This has been one of the busiest weeks I've had in months, so I've had to -- yet again -- scrap plans to write about Mad Men, the True Blood finale and Sons of Anarchy.
I actually had a bleak moment earlier in the week when I thought about scrapping the blog altogether, but it passed quickly enough. Still, if my readership drops much beyond what it is now, and if I continue to remain as busy as I've been, I may have to go dark for a few weeks.
And that would be too bad, because there's so much out there this time of year that I want to write about. (Putting aside TV, the fall is a great season for movies, music and books, not that I've ever reviewed the latter two here, but still...)
So maybe the best bet is to take things a day at a time, and write about what I can whenever I can. For tonight, that means brief thoughts on a lot of things:
- I can't say I'd ever expect Mad Men to turn into the Secret Diary of Donald Draper, but there we were, spending the most recent episode listening to his inner thoughts. A neat touch, although one that can only work one time before Mad Men morphs into a very different, very annoying kind of show. And with Roger gone this week, it fell to Don to give us the episode's funniest line: "Narrative...forced perspective...are you sure this was Joey?"
- Nearly everyone of True Blood is pretty likable, and the show did enough things right in its first two seasons for me to want to return in season four. But god, the second half of season three was a colossal chore, with too much going on, very little of it all that interesting. And for a show that can do really great cliffhangers at the end of an episode, True Blood has no clue how to end a season in that "You mean we have to wait a YEAR???" way. Let's keep our fingers crossed for a season four that includes: more vampires, less time with the humans (unless Alan Ball can give them better stories) a continually broken-up Bill and Sookie, and the return of Denis O'Hare, who was easily the best thing about this frustrating, frustrating season.
- Speaking of True Blood...there was one character who I never liked all that much, and that was Michael Raymond James as Rene, the Cajun good ol' boy who was revealed to be season one's big bad. He just never made much of an impression (and it didn't help that, as villains went, he was immediately overshadowed by Michelle Forbes in season two and O'Hare this year). But on FX's new Terriers, James is the most likable part of a hugely likable show, the comic relief to Donal Logue's (relatively) straight man. I've only seen the pilot, but I've had a few reliable sources tell me this is a show that gets better as it goes. I can't wait.
- I also can't wait for more Sons of Anarchy. This most recent episode was mostly about ratcheting the tension -- the priest in Ireland, the Guatemalan nurse -- without any release. I wasn't too keen at first about the show traveling to Ireland, but anything that keeps Paula Malcolmson and Titus Welliver around can't be all bad.
Tom Coombe
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