The HBO Original Series Thread

Great thread. I'll really have to think about this. I will say that Sex and the City is pretty underrated. I defended it one of the earlier threads but I may say more later.

How much of the Wire have you seen? It gets better as a whole, exponentially, with each season. After I saw season 1 I thought "Not mind blowing, but pretty great." By the end of season 4, I knew it was the perfectest thing ever.

1. The Wire - The best thing in the history of ever.
2. Carnivale - One of my favourite genre shows of all time and one of the only times I've ever seen a show really nail the landing. Watching both seasons back to back reveals just how well it was thought out.
3. The Sopranos - Not much to be said here, except that the show was never quite the same for me after Nancy Marchand died.
4. Deadwood - A breathtaking achievement, and I have yet to see the final season.
5. Oz - Three great seasons of drama, followed by two terrible seasons of soap opera
6. Six Feet Under - Not to say that it's bad, just my least favourite. Stopped watching about four seasons in.

Haven't seen Rome, Big Love, True Blood or John from Cincinatti - and since none of them look that apealing, I'm not sure I really intend to.

True Blood is very good, very pulpy fun. Fans of Supernatural will get a kick out of it. It's a lot more than Titty Twilight.

I think John from Cincinatti is probably the most underrated and underappreciated show in HBO's history, but that's because I worship the ground David Milch walks on. There are some truly stunning moments in that show. Plus, Garrett Dillahunt as a good guy!

I haven't seen a lot of Big Love, but what I've seen, I really, really enjoyed. There's an episode from the third season where the family takes a road trip to Upstate New York that's quite astonishing.

I was disappointed in viewers over John From Cincinnati - viewers will line up to be strung along by unresolved plots for SEASONS on any old genre show, but couldn't give John more than ten episodes to find its footing. I never knew what was going on but I was always intrigued and entertained and the dialogue was crackling and quotable. Didn't hurt that the cast (give or take a child non-actor) was kind of awesome.

I haven't seen a lot of the HBO series in full (only Wire, Sopranos, and Six Feet Under) but I just want to say that David and Keith in Six Feet Under is probably the best portrayal of a functional, healthy, and REAL relationship in the history of TV AND movies. They get into shit, they fight, but they work through it because they love each other, and it never feels phony or sugar-coated. They pretty much single-handedly kept me watching through the end.

And the *possible spoiler?* episode with the crackhead *possible spoiler?* was one of the scariest things I've ever seen on television.

Stringer and Avon on the balcony in season 3 might be the greatest scene in the history of HBO. But that's a whole different topic.

No love for LARRY SANDERS? To me it's the only one that comes close to THE WIRE.

DREAM ON is another favorite, if only for the casting masterstroke that was Brian Benben.

Larry Sanders is great, and incredibly influential. It's a shame they haven't released the complete series on DVD.

Patrick, you need to watch Deadwood asap. It takes a bit to get acclimated to the theatricality of the dialogue (for me it was very similar to reading Shakespeare, where I'd have to read every line in Act One three times, but would rapidly develop an "ear" for it), but it really builds on itself over time, growing a phenomenal ensemble cast around a lead performance as ferocious and towering as anything Gandolfini did. It can be as brutal and violent as anything you'll encounter, but there's a beating heart beneath the blood and grime that The Wire or certainly The Sopranos (great as they are) can't match. It's earlier cancellation means it can't match The Wire in scope and completeness, but there's still 36 of the greatest hours of television ever to work with.

I think a lot of it has to do with the rights. When they released "Not Just The Best of..." there were a number of articles about it. I can't for the life of me remember any of it, though.

Y'all are forgetting the incredible In Treatment.

That's because In Treatment is too much of a time commitment for too little reward.

Disagree. I think its an incredibly awarding whole season of show as you watch the patients and Byrne change and grow through the weekly sessions, and the acting is all top-notch.

Specifically, I believe the issue is music rights. So many musical guests from various record labels appeared, and I think those companies are wanting action on the DVD sales. That's just my guess, though.

And let me be the guy that says Eastbound & Down doesn't get enough love. That show is awesome.

Everyone should pick up that Not Just The Best of Larry Sanders box set. Such a great show and those interviews are UNBELIEVABLE.

I love this show. I went out for my birthday last year and a couple of my buddies wouldn't stop raving about it. Woke up hung over the next morning and watched the whole season in one sitting On Demand. Kenny Powers miraculously cured my hangover.

I throw the ball fast as fuck.

Can't wait for the second season. They've just now starting to release details about it. 8 episodes, shot outside the US, most of the cast not returning. I don't know where they're taking the story but I have complete and total faith in those guys.

1. The Wire
2. Everything else
Last. Deadwood

I think Deadwood is a wonderfully acted, mostly well written show (there are some episodes that feature some god awful, terrible writing) with absolutely no sense of overall story. It just meanders. Maybe that's the point, so that the viewer feels as stuck in the town as the residents. But what does it say about the show that I'd rather be stuck in Baltimore for five seasons? Ugh. And by the end of the series, things really seem to be falling apart and they clearly don't have a handle on the material. I really don't get why fans get so indignant about it ending. If it ended after the first season, I could understand.

Parker, let's meet up in real life. Definitely not so I murder you violently. No, not for that at all.

Or, we could meet in real life and you could rationally try to explain to me why I'm wrong. And I would do the same to you.

Or, we could just try to do that here.

I've only ranked the shows I've seen every episode of...

01. The Larry Sanders Show
02. The Sopranos
03. Six Feet Under
04. The Wire
05. Deadwood
06. Rome
07. Big Love
08. Curb Your Enthusiasm
09. Eastbound & Down
10. Carnivàle
11. Flight Of The Conchords
12. True Blood
13. Sex And The City
14. Entourage
15. Extras
16. John From Cincinnati

I can see where you're coming from on this. I just powered through all three seasons on Netflix and while there's a lot to love about Deadwood, the series wasn't without it's flaws. That third season seemed confused as fuck. Brian Cox is a great example. Awesome, charismatic personality that did the absolutely nothing and contributed very little to the overall story. What was the most he contributed to the plot, give Hearst a back rub? I also thought they pussied out with Hearst at the end, but that conversation contains too many spoilers and will be saved for another time.

Warts and all though, the show was still better than the majority of shit out there. The writing and dialogue was so good, I dare anyone not to watch 3 episode in a row and spend the whole next day talking like that, hoople-headed cocksucker!

Haven't checked the HBO site, but where did you get this info? The shot outside the US part sounds intriguing. I wonder how they can write that without it feeling jarring.

http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2010...up-season.html

I maintain that in almost a decade of "uncomfortable comedy," most of it inspired by the original BBC Office, EASTBOUND AND DOWN is the only thing that comes close to the greatness of Gervasis' show. Time's gonna tell on that one.

That's not story, though. What you're talking about is theme. And that's interesting enough to hold my attention at first, but Deadwood has a lot of characters and is too interested in pushing that subtext then to give them anything interesting to do. And then it piles on MORE characters (like in season 2, with the introduction of the wife and the kid) that never go anywhere (in so much that they just kill off the kid for cheap drama).

The Wire has a lot of characters too. But it manages to give them all something to do, things to care about, directions to go in and it develops arcs for almost all of them. Arcs that don't involve them simply waiting around and talking about what they're going to do. Deadwood is all planning and scheming with no payoff.

The town goes from a place without law to holding its own elections and actively campaigning for statehood (an effort that requires every character on the show, whether they know it or not) and legitimacy. How is that not story?

The flipside of that is no character in The Wire is as layered as Francis Wolcott, or George Hearst, or Trixie, much less, say, Al Swearengen and the reason is, if I'm understanding you correctly, the way The Wire prioritizes what you'd call "story". Which is in no way a criticism of The Wire, but it'd be like criticizing David Lynch for lack of three act structure or The Sopranos for portraying unlikeable characters.

One problem is that what you seem to be considering "payoff" is kind of in direct contradiction with the show itself, which is about a natural progression. The Wire has big payoffs because the character arcs are molded on greek tragedy but the internal worlds in Deadwood characters are a whole different species. See Al Swearengen in ep1 and see him in the "series" finale and he's changed more than any character in 5 seasons of The Wire and what's great about his "arc" is that he didn't change because of one event*, but as a progression as natural to him, episode by episode, as the town's progress towards civilization.

Another way to argue here would be to say that to add those things you criticize the series for not having would be in detriment of that which a lot of us, or me at least, praise the series for. Milch's "weakness" for tangents is kind of precisely what makes Deadwood, well, Deadwood.

I would also question the characterization of characters that didn't go anywhere. I think the very idea of Martha and Seth, despite being about as close as a "lied agreed upon" version of a marriage as can be, sticking in together, to find something in light of the kid's death is enough of a "somewhere" to say they didn't go anywhere. And considering the series was planned for 4 years, its unfair to hold unfinished plotlines (see Theatre) as examples. Had the series ended after one season, the Cy/Joan drama could've been seen just like that, but without it we'd have no setup for the Wolcott/Chez Ami/Something Very Expensive thing. And seguing from that, how is that not payoff, or something interesting to do? Not just that event itself, but the following one, the meeting and all?

*You might say gleet, but there's hints of later Al earlier than the Gleet ep and he's still early Al in several eps following le gleetnessé.

1. Deadwood
2. The Sopranos
3. Carnivale
4. The Wire (only finished the first 3 seasons, so this might move up.)
5. Rome
6. Six Feet Under
7. Reserved possibly for Boardwalk Empire
8. Reserved possibly for Treme'
9. Reserved possibly for A Game of Thrones
10. Reserved possibly for the Armando Iannucci show.

1. The Wire
2. Deadwood
3. Rome
4. The Sopranos
5. Eastbound and Down
6. Big Love

Haven't seen anything else...

EDIT: As for Deadwood vs The Wire, I loved Deadwood, but The Wire is simply above it. I can totally understand why some like it more, but to me, The Wire is the definitive television series ever produced, where each elements becomes a whole so much greater than their initial value, and thus exposing the true character from the series; Baltimore itself.

Huge Mr. Show and Curb Your Enthusiasm fan here.

I'm kind of ashamed to admit I haven't seen many of the dramas despite the praise, but they're too damn expensive on DVD and I don't have television at my house, let alone HBO.
No doubt Deadwood becomes great but I really disliked the pilot. I'm far from a prude but the profanity seemed excessive as fuck and didn't fit in a western for me.
The only others I've watched are a handful of Sopranos and episodes of OZ.

I could argue that The Sopranos is the "definitive television series" because it contains all the elements that one could namedrop when thinking of a television series, whether drama or comedy, from all the way back to the beginning: character catchphrases, recurrent situations, episode-ending endings as well as an episodic nature, except it somehow spins them all to work thematically, rather than merely function as part of the formula. The catchphrases are either natural in the moment and a sort of satire of what is being portrayed (what you gonna do?) or they help show a character's transformation (Tony-into-Livia via "poor you" and its "you go about in pity for yourself" variation). The recurrent situations become thematic, etc.

The Wire, on the other hand, refused to play by "television rules" and is "something else". It's interesting because, even though it began as a way of showing the falsehood in all other "police procedurals", it sticks to itself so thoroughly that even the novel and 13-hour movie-seasons/66-hour movie characterizations come up lacking. I've seen the term post-television be used to refer to it and considering how, even though it was canonized the moment it ended, every day those of us that watched it as it aired become the "minority", I think it'll be progressively seen less as "television" as time passes.

I never really gave a fuck about The Sopranos... it was barely saved by the (great) last episodes, but the last years weren't the first. Kinda like BSG, but a better ending streak.

Is there a way to ban oneself from a thread? This one's gonna break me.

Don't forget Luck!

Don't be a damned pussy.

And damn do I look forward to A Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire.

Shout! Factory plans to release "The Larry Sanders Show" the complete series this year:

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Lar...VD-Plans/13400

Agreed.

Shout has a real hit and miss record regarding music rights, though.

Typically Monday mornings are for apologizing for the weekend's transgressions, I'll start now by admitting I'm an unabashed Arliss fan.

I completely forgot Hung. I liked this much more than I expected.

Oh, hell yes. Now my low-fi bootleg versions can finally go by the wayside (as long as they don't butcher the audio/music. It would suck if they've just "creatively" cut around it, as so many episodes have jokes/plotlines revolving around the music).

Also, if I'm ranking just off the top of my head (and I so desperately want to separate dramas from comedies... but I'll try to do it properly):

1. The Wire
2. The Larry Sanders Show
3. Deadwood
4. Mr. Show
5. Curb Your Enthusiasm
6. Carnivale
7. Extras
8. Entourage

ETA: I'm biding my time before I actually try to give Sopranos a chance. I can appreciate it's strengths, but the "cult" surrounding it just put me off of it something fierce. I got so sick of the fascination with repugnant and obnoxious Italian-American/guido caricatures and the "who's a-gonna get whacked this week?!" routine that I never could get into it.

That fascination repulsed David Chase, too.