national period, I'd presume) would rather spend more time with him than with Giamatti's Adams. Tom Wilkinson's Ben Franklin is also worth relishing, but he's somewhat hamstrung by the fact that virtually every other line he gets is one of Franklin's famous epigrams. (The jury's still out on David Morse and his putty nose -- I'll reserve judgment until after Washington's presidency next week.)

My biggest problem with the show thus far, and this reflects my own historical biases more than anything else, is the sheer amount of time spent on John and Abigail's relationship and family trials. This is not to say I'm totally averse to the social history: The smallpox inoculation, for example, was a intriguing addition to Episode 2. But, more often than not, I'd rather see much more birthing of the United States and much less of the domestic drama. Tonight's episode, for example, spent more time on the respective travails of the Adams children than it did on the writing of the Constitution. Now, granted, this is partly because John Adams had very little to do with said writing (although you'd get no sense here that he was nevertheless defending it from afar.) Still, Adams and Jefferson discussed our founding charter for only one brief scene, thus shoehorning Jefferson's thoughts on generational revolution, Franklin's "republic, if you can keep it" riposte, Jefferson as "the American Sphinx," the brewing of the Adams-Jefferson conflict, and the venerable undergraduate essay question, "Was the Constitution a continuation or repudiation of the American Revolution?," all into five or so minutes. As a political history aficionado, I eat this stuff up like catnip. But then there's at least 30-40 minutes devoted to John and Abigail doing variations on their Saltpeter-Pins schtick, and/or Sarah Polley and the rest of the Adams kids all grown up, courting and drinking. (Gasp!)

Now I understand McCullough's book is above all else a biography, and some of this is par for the course. But -- call me old-school, top-down, whatever -- I'm really hoping the final three episodes, and particularly the next two on the "Age of Federalism," spend significantly more time concentrating on the affairs of the early republic, and both John and Abigail's important role in them, than on the domestic bliss and family squabbles of the Adamses themselves.

By way of my bro, Underground Online queries numerous celebrities and luminaries on the most pressing issue of our time: Who would win in a fight between a minotaur with a trident and a centaur with a crossbow? Those weighing in on the debate include David McCullough, Ridley Scott, Helen Mirren, Ed Harris, Marc Singer, and the Battlestar and Wire crews. I was asked before being shown the site, and you can count me in the centaur camp. Screw the dice: If this is happening outdoors and not in close quarters, ranged cavalry > heavy infantry (although admittedly there's something to be said for the existential Nolte thesis.)

"When someone from the audience asked Mary McDonnell, who plays President Roslin, if Barack Obama had approached her to be his running mate, she replied that Hillary had. At which point Douglas quipped: 'Hillary's the final cylon.' Badabum!" The promotional campaign for BSG Season 4 gets rolled out of drydock, including a stop on Letterman's Top 10. [Text.] Not great, frankly, but it's redeemed by #5, #1, and the World's Most Dangerous Band's mean version of "All along the Watchtower." If you're not caught up, Season 3 came out last Tuesday. If you are, Season 4 premieres Friday, April 4.

By the way, the first link is via High Industrial, who's also recently linked to this great dog-cylon friendship, one considerably more symbiotic than Berk and the now defunct Roomba. (It apparently got distressed by all the dog hair and up and pulled a Marvin. Now it just sits there "recharging" and won't vacuum a frakking thing.)

"No one went near the theme; everyone stayed dead-center and literal, oblivious to the big-ass elephant in our mythical newsroom...Here's what happened in season five of The Wire when almost no one -- among the working press, at least -- was looking: Our newspaper missed every major story." With the finale come and gone, David Simon has to explain to the press the theme of the season, which they -- ironically -- missed. (See also: the next post.)

And now for something completely different: a Friday night trip on the wayback machine. A few weeks ago, I showed up at a winter gathering wearing the snazzy official Tom Baker scarf my mother made me for Christmas. And, while a few folks correctly identified it (and were suitably impressed --Thanks, mom!), absolutely no one had any clue what I was talking about when I aped this classic moment with the wires from The Genesis of the Daleks ("But do I have the right?"), when the Doctor contemplates his own version of the baby-Hitler conundrum: Is it moral to destroy the genocidal Daleks before they've ever been created? Well, admittedly old-school Who is a pretty niche interest here in the States...it's not exactly "I drink your milkshake!" Still, since everything is on Youtube these days, sure enough, I found this fun fan-made trailer for Genesis online, and thought I'd share it. If you ever watched Tom Baker Who, I'm guessing you'll probably dig it. If not, it'll just seem realllly cheesy (although perhaps not as cheesy at first glance as another Brit sci-fi classic (and the Farscape of its day), Blakes' 7. Blakes' credit sequence may not hold up at all in 2008, but the dour finale certainly does.)

By the way, there are plenty more classic Who trailers where that came from, including this one, featuring scenes from every episode. Collectively, they bring back fond memories of staying up into the wee hours as a kid on Saturday nights to catch Who on SCETV (and, roughly half the time, waking up in the middle of Jack Horkheimer, Star Hustler wondering where the hell I was.)

Fare thee well gone away, there's nothing left to say. Pour a glass of Jamesons and give the devil (way down in the hole) his due: The Wire, a television show with a better claim than most to the title of "Best Ever" (and definitely the best show ever made about American politics), ends this evening. As such, before one last Sunday round with the men and women of Baltimore, some links from the vault:

"What the drugs themselves have not destroyed, the warfare against them has. And what once began, perhaps, as a battle against dangerous substances long ago transformed itself into a venal war on our underclass. Since declaring war on drugs nearly 40 years ago, we've been demonizing our most desperate citizens, isolating and incarcerating them and otherwise denying them a role in the American collective. All to no purpose. The prison population doubles and doubles again; the drugs remain."

On the eve of the final episode, the writers of The Wire -- Simon, Burns, Lehane, Pelecanos, and Price -- argue in favor of jury nullification as an act of civil disobedience against America's failed drug war. "If some few episodes of a television entertainment have caused others to reflect on the war zones we have created in our cities and the human beings stranded there, we ask that those people might also consider their conscience. And when the lawyers or the judge or your fellow jurors seek explanation, think for a moment on Bubbles or Bodie or Wallace. And remember that the lives being held in the balance aren't fictional."

"The season is about how far individuals and institutions and society in general can go on a lie. And if you think that theme is hyperbolic and that lies...are too big and too outrageous to sustain themselves, I'd simply point to this ugly mess of a war we are in, why we are in it, what was printed and broadcast and declared by the nation's elite and its top media outlets. You look at Iraq and how we got there and McNulty and Templeton are pikers by comparison." David Simon talks with Newsweek about the rationale for Season 5 of The Wire. "The season is about the chasm between perception and reality in American life and how we are increasingly without the tools that allow us to recognize our true problems, much less begin to solve them." Speaking of which, the penultimate episode, "Late Editions", is now available on On Demand.

"The suspect is likely a white male in his late-20s to late-30s. He likely is not a college graduate but feels nonetheless superior to those with advanced education, and he is likely employed in a bureaucratic entity, possibly civil service or quasi-public service, from which he feels alienated..." The Wire Episode 58: "Clarifications" is now available On Demand.

Bruges aside, the U.S. has a purgatory of its own in B-more, and Jimmy, Lester, et al are all too busy digging their graves there...The Wire Episode 57: "Took" is now available On Demand.

"'This the best deal this guild has bargained for in 30 years,' Verrone said." Is the writers' strike coming to an end? It would appear so. "The endorsement paves the way for writers to return to work on Wednesday, pending a vote by the guild's membership to lift the strike order on Tuesday."

Variety covers the basics of the deal here. "The most significant opposition is coming on the issue of the promotional window on ad-supported streaming. The objections center on concerns that TV viewing will be quickly migrating to the Intenet before the end of the contract [May, 2011], given current viewing trends...reaction to the deal points in the blogosphere on Saturday morning has been decidedly mixed, with much of the criticism pointed at the length of the promotional window." To be honest, I don't know enough about the issues at stake to evaluate the deal. Any thoughts out there? Update: Slate's Kim Masters sifts through the deal.

"If you have a problem with this, I understand completely." The Wire 56, "The Dickensian Aspect," is now on On Demand.

"'I can confirm that a round of sniffing has started,' Bateman said. 'Any talk is targeting a poststrike situation, of course. I think, as always, that it's a question of whether the people with the money are willing to give our leader, Mitch Hurwitz, what he deserves for his participation. And I can speak for the cast when I say our fingers are crossed.'" Cue "The Final Countdown"...Rumor has it Mitch Hurwitz & co. are contemplating an Arrested Development movie, and that deserves a chicken dance.

"[T]he closest comparison I can find for this season is Stanley Kubrick's 'Dr. Strangelove' -- if, that is, Kubrick cared even one-tenth as much about humanity as Simon and partner Ed Burns so obviously do." So said Alan Sepinwall in his Season 5 preview, and it's definitely playing out that way. The masterful and gut-bustingly funny Wire 55 is now available On Demand. And, now that we can talk about it -- don't scroll over the link if you're at all behind -- a remembrance of last week's fallen.

Undecided voters: If the moving speech below can't entice you to vote for Sen. Barack Obama for president, maybe this'll help: His favorite TV show is The Wire(!) "Michael Kostroff, an actor who was in town to volunteer for Obama and had a chance to meet him, told the Sun that Obama’s favorite TV show is his own: HBO’s 'The Wire,' which chronicles Baltimore’s violent drug culture and the police who quixotically try to stop it. Obama told the Sun his favorite character is Omar, a stick-up artist who steals from drug dealers and then gives the loot to poor people in the neighborhood. 'That’s not an endorsement. He’s not my favorite person, but he’s a fascinating character.'"

Update: Episode 54 is now On Demand.

HBO's forthcoming mini-series of David McCullough's John Adams looks to be in the can, and you can now watch the teaser (with a rather breathless endorsement by the author) at the official site. (It begins airing March 16, presumably after the close of The Wire.) The cast includes Paul Giamatti (John Adams), Laura Linney (Abigail Adams), Danny Huston (Sam Adams), Sarah Polley (Nabby Adams), Rufus Sewell (Hamilton), Tom Wilkinson (Franklin), Stephen Dillaine (Jefferson), David Morse (Washington), and Bad Putty Nose (Washington's Nose).

"For Simon, this dispute basically comes down to the complexity of urban problems. As he sees it, the 'Philly model,' imported to the Sun by Carroll and Marimow [re: Klebanow and Whiting], ignored the decades of economic, racial, political, and social disconnects underlying that complexity. When it spurred reform, it was reform that could not match the intransigence of the underlying patterns. The reporting itself was formidable, Simon says, but to him, homelessness, addiction, and violence aren’t the central problems. 'Those are all the symptoms of the problem,' he says. 'You can carve off a symptom and talk about how bad drugs are, and you can blame the police department for fucking up the drug war, but that’s kind of like coming up to a house hit by a hurricane and making a lot of voluminous notes about the fact that some roof tiles are off.'"

As The Wire 53 premieres on On Demand, some links on the journalistic controversies driving show creator David Simon's animus this season. The CJR offered a long and interesting overview of the Simon v. Marimow/Carroll feud, and its partial roots in differing conceptions of urban journalism. An old 2000 City Paper piece suggests who Simon may have in mind in cub reporter Scott Templeton. And Simon himself recently discussed his old newsroom for Esquire, and got involved with Mark Bowden and Matt Yglesias over at The Atlantic. (Most links here via THND.)

As the fourth and final season nears, EW says hello to the Battlestar: Galactica cast, and offers clues for what comes next. (Perhaps the biggest spoiler: According to Ron Moore, the Final Cylon is not in this picture.) [Via...one of the blogs on my blogroll, but I'm having trouble retracing my steps at the moment. A possible Cylon malfunction? At any rate, if I figure it out, I'll update. Sorry!] Update: The Season 4 teaser, and this is definitely via Quiddity.

You heard it here first: Barack Obama's campaign has abandoned its message of hope, and, with Larry David, is now waging the politics of fear: "David is...quoted threatening the Dartmouth students who are undecided between Obama and Edwards. 'Okay, alright,' he said. 'If you don't vote for Obama, I'm never doing the show again.'" Sigh, it's a sad day...no wonder Cheryl left him. Still, don't say you weren't warned.

Which reminds me, in case you missed Senator Clinton's Hail-Mary Giuliani-ism of Monday, Ted of The Late Adopter posted it in an earlier comment thread. Said the Senator, speaking of Gordon Brown: "I don’t think it was by accident that Al Qaeda decided to test the new prime minister. They watch our elections as closely as we do, maybe more closely than some of our fellow citizens do...Let’s not forget you’re hiring a president not just to do what a candidate says during the election, you want a president to be there when the chips are down.” Hard to call that a message of change. In fact, take out that weird stab at "our fellow citizens" who haven't swarmed to Clinton's candidacy, and it sounds like all the usual terror terror terror garbage we've been hearing from the GOP for years.

"He preys on the weakest among us." Episode 52 of The Wire premiered last night for we On Demanders, and hoo boy. Jimmy McNulty's done some outrageous stuff in the past, but this is beyond the pale. I'm curious to see how Wire fans react to the big moment here -- If the show hadn't spent so much time grounding itself in realism, I'm not sure it could pull off this turn towards the baroque. Still, I trust Simon and Burns.

"It’s really dark and explosive. Everyone’s off the hook; no one trusts anyone. Everyone questions the way things are operating on the street level, in the police department, in the newsroom. Like McNulty, he’s way off the hook this year. He’s doing things that are totally outrageous, questioning authority, and trying to find the truth. He goes way off the deep end this year." On the eve of Season 5 (for the nOn-Demand folk), NY Mag's Joe Colly talks with Michael K. Williams, a.k.a. Omar Little of The Wire. Update: The last scene of Season 5 leaks! (Sort of.)

A New Year is dawning. A New Day is not. I spent the first hour of 2008 watching the first episode of The Wire Season 5 -- which is now live if you have HBO On Demand -- and it was time very well spent. Between instantly fascinating new characters in the Baltimore Sun newsroom and some even more byzantine connections made between the old regulars (Note Partlow's errand to the Criminal Court, and wait 'til you see who Herc's working for), the best show on television is back in a big way. (That being said, it might take me awhile to get used to Mel's husband Doug from Flight of the Conchords as the Sun's managing editor.) Update; More discussion of Ep. 51 here at Alan Sepinwall's blog, who's also compiling a list of The Wire's greatest moments (That might take awhile.)

At one point in Mike Nichols' smart, surprisingly enjoyable Charlie Wilson's War, the freewheeling, fun-loving Representative Charles Wilson (Tom Hanks), he of the Texas 2nd Congressional District, tells his schlubby, foul-mouthed partner at the CIA, Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), "You ain't James Bond." Deadpans Avrakotos, "You ain't Thomas Jefferson, so let's call it even." True, Bond and Jefferson they're not, but that's actually part of the appeal of Nichols' lively little film. A strangely optimistic, almost Capraesque movie about the covert proxy war in Afghanistan (and, ultimately, the inadvertent role played by the U.S. in fostering the Taliban), Charlie Wilson's War -- adapted by The West Wing's Aaron Sorkin from the book by the late George Crile -- is no grim, sober-minded edutainment. Moving at a brisk clip and maintaining a light touch -- too light, some might argue -- throughout, the movie instead depicts how a few (relatively) ordinary, committed people can change the world...provided one of them is sitting on the House Defense Subcommittee, and has stacked up a sizable amount of chits.

When -- after a quick flash-forward setup -- we first meet Congressman Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks, eschewing the Pvt. Ryan earnestness for his more sardonic Bachelor Party/Volunteers side), he's lounging in a Vegas hot tub with a coke-snorting television producer, a Playboy bunny, and two strippers. In short, he seems like a out-and-out cad. But there's something endearing and even statesmanlike about his piqued interest in a 60 Minutes report, playing in the corner, on the mujahideen in Afghanistan. (Maybe it's the Dan Rather Texas connection.) Delving further into the issue back in Washington, Wilson -- exercising the power of his crucial committee position -- singlehandedly doubles U.S. funding of the mujahideen from $5 million to $10 million. This by-all-accounts token gesture draws the attention of the wealthy Houston socialite Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts, solid), a woman with money, connections, and a fervent commitment to anticommunism, and she sends Wilson off to Pakistan to meet with President Zia-ul-Haq about the situation in neighboring Afghanistan. There, Wilson is moved to the cause by the sight of a dismal refugee camp, and soon enough, he's enlisted an important ally in Avrakotos, a profane Langley veteran (Hoffman, showing yet another side after Before the Devil and The Savages this year, and nearly running away with the movie.) Together, these three -- Wilson, Herring, Avrakotos (John Rambo's unique contributions to the cause of Afghan freedom are sadly overlooked -- set in motion a scheme not only to increase funding radically for the war but to funnel Soviet w