Escape from Pianosa

I’m disappointed in this season of the Wire (spoilers coming–you’ve been warned). I think the Baltimore Sun storyline sucks. I don’t know if it’s David Simon’s enmity towards the Sun interfering with his creative judgment. I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt since the first four seasons were brilliant. It’s amazing to look back at season one and two when I had to beg anyone I met to just give this show a chance and we lost sleep over whether HBO would renew for a third and fourth season.

Anyway, the newspaper characters feel contrived and one-dimensional. The dialogue makes me nauseous and reminds me of network TV dreck. And I just can’t buy the whole McNulty serial killer storyline. It’s just like, really? After episode 3 I find it more tolerable, but it still bothers me. At least I care about what’s going to happen, if only because it would be so stupid to see McNulty and Lester go to jail over this. I can’t see the same for The Sun; I find myself daydreaming of Omar coming back to Baltimore to shoot up the newsroom. Something…anything… just do something interesting… make me care.

The Wire has always been about Show Me, Don’t Tell Me. This season it’s the opposite. It feels so preachy and in your face.  And so the veil of trust has been broken. It happened with The Sopranos in season 3 (IIRC) with the Columbus Day episode. I saw that episode and I thought “man, that was stupid. And contrived. What were they thinking?”

And the veil of trust disappeared; I no longer believed everything I saw. I lost my faith in the show and the characters. I began to notice other faults with the show and I began to loathe the characters. Especially those mobster criminals. The Sopranos always intrigued me but I never felt sympathy for them at the end; only disgust. The plot was still compelling but I couldn’t get lost in their world anymore.

I never though that would happen with The Wire. I believed everything about The Wire as truth; I took it all at face value, and I don’t think that was naiveté. I mean Baltimore really is a fucked up place, I lived there for two and a half years and I still go there almost every day. The show was so real.

But then the serial killer came along and there was the Sun story and I lost my faith and trust in the show. Now it’s just a very real (and still very good and interesting) show. But I can’t get lost in that world anymore and I can’t sympathize with the characters. They are loathsome criminals–the police, the government, and the drug dealers. A morass of socialist decay that has wreaked its havoc on Baltimore.

Then again, maybe that’s the point. That we fall in love with these characters and then wake up at the end and realize that they’re evil or that the institutions are wrong.

OK, now I’m the one preaching… 4 out of 5 ain’t bad for what’s still the best TV show I’ve ever seen.

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So Dwight has overcome his struggles with the self-aware computer and focused his energies on ‘agrotourism’? Really, agrotourism? Ok. Tell me more Dwight.. Agrotourism is a lot more than you think… “it consists of tourist coming to a farm, showing them around, giving them a bed, giving them breakfast.”

And Hey, Micheal is doing improv! Back to his roots. “You can do a scene where you pretend you have a car” like when I used to do scenes where I pretended I had a job. Or that I didn’t live with my parents.

“In the Shrute family, we have a tradition where when the male has sex with another woman, he is awarded with a bag of wild oats.” I’m so on board with you Dwight.

Ok and what’s with the squirrelly Amish type running around?

And no…not telemarketing Micheal. You sell out. I so wanted to see him doing improv, or nonimprov. An improviser pretending to be a nonimproviser, improvising. If that makes any sense. Seriously, how much will it take to see this? I’m pledging $50.

Apparently the squirrelly Amish type likes to throw shit around! Mose!

Dwight’s reading Harry Potter to Jim and Pam. Mose likes the hobittses, they have his ring, yes?

Poor Dwight, moaning in the night. Can we get him his oats already?

I see Ryan is now actively attempting to be a complete douche bag. “Hey guys, how’s my favorite branch!?”

And up pops the toolbar. That’s what she said.

If I had money problems, would I do this? Hm, not a credible signal Michael.

“But you need to access your uncrazy side.” God he’s so smooth. “Slow down. Think it over.” So smooth.

“Lord Rupert Everton. A shipping merchant who raises fancy dogs. That’s the life.” Indeed!

Runaway train never coming back… and it ends a bit slowly but good to see Dwight refinds himself. And I just found his blog…

These are the contents of 1985 Dwight’s Time Capsule:

1. A dehydrated beet sculpture of myself holding a very small metal box meant to represent a miniature version of the time capsule. I was very much into beet miniatures when I was teenager. I did not, however, know my “BeetDwight” would shrivel into dehydration. That occurred because of science, not intention.

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I love these Seinfeld commercials. I don’t understand why advertisers don’t use these story commercials more often… stories that are three short episodes shown during a TV show. People love stories. Maybe they’re worried about channel-flipping? I don’t know who could tune in to The Office and turn off the TV before it’s over.

Dwight vs. the self-aware computer. I love it. The singularity will not be televised, it will be IM’d to your desk.  God this show is great.

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I just started watching The Office and I’m kicking myself for missing the past three seasons. Michael is a brilliant character and he’s already taught me something about online marketing:

Michael: “Business to business. The old fashion way. No blackberries. No websites. I would like to see a website deliver baskets of food to people.”

Indeed!

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This season of Curb has been a little slow but that was a great line.

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Katie says The Hills is a reality show. And I ask “but how can the acting be so bad on a reality show?” She smiles and says they’re nervous in front of the camera. But I know they’re not. They love the camera. They’re addicted to the camera. Comcast agrees with her. So does Wikipedia. But I’m not buying it. It’s way too produced to be a reality show. And the acting is so so bad. That’s what I love about it.

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I just watched the premiere episode of Flight of the Conchords. It’s an offbeat comedy about two Nw Zealanders transplanted in what looks like New York. Subtle but hilarious. You can watch the first episode for free. Link here.

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Having heard Ali G accuse so many of his detractors of “racialism,” I thought it was just a word made up by Sacha Baron Cohen. Alas, it’s really used in Britain, and there’s no parody here:

“So she explained. The Green Man, she said, prided itself on being the most racialist pub in England. That was her word: racialist. There were other racialist pubs, she said. In fact there were two more in Bury. But none was as consistently racialist as the Green Man. The Green Man, she continued, had never served a colored person.”

That’s from Among the Thugs by Bill Buford, a fascinating read about a reporter who infiltrates a gang of English soccer hooligans. It’s a good way to knock that notion of European civility from your brain, if only temporarily.

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Once you watch The Wire, you’re spoiled. On the plane they showed Freedom Writers. What drivel. A movie about an idealistic white woman, inspiring the ignorant blacks and Hispanics. Yes, if only they had better, whiter teachers to teach them about literature and writing!

What’s the lie? That the system is OK. That welfare and housing projects and the drug war (especially the drug war) and socialist government schools haven’t destroyed inner city culture. No, everything’s OK. Nothing some good ivy league inspiration can’t solve, right? Or how about some Scheherazade?

Where to start? God only knows. Shows like The Wire don’t pretend to know. The good intentions of the guilt-ridden have done enough already.

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One of the best things about being between careers is that you have some time to experiment and try out new ventures that you otherwise might not have time for.

One of these ventures is a Web TV show we’re creating for Generation whY; the show will discuss social and career-related issues that affect young professionals today.

We don’t have a website yet, but the show’s main sponser is Zoodango.com (”where you connect with young hip urban professionals”), a social networking site created by James Sun of Apprentice fame.

I’m super excited because I’ve spent the past few months working on show ideas and writing scripts with Aaron Altscher, and this weekend we’re flying to Seattle to film the show. More details to come…

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I may have told you this weekend with great excitement about a groundbreaking new sitcom that takes places in a terrorist training camp. The terrorists were all named Abdul, and everyone was portrayed as an hapless idiot–a terrorist parody. Edgy but hilarious.

And unfortunately, not real. Turns out it was an April fool’s day hoax from NPR’s On The Media. I’m disappointed, as I was looking forward to the show…

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Sadly, Aaron’s bid to be the next Apprentice has come to an end. You can watch the final episode here.

Aaron was the latest victim of an unforgiving format that tends to ignore past performance and focus squarely on “what have you done for me in the last 24 hours?” Despite having won two weeks in a row, Trump (and the producers) came down on Aaron. This seems to fit the pattern in which the losing project manager gets canned, barring any really obnoxious or poor behavior by one of the losing team members.

The only thing that really bugged me was how they set it up, to portray him as quiet and ineffectual. The big deal about not speaking up the ‘week’ before in the boardroom was ridiculous. Trump thoroughly dominates the boardroom and having the winning PM in there with him is so gimmicky. I mean, as part of a job interview, you’re encouraging the prospective hire to criticize his team members and create drama? Ah yes, teamwork. As in the team working together to boost ratings. That’s reality TV for ya…

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Last night I went to a premier party for Season 6 of The Apprentice. My good friend Aaron Altscher is on the show this year and his parents threw a big bash to celebrate. He was also kind enough to link to me from his site. Something tells me he’ll be sending me more traffic than I send him!

We’re all super excited for him and so far it looks like he’s been playing the game well. Early on, you want to fly under the radar, something that Aaron managed quite well in the first episode. And something that Frank seems to have trouble with. NBC has dubbed him “The Mouth” and you’d be hard pressed to come up with a better nickname.

Being the project manager is always hard when you just met everyone on your team and you have no idea what their strengths might be. And the PM is almost always on the hot seat for the losing team, unless one of the team members screwed up royally, putting the PM in the awkward position of blaming his team for the failure. I’ve never been to B-school but something tells me that “When things go bad, blame your team” isn’t something they teach you in leadership class.

On the other hand, all that fighting makes for some good TV… I’ll be interested to see how Aaron handles this sticky situation if it happens to him.

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I’ve been having TV envy lately. OK, not really because I don’t watch much TV–although I don’t hold it over anyone’s head. I actually like a lot of TV shows but not enough to make them a priority–except for The Wire and pretty much anything else HBO produces.

Anyway, I went to look at a house yesterday and what do I see in the living room? A humongous flat-panel TV that must’ve cost at least $1000. And what else did I see in the living room? Nothing. As in no furniture whatsoever. No furniture upstairs in the bedrooms either. I can understand the desire to have a very large television, but at the cost of furniture? I don’t pretend to know what’s best for other people, but that certainly boggles my mind.

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