Television!!: Sons of Anarchy

More than a little ink has been spilled on the splintering of American pop culture due to the skyrocketing number of cable channels in the mid-late '90's and early '00's. The addition of the internet has only exacerbated the fears of these stolid, Baby Boomer journalists who wax poetically about that mystical era when there were only 4 stations and everybody was able to talk about the same programming around that sacred grove of social interaction: the water cooler. I call bullshit on this. In a world where your options are so numerous, it puts you into a state of epileptic paralysis, the onus is on the content providers to do just as their job title indicates:provide good content. Television was shit when there were only three channels. The networks were able to throw whatever they wanted at us because Hey! We sure as hell didn't have any other options. Other than shutting the damn box off, but who are we kidding here. I believe more is better, because as competition for our time intensifies, there are only two ways for the content providers to go: the cheap (in terms of production cost and content quality) voyeurism of reality television or high quality content that will enrapture the audience. Of course this is a very simplistic and binary way of looking at a complex market, but I feel comfortable with it do let's get rolling.

For the past 6-8 years or so, FX has branded itself as the channel for dark and gritty dramas, and have created some stunning shows to back up that claim. The Shield was made of dirt, spit and the sound of skulls thumping against pavement as Michael Chiklis curb stomped The Comish from our collective memories. Nip/Tuck was sleek, slippery, and skeezy. It thrust our faces into the gore of surgery while showing us that the hallowed priests of beauty and lust were more fucked up then we could imagine. After having brutally deconstructed the Lawman and the Plastic Surgeon, FX decided to take on another of semi-mythologized and excessively glorified part of Americas gestalt totality: The Outlaw. Thus I present to you: The Sons of Anarchy.

Stephen Colbert:: Genius or SUPER GENIUS?!

I can truly and honestly say, from the bottom of my small grinch like heart: Stephen Colbert has the biggest balls in the world. Seriously. Ahmadinjad has nothing on this man. He is called to Congress to testify on his "experience" as a migrant worker for a day and mocks the whole decrepit lot of them! First the President, now Congress, next he will hide whoopee cushions on the chairs of the Supreme Court Justices. I love this man.

Television!! - A new segment!

It is telling that I spent an hour-and-a-half on Sunday watching a famed German show called Tatort. The show is a long (we're talking decades!) running cop drama that has multiple iterations and protagonists for every major and most minor population centers in Germany. It is what Dick Wolf dreams off, while he huffs paint and masturbates furiously to the fevered nightmare of Law & Order: Small Claims Court Tallahasse. I jest of course, Tatort is actually a fairly decent show. It tends to focus more on the personalities of the Kriminalkommisare trying to solve the really obvious cases. Call it an anti-CSI. While naturally, some series are better than others, in terms of quality the series float between your average episode of JAG and one of the best episodes of the first season of 24. The problem isn't the show. The problem is that the show is the best thing on German television.

The landscape of the German television industry is something from a post-apocalyptic sci-fi comic: blasted, lifeless, bleak and probably incapable of ever again spawning life. Most of it consists of reality shows about dreary "ordinary, everyday" people and their useless, wasted boring lives. What little original programming exists can hardly be called original, let alone good. American television may be scourged unimaginably shit shows that make you want to claw your eyes out, at least the industry is not adverse to risk taking, trying to tell new stories while German television relies on reality and game shows that are so mind numbingly pointless that you want to scream out, begging for God to release your tortured soul from this stygian neverscape.

I miss American Television.

So as part of this new segment I shall be reviewing those series, both new and returning, that I particularly enjoy and find worthwhile on a level for more than just base entertainment. How I Met Your Mother is a very funny show and I enjoy watching it, but it doesn't really enthrall me the way some of the shows do that I shall be presenting here. First up will be one of my all time favorites: Sons of Anarchy!

Why I am not at all happy about Shaq being with the Celtics.

Let Bill Simmons say what he will. I don't care about his superior sports knowledge, or that he has been diligently been following team sports in the Boston area for decades. I care nothing his Rain Man style command of statistics or his almost disturbing ability to recall the most obscure of pop culture trivia. All I need to know to confirm my misgivings about Shaq signing up with the boys in green is expressed by this picture: