Sex and the City - The Complete First Season - Michael Fields, Susan Seidelman (1998, DVD)
Okay, admittedly, I laughed a bunch watching this, so it isn't completely worthless. It's very uneven. There's very little chemistry among the recurring characters, least of all between Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her paramour "Mr. Big". Part of the problem with that relationship is in the writing; the writers are constrained to keep viewers guessing as to whether Big is a sleazeball or Prince Charming, so the character winds up just being vague, which in turn forces Carrie to act like an idiot. With the viewer ignoring their painful scenes, and two of the "sidekicks" being fairly one-dimensional caricatures, I find myself mostly enjoying Miranda's caustic wit. I hear later seasons get better, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for them.
| Comments (8) | TrackBack (586) | link me | January 2003

The Sopranos - The Complete Third Season - David Chase (creator) (2001, DVD)
Yep, it's time for more ethical gray areas! As with the first two seasons, this is somewhat uneven, with story arcs moving in fits and starts, characters and situations introduced and discarded arbitrarily to create conflicts, and the like, but it's still compelling to watch.
| Comments (1) | TrackBack (202) | link me | November 2002

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - The Complete Second Season - Joss Whedon (creator) (1998, DVD)
Despite the fact that the second season had more episodes than the first, I think we plowed through this set of discs in half the time. Note that we don't watch network TV, so we're 5 years behind all the True Fans out there — we borrow the DVDs from anne and Dave. Things are starting to come together in the second season. Unlike a lot of TV shows, there's actual character development going on here, and while the shallows of wisecracks, slapstick, and monster-of-the-week stories are still present, there's also a surprising amount of action going on beneath the surface. The show isn't without flaws: there are plot holes, uneven writing, inconsistent characterizations, and all the rest that goes with writing, shooting, and editing the equivalent of a 16-hour film in the space of a year. It would be all too easy to recycle the same material over and over until it became self-parody, but Joss Whedon and the other series creators focus on a few powerful themes: love and loss, taking responsibility for the consequences of one's actions, and growing up. The characters make decisions, take chances, and have to live or die by the results. Sometimes, given the ages of the actors (Sarah Michelle Gellar was 20 in the first season; Charisma Carpenter is, and looks, ten years too old to be Cordelia), it's easy to forget that these characters are supposed to be teenagers, but sometimes they hit a scene just right and really seem to be children figuring out what kind of adults they're going to be. The regular supporting cast is so solid that I rarely think "oh, I hate this character, when do we get the good stuff?" — in some ways they're more enjoyable to watch than the Buffy-and-Angel show (a bit too gooey in the early part of the season). Maybe the most painful part of Buffy are the endings; we have to stop watching for the night so we get some sleep; we run out of DVDs for the season and we have to wait for season 3 to come out; and worst of all, eventually the show will start to suck and/or be cancelled. *sob*
| Comments (1) | TrackBack (103) | link me | September 2002

The Simpsons - Neil Affleck (part of season one - 1989, DVD )
We were underwhelmed. We hear later stuff is better. It's not like there's much in the way of continuity, right, so we should be able to just dive into, oh, some good season, right?
| Comments (2) | TrackBack (105) | link me | March 2002

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - The Complete First Season - Joss Whedon (creator) (1997, DVD)
So here's the hypothesis: If you enjoyed superhero comics and role playing games when you were a kid, you will probably love Buffy. If not, you probably won't. You've got your different villain every episode (but some recurring bad guys as well). You've got your big fight at the end of every episode, and you know who's gonna win. Some of the standard elements of the genre -- the slipping away from the responsibilities of the secret identity to fulfill the responsibilities of a superhero, major characters dying temporarily -- are referenced so perfunctorily that it's hard to say if it's writer laziness or brilliant homage. Similar games are played with conventional vampire-movie elements. You can practically see creator Joss Whedon winking at you in every scene; the dialogue is whip-smart and tongue-in-cheek funny. Makes me want to break out the Champions rulebook...
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (125) | link me | February 2002

The Sopranos - The Complete Second Season - David Chase (creator) (2000, DVD)
More of the same.
| Comments (1) | TrackBack (43) | link me | February 2002

The Sopranos - The Complete First Season - David Chase (creator) (1999, DVD)
We got completely hooked on the Sopranos after just a couple of episodes. It has a few flaws — it tries to blend one-shot episodic stories with extended story arcs, not always successfully, for example, and there's some awkward dialogue here and there — but on the whole it's pretty good. A high tolerance for violence, foul language, and misogyny is essential to watch it. The whole show is one big moral/ethical gray area; one of the viewer's first impressions of James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano is of him savagely beating a "customer", yet despite this and several killings along the way, he earns some sympathy and respect for his efforts to get his life under control and to do right by his family. Good acting by TV standards.
| Comments (2) | TrackBack (236) | link me | January 2002

Twin Peaks - The First Season - David Lynch (1990, VHS)
meriko hadn't watched Twin Peaks, so I forced her to. We got as far as Leland's confession and death. The main Laura Palmer story arc is basically done there; once you reach this point you can watch the movie without confusing yourself too much (although Annie's appearance in Laura's dream in FWWM is bewildering if you haven't reached the end of the series). After this point, the series gets weaker, though I think it's still worth watching.
| Comments (1) | TrackBack (324) | link me | January 2001