Week to Week

"We give ourselves in imagination to the reality of another world. We take joy in respecting its integrity. We treasure its difference. And that lifts us up as human beings. And it's a wonderful thing to do every week. You know I feel privilege to participate in a sacrament. And uh, don't tell the bosses, but I'd do it for nothing."

                        

                                                    -David Milch

How do you rank TV shows? Honest question. What if a series has one A+ season and the rest of the seasons are sub par? Are we ranking that one season or does the quality of the whole suffer, thus dragging it down? 

In the case of the latter, The Simpsons, The X-Files, True Detective, Twin Peaks, and Seinfeld are all out of the running for the top 10. Their GPA isn't quite a 4.0 compared to classmates like The Leftovers or Breaking Bad. 

In the case of the former, True Detective and Twin Peaks skyrocket to the top because of how great Season One and The Return were. Because of season 2, 3 and Night Country and seasons 1 & 2 of Peaks, their ranking is affected. The only real slogs of those two shows being Night Country for TD and everything after the 'reveal of the murderer' in the middle of season 2 of Twin Peaks. It is even more complicated in the case of Twin Peaks. If we were to rank seasons of TV shows individually, The Return would be numero uno on this list. When it aired on Showtime, it was billed as a 'Limited Event Series.' So it can just as easily sneak into and dominate a list for miniseries. 

The four season run of Succession brought many of these questions into focus. Jesse Armstrong made the decision to go out on top before the show got tiresome. Barry ended it's four season run the same year. Atlanta released it's two final seasons in the same year, both superb. As of this writing, The Righteous Gemstones announced it will be ending after it's fourth season concludes later this year. You never want to see a TV show you love outlast its welcome. A recent example being Game of Thrones. A show which managed to take all of the good story and character writing in its first four seasons and incinerate it all in its last three seasons. Especially the notorious season 8. The one that hits closest to home is The Simpsons. You strike while the iron is hot and get out. Or else you end up with a sober Barney Gumble. 

Some television shows don't even get a chance to wear out their welcome. Mindhunter is the most recent example that comes to mind. Only two seasons and then nada. If it meant Fincher trading in the existence of Mank for another season, I'll take it. 

The rewatchability of a show is another big factor. How many times do I return to it. Therein lies the big three pieces of comfort food- The Simpsons, Seinfeld and MST3K.  

At the end of the day, it's a little bit of science and a lot of subjectivity. If you know me, truly know me, you'll understand why The Wonder Years is in the top ten. 

There are some other welcome additions. Columbo being the recent "where have you been all my life?" piece of media. Ditto for Peep Show. Revisiting Season 1 of Miami Vice has brought it up in the rankings. There's some that just miss the cut: Jackass, Chappelle's Show, The Office, Black Summer, Barry, Kids In the Hall, The Thick of It, Brass Eye, Eastbound and Down, The Righteous Gemstones, Severance. 

The last TV list I published had The Wire as the king. It's since been dethroned by not one but five shows. If we're talking about the long form narrative television show, The Sopranos is the one I've seen the most at 5 times. I've listened to multiple podcasts, read The Sopranos Sessions cover to cover, and I still come away with new interpretations upon each rewatch. There's an overarching and well digested influence of GoodFellas. There's an absurdist element, especially in the early seasons where season long narrative arcs have an unpredictable element come in. Then you have Tony himself who reads like Raskalnikov from Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. We are not use to seeing our heroes commit crimes. The College episode of The Sopranos is when we see Tony commit murder. A crucial aspect of Dostoyevsky's Raskalnikov as with Tony Sopranos is both the book and TV show continue to remind us of their heroic qualities. He may have strangled a man with his bare hands, but he's providing for Carmela, helping out AJ, and looking out for Meadow. One of the questions the show poses is: Does Tony feel guilty for his actions or is Tony's moral crisis comparable to the one us regular people go through? Can him or any of these characters get off the path they chose or will they continue to circle the drain? Add a healthy dose of Lynch and you got the formula for a show I continue to come back to.

Now if we're looking at weak spots in The Sopranos, it oddly comes sandwiched between the best episodes. From episode 11 of Season 5 thru episode 3 of Season 6A is my favorite stretch of the show. It then takes a downturn in quality not seen since the Christopher Columbus episode of Season 4. It then picks back up in quality with the second part of Season 6. The last nine episodes being astounding. 

***

When prestige television is discussed, three names are inevitably mentioned. The three Davids: Chase, Simon and Milch. While Chase and Simon have found their series top many a list of Greatest TV Shows of All Time, Milch's creation has become the lump of gold encased in the mound of coal, hidden away for all to discover it. The world of The Sopranos is one where the characters have lived through the experience of having built a social order that has become so transparent as to not even be recognizable. They are back to being individuals in a wilderness subscribed by institutions, capitalism and mass media. In the Pilot, Tony Soprano tells his therapist, Jennifer Melfi, "It's good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that and I know. But lately, I'm getting the feeling I came in at the end. The best is over."  The Sopranos and The Wire are shows about how people and situations never change, about how the system has rigged to make it, if not impossible to change, at least so difficult that nobody would ever want to. Deadwood is about the birth of something, so that means everything is always in flux. Amongst the grit, grime, and cynicism, there are signs of hope and humanism. It's a foul-mouthed Shakespearean masterpiece and any hooplehead cocksucker would say different. My obsession with it might as well proclaim the Summer of 2025 as The Summer of Deadwood since I've been devouring every connected piece of media to the show from David Milch's autobiography, Matt Zoller Seitz's The Deadwood Bible, podcasts, think pieces, YouTube reviews, etc. As of this writing, it is my favorite long form narrative drama. Only one show outranks it...

***

Since were on the point of strong seasons, any conversation about the Simpsons will inevitably come to this question: when was the golden age of the show?

Let's break this down by showrunner:

Season 1 and 2- Matt Groening, James L. Brooks, Sam Simon

Season 3 and 4- Al Jean and Mike Reis

Season 5 and 6- David Merkin

Season 7 and 8- Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein

Season 9, 10, 11 and 12- Mike Scully

Al Jean returns after Scully and takes over the bulk of what came after season 12. 

The general consensus is Season 3 thru 8. The inclusion of 1, 2 and 9 is when it gets tricky. Personally, I would include them. Even though 9 includes the controversial Principal and the Pauper, an episode Harry Shearer has gone on record saying it betrays the audience who've come to love this character, it's littered with classic episodes. But then something happened. The characters we loved started to change. And it wasn't just Principal Skinner. The innocence and sweetness was traded out for the very thing it's competitors like Family Guy used: cynicism. The later seasons became a collection of jokes with no genuine character moments. The writers during the golden age understood that in order to have episodes like Marge Vs. the Monorail, you need episodes like Marge Be Not Proud. The peaks didn't matter because there were no valleys. 

Enough talk. Here's the list. Check it out. It's like a party is in my mouth and everyone is invited! 

TOP TEN

1. The Simpsons (1989- Present) (specifically 1989- 1997) 

2. Deadwood (2004- 2006 + The Movie)

3. The Sopranos (1999- 2007)

4. Lost (2004- 2010)

5. Breaking Bad (2008- 2013)

6. The Wire (2002- 2008)

7. Seinfeld (1989- 1998)

8. The Twilight Zone (1959- 1964)

9. Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988- 1999) 

10. The Wonder Years (1988- 1993)

11. The X-Files (1993- 2002, 2007) (Specifically 1993- 1999) (Location shooting doesn't factor into the quality of a show. But after they moved the show from Vancouver to Los Angeles there was a decline in quality that was only magnified after Duchovny's departure in Season 8. Season 6 had a better ratio of good to bad episodes so I consider it the last good season.)

12. Twin Peaks (1990- 2017) (after rewatching Seasons 1 and 2, I maintain the opinion of had this been a list of ranked seasons, The Return puts Twin Peaks in the top 3. Season 2 drags it down to just missing the top ten.) 

13. The Leftovers (2014- 2017)

14. Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000- 2024) (It doesn't really take off until the Season 2 episode The Doll.  After this, it is fairly consistent. There are dips in quality but not bad enough to rule out an entire season as being lackluster.)

15. At the Movies with Siskel and Ebert (1986- 1999)

16. Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969- 1974)

17. Tales From the Crypt (1989- 1996)

18. True Detective (2014- Present) (Seasons 1-3, icksnay on the Night Country)

19. Mad Men (2007- 2013)

20. Monday Night Raw (1993- Present) (the Attitude era thru the Ruthless Aggression era; 1997- 2005)

21. Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1990- 1996) (Seasons 1 thru 4. Some of season 5 and none of the revival bullshit)

22. Mindhunter (2017- 2019)

23. Mr. Show (1995- 1998)

24. Columbo (1968- 1975)

25. Freaks and Geeks (1998- 1999)

26. Six Feet Under (2001- 2005)

27. Better Call Saul (2015- 2022)

28. Succession (2018- 2023)

29. Arrested Development (2004- 2006) (I disregard the revival)

30. Batman: The Animated Series (1992- 1995)

31. Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! (2007- 2010)

32. Frasier (1993-2004) (Specifically 1993-2000)

33. Justified (2010- 2015)

34. The Adventures of Pete and Pete (1991- 1996)

35. The Bear (2022- Present)

36. AtlantA (2016- 2022)

37. Married With Children (1987- 1997) (specifically 1987- 1993)

38. Miami Vice (1984-1989) (Specifically 1984- 1986)

39. The Ren and Stimpy Show (1991- 1995)

40. Peep Show (2003- 2015)

41. Oz (1997- 2003)

42. Hannibal (2013- 2015)

43. Veep (2012- 2019)

44. Euphoria (2019- Present + Trouble Don't Last Always and Sea Blob)

45. The Outer Limits (1963- 1965)

46. Cheers (1982- 1993)

47. The Rehearsal (2022- )

48. The Knick (2014- 2015)

49. Boardwalk Empire (2010- 2014)

50. Parts Unknown (2013- 2018)

No Country For Old Men

In an interview with Megan Abbott, Joel and Ethan Coen mentioned one of the deciding factors to adapt No Country For Old Men was just how cinematic it was for a book. The book starting out as a screenplay and filled out into a full-length novel is what lends itself to being adapted for the screen so well. It takes place in the heart of America through hotels, gas stations and diners. Common places where common people mingle. These transitory places are given spatial relationships through Deakin's beautifully photographed Texas horizons. 

The fates of the three characters in the novel and the film conclude fairly similarly. Though the book adds depth to each of them. 

ED TOM BELL

In the opening monologue, Ed Tom Bell tells us his moral principle. You gotta put your soul at hazard to be a part of this world. He then says he is not willing to do this. He is a man who is always running. This gives him sympathy for Llewlyn Moss who too is on the run. During World War II, he abandoned his troop and they all died while he got a medal. Coming off this, he became "sheriff of this town when I was 24 years old." 

There is an idea of Ars Moriendi or "the good death." In the case of Bell, he should have stayed with his troop in France as the Germans were advancing on his position and died. In the book, Llewelyn Moss achieves "the good death" by dying to protect an innocent girl. Bell knows what he is supposed to do but he ends up choosing to save himself. 

Bell is a great detective because of his intuition. He is able to put together a story better than anybody. So when his intuition says "hey man you better not stick around this place too much longer or you will die," he listens. This intuition undermines the archetype of 'the brave lawman who fights the bad guy and achieves a noble death.' 

Ed Tom Bell's unraveling is the quiet heart of the novel's devastation. McCarthy methodically strips him of every illusion, like pealing back the layers of sun- bleached paint to reveal the rot underneath. His use of language shifts- from folksy, rambling monologues full of homespun wisdom to fractured, hesitant confessions, as if each word is a stone he's forced to carry. 

What chills me to the bone is how Bell's resignation mirrors our own complicity. We want him to fight, to be the hero. But McCarthy denies us that catharsis. Instead, we're left with his dreams- those fragmented, haunting visions of his father carrying fire in the dark. He is a man who continues to finger the wound until he dies. Those repetitive, circular passages where Bell is agonizing over the 'why' of it all- we're trapped in his mind, choking on the same questions. His visit with Ellis can be seen as a microcosm of his role in the book in terms of theme. Though he doesn't dwell on his time in the war in the movie, in both mediums he talks about 'being outmatched.'

There are three things Bell does at the end which shows his obsessiveness. The first is his returning to the scene of the crime. He finds spent shell casings on the desert floor. The second is to question a kid named David De Marco at a diner. The kid being one of three who went over to Chigurh after he had been in the car accident. David lies to Bell about there being other people with him and Bell sees right through him. He goes to find the other kid who was with him at his school and ends up causing him to cry at the principal's office. Something he "wishes he could have done differently." The information gleaned from the kid providing as much as what David told him. No real leads on the whereabout of Chigurh. Just a vague description. The third thing Bell does is seek out the brother of Llewlyn Moss. "People will tell you Vietnam brought this country to its knees. But I never believed that. It was already in bad shape. Vietnam was just the icing on the cake." he tells Ed Tom. 

Finally, Ed Tom visits a Mexican man in jail who has been convicted of murdering a man and setting his car on fire. His interest in it being that on his way to the motel where Llewlyn Moss is murdered, Bell spots a car on fire. Bell believes this was act done by Chigurh. When he confronts the Mexican, he tells him he did the best he could by him and didn't think he did it. To which the Mexican laughs at him and tells him "he shot the man right between the eyes and drug him back to his car by the hair of his head and set the care on fire and burned him to grease." 

The revelation speaks to a larger haunting of Bell's mind. The resignation isn't just in the action, but in the prose itself, the way the sentences grow shorter, like a man pruning his own hope branch by branch. 

LLEWELYN MOSS

Llewyn Moss is unchanging. He is the same at the end as he was at the beginning. He is not a very reflective person but this allows him to survive as long as he did. This isn't to say he is entirely non contemplative. There is a scene in a book, right after he checks into the first motel, where he goes into town and uses some of the cash he found to go to a restaurant and order steak and wine. "He thought about his life" McCarthy writes. I don't think many writers could get away with writing so sparse and minimal a line. 

Let's look at the scene where he is in the hotel. He sits listening to the door, shotgun in one hand. He goes into the bathroom and turns the shower on. He then goes back to the door and listens again. "He realized the phone might ring and he took the receiver from the cradle and laid it on the table. He pulled back the covers and rumpled the pillows on the bed. He looked at the clock. Four forty-three. He looked at the phone lying there on the table. He picked it up and pulled the cord out of it and put it back in the cradle. Then he went over and stood at the door, his thumb on the hammer of the shotgun. He dropped to his stomach and put his ear to the space under the door. A cool wind. As if a door had opened somewhere. What have you done. What have you failed to do." The last line gives us access to Moss' subconscious. A couple lines later, McCarthy writes this, "Heart beating against the dusty carpet." He goes to the body's physiological state in his descriptions of fear. The passage prior also points to how Moss managed to survive as long as he did. He turns the shower on as a decoy to fool Chigurh. He gets the drop on him and tells Chigurh to drop the shotgun. Now at that moment, he should have shot him. This scene is a microcosm of Moss' narrative trajectory. This is the world Moss has entered into. Moss, being a Vietnam vet, knows what it is to kill a man. The principle he lives by doesn't allow him to kill an unarmed man. The way he handles this situation mimics his choosing to go back into the desert with that jug of water for the narco. 

When the Coens were looking to cast an actor to play the part of Moss, they wanted to find someone who 'looked good doing things silently'. We see Llewyn cut off the barrel of a shotgun, use the blinds and wire hangers as a means to hide the money in the vent and pull it out the other end. He is a smart and resourceful person. One of the pleasures of both the book and film is following Moss' methods of survival in a particular scene. 

In the podcast Method and Madness, Brad Kelly mentions how, in a way, by dying 'a senseless death, he prevented himself from ruining his life. Let's say he outsmarts the cartel and keeps the money. Then what? His soul is now fair game to be corrupted. Gambling, prostitutes, alcohol are all vices that befall people who luck into large sums of money. When Carla Jean finds out about him dying to protect an innocent girl at a motel, she believes Moss is cheating on her. His image through her eyes may be tainted. And yet, he dies the good death Ed Tom Bell is supposed to have died. Ed Tom is supposed to 'put his soul at hazard'. Yet he knows through intuition were he to confront the ultimate evil in the form of Chigurh, he will not survive. He retreats and all he is left with is dreams of his dead father. 

ANTON CHIGURH

When the narrative starts, Chigurh is already in custody by law enforcement. What we find out later, what is not in the movie, is why he is in custody. When he is talking to Carson in the motel, he confesses to him that he got arrested to "see if I could extricate myself by an act of will. Because I believe such a thing is possible." He explains to Carson he was at a diner and some guy asks him something "pretty hard to ignore." The text all but pointing out him asking if Chigurh was queer. Chigurh goes out into the parking lot and kills the man in front of his friends. The deputy shows up and he allows himself to be arrested. This is a reckless act.

When we see Chigurh go into the office and shoot the man who sent Carson Wells after him, he loads his gun with birdshot so he doesn't hit the glass behind him and have it rain down on the people below. He was never this concerned about collateral damage before. 

Anton Chigurh doesn't just become stronger, he is elemental. The more Bell retreats, the more Chigurh expands, until he's less a man and more a manifestation of the universe's indifference. If a man were to be measured by principle, then Chigurh becomes a better person. Now when I say better person, I mean insofar as his nature. Let's be clear, Anton Chigurh is a psychopath. His principles however transcend things like money. The whole scene with Carla Jean makes this abundantly clear. He is a man of his word. 

After he recovers the money, he brings it back to its owner, the action showing his character turn from psychopath to sociopath. He sees himself as being a larger part of something. The next time we see him, it shows how he keeps his word to Moss that he is going to kill his wife. This scene between him and Carla Jean plays out. 

"Every moment in your life is a turning and every one a choosing. Somewhere you made a choice. All followed to this. The accounting is scrupulous. The shape is drawn. No line can be erased. I had no belief in your ability to move a coin to your bidding. How could you? A person's path through the world seldom changes and even more seldom will it change abruptly. And the shape of your path was visible from the beginning." 

She sat sobbing. Shook her head. 

"Yet even though I could have told you how all of this would end I thought it not too much to ask that you have a final glimpse of hope in the world to lift your heart before the shroud drops, the darkness. Do you see?" 

"Oh God," she said. "Oh God."

"I'm sorry."

She looked at him a final time. "You don't have to," she said. "You don't. You don't."

He shook his head. "You're asking that I make myself vulnerable and that I can never do. I have only one way to live. It doesn't allow for special cases. A coin toss perhaps. In this case to small purpose. Most people don't believe there can be such a person. You can see what a problem that must be for them. How to prevail over that which you refuse to acknowledge the existence of. Do you understand? When I came into your life your life was over. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is the end. You can say that things could have turned out differently. That they could have been some other way. But what does that mean? They are not some other way. They are this way. You're asking that I second say the world. Do you see?

"Yes," she said, sobbing. "I do. I truly do."

"Good," he said. "That's good." Then he shot her. 

McCarthy starts off the next paragraph with "The car that hit Chigurh in the intersection three blocks from the house was a ten year old Buick that had run a stop sign." He breaks his arm in two places and broke some ribs. The immediate follow up to a scene demonstrating a man who lives by a code is that same man being injured by a force outside of his control. In this case, a truck driven by three high teenagers who are not paying attention. Chaos interrupts order, something even a man like Chigurh cannot overcome. 

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

The title of the book derives from a line of the Yeats poem 'Sailing to Byzantium.'

That is no country for old men. The young

In another's arms, birds in the trees,

Those dying generations-at their song,

The salmon-falls

It's a poem that explores the speaker's desire the escape the limitations of old age and physical decay by seeking spiritual transcendence in the idealized world of Byzantium. In the world set up my McCarthy, there is no Byzantium. After Ed Tom Bell visits the Mexican in jail, he monologues about this:

"These old people I talk to, if you could of told em that there would be people on the streets of our Texas towns with green hair and bones in their noses speakin a language they couldn't understand, well, they just flat out wouldn't of believed you. But what if you'd told em it was their own grandchilden? Well, all that is signs and wonders but it don't tell you how it got that way. And it don't tell you nothin' about how it's fixin' to get neither. Part of it was I always thought I could at least someway put things right and I guess I just don't feel that way no more. I don't know what I do feel like. I feel like them old people I was talkin about. Which ain't goin to get better neither. I'm bein asked to stand for somethin that I don't have the same belief in it I once did. Asked to believe in somethin I might not hold with the way I once did. That's the problem. I failed at it even when I did. Now I've seen it held to the light. Seen any number of believers fall away. I've been forced to look at it again and I've been forced to look at myself."

A good old boy named Llewyn Moss brings a jug of water to a dying Narco. He finds a satchel of money he knows belongs to the cartel but takes it anyway. A trooper deserts his buddies in the war and becomes sheriff of a town. Only to end up retreating because he is haunted by an overwhelming force of evil he can't understand or doesn't want to. What keeps me coming back to this book and this film is that out of the three characters, Anton Chigurh comes out the best. It immediately calls into question the lines that separate good and evil. 

The best movies of the 2020s, so far: CIVIL WAR

   Much like Nope and The Zone Of Interest before it, Civil War interrogates the ethics of image-making amidst tragedy. It's much less about a metaphorical Red Vs. Blue and more about the literal Red Green Blue color model; instead of getting into the specifics of the war, we follow journalists/thrillseekers documenting urban combat on a road trip to interview their fascistic President. You can easily parcel out why the war started and other details from subtle world-building nods, but it's still an incredibly vague conflict to us.

  Garland mines tension from that inexactness, insomuch as there are no easily definable Good or Bad guys, so paranoia is perpetual. He isn't playing a game of craven centrism, because that would be an attempt to appeal to both sides, which would betray the story he chose to tell. Instead, he's directly honed in on characters who think they're impartial, thus the movie reflects their worldview. Our lead, Lee, tells her devoted young fan and hopeful protegé, Jessie, after a scary encounter that it's not their job to question what they see because "Once you start asking yourself [those] questions you can't stop. So we don't. We record so other people ask. Wanna be a journalist? That's the job." Jessie internalizes this and suppresses her emotions.

  Their impartiality is what's dangerous because it erodes their humanity. Civil War asks us to examine what it means to not intervene but to stand on the inside and make moments of misery into spectacle. Every sequence we watch them duck and cover and scurry around soaring bullets all while pointing their cameras at dying people. Once the firing has stopped and they take a breather to go over their camera roll, they either frown about their shots of carnage being out of focus or get a dopamine hit out of snapping that One Perfect Shot (again, it's a shot of someone bleeding out on the sidewalk).

  One of the most powerful character moments comes toward the beginning of the third act when Lee decides to actually delete a[n admittedly beautiful but tragic] photo. From that moment on she can barely function how she's been for the first ⅔ of the movie because deleting that photo, choosing her humanity over her Art, makes all the noise she's shut out unbearably loud. In those moment she lets herself feel again.

  Garland has this great stylistic flourish throughout where, every time Lee starts to dissociate, the red, green, and blue color values in lights at the edges of the frame start to separate. It never lasts too long and he doesn't call attention to it; we'll see it start to happen, it'll cut away to a shot of something else, and when we cut back they're seemingly fine again. He does this multiple times until, at the very end, it happens to Jessie and it feels like watching her succumb to a zombie bite. This is the the note Garland ends on: us not knowing if she's ever going to be okay again. We watch her first photo, taken after this transformation, develop over the credits and it's the most fitting ending for a movie about how images are all about what we bring to them.

East and West

Last summer, I spend time in the South. The backwoods of Georgia, where Flannery O'Conner grazed peacocks and spun stories wrapped in Catholic guilt. It's time to take a trip down other paths. 

EAST

HONG KONG ACTION

Shaw Brothers, Zatoichi, Jackie Chan, CAT III, Pinky violence, John Woo, Johnnie To. These are the things you will come to expect from me during this season of sweat and sunscreen. Hong Kong has a glut of great films overflowing from three specific genres: the martial arts flick, the horror film and the heroic bloodshed movie. I'll be watching a bit of all three this summer. Blood will flow from the blade. 

WEST

I have been working on a major piece for this blog since January and hope to have it published in the fall. It concerns the Western as genre which has both peddled and later deconstructed myths that America has built itself on. The essay traces the genre from the earliest days of cinema up until Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon. In doing research, I've been able to track down a litany of films I've always wanted to get around to but couldn't because the watchlist it too fucking big. Now that I have a subject I'm chasing, the films of John Ford, Bud Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah and more have been moved up the queue. And that's not all, partner...

KEN BURNS' THE CIVIL WAR

It's a crime for someone who loves studying history to not have seen this. I watched Ken Burns' The Vietnam War last year in January and it stood out as one of the best things I saw that year. The 20th century remains the most fascinating to me, particularly the 60s and 70s. So this historical nectar has eluded me. 

DEADWOOD

During the 'Golden Age of Television', where once The Sopranos broke open the door, television had become a respectable medium for longform storytelling, there were three shows considered gold standards at HBO which at one point were all on at the same time: The Sopranos, The Wire and Deadwood. Both Sopranos and The Wire were given their flowers in countless Best TV Shows lists. Deadwood sometimes gets the short straw. Canceled prematurely after only three seasons, the show's fans are as die hard as they come. I've seen the show once and I plan on watching it a second time. 

The ensemble remains unmatched: Ian McShane, Timothy Olyphant, Robin Weigert, Molly Parker, Brad Dourif, Powers Boothe, Keith Carradine, John Hawkes, Kim Dickens, Paula Malcomson, William Sanderson, Garrett Dillahunt, Jeffrey Jones, Dayton Callie. And that's just the core cast. Each character acts as an analog to a type of American who emerged out of this experiment we call the United States. 

AND TWO BARE BREASTS

Besides Action and Comedy, there's another genre I am drawn to watch during the summer- sexploitation. Andy Sidaris, Joe Sarno, Doris Wishman and the big, busty one...

RUSS MEYER

I've been sitting on Severin's recent restorations of Russ Meyer's films. Like Bennett Media's reason for not watching these during the frigid month of February, I have put these off for this special occasion.