Category: Television

Bluth Monday?

“‘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.

The Truth in Masquerade.

“[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.

Season Six: The White House.

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.

The Duke of Braintree.

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 Dillane (Jefferson), David Morse (Washington), and Bad Putty Nose (Washington’s Nose).

The Sun Also Spins.

“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.)

The Cast Supper.

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.

McNutty.

“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.