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I'm going to start this thread with a question. Does anyone think that eventually, television will eventually have more "star power" than movies? Virtually half the cast of Luck, especially the leads Hoffman and Nolte, are way more known as film actors.

Probably. Television has far more opportunities for greatness with traditional narratives than film just because of the length issue and those sorts of stories must seem really attractive to some actors.

If it isn't the case already, I'm sure some of the networks will soon have the kind of money to throw around the studios have. Hell, all of the major networks (sans CBS) are sister companies of major studios, same with the cable networks.

Definitely and even with less than 100 mil budgets you have stuff like Breaking Bad which is as cinematic as you can get while telling a straightforward story.

It's not a coincidence that the previous decade gave us the best television has ever had to offer, while American movies became increasingly juvenile and spectacle-driven. I can't imagine this trend is going to reverse itself anytime soon, and I'm sure ambitious actors are taking note.

Otherwise, what's going on with HBO at the moment? Is anyone on this board still watching Treme or Boardwalk Empire? I couldn't finish the first season of either show, and it doesn't seem as though they've caught on with the public. Aside from Luck I don't think there's anything on the network that catches my interest.

ABC cancels cross-dressing sitcom "Work It" after two episodes.

I knew the GLAAD protest was going to be a waste of time. This show had "cancelled after two episodes" written all over it.

In my endless quest for TV shows to keep on as background noise I watched the first few episodes of Alcatraz. The premise is already turning into another convoluted Lost-type scenario, but I like Jorge Garcia enough to stick around. Although the idea behind the show - that these convicts who have been imprisoned for years or decades would, upon gaining freedom, just revert back to their criminal behavior - makes me sort of uneasy.

My favorite new discovery is "Storage Wars" on A&E.

To fans of Battlestar Galactica, does Caprica in any way live up to the original? I'm making my way through BG right now and it's among the best series I've seen.

Murdoch wrote:To fans of Battlestar Galactica, does Caprica in any way live up to the original? I'm making my way through BG right now and it's among the best series I've seen.

I never watched BSG, but I absolutely loved Caprica. Very much a thinking man's type of sci-fi show, with no easy plot points. Every second of the show is about some larger theme and the writing was always excellent.

Good to hear, I'll be checking it out.

edit: And apologies for posting this in this thread, I thought Caprica was still on the air, turns out I was way off.

Good popcorn TV. I used to have a really good personal Olivia Wilde story but then she got super famous and I had to quit telling it

I can't even imagine what story that could be

Wow, so I just watched the entire first season of Dave's Old Porn in one evening, and it is the best thing on TV right now that you haven't even heard of. It's on Showtime, and is a MST3K-style riff-fest of '70s-'80s porn films created by and starring the one-liner machine Dave Attell and a guest comedian for each episode, sitting on a red couch (that is often used as a censor bar by some clever editing) and riffing on the porn clips presented to them. Some notes: The best episode stars three seperate current-era porn stars (Belladonna being the highlight) in lieu of a comedian - they seem genuinely tickled by Dave's jokes, and offer an interesting perspective on the material - and the one mistake the show makes is offering episodes with male guest comedians. I realize that might sound like a strange statement considering the male-dominated comedy industry, but the show really hits its heights with a female perspective (Whitney Cummings is great in the pilot, and Chelsea Handler is tolerable for the first time ever in her ep) to expand the material's scope. The show has already been picked up for a second season, so it isn't going anywhere - but watch it, I think you may be pleasantly surprised.

RobertAltman wrote:Last night's Eastbound and Down is easily the most absurd episode so far, thanks to the last five minutes.

Agreed, though I didn't really think that was a bad thing in terms of comedic value. In fact, I think the show is best when they ramp-up the absurdity while in the US location. Plus, whenever Ashley Schaeffer/Ferrell is on the show, things tend to get mighty weird (I can feel it... in my pluhhhhhms). Oddly though, I think the increased realism in how they decided to handle KFP's unbalanced ego is probably why I enjoyed the 2nd season so much, so maybe I'm too ambivalent on the topic to make a good judgement on what exactly is the right level of absurdity to make the show successful.

Also, the episode included this great line: "I've got something for you. It's a Friends DVD. Season 6, Criterion Collections"

That may have replaced Alex's (Elisha Cuthbert) Criterion Collection shout-out on Happy Ending as the most hilarious Criterion Collection-related reference on TV last week. Though, if I'm being completely honest, I must admit that I would not hesitate in buying a Criterion Collection edition of Clueless, so maybe I'm not the best judge on this topic also.

flyonthewall2983 wrote:Any thoughts on Luck so far?

I thought last night's episode was probably the least cinematic (though, the featured race was filmed and edited quite well), but also the most satisfying in terms of advancing the narrative. I've enjoyed the first few episodes, but it's also been difficult to sustain much enthusiasm for the show through the first stretch since it often seems to be stuck in neutral at times, without much indication of what direction it will take. I find the show builds less momentum than previous efforts from Milch (and I'm even including John from Cincinnati in that category, just because it was so utterly beguiling in terms of actually existing on TV) and a great deal of that has to do with the fact that they allow their actors so much time to chew scenery, which kind of makes the atmosphere interesting, but leaves the narrative in stasis. It's a strange frustration for me, considering how much I enjoy Milch, Mann, and probably 90% of the actors they've selected for the series, but I'm less intrigued by this effort than I expected. It's also strange to find a series where the central subject-matter is gambling, yet the scenes involving gambling really seem to lack much tension, or at least lack any sort of tension where I find myself transfixed by my attachment to a specific outcome taking place. Perhaps that's due to the fact that we haven't really witnessed the outcome of a devastating loss yet, but I'm not even sure I would be more engaged after any of the central characters were frustrated by finishing out-of-the-money. Maybe it's also because the Kind and Dunn characters are slightly grating and they chew up so much of the screen-time. On the other hand, I never thought I would see Dawson's mom take part in a threesome, so there's that to consider among the show's preliminary accomplishments 8-[ .

Werner Herzog's four part series On Death Row begins tonight on Investigation Discovery.

The essence of the Maury Show perfectly distilled to 49 seconds (NSFW) I may or may not have watched this like five times in a row

My heart will always belong to his sadistic torture sessions

domino harvey wrote:The essence of the Maury Show

Larry David has it covered

Smash is coming back for a 2nd season on NBC.

mfunk9786 wrote:In case anyone was wondering what happened to Eric Forman's older sister Laurie...

That's not all that surprising. She's had a few legal issues over the past few years.

Upcoming Louis Theroux documentary titles (and one synopsis) have been revealed:

Porn 2.0: Travelling to LA, Louis Theroux revisits porn stars and their industry now in crisis, its profits slashed due to competition from free pirated porn on the web.

Extreme Love: Autism

Extreme Love: Dementia