The Wire — Season 2

[Warning- this review assumes you've seen the first season and will contain spoilers from that season]

A police major visits his local cathedral to donate a stained glass window, only to find that the spot in question has been filled by another window, donated by the Stevedores' Union. Unwilling to place his donation in the less visible rectory, the major puts a detail on the union secretary treasurer to dig up some dirt on him. Meanwhile, a port authority officer inspects a cargo container only to find 13 dead girls inside. McNulty, reassigned to the marine unit, finds a 14th floating in the harbor. Welcome back to The Wire.

The finale of The Wire's first season flew in the face of the typical season bookend. Instead of setting up events to end on a giant cliffhanger, it resolved its main plots while leaving enticing yet not maddening loose ends: the Barksdale organization was ripped apart by arrests and convictions, yet this victory didn't satisfy the more political members of the Baltimore Police Department, who scattered the Major Crimes Unit detail into the wind. The final montage rammed home the realization that the drug trade wasn't even dented and that the cops, who all came to believe in their work and excel, felt useless when it was all said and done.

Welcome to hell, Jimmy.

From such an end one almost wonders how the show could continue. Even though the season inevitably felt just a little derivative (inner-city poor turning to drugs amidst urban decay), it rose above any and all clichés with its sharp writing and natural acting. Its finale was a devastating critique on the socioeconomic decay of America, how it could turn decent, intelligent people to crime, and how even --or perhaps especially-- driven, honest police officers would forever be one step behind in the War on Drugs; why sully all that by trying to match its quality?

To my utter amazement, The Wire not only overcame its negligible flaws but moved in unexpected and fantastic new directions. It pulls back the camera a bit to investigate not only the drug trade on the streets and the cops who fight them but the deeper levels of operation of both sides. For the cops, we move up the political ladder to see why the higher-ups were always so concerned with how much the detail was digging up, and at the same time we see how the drugs get to the dealers and how the suppliers get their stuff into the country. Despite the greater scope, the show never loses an ounce of character depth or intrigue and even manages to add a heap on with all the new additions.

Let's go back to the first paragraph. Those three events, seemingly disparate, hit the viewer like a sledgehammer in the very first episode and form the foundation for the season. If you thought the last season was a bit hard to understand at first, this premiere will show you how well you had it. Not only do almost all of the last season's characters make an appearance, but we meet a whole new set of people, from port authority officer Beadie Russell (Amy Ryan of Gone Baby Gone fame) to the set of stevedores, lead by union secretary Frank Sobotka. I tried to keep track of the new faces but I lost count at a dozen and resigned myself to playing catch up over the next few episodes.

Brother Mouzone is the coolest character since Omar.

I won't even try to go through all the happenings of the season; not for spoiler reasons, but because life is simply too short. These 12 episodes pack more dense, layered story than any full 22-episode season of network drama. We delve deeper into McNulty's private life and his attempts to win back his wife and his descents into alcoholism and casual sex when he fails. After watching these episodes I must say, few people can act drunk as well as Dominic West. Meanwhile, Stringer Bell must apply his night school knowledge in order to deal with increasing supplies of low quality drugs. In a darkly ironic twist, he applies his business school teachings to mask the quality of the stuff in a way not entirely dissimilar to the shady practices of big corporations.

But its the newcomers, the stevedores, who provide much of the season's intrigue. The first season's central character was D'Angelo Barksdale, precisely because he epitomized the core message of the "bad guys" of the show: honest, intelligent, and decent people must turn to crime when the corruption of established institutions boxes them in. But with Dee in prison and increasingly resentful of his family's dealings, the emotional brunt of the show falls on the shoulders of Frank Sobotka.

Chris Bauer better not have to pay for drinks again as long as he lives.

Frank has been in the docks his whole life; his father was a stevedore, and his father, and so on, and he's raised a new generation of stevedores. But he must contend with a rapidly failing business thanks to an unrepaired grain pier, and in order to keep money in the coffers he helps Greek smugglers get their contraband through. Every day he goes to work in the shadow of a run-down steel factory, once a source of many jobs in the area, now a decaying reminder of how fast "unskilled" labor is being outpaced by technology.

Chris Bauer is note-perfect as Frank; just watch the look on his face when he realizes his role in the death of the smuggled girls, or later on when he discovers the police are onto him. He forever looks as though the world is on his shoulders, but he keeps working with the Greeks out of desperation.

As with the last season, this ends with a montage of chilling, deeply symbolic imagery. The first finale showed the drug trade continue without missing a beat, despite some big convictions. This season, on the other hand, ends with a series of images of rusting factories, symbolizing not only the death of the Industrial Era and its effect on the working class but also the increasingly isolated politics of the police force. After all, the whole season unravelled based on the petty whims of a childish old cop.

Many shows aim to be cinematic, and it certainly makes for more enjoyable entertainment. The Wire is not one of those shows. Instead, it aims to be novelistic; you do not simply pop in a season to watch one or two stand-out episodes. You have to sit down for a whole season. Not that you'll hear me complaining; if I didn't need to watch the rest of the series, I would have immediately rewatched the entire thing. With this season, The Wire stopped being great television and started being timeless television. I don't know how it could get any better, but I can't wait to find out.

Bicycle Thieves

I don't know why I've been putting this film off for so long. For months it's been at the top of my Netflix queue, only for me to put another three ahead of it just in time for the next shipment. I certainly didn't do this out of dread, as I did so long with The Birth of a Nation, so why put it off? Perhaps it was the fact that the film's synopsis seems so simplistic that I wondered if it was one of those classics marred by time; that is, if it grew into more of an intellectual and historical curiosity rather than an enjoyable film. But I finally reprimanded myself for letting something as basic as a brief summary hold me back, and popped in Bicycle Thieves, assured that the plot would be much deeper than it suggested.

Well, it wasn't. Matter of fact, the summary might as well be an entire synopsis: A man lands a job that requires he own a bicycle, so he pawns off some trinkets to get one (funnily enough his own bike, which he pawned earlier), only for the bicycle to be stolen. The rest of the film follows this man, Antonio Ricci, and his young son Bruno as they traipse through Rome looking for the thief. Yet in my initial dismissal of this sparse explanation I forgot the most important rule of cinema, "it is not what a film is about but how it is about it."

Bicycle Thieves is a vibrant yet stark plod through a city torn not only physically but emotionally and economically by war, and without ever preaching to us director Vittorio de Sica forces us to provide our own answer to that philosophical question: "Is it acceptable to steal when your family is starving?"

True to the style of Italian neorealism, de Sica didn't use professional actors. Lamberto Maggiorani, who played Ricci, worked in a factory and did some occasional acting prior to his casting; as such, it's easy to say that he never really gets emotional, that he suffers his numerous indignities with a stone face and an occasional flash of pure shame. But isn't that how a normal person would act? Should he have shook his hands at the heavens, tearfully cursing God? No, Maggiorani was the perfect choice for the role, and emotes just enough.

de Sica splits his camera work between long tracking shots that amble the streets with Antonio and Bruno and static shots that let the action really sink in. In only 90 minutes, he manages to paint a vast yet strangely claustrophobic picture of Rome, one in which extreme poverty has banded neighborhoods together, to the point that when Antonio finally catches the thief, everyone in the community turns hostile when he attempts to notify the police.

It is in these final minutes that the grand, lasting tragedy of the story unfolds. Ricci, driven to desperation after failing to retrieve his bike or bring the criminal to justice, attempts to steal someone else's bicycle. Antonio never mentions it aloud, nor does de Sica go out of his way to hammer the it home, but the meaning is clear: in this economic fallout, people like Antonio, who themselves resort to theft after being stolen from, unwittingly perpetuate a cycle. Hollywood directors might have stressed that this climax calls into question the motives of the original thief, but de Sica trusts that you can think of that yourself.

The original U.S. translation of the film was simply "The Bicycle Thief," but its true translation cuts to the very core of the story with only two words; at the end of the film, Antonio must walk in shame not only because he was humiliated in front of his son, but because he realizes he is no different than the man who stole from him. For all we know this story can be copy-pasted and placed both before and after the film.

Many films remain tethered to their time period, or to some sociopolitical event. It's not their fault of course; you make a film for the present, not the future. However, the core message of Bicycle Thieves will sadly never lose relevancy because poverty will always exist. Indeed, as I watched it I couldn't help but think about the current state of our own economy; is Ricci's conundrum really that implausible in present-day America?

While more classic films retain their power than some would have you believe, Bicycle Thieves is surely one of the more lastingly exciting and resonant. Though Antonio and Bruno cover a lot of ground (literally), it feels eternally personal thanks to de Sica's minimalistic direction. I've been working through a number of established masterpieces lately, but few have stayed with me like Bicycle Thieves.

The Rules of the Game

According to many, 1939 was the greatest year in film history. With two Technicolor epics (Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, two defining John Ford classics (Young Abraham Lincoln and Stagecoach, which gave John Wayne his breakout role) and a number of less-remembered but well-regarded movies, it certainly stacks up better than just about any single year short of your pick of the mid-'70s. But the truly defining film of the year came not from Hollywood but from France, on the eve of plunging into war with Germany. The Rules of the Game, made a full three years before Citizen Kane, perfected a number of innovations that Welles would lovingly adopt (and outright steal) for his own masterpiece.

Set in a lavish, rural chateau in which a number of French aristocrats gather for a weekend getaway, The Rules of the Game points perilously to the downfall of French society that was mere months away. Naturally, Renoir could not have anticipated how swiftly the Nazis would come for his country, so he seeks to dismantle the system himself, through some of the most biting satire ever put to film.

The influence of Renoir on director Robert Altman's style is visible from the start: Renoir works with long takes that zoom in and out of conversations winding through separate groups and picking up the overlapping dialogue of each. This style prevents any one character from taking precedence, though a small group do stand out against the rest. André, a pilot, just flew over the Atlantic, and is devastated when his lover does not meet him at the airfield. His friend Octave (played by Renoir himself) takes him to a weekend retreat at the house of Robert de la Chesnaye. Robert's gamekeeper is named Schumacher, whose wife serves as a maid in the chateau.

In the center of all this is Christine, André's former lover and now wife to Robert. Everyone lusts after her like some sort of French art-house version of There's Something About Mary: André still loves her, Octave secretly has feelings for her, Robert perhaps doesn't but certainly views her as his. Even Schumacher's wife, Lisette, is fiercely loyal and loving to Christine; coupled with her disinterest in her husband, one wonders just how deeply she loves her friend.

Through the relaxing activities of these characters Renoir exposes the clueless decadence of the aristocracy. In one memorable scene, the twenty or so guest head out into the fields and promptly shoot every little creature that wanders into their field of view. Animal lovers beware, this is pretty tough stuff. Renoir clearly wants us to see that these aloof fools not only have lost their innocence but actively destroy the purity of nature wherever they go.

The titular game refers to the rampant seduction going on in the retreat. The 'rules' allow the men to take mistresses provided they keep it quiet and treat their wives with respect. Naturally, the women are game pieces, not players themselves. By the end of the thing you get the feeling everyone has screwed everyone else except their own spouses.

The stories of the various characters play out under Renoir's masterful direction, which uses deep focus lenses to show characters in the foreground and the background advancing their plots. Long takes pull every nuance from an actor's face and body language, and each person and object is meticulously placed for maximum aesthetic effect. His style of ambling through various conversations gives the narrative and ebb and flow that can lead you in one direction until it floors you with a change and even move the story along in moments that might seem tangential on a surface level. It's almost too subtle for satire.

But there's a savage humor throughout; Renoir does not so much go for gags and ruthlessly and relentlessly tear the veil down on upper class life; I don't think a director would so clearly loathe his characters until Neil LaBute made In the Company of Men nearly 60 years later. The final segments ram home the complete corruption and delusion of the aristocracy; not even a terrible tragedy can ruin the party. The shocking violence of its humor reminds me of the Coen brothers, as the climactic death of Rules reminds me more than a little of the sudden (and darkly hilarious) deaths that make up so much of their work.

Renoir's flawless direction, combined with his rambling narrative and his unusually deep (for a satire) characterizations make The Rules of the Game stand head and shoulders above just about every other film I've ever seen. Renoir's deep focus photography gives the picture a classical detachment that clashes vividly with the intimate movement of the camera, a dichotomy that makes the movie as engaging as it was the day it came out even as you want to sit back and admire the overall impact of it. The only cinematic satire I can think of that even approaches the vicious, raucous level of this stone-cold classic is Dr. Strangelove, but not even the great Kubrick shot his film as well as Renoir did his. If Citizen Kane is to be acknowledged as the pinnacle of cinema, then this equally influential masterpiece must never be far behind.

Ran

I almost did a double take when the first splash of color filled the screen at the opening of Ran. Perhaps I was so used to Kurosawa's sharp black and white photography that finally seeing his work in color threw me. Kurosawa's Seven Samurai was the first film that broke me of my childhood distaste for monochrome films, by showing me just how detailed and real a world that was at all times obviously false could be. But if his black and white masterpieces were realistic, then Ran looks at once even realer yet utterly fantastical. It's been too long since I've sat down with one of the master's films, and this later-day masterpiece has reminded me of his power.

An adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear, Ran is a culmination of everything the director ever put to celluloid: it's a study of a broken old man trying to do something right with his life before he passes (Ikiru), a Shakespearean adaptation (Throne of Blood, The Bad Sleep Well), and a samurai epic (too many to list). It's also a showcase of his state of mind at the time.

Kurosawa had been a prolific artist in the post-war years, pumping out about a film a year. He hit his stride in 1950 with the monumental work Rashomon, a film that operated within a small frame but felt epic thanks to its staging. The endlessly deep observation on justice and its subversion offered no answers (even in the deceptively "Hollywood" conclusion), and was so innovative that it not only spawned a genre all its own but became the basis of a psychological condition (the Rashomon Effect, in which more than one story is plausible even if they cancel each other out). Many point to it as the father of art-house cinema, which would explode in the late 50s and early 60s with stunning films from European legends like Jean-Luc Godard and Ingmar Bergman.

It also sparked a 15 year working relationship between Kurosawa and leading actor Toshiro Mifune, inarguably the greatest Japanese actor of all time and surely one of the all time greatest actors of any nationality. The Kurosawa-Mifune team would prove to be the most fruitful director/actor collaboration in filmic history, spawning such masterpieces as The Hidden Fortress (a HUGE influence on Star Wars), Yojimbo (remade by Sergio Leone as A Fistful of Dollars), and the legendary epic Seven Samurai (also remade in the West, as The Magnificent Seven).

When their relationship fell apart following 1965's Red Beard, so too did Kurosawa's career. Studios in both Japan and abroad mistook his visual perfectionism for arrogance and megalomania, and where once Kurosawa's films were like clockwork they were now sporadic, coming only when the director finally managed to drum up money from various sources, usually high-profile fans of his. Indeed, New Hollywood darlings George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola funded Kurosawa's Kagemusha, which was a big critical hit but nevertheless didn't make enough money to ensure a comeback. Five years later he finally got the money for this pet project, which he had wanted to make long before he made Kagemusha.

But why am I spending all this time writing about behind-the-scenes material? After all, I hate the modern film "criticism" in which people decide whether they like a film based on who's in it and what couches they've jumped on in their lives; why care in this instance? Because Ran is as much about Akira Kurosawa as it is Lear: when the old man tries to kill himself, fails, and goes mad because he must continue to live in a life that suddenly lost all value, it uncomfortably recalls Kurosawa's own suicide attempt in 1971 and his years of depression.

The plot generally follows Shakespeare's play, but changes a few aspects in its transposition to feudal Japan: the old warlord Hideotora (Tatsuya Nakadai), planning to live out his days in tranquility, divides his kingdom amongst his three sons, Taro, Kiro, and Saburo. The eldest two smile and bow and praise their father, but young Saburo speaks the truth: why would Hideotora expect his sons to keep to this agreement when he himself built his kingdom on treachery, brutality, and war? Of course, the truth is uncomfortable, so the father banishes the son.

The resulting story is pure chaos. Saburo's observation proves true before he's even out of the kingdom; Karo forces his father to fully sign over his title to his son on the instruction of his wife, Lady Kaede. Kaede takes a page from another Shakespeare work and operates as a Lady Macbeth; bitter with hatred over the murder of her family on Hideotora's order decades ago, she sees the whole thing as a way to destroy the family line. When the warring between brothers goes ill for Karo, she simply moves into to seduce Jiro before she even has time to fake some tears.



Kurosawa is no stranger to action; in fact, he's probably the most important action director ever. But he outdoes himself with the constant warring of the Ichimonji clan; consider the epic battle against Hideotora's remaining troops, in which the two elder brothers combine forces to massacre everyone still loyal to their father. Kurosawa, who used to get down and dirty with his action sequences, observes with long static shots, a god momentarily interested by the plight of the peons below.

In that respect, Kurosawa's direction in this film reminds me a great deal of Kubrick's underrated gem Barry Lyndon. That film also removed itself from its characters, to the point that many dismissed it as cold. Well, they're right; Barry Lyndon, as well as Ran, are cold and detached, but they aim to be. Kurosawa's previous samurai action flicks had such a personal touch to them that you almost can't refer to them as "epic," but Ran has a different kind of feel. If his previous work could shock because the audience felt like participants and thus learned the truth only when the characters did, Ran unsettles and disturbs because we know how this will turn out long before its characters do.

Kurosawa utilizes this new style with aplomb, mainly thanks to the acting of leading man Nakadai. Of the three major recurring actors in Kurosawa's work, Nakadai is the least praise, and for good reason. Not because of a shortcoming in talent, but because of his "competition." On the one hand there was Mifune, wild and earnest, who threw his whole being into every role and did it in such a way that this overacting never seemed overacted but plausible. On the other was Takashi Shimura, the old, wise man who pretty much wrote the book on old, wise men in film. He could convey everything you needed to know about his character in a simple glance.

But Nakadai works in this role better than either of the other leads precisely because he plays Hideotora with the same coldness that Kurosawa used for his direction. Where Mifune would have made us pity Hideotora, Nakadai recognizes that we are not meant to sympathize with him (or anyone else in this film).

As with Kurosawa's other work, the action is gigantic and thrilling, but it's never the point. He inserts layers and layers of themes into the story; the film is about an old man wants to make the world a little better for his children (even if he didn't think the plan through), while the next generation does not care for his help and has their own pettiness that must be expressed. It also documents the backstabbing of politics and the general corruption of the powerful. Not quite as obvious, it also works —according to Kurosawa— as "a metaphor for nuclear warfare." Clearly the volleys of gunfire do give off an apocalyptic feeling.

So where does Ran rank with the master's other work? It's as complex as Seven Samurai, if not necessarily as great and expansive. It lacks the more lusty humor of his earlier work but has a few dark laughs sprinkled here and there. As a personal statement, Ran is absolutely vital, a beautiful catharsis for Kurosawa that allowed him to pour out his demons onto the screen. The juxtaposition between the grayish banality of the landscapes with the gorgeous and bright costumes of the soldiers makes both entities more beautiful and reminds us what an artist Kurosawa is (painting is what kept him barely sane in all those years of inactivity). Overall I'd rank it firmly within the upper echelon of the man's work; it doesn't get mentioned as often as his 50s-60s output, but it left me as invigorated yet drained as the very best of classic material.

Grindhouse

For whatever reason, I never caught "Grindhouse" in theaters. Perhaps it's my aversion to horror (read: childlike whimpering fear), or maybe just the fact that it bombed so quickly, but even when it hit a dollar theater my buddies couldn't convince me to go to a midnight showing (I am not sitting through a three hour movie starting at midnight). At any rate, when the individual DVDs came out I picked them up and was stunned: Rodriguez and Tarantino made a completely hilarious romp through the films of their childhood, ones I had never even heard of. Yet it didn't matter; their enthusiasm for the glorified detritus of the 70s was infectious.

Unfortunately, in their individual director's cuts, both films were noticeably bloated, crammed with so many in-jokes that only they would get that it got bogged down in nerdiness. They went so far out of their way to tribute the look, feel, and general (lack of) quality that, after a viewing or two, it became a chore to watch them. But now Netflix is offering the theatrical cut of "Grindhouse" in its "Instant Watch" queue, so I finally got a chance to see what I really missed. Turns out, I missed one of the best movies of 2007 and one of the single most fun movies ever made.

Of course, it opens with Robert Rodriguez's "Planet Terror," inarguably the more visceral and fun of the two. The plot seems simple (some sort of gas turns people into zombie-like things), but he adds layers of asinine backstory to make it seem deeper, just like a crap Grindhouse film. The hero is the mysterious Wray, and no one respects him until they learn he's "El Wray," at which point he's treated like a god. Dakota is leaving her husband for a woman. Cherry and Wray have a history. The hilarious reveal about Muldoon's contribution to the War on Terror.

These little threads make the movie more interesting, but really it just comes down to shooting zombies. Shooting zombies with pistols, shooting zombies with shotguns, shooting zombies with assault rifle legs; if it shuffles, it's getting shot. And really, that's what the movie's good for; it offers not even an ounce of depth, but then why would it? You get some funny lines and a nonstop series of explosions. The theatrical cut of "Planet Terror" doesn't change too wildly; there's a bit less gore and a few scenes are shorter. "Death Proof," on the other hand is a revelation.

When I compared the two separate films I found "Death Proof" to be the better entry because there was at least some story, but the version I saw was so endlessly drawn out on the uninteresting conversations of the first half that I can barely watch it after two viewings. But here, Tarantino reins it in; the conversations between the vapid, first set of girls are still boring and oddly devoid of wit, but he cuts out a great deal of their incessant prattling. Now I only had to wait 25-30 minutes for something interesting to happen rather than nearly an hour.

Many cite "Planet Terror" as the superior film, but in this trimmed version, "Death Proof" reigns triumphant. Apart from the fact that this shortened version is actually funny, DP wins (if I may be so simple) solely on the basis of Kurt Russell's Stuntman Mike. One of the oddest, darkly funniest, and genuinely intimidating villains I've seen, Stuntman Mike makes not just DP but "Grindhouse."

Turns out Mike's been spying on these ladies all night and, after quickly crushing his hapless passenger's skull against the dash with a well-applied brake, he sets off into the night to more or less slash them with his car. A borderline stupid concept, Tarantino makes it work, mainly thanks to Russell's acting. When Mike first speaks he seems like such an amicable fellow: he doesn't drink, doesn't do drugs, and offers a ride home (though admittedly he's offering the ride to a drunk, hot chick so maybe that's not so noble).

But Russell turns on a dime when he actually converses with the ladies he's been stalking all night. When they interrupt him or insult him, Russell's face changes ever so slightly, and suddenly a bottomless well of contempt springs from his eyes. You can tell here that he's going to do something bad.

Of course, the movie really picks up in the wake of the first set of girls. The most explanation we get for why this happened is that maybe Mike is a pervert who gets off on killing with his car, but there's no way to prove he did anything, so once he heals from his cuts and bruises he's free to go. When flash-forward to a new set of ladies, a group working on some movie. There's two stuntwomen, a makeup lady, and an actress, all out for a day off chatting over lunch and oh yeah test driving the car from "Vanishing Point."

The ending 20-minute car chash is just about the best thing Tarantino has ever filmed. Unlike seemingly every other car chase these days, he shows us what's going on. The man famed for his quick-cutting actually bothers to follow these cars. It's a ballet of metal and rubber, starting horrifying and thrilling, then turning the tables on Mike in hilarious and no less exhilarting fashion.

Complete with the fake trailers, "Grindhouse" is a pure romp, one that greatly exceeds the sum of its parts. Separate, the two films are certainly fun, but together the flaws of both cancel each other out; if you didn't get the chance to watch this in theaters, go to Netflix now, even if you aren't a member; it's worth the fee.

Doctor Who — Series 2

Russel T. Davies' reboot of "Doctor Who" hooked me from the start when I finally sat down and watched the first series of the revival. I've never seen any of the old series but it always looked rather camp to me, a feeling that didn't exactly go away when I saw Davies' version. Yet I was bowled over by Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper, two people I'd never heard of before and one of whom, Piper, was evidently cursed to Hell and back when she was announced. Nevertheless, she played the Doctor's companion Rose perfectly, moving from a borderline-annoying, hapless twit into the Doctor's intellectual- well, certainly not equal, but she could at least go toe-to-toe with him in a conversation. After a series of killer episodes, Eccleston's time was up and thus a new Doctor was born in a bloated yet still incredible finale. After Eccleston's portrayal, David Tennant had a lot to live up to and I wondered if he could grab me as much as his predecessor.

The answer was a resounding 'yes.' Tennant establishes himself, as Eccleston did, before the end of his first episode as a quirky, hilarious, contemplative, and endlessly fascinating character. He debuts in the superb Christmas special "The Christmas Invasion," in which once again aliens arrive over London. Harriet Jones returns, now the Prime Minister, just as the Doctor predicted. But the real intrigue of the episode, even above Tennant picking up the ball with utmost confidence, is how Jones has changed. The Doctor manages to make defeat the aliens and send them heading back into the cosmos, only for Jones to order a laser strike on their ship with the help of the mysterious Torchwood Institute.

Meet the new Doctor, not quite same as the old Doctor.

When we met her, Harriet Jones quickly proved a capable, intelligent, and intensely strong character; you knew she was destined for greatness before the Doctor told us. But here she has become an ordinary politician; she says that destroying the fleeing ship sends a message to any other aliens out there that Earth won't stand for invasion, but really you can tell it's so she can win support amongst the people. It's one of the few moments of subtlety in a Russell Davies script, and an auspicious start to Tennant's tenure.

However, like the last series, the episodes veer wildly in quality. "New Earth" brings back Cassandra, the insufferable "Last Human" from "The End of the World" and simply rehashes what she brought to that episode. The only difference is that this time she somehow manages to possess Rose and the Doctor, which makes just about no sense since she's pure human kept alive solely through horrific plastic surgeries. She worked then as a multi-layered metaphor, not only for actors' destructive desire to stay young forever but as a classist and perhaps racist who views any evolved human as inferior. Here, she's a caricature of that person, and Davies' attempt to make her exit at the end poignant rings false.

The return of Sarah Jane, an old Companion, is a big highlight of the early episodes.

Another weak episode, "The Idiot's Lantern" is a blatant attack on the "idiot box," even though "Doctor Who" is inoffensive family entertainment. Also, there's a sub-theme about parents needing to accept the homosexuality of their children which is just forced. Some people say that Davies tried to insert a "gay agenda" into the show during his run, which is a terribly stupid thing to say; however, cramming in a message into an episode and letting it just stick out far away from anything relevant is a problem.

But the worst is hands down "Fear Her," an Olympics episode which acts like the Olympics is the one thing holding this planet together (hint: it's actually gravity). In it, an alien child draws people out of existence...because she's lonely. I don't know either. And I thought I was going to die laughing at the moronic Olympian commentator who acted like a dropped torch meant the end of civilization. It's easily the worst of the first two series.

O.K., there's the bad out of the way, now let's focus on why this show rises above these crap episodes and into the stratosphere. First, there's Steven Moffat's absolutely outstanding entry, "The Girl in the Fireplace." The concept? The Doctor discovers a direct portal through time that leads into the bedroom of Reinette, who grows up to become Madame de Pompadour. The catch? Time passes much faster in Reinette's world, to the point that years go by when the Doctor spends merely a minute or two on the other side. Yes, there are monsters to deal with, but the real focus of the episode is the Doctor's loneliness and his relationship with the companions; for those who travel with the Doctor, they devote their entire lives to their adventures. But for a 900 year old Time Lord, the few years they spend with him pass all too quickly.

Other highlights include "Love & Monsters," a wonderful look at obsessive fandom and how it ruins it for people who just want to have fun, and that people who focus on continuity tend to miss out on that which actually matters: plot and character development. Funnily enough, it was written by Davies, the most continuity-obsessed writer on the show. Maybe he knows he cares too much but can't do anything about it. Additionally, the two-parter "The Impossible Planet"/"Satan's Pit" is dark and intelligent, until it gets to the last third and just ends up focusing on the cool-looking Beast.

O.K. I admit it: it killed the depth of the episode, but this thing is awesome.

But the best episode of the season, and of the show I've seen thus far, is Davies' "Doomsday." Picking up on one hell of a cliffhanger (both Daleks and Cybermen show up on Earth), it proves to be both a killer action climax and a emotionally devastating hour. I cannot go into why the episode is so good without mentioning spoilers, so if you haven't seen the series, you should really stop reading now because you'll rob yourself of something big.


The showdown between the Daleks and the Cybermen is brilliant; both should focus on the Doctor, but they have such superiority complexes that they turn on each other at the very mention of cooperation. But the battle isn't why the episode is transcendent. No, it's the lauded end of Rose's time as the Doctor's companion. When the Doctor seals the portal that allows the Cybermen and Daleks to invade Earth, Rose winds up sealed off in the parallel universe visited in "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel." The short, tearful goodbye on the beach between Rose and the Doctor is simple and heartbreaking. Rose gets to be with her family and Mickey (who really grew this series into a person and not just a one-note ponce), but her adventures are over, and it crushes her.

Probably the most poignant scene in sci-fi outside of a Whedon production.

The first series was all about heroism, about the Doctor, Rose, and the people they meet standing up to beat the bad guys, whomever they may be. In contrast, the second series focused on the companions themselves; if the first series showed people rallying behind the Doctor, this series showed why. An old companion, Sarah Jane Smith returns in "School Reunion," and you can see the pure, unadulterated elation on her face when she realizes she's reunited with the Doctor. Davies and Tennant move away from the asexual Doctor by showing just how much he cares for his Companions. His joy at seeing Sarah is almost as boundless as Sarah's.

Even the more minor players grow because of their experiences with the Doctor. Mickey started out a whiny, self-centered fool with an IQ just above grapefruit, yet by the end of this series he's capable and strong, as is Jackie, who becomes a surprisingly sympathetic character. Even Reinette serves the overall theme of the series; she is so completely taken by this mysterious man who came out of her fireplace that she waits for years in her world waiting for him to come.

Of course, it all comes down to the Doctor and Rose. Rose proved to be a hero in her own right the start, and certainly by the finale of the first series. The second series expands upon their relationship, creating a level of sexual tension that remains ever-present but never beats us over the head with it. Watching her grow even more this season was an absolute delight, and it made her departure all the more poignant.

Ultimately, most of the flaws of the season relate to the individual episode plots, particularly Davies'. He has a tendency to throw in much too much to make sure everyone's been paying attention, and it chokes the actual story. His scripts overflow with humor and emotion, but he can't seem to put them into a coherent story, and he often highlights the message of his episodes in neon lighting and spends the episode pointing at it frantically. But he has a gift for serialized character development a la Joss Whedon; while individual episodes often fail because of its increasingly formulaic setup (Doctor and Rose go somewhere, lose TARDIS, get into trouble, nearly die, then find TARDIS in last five minutes), many overcome these problems with telling looks into the Doctor's loneliness or the lives of those who come into contact with him. It's certainly not perfect, but it's compelling character drama that is funnily enough limited by its science fiction constraints.

Perhaps it's cheating to look beyond the actual episodes and rate this so highly based on the overall impact; indeed, working through the episodes I found myself wondering more than once what all the fuss was about. Yet it all clicked in retrospect; a truly perfect show would work on a surface level and a deeper one, but "Doctor Who" is only truly rewarding when you pay attention.

The Wire — Season One

God I wish I had HBO for the last few years. The Sopranos, Deadwood, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Six Feet Under; the network has delivered a number of the most acclaimed programs of the decade. However, a less-seen (though certainly no less-praised) program threatens to rise above them all. The Wire, David Simon's crime drama set in his home town of Baltimore, blew me away from the start. It's realistic dialogue, complex characters, and entrancing story arc has pushed the program high onto my list of favorite TV shows, and I've only watched the first season.

It all starts with Detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) sitting in a courtroom watching the murder trial of D'Angelo "Dee" Barksdale (Larry Gillard, Jr.). While there, he sees a witness change her story to get Barksdale off, and suddenly McNulty is on a mission. He assembles a detail of officers to take down the local drug ring, run by Dee's uncle Avon Barksdale.

It is in these early moments that The Wire establishes itself as something different. McNulty's superior, Major Rawls, gives him some of the worst cops he has to offer. Other programs would wasted no time ramming the message home, but Simon and his writers let the horrible truth sink in ever so slowly: these cops don't care about the drug trade because it affects almost exclusively the poor black population. If black dealers kill each other, who cares? And it's not just the white cops gently showing their prejudices; even the black Deputy Commissioner, Burrell, doesn't care. Perhaps the black officers see the dealers as making it even harder for them to be taken seriously. Also, the higher-ranking cops (like the Deputy Commissioner) know that some of that drug money makes its way into the hands of politicians, and they're wary of following the paper trail.

Lieutenant Daniels heads up the new detail.

The fact that this delicate subject matter is handled delicately over the course of the entire 13 episodes is amazing enough, but the portrayal of the characters sends The Wire into the stratosphere. The cops, mostly uncaring and some flat out inept, at first seem dangerously close to the stereotype of the clueless, incompetent police officer. But McNulty twist their hobbies, their drives and even their prejudices to motivate them, and soon the team defies expectations, playing to their strengths while never settling into one-note archetypes. Sure, there's the alcoholic, the kid assigned solely on nepotism, the muscle; but none of these characters simply perform the rote exercises and leave.

Consider Roland "Prez" Pryzbylewski, the officer assigned to the detail because his father-in-law is a bigshot officer. When he arrives he starts playing with his gun, accidentally discharging it into the wall because he did not bother to make sure the chamber was clear. "This guy is going to be cheap comic relief, and nothing else," I thought to myself. How cynical and immediately distrusting I am. Instead, Prez proves vital to the detail, using his affinity for word and number puzzles to break phone codes used by the Barksdales.

When you get down to it these are good cops, motivated perhaps by bad things, but good cops nonetheless. Simon paints the police department as a place paralyzed by politics; in the drug rings, you move up the ranks by bringing in a profit and keeping your mouth shut when you inevitably get arrested. But getting a promotion in the police department depends more on who you know. Even within the detail, there are informants; not to the street, but to the higher-ups in the department. Even when one or two of them take a bit of confiscated money, you never get the feeling that the whole place is corrupt.

Likewise, the view from the street is startlingly realistic. Sympathetic criminals are nothing new, but Simon creates dense characters that can stand alongside any of the famous TV and cinematic mobsters. But these are not the children of Sicilians who came to America, inherited "the family business" and live in the lap of luxury; these dealers, even the leaders of the operation, have the money but do not flaunt it.

The only thing they seem to spend money on is the damn lawyer.

They live in the projects they were born in, sell in the projects they were born in, and often die in the projects they were born in. It's a fascinating look at how race can shape lives; at any moment they could leave these rundown areas and buy mansions, but a lifetime being harassed (whether justified or not) by police has left them too cautious to flaunt. Why then do they keep the trade? What good is all that money if you just sit on it? I'd venture to guess that it's because social mobility is a myth for a great deal of Americans, and the best these kids can hope for is a bit more scratch than the tenant next door. Loyalty is much looser than we see in the mafia; pinched soldiers are as likely to turn informant as keep their mouths shut. It's all about survival on these streets.

As with every show, little things set the show apart. The McNugget debate. Dee's couch. The way McNulty's kids are so used to him putting them to work that they can independently tail Stringer Bell and get his tag numbers. Stringer going to business school at night to be a better drug lieutenant. Dee teaching Bodie and Wallace to play chess, using the drug ring's organization as metaphors for each piece. Using chess as a metaphor is hardly new (the game itself is a metaphor for battle), but the conversation that results makes this stand out.

One of the best moments of the season.

I can't pick out too many flaws in these 13 episodes. Despite its subtlety, a few lines are repeated almost verbatim amongst different characters, which is a bit annoying. Daniels tells his wife the dangers of following the drug money, only for Freamon to say almost the exact same thing to the detail to ram it home, something that the show typically didn't do. Also, it can be very confusing at the start; as a result of its realistic dialogue, people don't always refer to each other by their full names. As a result I couldn't match all the names with the faces for about five episodes.

But therein lay the charm of the show. It expects you to do the work and therefore never condescends to you. McNulty is an unlikely hero: the typical cop with a terrible home life who puts all of himself into his work. Yet for once we believe that such a man would be so driven; he' a man who's just fed up with it and keeps going because the criminals are always one step ahead. However, the standout star here would have to be D'Angelo. He's street-smart, clever, and tough, but he has a certain naïvete. He believes that if drug dealers would stop resorting to violence, the cops would leave them alone. Funny thing is, he seems naïve but he's absolutely right; the detail is comprised mostly of Homicide detectives, and more than once they maintain the drugs come second to the killing.

Omar Little, the gay stick-up man, is one of the best characters of the season.

The show is not quite perfect, but I couldn't really point out anything glaringly wrong. The only remotely noticeable thing is that Levy, the lawyer, comes off a little too pleased when he constantly get his clients off the hook, but then I guess that means it's payday so maybe I shouldn't complain. The casting is perfect and the scripts bleed realism and never call attention to themselves. It's a snapshot of the American life we see exploited on the news but never truly analyzed by the anchors. The deaths are always shocking, even when you know someone has it coming. I won't spoil them, but the demises of even the most minor of recurring character made me sit bolt upright in my chair. All the praise is true, The Wire is one of the best shows of recent years, and I can't wait to see where it goes from here.