Sunday, March 28, 2010

First Ten ---- Part 2

45. Curb Your Enthusiasm ---- Opening Night
All right, I never liked Seinfeld. But this show has a tart acidicness that show missed. Watching Larry David make endless faux pas could be very entertaing, and they didn't have the seasons last too long. So it was interesting to see him acquit himself in The Producers. Until he can't. And then makes it work for him. Funny enough--- until we see Mel Brooks scheming with Anne Bancroft before they learn that Larry can even screw up screwing up. (And the scene where they play Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder? TV dynamite.)

44. Battlestar Galactica --- Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II
Yes, 'Blood on the Scales' was gutwrenching, but I prefer the first mutiny that took place on the Galactica A wrenching episode that literally placed President against military leaders, soldier against commander, son against father. The fleet appears to shatter, and you can't see how they'll ever rebuild. And we watch Boomer, who has struggled against her Cylon nature all season, finally seem to choose humanity --- until she doesn't, and commits one of the biggest surprises in TV history

43. Chicago Hope --- The Quarantine
I'm definitely in the minority here, but I thought Chicago Hope's first season was better than ER's, and often muse if Kelley and Mandy Patinkin had stayed with it, could it have acheived greatness? This episode was the clearest sign that it could've, as the tensions that have brewed between these doctors and nurses for ten episodes boil over--- leading to some of the most brilliant monologues I've ever heard out of any hospital drama. Chicago Hope was all about the characters, and this demonstrated why it deserves to be remembered. Hint, hint Paramount DVDs? Anyone?

42. OZ --- Escape From Oz
Beneath the copious male nudity and mindless slaughter, there were some truly great moments on this series. Season finales would become almost mindlessly violent, but for this the brutality is positively muted. The Beecher-Keller love story has it's first major twist (lieterally) Alvarez finally gives into pressure, Ryan O'Reilly finds himself in a situation he can't outmaneuver, and Kareem Said is in the same room with Governor Devlin, who despite the fact we were surrounded my murderers, rapists and pedophiles always seemed scummier than all of them. Everything that was right about this show clicked here. Shame they couldn't maintain it all the way.

41. Brotherhood --- Matthew 22:10
I may have been the only person watching this series, so I'll probably get called out for it, but that doesn't change the fact that this series proved, after years in the wilderness, that Showtime could created Brilliant TV. Watching the Caffee brothers attend a wedding where marriages will be wrecked, frailities will be revealed, and a good cop, crippled by his conscience will litrerally beat a mans brains out--- this show reached levels that The Sopranos never dreamed off. I'm just sorry it died in obscurity. It deserved far better. (And no, I don't know what the title refers to.)

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