The Wire

By Paul Levinson(levinson.paul@gmail.com) Well, my wife and I saw the first four episodes of the new season of Dexter last night - season 4 - courtesy of Showtime's advance screener copy, and I'm bursting to tell how superb indeed this new season is, on its way to being perhaps the best season of Dexter yet (high praise indeed, because the first three seasons were outstanding), but I don't want to spoil any of this for you, so here instead are some non-specific highlights - 1. Dexter as a new father is sleep deprived. Watch for all kinds of consequences from that. He's now essentially juggling three jobs - blood specialist for the police, serial killer, and dad.   [read the full post]

By Paul Levinson(levinson.paul@gmail.com) First, though, let me offer the ever-relevant apples and oranges proviso - television series, like all works of fiction, are never completely comparable. The Wire is in a superb now classic class of its own, not as police drama, but in its vivid, scalding, anthropologically rich presentation of life in the drug drenched hood. The Shield, in contrast, is more about police. And neither show has much in common with Lost, which inhabits a unique position in story telling that transcends even the science fiction of which it partakes. But television series can nonetheless be compared on some levels. See also ... The Sopranos Anti-Ending and The Sopranos Conference at Fordham University May 2008   [read the full post]

By Paul Levinson(noreply@blogger.com) When you walk through the garden, you better watch your back ..." Hey, they could almost have played that superb Tom Waits "Way Down in the Hole" theme song from The Wire in last night's episode #5 of Life on Mars, which had two* Wire veterans on hand, Clarke Peters (Lt. Freamon on The Wire) and Chad Coleman ("Cutty" on The Wire). Even Whoopee Goldberg had a cameo. *(And an anonymous commentator just mentioned that Chris Bauer, Frank Sobotka from The Wire, played the priest in this episode of Life on Mars - so that makes three Wire people.) challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News   [read the full post]

By Paul Levinson McNulty has picked up the pro-active make-things-happen and damn-the-consequences approach he played so well in the very first season of The Wire. It's good to see McNulty really on top of his game again. This time, he's trying to make his colleagues and bosses think there's a serial killer loose in Baltimore - the only way McNulty can think of to keep the cops focused on Marlo and the drug business. The only person wise to what McNulty is doing - because he was there when McNulty started hatching this plan - is Bunk, who is none too happy about it. See also The Wire's Back! Review of Season 5 Episode 1 and Episode 2: The Great, Dangling Conversation challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News   [read the full post]