The Strange World of Thomas P. Coombe

What I've Been Watching: Rip van Winkle Edition

Dear lord. It's been three months since I've posted. I'm not sure that means anything, other than that I paid TypePad around $20 to ensure that anyone who wanted to read my half-formed thoughts on Lost finale was allowed to do so.

But my life outside the blog continues to be busy, and I no longer have the time to watch any shows as they air. Since Fringe, um, "Petered out" in May, I don't think I've watched a single thing on TV in its original time slot other than The Killing, which I'll get to soon.

So let's catch up:

• So yes, Fringe. Wonderful, wonderful second season. Who'd have thought there'd come a day when Anna Torv's performance (or performances) would be one of the show's assets, rather than one of its drawbacks. I even liked her Leonard Nimoy voice (actually, I found it adorable), although I know it drove some people nuts. But that finale -- 40 minutes of a frightening-but-ultimately-meaningless "what if?" future followed by an ending twist that will almost certainly need to be reversed early in season four -- was grating...
• ...yet not as grating as The Killing's finale. For me, the best part of the detectives solving the Rosie Larsen case is that we were done with it. AMC's first failure, although I'm jussssst curious enough to come back next year.
• The same night The Killing disappointed millions, Game of Thrones cemented its place as a serious contender for best show of the year. (We'll see what Breaking Bad season four and Boardwalk Empire season two have to offer.) This show is just about flawless: smart, exciting, funny and tense, with not a single character or storyline I was bored with. Season two can't come fast enough. I'm reading the books now, which are just as compelling as the series.
• A few months back, I read The AV Club's Ten Reasons You Should Be Watching the Vampire Diaries, and put the show on my "to get to eventually list." Turns out they were mostly right; this IS a fun show, at least so far. As fun as True Blood used to be, before the writers decided they needed 50 storylines at once.
• And now we're in season four of True Blood, and it's as overstuffed as ever. I'm hoping Fiona Shaw can grow into the type of villain Michelle Forbes and Denis O'Hare gave us in seasons past, yet I'm still thinking what I thought all last year: this show would be a lot better if it focused on its "I could give a fuck" vampire characters Eric, Jessica and Pam and forgot everyone else.
• That's all for now. Breaking Bad returns in a little over three weeks, which is reason enough for me to blog more regularly. I kind of miss this.

Tom Coombe

The Best TV Shows of 2010

It was a pretty good year for TV, but for me, a bad year for TV watching. I spent the second half of 2010 buried in work, which meant I didn't have much time for this blog. But with the year winding down, it's worth remembering the cream of this year's TV crop, whether I wrote about them or not.

1. AMC -- At least one of this network's program's -- Breaking Bad -- was an obvious contender for the top spot before the year was halfway over. Then came Mad Men's fourth -- and best -- season, followed by Rubicon and The Walking Dead, and by the time November arrived, it became clear AMC was TV's new king of quality TV shows.

No network has had a year like this since 2005, when The Wire, The Sopranos and Deadwood (not to mention Rome, Carnivale, Six Feet Under and Curb Your Enthusiasm) were all part of HBO's line-up.

The Walking Dead proved to be the network's biggest hit so far, a comic book-inspired horror/drama that managed to transcend its roots by the time its six-episode season was over. 

 Rubicon's low ratings, slow pace and complicated storyline pretty much doomed it early on, but it was still fascinating to watch, and heartening to see AMC take this kind of risk, even for just a season. In the end, the show's conspiracy plotline wound up being less interesting than its characters -- the fascinating, funny villain Truxton Spangler justly inspired a fake Twitter feed -- and it's those people, rather than the answers we did/didn't get, that makes me sorry Rubicon won't be returning.

I'd been a little underwhelmed by Mad Men's second and third season, but its fourth was brilliant, taking us deeper into the mind and soul of protagonist Don Draper while also giving us a compelling look at an ad agency struggling to keep its head above water. But put all that aside, and Mad Men rises above most of its contemporaries on the strength of "The Suitcase" episode alone.

The king of the AMC mountain this year, however, was Breaking Bad. In three seasons, it's gone from "interesting" to "must-watch" to "comparisons to the Coen Brothers are not unwarranted."  

In the article I linked to above, TIME's James Poniewozik ties Coen movies like No Country For Old Men and Fargo to some of Breaking Bad's larger themes. It's an apt comparison, but I'll take the connection in a different direction: just as the Coens can jump from No Country to Burn After Reading to True Grit, Breaking Bad can be a different kind of show every episode. One week it's the most tense thriller you've ever seen, another it's a tragic-comedic "bottle show." And it does all of those things well, helped along by a brilliant cast and the most beautiful cinematography on TV. The finest show in production now.

As for the rest...

What I've Been Watching: Mad Men Charms, True Blood Goes Nuts

 "I'm a little bit in love with stoned, yelling-over-the-music Peggy," I wrote last night during Mad Men's party scene.

 I've had one of these moments at least once every season. Yes, Joan is a goddess and the Betty Draper/Grace Kelly analogies are kind of apt, but my Mad Men watching heart will always belong to Ms. Olson.

 Anyway, I was more than a little in love with the latest episode, for the way it handled Peggy's story, made me realize I've actually missed Pete -- I loved how fatherhood spurred him into action -- and then managed to tie all the plot threads together.  

 Favorite moments: Peggy peeking over the office wall at Don after Alison quits; Lane giving Pete a snarky response after "I'm going to be a father," then rethinking it and genuinely congratulating him (most other shows would've ended on a caustic line); and as always, Roger Sterling, talking to Lee at Lucky Strikes after new tobacco regulations forbid them from showing athletes with cigarettes, and how they can get around it: "Bowling's a sport...how about horse racing?...Lee, the jockey smokes the cigarette."

 Least favorite moment: This was a very strong episode, but I could've done without the shot of Peggy and her new bohemian friends literally walking away from the assembled suits. It was a little on the nose, and was saved from being even more obvious by the decision to close not on that moment, but on Don returning home to his apartment and the "Didja get the pears?" couple. Nice work, by the way, by John Slattery (Mr. Sterling himself), who directed this episode, the first cast member to do so.

                                                                               ***

 After last week's episode, I joked to my girlfriend that True Blood could retitle itself "Blood and Fornication." (OK, I may have used a slightly different word.)

 This week had far more of the former than the latter, but frankly, I'm only watching the show for the non-Bill Compton vampires at this point. Eric, Pam, Jessica, Nan Flanagan and -- especially -- Russell* are all fascinating, and any time we leave them to spend with, say, Arlene or Jason or Sam and his snot-nosed brother, the show just gets stuck in a swamp.

 *I'll confess I had no clue who Denis O'Hare was before this summer, until he blew me away as Russell, True Blood's best villain so far. If you're a Stephen King fan, it's worth tracking down the audio book of Just After Sunset, where O'Hare is one of the narrators on "N," a truly frightening short story.

 But this week, any boredom I felt watching the human characters was washed away with that amazing, completely insane final scene. Why couldn't this show just have been about the vampires in the first place?

 Tom Coombe