Thursday, August 31, 2006
I tried to send this to James Wolcott in response to this post, http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2006/08/sammy_glick_mee.php, but it bounced back to me. I felt cheated by that, so I post it here, for the enjoyment and/or edification of no one in particular.
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Mr. W,
I agree with your take on Entourage, although I find it a likable enough diversion. I suppose it's too much to hope that Ari's canning means that the show will now focus on Ari (and Beverly D'Angelo!) to the exclusion of Vince and Eric, who are completely uninteresting.
But "bad acting" on "Deadwood"? Whoa. I'll admit that, with some of the players, the flowery language occasionally seems to get lost somewhere between sternum and larynx, and there is an awful lot of triangulated speechifying through gritted and blackened teeth. And the Bullock character is so one-dimensional as to be practically a black hole.
But I love the show, and not principally for the story, which is, how do you say, a bit slow. I'll admit to being sort of a softie for mud and gratuitous violence, but I also think the characters and acting are terrific. Ian McShane is just electrifying. I can't remember ever watching a television show and thinking, "More monologues for him, please!" Farnum, Trixie, Calamity Jane, Steve the Drunk, and Merrick are all written and acted superbly. Gerald Raney and Powers Booth are surprisingly effective nasties, and I even like Brad Dourif coming off 35 years of B-grade horror movies to play Bones McCoy to Swearingen's Captain Kirk. Moreover, he does justice to the Bonesian tradition of TV doctors beginning every sentence with "Dammit, So-and-so, these whores is infested with the Prairie Scum, and they . . . require . . . immediate . . . MEDICAL . . ATTENTION!" Then there was Keith Carradine as Wild Bill and that guy who played both Hickok's killer and Hearst's pervy advance man. Great, all of them. Lastly, I don't have the slightest idea what that theater troupe is doing there, but if that's what it takes to get and keep Brian Cox on the show, then so be it.
All that said, I'd trade 10 Deadwoods for one of "The Wire," which begins soon.
