true bood, entourage

almost a week late, but here's an update on those HBO showz:

true blood is getting good. and good--because it looked from the beginning like it was squandering all of the potential in the world. crazy, redefining ending to last episode, though. let's keep a close eye on this one.

entourage--tripping in j-tree. amazing. i'd heard about this episode a while ago when i saw doug ellen speak at the wga, and it followed through on expectations. fantastic. truly.

it's always sunny in the bigoted south...and heroes. OH! and skinamax!

the second it's always sunny double-header of the season featured two episodes that helped ease the fear of shark-jumping, but brought forth a fear of formulaic writing. nonetheless, two episodes that started off slowly and finished amazingly does bode well--it's the antithesis of what south park's been doing lately, and that's a good thing.

true blood kind of reinvented itself this week. kind of. it's still hard to fully judge where it's going, but i know that it's treading dangerous waters: it's going to be hard to keep up an interesting supernatural allegory without feeling hammy (it already kind of does).

heroes: i can't believe it's taken me this long to realize that i don't like these characters or actors. writing in the two hour premiere was HORRIBLE, but the plot lines are somewhat interesting. as dan points out, though, adding time travel elements to a show like this just makes it too unnecessarily complicated. it adds in a diagetic rule that nullifies all other diagetic rules. tough.

and finally, co-ed confidential. those of you who are fans of brian belot's work (see: claremonttelevision.com) will love this currently on-demand softcore semi-porn show about four college freshmen and they're craaaaazy overseers. highly recommended. in depth analysis of each episode coming soon.

ps. congrats to the marlins for pooping on the mets' parade this afternoon. HUZZAH!

weeds finale, entourage continues, true blood--ech!, etc

the weeds reboot worked. the best season yet, by far. the last two episodes were indicative of a season marked by an unbelievably crisp balance of seriousness and absurdity.
--again, the same place entourage is at now, which is at an equally amazing point in its run, after an equally low point.

true blood's first episode sucked. cool world, terrible episode. episode two was great...until it wasn't. in an instant you could see the series get canceled; it really is a cool idea, so that--like--totally blows and stuff.

in other rockin' news, malcolm reruns are back to the pilot, which is amazing because the show gets progressively worse from day one out. getting to the beginning after suffering through the end is like peeing at a rest-stop.

in yet more news, because i don't know what else to say, this somehow feels appropriate, albeit morbid: isn't it perfect that dave wallace committed suicide in the method most frequently discussed through the use of incorrect grammar? (and isn't the forced construction of the sentence it takes to express that idea even more perfect? any students of his that may be reading this [barnet in particular, but he wouldn't be reading this], please correct away.)