Elyse and I had an amazing dinner tonight at a local French bistro. I bag on Phoenix pretty much as often as I can, but a local French bistro not sucking....yeah, I'm not complaining tonight.
I'm going to go into this in a post later this weekend, but for as much shit is on television--and as I watch The Soup while typing, let me tell you that there is plenty of shit on TV--there's just as much amazing storytelling going on. When Boardwalk Empire premiered on HBO, that was the push I needed to become a subscriber, and in the past six weeks, I've added five shows to my TiVo Season Pass Manager: Boardwalk Empire, Bored to Death, In Treatment, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Eastbound & Down. HBO's not the only one with great TV (though their pipeline, including shows from the Game of Thrones series, the creator of In The Loop, the writers of Tropic Thunder, and David Milch, is most impressive), though. AMC said good-bye to Mad Men and Rubicon, but said hello to The Walking Dead, which really was an incredibly impressive pilot. I still consider the Lost pilot to be the best drama pilot ever--it had about as much time as did The Walking Dead and had to fully introduce--in one-dimensional terms, but the point stands--14 characters, not just one.
That aside, The Walking Dead began really strongly, to the point where the next five episodes in the first season (which is short, but based on the pilot's ratings, the second season announcement will be coming very soon) could be the worst ever produced, and I'd still watch. FX is standing out as a solid network for TV all year-round: this past March, they had Justified; in June, they had Louie; now, they have Sons of Anarchy and Terriers; in the winter, they'll have Lights Out, which is apparently awesome, and then Justified returns in February. Of course, based on the ratings, FX would have to be miracle-makers to renew Terriers, which is a shame because it's a brilliant show, as assured and impressive as Boardwalk Empire has been. Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James play low-rent but intelligent detectives in Ocean Beach, California, and...just watch. Wednesdays, 10, FX. Watch.
So, in short, it's a slow Friday night, but TV is amazing these days. We're living in a great time for televised entertainment, folks. Filmmakers should be ashamed of the products they offer when they barely--if ever--meet up to the standards of the small screen.
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