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Perhaps. I should also say, though, that another reason I'm disdainful of certain TV shows is so that I don't feel guilty about not seeing everything that's critically hailed, because honestly, who has the time?

I was talking to my uncle at Easter at dinner, and he was going on about what a great show Entourage is. I said I watched the first episode and returned the DVD right away. He said, "Nah, you gotta watch more than that, it gets better." I said, "It just seemed a little too ... testosterone-y." He conceded, "Well, yeah, it's definitely a guy show." And I was like, "Well, there you go." It was awesome: he totally gave me a reason for never having to watch it again.

jaymc, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 17:13 (nineteen years ago)

After watching two-thirds of season 3 of Entourage on Sunday, I realized how different a show it would be as an NBC sitcom (i.e., clearly fake sounstage sets for Ari's office, the guys' house, etc.).

Eazy, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 17:17 (nineteen years ago)

Do "guy shows" make your pussy hurt?

kenan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 17:19 (nineteen years ago)

I don't much dig on Entourage either, fwiw, never got into it, don't much care, etc. And of course you're otm about not having the time to care about everything.

kenan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 17:20 (nineteen years ago)

I've heard people say that Curb Your Enthusiasm is a guy show. The difference, though, is that it's a guy that I relate to. Most "guy shows" or "guy movies" are about jackasses I don't care about.

jaymc, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 17:22 (nineteen years ago)

That describes Entourage for me to a t. It's a cast made up entirely of jackasses.

kenan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 17:23 (nineteen years ago)

i hated entourage (the little i saw of it).

another critically-acclaimed testosteroney show that i don't get: rescue me.

JuliaA, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 17:25 (nineteen years ago)

But there's a difference in jackasses, too -- Larry David is jackass who is smart, quick, funny, neurotic, and put-upon. There's something to him. Tony Soprano is beyond jackass -- he's a lying, cheating, murdering, racist, sexist, horrible blight on humanity that the world would be better off without, but he's human, and therein lies your show.

The guys on Entourage should be so lucky. They're more like what you think of if someone says that someone has an "LA mentality." Which the show satirizes, I guess, but not half as much as it embraces it. It's at the intellectual level of Sex and the City, only make it about stupid guys instead of stupid women, and move it to LA. I really dislike that show.

kenan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 17:27 (nineteen years ago)

Man, you guys are really starting to make me feel guilty for liking Entourage. Yeah, its definitely a guy show... but my fiancee loves it and she's usually very much against testosterone-laden "guy shows". I like it because Turtle, Drama, and Ari are some of my favorite sitcom characters on television right now and the potshots at/cameos from the Hollywood elite are usually pretty entertaining. I dunno, there are worse ways to waste half an hour.

jon /via/ chi 2.0, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 17:33 (nineteen years ago)

True dat. You could be watching 2 1/2 Men.

kenan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 17:35 (nineteen years ago)

ANDY BARKER WAS CANCELLED.

not surprising, but i really liked that half hour of tv, dammit.

JuliaA, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 17:39 (nineteen years ago)

- Kevin Dillon is thoroughly funny.
- Piven can be funny.
- The show works to get its details correct, in terms of show business and L.A. geography.

I like the show a lot but wouldn't try to convert anyone to it. It's certainly some of the fantasy-world of living in Santa Monica that makes Curb work for me, too.

Eazy, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 17:45 (nineteen years ago)

I'm leaving the office in a few minutes, so pls convince John to try the Wire by the end of the day, thx y'all.

Jordan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 17:47 (nineteen years ago)

(nb I'm not leaving to go drink beerz or anything, just some other work away from my desk)

Jordan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 17:48 (nineteen years ago)

the wire is an excellent, excellent show. What else can I say?

kenan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 17:48 (nineteen years ago)

I guess the cancellation of Andy Barker is not surprising given Richter's track record (I never actually saw the show), but c'mon, someone give the guy a break already.

jaymc, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 17:57 (nineteen years ago)

Tell me what the Wire is about, besides cops and plots about cops.

jaymc, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 17:57 (nineteen years ago)

lesbian cops and gay gangsters

Jordan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:00 (nineteen years ago)

the hook is, it's as much about who the cops are chasing as it is about the cops

kenan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:01 (nineteen years ago)

lesbian cops and gay gangsters

OK, if you're serious, I'm all over this.

jaymc, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:10 (nineteen years ago)

The first season will give you one hell of an education on underground drug-based economics. That alone was worth it for me. Oh, and when McNulty is a hilarious, drunken fuck-up.

mattttt, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:14 (nineteen years ago)

I am serious! Kima and Omar might be my favorite characters.

Jordan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:17 (nineteen years ago)

he totally gave me a reason for never having to watch it again.

And me for nevern having to watch it in the first place! Because, yes, "guy shows" make my pussy hurt.

Jenny, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:24 (nineteen years ago)

Do "guy shows" make your pussy hurt?

Haha, Kenan as every fratboy jock fuck ever.

dan m, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:25 (nineteen years ago)

The Wire is good.

The episodes of Andy Barker I saw were pretty mediocre. Deserving of cancellation. Sorry bros.

n/a, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:26 (nineteen years ago)

2x, even though I laughed really, really hard at one joke the one time I actually watched it.

dan m, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:27 (nineteen years ago)

Did you ever read any of Richard Price's novels, John? The Wire is very much in the same style (Price even wrote a few episodes this past season).

Eazy, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:27 (nineteen years ago)

I think the reason "The Wire" isn't a "guy show" is that it's pretty committed to realism, as far as I can tell. There are guns and drugs and bad dealings, but they aren't treated as some kind of macho fantasy world.

Of course, it's still a tv show, so the characters still talk like fictional characters with professional dialogue writers, and a lot of the cops follow the standard cop show character types. What makes it worth watching are the "bad guys," who are treated as real people with understandable motives instead of representations of pure evil or whatever. The criminals seem more realistic than the cops, oddly enough, though I don't claim any in-depth knowledge of Baltimore's crime scene so what do I know.

Also John, since you're into accents, the main "good guy" on The Wire is a British dude playing an American, very well (I had no idea he was British until I found out online).

n/a, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:31 (nineteen years ago)

Oh, I didn't know that Eazy, I can totally see it though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Price

Jordan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:32 (nineteen years ago)

It was pretty funny when he did that horrible Britishes accent in the brothel episode!

Jordan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:33 (nineteen years ago)

But anyways, I don't feel a need to "convince" John to watch The Wire. He's right, there's way too much stuff out there to try and watch everything. I'm having fun watching Twin Peaks, but our video store is renting it out in 2-DVD sets, with an average of four episodes on each disc. You can have each 2-DVD set for two days, which means you have to watch like 7 hours of TV in two days to get it back in time.

n/a, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:33 (nineteen years ago)

Ha ha, yeah, a Britisher doing an impression of an American doing a bad British accent, I had forgotten about that.

n/a, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:34 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, it's an impressive feat of speech, really, because he does it so well. I was expecting him to pull out his perfect and authentic British accent, but no, it was much better than that. Spot on.

kenan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:35 (nineteen years ago)

I kept expecting that he would whip out a perfect accent and say he had been practicing or something, just as wink wink thing for the actor, but it would have been way out of character for the show.

xpost!

Jordan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:36 (nineteen years ago)

There was an interesting article in the NY Times last week about how lots of British dudes and gals are getting lead roles in TV shows now (House, etc.) in part because they aren't botoxed.

I haven't seen the most recent Wire season, but they had episodes by all of these major urban-realism writers (Price, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos).

Eazy, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:36 (nineteen years ago)

Yup yup. It's a great show, John.

KitCat, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:39 (nineteen years ago)

interesting

chicago kevin, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:40 (nineteen years ago)

Wow, I was going to say something snarky about Google Earth not working on Macs, but I guess it does now.

dan m, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:45 (nineteen years ago)

wow, thanks. I just loaded it into google earth, and it's wild. It's like, holy shit there's a whole country on fire!

kenan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:47 (nineteen years ago)

google earth has worked on macs for, like, more than a year!

kenan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:47 (nineteen years ago)

I went to Google Maps by mistake and found Darfur, Minnesota.

Eazy, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:48 (nineteen years ago)

I have no reason to use it, though.

dan m, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:51 (nineteen years ago)

oddly enough, I usually don't, but today I'm actually using it for work. Grabbing screenshots of aerial shots and angled shots of 3d buildings and stuff. It's fun.

kenan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:53 (nineteen years ago)

At ik veronderstel ilx mijn vorige post, maar wie aan Imus luistert? Gepensioneerden? Ik weet werkelijk wie niet zijn markt is.

kenan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:58 (nineteen years ago)

Eat did I assume ilx my previous mail, but which listens to Imus? Gepensioneerden? I weet really which are not its market.

kenan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 18:59 (nineteen years ago)

Eet ik veronderstelde ilx mijn vorige post, maar die aan Imus luistert? Gepensioneerden? I weet werkelijk wat niet zijn markt zijn.

kenan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 19:00 (nineteen years ago)

Do I eat assumed ilx my previous mail, but listens that to Imus? Gepensioneerden? I weet really what is not its market.

kenan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 19:00 (nineteen years ago)

That's english to dutch back and forth twice.

kenan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 19:01 (nineteen years ago)

I'm all alone here, aren't I?

kenan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 19:03 (nineteen years ago)

I'm into accents?

I get Richard Price confused with Richard Powers and Richard Ford. Not with artist Richard Prince, though. Price is the dude that wrote Clockers, I'm guessing? Actually, I haven't read anything by any of them.

jaymc, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 19:11 (nineteen years ago)


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