jane after dark-related stories
Posted Jan 2nd 2010 11:00AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Programming, TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
I'm kind of bummed that it looks like
Better Off Ted might be
on its way out. Maybe not, though.
Mike's review this week sounded like it might get a reprieve from the axe. Who knows, really? But either way, I'm glad to have found this quirky series, and have been watching season one on DVD this week.
It's kind of a cross between
The Office and
Arrested Development. If you're not familiar with the show, it takes place in the Research & Development department of Veridian Dynamics, a corporation with lots of cubicles and fluorescent lights.
Ted (Jay Harrington) is a pleasant guy who runs things and answers to Veronica (Portia de Rossi), an uptight boss who wears her hair pulled back so tight it's amazing she can even breathe.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: Catching up with Better Off Ted
Posted Nov 29th 2009 10:02AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, OpEd, Video, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
I finished watching
The Prisoner this week, and while I had to watch the final episodes a few times, I think I sort of get it. As I mentioned in
my post a couple of weeks ago, I haven't seen the original 1960s series, so I'm just basing my thoughts on the current version that just aired on AMC. I'm guessing they'll air the series again sometime soon.
First of all, I was riveted to the series from start to finish. Not only are the characters and storyline intriguing and mysterious, but
the musical score by Rupert Gregso-Williams is phenomenal. So hypnotic and evocative. More of my thoughts on
The Prisoner -- including possible spoilers -- after the jump.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: Pondering The Prisoner
Posted Nov 16th 2009 9:02AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
And so
Jane After Dark has come to the end of
The Wire. I need to watch it again to catch more than the one-eighth I caught the first time around. But after watching all five seasons, spanned over most of this year, the thing that keeps popping into my head is that the bureaucratic end of things is really no better than the drug dealer end of things.
In some ways, the drug dealers have more ethics than the suits. At least when a druggie does something that wrongs others in the system, there's no messing around. They're shot. They know they have it coming, and they step up and take it, just like Snoop did, asking if her hair looked ok before being gunned down. Just like Proposition Joe did when he closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable bullet to the head.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: The Wire, season five (part two)
Posted Nov 2nd 2009 8:03PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, TV Royalty, TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
Ah, how good it is to get back to
The Wire. I've been steered off track by other DVDs landing on my doorstep for
Jane After Dark, so season five of
The Wire has been a while coming. One again, the show blows me away with the writing, characters, cinematography and realism. I'm just part-way into season one, but I love all of the references to everything that's happened thus far in the series, and the crew's continued attempts to bring down Marlo's organization. And, apparently, Omar is still in the game ...
Continue reading Jane After Dark: The Wire, season five (part one)
Posted Sep 27th 2009 3:01PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: TV on DVD, OpEd, TV Squad Lists, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
This week in
Jane After Dark, I caught up with season one of
Castle. I'm a sucker for fun whodunits, especially when they feature great male and female characters who've perfected the art of the snappy banter. Specifically, here are five reasons why I'm loving
Castle:
1. Nathan Fillion is boyishly charming. I've been a big fan of this Joss Whedon favorite since seeing him in 2005's feature film
Serenity. I finally completed that awesome circle by watching
Firefly last winter. Fillion has the ability to be goofy one minute and deadly serious the next. In
Castle, he plays Richard Castle, a best-selling mystery author who's raising a 15-year-old daughter Alexis (Molly C. Quinn) -- and, in many ways, his free-spirited live-in mother Martha (Susan Sullivan), as well. Having killed off his latest fictional character, Richard found inspiration in NYPD detective Kate Beckett, after being called in to advise on a case. Now they're working as pseudo-partners.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: Five reasons I'm loving Castle
Posted Aug 30th 2009 3:12PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
I've been hearing about an awesome new show on FX since it aired last year, and finally got around to watching season one of
Sons of Anarchy this week for
Jane After Dark. Being a motorcycle babe myself, I love any show where bikes or gangs are the central focus.
But even if you've never mounted a bad chopper, there are plenty of reasons to love this badass show about the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Originals (SAMCRO). They run a legal automotive business while dealing arms, battling rival gangs, and working with the cops (sometimes) to keep their town of Charming, California a pleasant place to live. You can see all the irony at work here.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: Sons of Anarchy - bikes, guns, sex and Katey Sagal
Posted Aug 23rd 2009 11:17AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: TV on DVD, OpEd, TV Squad Lists, Reality-Free, Gossip Girl, Jane After Dark
I'm almost to the end of
Gossip Girl season two, and frankly, I couldn't be happier! It's been quite taxing watching rich snobs backstab their best friends night after night. I'll need a short break before season three premieres on The CW on Sept. 14.
But, as with everything, I try to glean some small bits of wisdom here and there, things to help me in my quest for peace, serenity, and large amounts of cash. Here are a few things I've learned from
Gossip Girl:
1. Never tell the truth. Apparently, this is the first thing they learn in finishing schools. Never tell the truth, whether you're lying to your best friend about getting into Yale, lying to your girlfriend about where you've been for the past three days, or lying to your kids about their sibling you gave away at birth. Keep a spreadsheet handy to keep track of all the various lies you've told and plan to tell.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: Eight things I learned while watching Gossip Girl
Posted Aug 16th 2009 5:04PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Gossip Girl, Jane After Dark
As is often the case lately, I watch the first season of a show, fall in love with it (see
my Mad Men post from last week), miss the second season on TV, and have to wait for the DVD to be released. By then, I've all but forgotten what happened in season one and have to do a little refresher course.
Such is the case with
Gossip Girl, season two of which I've been watching this week on DVD. But, really, it's only taken me a few episodes to get caught back up ...
Continue reading Jane After Dark: Gossip Girl, season 2 - sex, lies, and ... more sex
Posted Jul 26th 2009 6:00PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, TV Royalty, TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
Well, well, well. How interesting to see the purchase of the nail gun we saw in the first episode of
season four of The Wire come back around to bring everything together. "It's a tomb," says Freamon in "A New Day," and it all makes sense to me. Well, some of it makes sense anyway.
And then there's the teetering decision of whether Freamon will keep getting crap from the higher-ups about going out and looking for Marlo's bodies, using up manpower, and upping the murder rate of the city, or whether they'll do the right thing and actually do their jobs. Oh, the bodies that rolled in.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: The Wire - season four ends, alliances shift
Posted Jul 19th 2009 1:01PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, TV Royalty, TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
I'm well into season four of
The Wire (just finished "Margin of Error"; read my other
Jane After Dark installments), and getting into the guts of the Baltimore political scene and how it's all interwoven with the cops and drug business.
Oh, those kids! It really makes you see how they've gotta be extremely driven to get out of that life, because a lot of the adults are just priming them to continue the drug business into the next generation. Not only their parents -- which is really sad -- but people like Marlo, who has his minions handing out back-to-school cash to build goodwill with the kids. At that rate, those kids don't have a shot of clawing their way out of a life of crime.
It will take me another run-through or two to really fit all the pieces together, but I'm digging how all of the characters have evolved ... or not ...
Continue reading Jane After Dark: The Wire, season 4 - The kids are not alright
Posted Jul 12th 2009 10:03AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, TV Royalty, TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
Well, holy cow. I did not see that coming, although
from what you've all said, I was prepared for just about anything to happen on
The Wire. Except that!
I feel like season three ended on a high note. Well, sort of ... at least for McNulty, now walking the beat in the Western Division. Even though he's wearing a uniform, which is just weird for him, he's talking and laughing with the residents, and that's really what it's all about. And Rhonda and Cedric are together (oh, that chiseled butt of his!).
Even with all the busts, though, the drug business sails onward, with Marlo moving up in the hierarchy and Dennis' boxing gym virtually deserted, all the kids lured back into the streets. But mostly, season three was all about Episode 11, "Middle Ground"; in particular, a few penultimate scenes...
Continue reading Jane After Dark: The Wire, season three - Oh, Stringer!
Posted Jul 5th 2009 2:05PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
After a brief break to watch
season four of Weeds last week,
Jane After Dark is back with
The Wire. I'm half-way into season three, and while there are definitely parts of this show that put me to sleep (ducking and running for cover), it's still a brilliant drama. My teenage son popped in for part of an episode, decided it was too "real," and promptly lost interest.
To help me organize my thoughts, let's take a look at a few characters:
Stringer Bell. I'm really digging Idris Elba dressed up in his fancy suit, running the real estate company, working with government officials, and holding drug meetings using Robert's Rules of Order. It's fascinating that there's this whole hierarchy within the gangs that most of them respect and follow.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: The Wire, season 3 - Stringer wears a suit, Omar gets rash
Posted Jun 20th 2009 3:16PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, TV Royalty, TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
As John Howard noted in the comments in
last week's Jane After Dark column, I really haven't talked much about Omar yet. I just finished season two of
The Wire, and to be honest, most of my thoughts right now revolve around the Sobotka clan.
First of all, how stupid was Ziggy? The guy's always been a live wire, and you could see the bad karma building throughout this season, with him flashing money around, showing off his Italian leather coat, and going a little bonkers with the stolen Mercedes. Things were bound to go bad for him, and they did just that when his deal with Double-G went oh so wrong.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: The Wire - Season two ends, the Sobotka clan crumbles
Posted Jun 13th 2009 2:06PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
I'm three episodes into season two of
The Wire. I tried watching it online as Usama suggested in last week's
Jane After Dark comments (thank you for that awesome site!), but decided to just buy the DVDs, because I stop and start a lot and need easy access to it. So I looked around town and found a fairly reasonably priced season two at FYE. It's new; no one seems to have any used sets, which makes me think - as you all have suggested - that no one ever gets rid of their DVDs of
The Wire. They keep them around to watch again and again. I'll probably just buy each season as I work my way through the series.
And speaking of starting and stopping,
The Wire does not get any easier to watch while doing something else at the same time. Whenever I try to do that, I end up replaying those parts again, because there's way too many subtleties to be only half-paying attention.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: The Wire season two - on the waterfront with Amy Ryan
Posted Jun 7th 2009 3:31PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
I just watched the last episode of season one of
The Wire.
You guys are right. It's good stuff. Most of season one was pretty slow-going, but things started to kick in during the last few episodes, about the time Greggs got shot.
As in
last week's Jane After Dark column, I'm still a bit lost on exactly what's happening, but that doesn't seem to really matter. The characters are so interesting to watch. It's almost like you're watching a documentary about the real thing, rather than a scripted TV show. I took the suggestion of some of you and started watching with the subtitles on. It really does help!
I noticed that
Alan Sepinwall is also blogging on The Wire -- and writing a masters thesis on each episode. He even has two different versions -- one for newbies and one for veterans. I'm the anti-Sepinwall, just trying to grasp the storyline and get the basic gist. But I did read his newbie editions and found them helpful.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: I'm still watching The Wire
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