A Great Book

...will be written about HBO at some point. I just finished the 2nd season of Deadwood and the emotional experience of the finale is so much more intense and heavy than anything I've seen in the theater in a long while. The depth and richness of several of these HBO shows - The Sopranos, The Wire, and Deadwood - are on a completely different planet than the other work out there. How this is possible, I don't know. Sopranos was created by a career TV writer who wasn't particularly well known. The Wire, a lifelong labor of love by a journalist-turned author-turned tv showrunner. Deadwood was created by a giant in the tv landscape, but years after the other two. Hung has the potential to be considered a small side example, along with the best years of Entourage, and Sex in the City. I've never seen an episode of Six Feet Under, but by all accounts, it probably belongs in the first category. These shows are the great American Novel of our generation. These shows are what Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Faulkner were to America in their time.

The work HBO has created in these past 10 years is like a giant roadside bomb to the auteur theory. These works are major collaborations of writers, directors, actors, and obviously something within the HBO apparatus. Such a remarkable string of successful shoes cannot be explained otherwise. Not even to mention the offshoots - Mad Men, Weeds, Dexter, all these shows only exist because of HBO shows. Maybe all of the shows exist only because of the success of the Sopranos. I don't know. But I know it's fodder for a great Michael Lewis style book.