Logging

TV:  House of Cards ep 1 and a half

Another show of despicable characters.  Does cable TV think this low of us?  Or more scarily, does cable tv think we think this low of ourselves?  A show about a Machiavellian political couple?  Kevin Spacey pulling a Ferris Bueller and talking to the camera?  Boring.  I'm not sure I'm going to finish this mini-series.  Law and Order SVU is better TV drama.

Another thought:  these new shows are retarding the classic archtypes of tragic figures and anti heroes.  Tragic characters and anti-heroes are imperfect, flawed characters who often do not prevail.  We love them, however, because they flounder between good and bad and usually do battle with worse characters in a dark, unfair world.  In the best cable shows - the Sopranos and The Wire, both "protagonists," Tony Soprano and Jimmy McNulty are flawed anti-heroes, but battle against worse forces within their own families and work place places, respectively.

These new cable shows are strange for the way in which they celebrate the most conniving, evil, "ahead-of-the-game" characters and we are supposed to delight in their wickedness.   I just get bored.  Even their tactics and the stakes feel so small and petty.  Who honestly cares about most of this stuff?  A leaked first draft of a bill?  A column someone wrote in college?  It's just pettiness.  There is nothing large at stake, nothing philosophical.  I felt like back in the day, West Wing addressed issues in a much more emotionally and realistically impactful way.

The first episodes of Girls had the same quality, but set in an ugly hipster world that just felt small and petty to me.  I imagine Dexter is the same -- I mean -- we're really going to take the POV of a serial killer.  Come on.