Lost: Season 2 on DVD

An idea for a comedy sketch kept popping into my head as I gleefully tore through the 23 episodes of Lost's Season 2. It's probably been done already on MAD TV or SNL or by someone on YouTube, but it's called something like "Lost: the Happy Ones", and it's basically a bunch of men and woman in resort wear whooping it up around a beach bonfire, drinking out of coconuts, playing ukuleles and off camera we hear Michael yelling about "Getting back my SON!", and Jack raging at Sawyer, and Locke screaming about his pathetic little life, and gunfire, and Jin getting all frantic in Korean and every once in a while the partyers give a puzzled look off into the distance, and say things like "What are those guys up to now?" "Why don't they chill out and have some of these mango margaritas!"

Because man, the dozen or so main characters sure have had an awfully dramatic time of it in this tropical paradise.

But, yes, I am now even more completely hooked on this show (though still find the flashbacks far less interesting than the on-island goings-on: for example, did we really need to see the whole Jin/Sun courtship to get to the punchline about... well I won't say); I think the writing is mostly pretty tight and smart; the acting mostly strong (though some characters are starting to get annoyingly one-dimensional); and I'm surprised that they've been able to juggle successfully so many narrative arcs, and introduce so much more unexplained weirdness, without the whole thing dissolving into a mess. Through Season 2, Lost remains a lot of fun, and totally worth the addiction.

Lost: Season 1 on DVD

After four months spent savoring the first three seasons of that masterpiece The Wire, I decided to get out the city, go tropical, and see what what all the fuss was about Lost. And though at first I was slightly put off by the network-ness of the show (lots of exposition, high degree of corniness, intense drama over things that seem to be completely forgotten the next day), I admit that, around about disc three, I was totally hooked.

I'm not going to go into any plot details, but basically: a plane crashes, 44 people wind up on a deserted (?), friggin' bizarre island in the South Pacific, and the show shifts between (thank goodness mostly) their adventures post-crash and their overly melodramatic backstories. There are maybe a dozen characters whom we follow pretty closely, show after show, most of whom I didn't mind spending time with whenever their "turn" came up.

Although there were certainly flaws and annoyances here, there were also more than enough intriguing relationships and narrative threads and left-field weirdness to keep me going back for more (including the pilot and two-part season finale, that's 22 episodes in all), and the acting is mostly pretty solid, and there have been more than a couple of creepy moments that gave me serious goosebumps, and more than a couple of tender moments that made me cry, so, absolutely, I'm diving right in to Season 2.

The Wire: Season 3 on DVD

So sad.

It took me about four months, but now it's over... I've seen all 37 episodes of David Simon's masterpiece of a television series that are currently available on DVD. Is there any point in even being on Netflix anymore?

Anyway, Season 3 of this smart, tightly-written, many-layered HBO drama about cops and criminals in Baltimore... overall I'd have to say this was the relatively weakest arc so far—call it an A-minus to the first two season's A-plus-pluses. Yes, the individual episodes were completely compelling, and it probably had some of the show's funniest moments yet, and I won't forget that preacher's nightime visit to Hamsterdam anytime soon, and it's always a pleasure to spend an evening with Omar and Stringer and Bubbles and Rawls and Kima and Carver and Herc and Lester and McNulty.


But I must say I never really got sucked into the machinations of "The Hall"—the politicians and police administration—the way I did the world of the Polish dockworkers and Greek Mafia in Season 2. And the denouement of one of the primary storylines... well you could see it coming a mile away, although I admit the timing was fiendishly clever. And though I personally, philosophically agree with the Hamsterdam experiment, I thought Simon, Ed Burns and their all-star cast of guest writers (this time including Richard Price and Dennis Lehane) maybe got a little preachy about this obviously good idea.

Really, though, these are minor complaints. The Wire remains a work of entertainment genius. Now can anyone recommend a TV series on DVD that I can get into while I await the release of Season 4? Maybe Lost? Deadwood? Anyone...?

The Wire: Season 2 on DVD

After the first 13 episodes (aka Season 1), I knew it was true: The Wire is the best TV show ever made ever, and is sharper, better written, and more consistently immersive than, say, 86% of the movies I've seen in the past few years. I know, it's kind of an unfair comparison... the narrative scope and pacing, the rhythms of the characters, the balance between exposition and style, are all inherently different in a two- or three-hour movie designed to be viewed in one sitting than in a 12-hour show meant to be seen in segments. But still.

So, really the only question was: could Season 2 possibly be as good as Season 1?

Yes. It could... and it may even be better.

I loved the sprawling new case in Season 2, involving hard-bitten stevedores and longshoremen, drug smuggling, a drunk duck, McNulty on a boat, slavery, stolen goods, RICO-obsessed FBI agents, the Greek mafia, wiretaps (of course), run-down old Baltimore Polish neighborhoods, and 14 dead young women. I loved the new faces, especially Amy Ryan's jittery but smart Officer Russell, and the beautifully played insecure insanity of James Ransone's Ziggy. I loved the way David Simon, Ed Burns and their guest writers (including George Pelecanos) also managed to keep the stories moving of all the old characters, cops and criminals, that I had grown so attached to in Season 1. And I really love that tonight I can start The Wire: Season 3!

The Wire: Season 1 on DVD

You don't need me to tell you that The Wire is the best television show ever... just about every critic and blogger and all your friends and enemies and acquaintances have been saying it for years. But if you don't need me telling you, then what the heck are you waiting for? As a way-latecomer to the show—I just finished Season 1 last week, thanks to Debbie's amazing Christmas gift to me of Netflix for six months—let me suggest that you put Season 1, Disc 1, at the top of your queue right now, you'll get totally sucked in, and so have 37 hours of excellent entertainment awaiting you. And by the time you finish all that, Season 4 will probably be out on DVD.Why is The Wire so good? This epic tale of Baltimore cops vs. Baltimore criminals—in Season 1, all the action centers on the drug trade in a westside housing project, and we come to know both sides intimately—is smart and surprising, the writing crackles, the acting is top-notch, the characters are complicated and likable and infuriating (often at the same time), it's well-paced, it's funny, it feels real.

The Wire was created by David Simon, who also wrote two of my all-time favorite non-fiction books, Homicide and The Corner. Edward Burns is the co-author of The Corner, as well as a writer and producer of The Wire. If you haven't seen it, The Corner—which portrays a year in the life of a family of Baltimore junkies—is a terrific HBO mini-series, and is also now available on DVD.