So There's This Show Called...Veronica Mars!

Surprises are the best. To all those people out there who say surprises are the worst: you're wrong. They're boss. Especially when the surprise doubles as one of the most satisfying season finales of a show ever AND thus turns the show itself into one of your new most favoritest television shows ever. This is called the slow-burn surprise and because it's the rarest and most thrilling kind of surprise, the only other show that I ever experienced it with is Lost, which I hated for a good three episodes before I even let it grow on me. Similarly, I never thought I'd ever enjoy a show with teenage characters as much as I do Veronica Mars. But I tried to go in with an open mind because it ended up on so many critics' best-of-the-decade lists, and because I stuck through the first handful of eps and got used to its UPN-ness and cutesy faux-noir aesthetic, I reaped so many benefits. This truly is one of the most expertly crafted mysteries of all time (at least the first season, and to a certain extent, season two as well).

So there's this show called Veronica Mars.

Reason For Johnny-Come-Lateliness: As hinted at above, this was a show on UPN, a station that I avoided since its inception up until its death with the semi-exception of Simpsons reruns, where its ensemble cast was teenagers and the bald guy from Just Shoot Me. And yet, while I feel my tardiness in realizing its genius is justified, I seem to know a number of respectable people (both friends and critics) who have loved the show since it first aired. Who knew? I guess I was completely oblivious and judgmental back in 2004. Yeah, that's the ticket...WAS completely oblivious and judgmental. Definitely do anything like that anymore. I am completely open minded to all things pop culture. Where's the SarcMark when I need it?

Commitment Level: In addition to and possibly because of it being one of the most satisfying surprise-fests of all time, it is an insanely addictive show, especially once you get over the first few episode hump and start to really love the characters and get obsessed with the mystery at hand. In fact, toward the end of season one, in which the eponymous teen detective played by Kristen Bell (she may have had something to do with my ability to stick with it until I officially started loving it; and don't start judging- she was 24 when the show began) got closer and closer to learning who her best friend's killer and her own rapist was (yeah, dark!), Jessica and I got so wrapped up in our own theories and stabs in the dark that we ended up staying up wayyy too late on school nights in order to finish discs and send them back to Nerdflix for more. The only downside (besides the lack of sleep) was that everything was largely wrapped up nice and neatly by the S1 finale that our overdosage inspired us to take a break from V-Mars in between the first two seasons. Though the second season is not nearly as strong as the first, I wish we hadn't because it turned out some of the loose ends we thought were tied up actually weren't!

The Episode That Got Me Addicted: Because it was such a slow burn, this is kind of difficult to pinpoint. If I had to guess, I'd place it right around the time of the season one ep "The Return of the Kane" in which Veronica's dead best friend Lily's (played by Amanda Seyfried of Big Love in flashbacks, by the by) former boyfriend Logan, who Veronica keeps suspecting of being up to something, because he kind of acts like a douche, but is generally very witty, reveals to the audience (not Veronica yet though) that his life at home with his washed-up movie star father (played with equal parts gusto and disgust by Harry Hamlin of the original Clash of the Titans) isn't all it's cracked up to be in the press and at school. Suddenly a show with a very calm, cool, and collected (not to mention cutesily smart, sometimes to the point of annoyance before you start loving them) cast of characters unraveled a layer of obscene darkness a la David Lynch in Blue Velvet and didn't look back. It was done with such panache that it, I believe, officially made Veronica Mars officially not just your average teen drama.

The Moment That Broke My Heart: And believe it or not, even though the aforementioned episode reveal was begging for a sympathetic tear, it was mostly just shocking and discomforting more than anything else. No, the (first) moment that broke my heart was when we find out the truth behind why Abel Koontz confessed (not a spoiler, happens before the first ep even starts) to Lily's murder in the first place in the ep "Kanes and Abel's". Without giving too much away, it is an exemplary example of the show's ability to show the importance of family, for better or worse, which is interesting considering how many teen shows throughout history tossed the notion of family aside and concentrated on friends. Now I'm not right-wing family values Nazi, and I don't think show creator Rob Thomas (who went on to create Party Down) is either, but more so than the friendships amongst characters on the show, the way family is portrayed is bitter, honest, and more often than not, devastating. It's possibly the show's greatest quality, right alongside its deft ability to keep an audience guessing about a murder mystery that never gets boring.

Favorite Character(s): If I were to list just one more lens that Thomas employs oh so well in Veronica Mars, especially in its (now that I think about it) actually underrated second season is its ability to star pretty upper-class (and mostly white) people in southern California but still address race and class in complex ways, though never exactly realistically. I say this because I think, after a lot of hemming and hawing, Weevil is my favorite character. I may be biased because now in the throes of season three actor Francis Capra has transformed Weevil into one of the saddest and most sympathetic characters in the history of television (and not just because he got fat and has a skin problem), but really his arc with his motorcycle crew the PCHers rivaling against both the 09ers and the Fitzpatricks in season two made him into an unparalleled harbinger of heartbreak and class struggle. If you don't like your supporting characters bold and depressing though, let's go with Ken Marino's portrayal of Vinnie Van Lowe, the less talented private eye in Neptune, always playing the dope to Enrico Colantoni's brilliantly modest Keith Mars. Speaking of Party Down stars, Ryan Hansen also slowly helped Dick become the character he should have been since he was introduced, all cocky and amateurish, but with a troubled soul.

Questions I Can't Wait To Be Answered: Really, because the show is so good at tying up its loose ends in its season-long mysteries by each finale, I have no questions in season three other than why in the hell must it end here? Of course I want to know who the head-shaving on-campus rapist is, but I'm afraid I'm going to find on soon and we're going to move on to another smaller-scale mystery than either season one or two, as I've been told by a little bird (read: my friend Molly). I guess, even though it's unlikely given the show's sudden cancellation three years ago, I'm wanting to know if Wallace will ever see Jackie again, if Veronica will ever see Duncan again, if Veronica's mom will ever show back up, if Weevil will ever get a break, and if Keith will ever just suck it up and propose to Wallace's mom, even though that's impossible now for a number of reasons. Also, can I name my dog Back-Up when I get one like V-Mars? Cuz that's all kinds of awesome.

So There's This Show Called...Damages!

Welcome to the second edition of our new feature So There's This Show Called... in which I get on board with a popular idiot box program a few (or many) years too late and attempt to explain myself and mostly just vent to the abyss of the Interwebs because I have few people or nobody to talk to about how awesome show X is. Last month I focused on The Sopranos and have since been only moderately enjoying season three of said show, though it is picking up steam in its final few episodes and will definitely be enough to encourage me to finish watching that show. This month we're looking at the quite underrated (in my opinion anyway) legal thriller serial Damages, which stars Rose Byrne as a rookie lawyer embroiled in conspiracies and betrayal with and against her boss, played by Glenn Close. It's a show that's always been heralded for its masterful acting, but I think though it's sometimes convoluted, the wicked awesome plot twists and storytelling techniques are just as magnetic. So without further ado, let us begin by saying:

So there's this show called...Damages.

Reason For Johnny-Come-Lateliness: Not having cable is a big one, but not good enough, seeing as how FX, as far as I know, also had this show streaming on Hulu, so I could have watched it while I followed their other shows like Sons of Anarchy and It's Alway Sunny In Philadelphia. So I would have to blame my tardiness on plain ol' bad first impressions. While the print and web ads made it look dark and gritty (a plus), I thought that it was all just a slick marketing campaign trying to elevate another lawyer show with self-contained plots and dull cases where rich people bickered back and forth until someone settled or got convicted by the end of an episode. Luckily positive word of mouth from both Qualler and Brigitte got me and Jerksica to Nerdflix the first season, and the rest is history.

Commitment Level: This is actually a show that I got hooked on right away, despite my initial misgivings, and then my addiction slowly tapered off, which is very unlike how I obsess over more shows. Usually I watch with trepidation at first and then slowly become a rabid fan, but this one, while I still loved by the end of the second season, Jerksica and I were able to control ourselves and only watch an episode a day instead of a disc a day, which is what we often found ourselves doing toward both the beginning and end of the first season. So yes, season one is far more satisfying than season two (and feels a lot more refreshing because they re-use their better-the-first-time flashback glimpse storytelling technique in season two to a lesser effect), but I definitely recommend both, and especially season two if you're a Michael Clayton fan.

The Episode That Got Me Addicted: While I believe Jerksy and I watched the first disc of the first season all in one night, I don't think I was officially sold on the show until I saw the third episode "And My Paralyzing Fear of Death" in which Ellen's (Rose Byrne) boss Patty (Glenn Close) and her husband start receiving death threats as they dig deeper into the Frobisher case (which is followed throughout the season and we brilliantly find out piece by piece how it's related to main protagonist Ellen's fiance's death, which we see flashes of through flashback at the beginnings and ends of each episode). What cinched the deal for me in this particular ep, besides the exciting (yet admittedly hyperbolic) twist that a white collar crime lawyer would find hand grenades placed in their car for digging too deep into a case, there's a brilliantly abstract scene in which Patty's disturbed teenage son tell his high school counselor about a dream he had where he knows he's about to be assassinated so he hires seven body doubles to prevent the real him from getting killed, but he ends up forgetting which one is the real him. These dark offbeat moments (especially when they're acted so damn well) are what make the show, and it's what got me hooked in the first place.

The Episode That Broke My Heart: For a show with such a standard thriller feel (not a bad thing in its case; it works the tense suspense mojo just as good as other high-ranking fare like Breaking Bad or Lost), where the emotions run high but largely not deep, the acting often has the cross to bear to elevate the content. What's hard for this show to succeed at, then, is to have an episode chock full of these kinds of bravura performances and not feel bloated or glutted with over-the-top dramatics. Luckily, there are a distinct handful of eps that do this in spades, including but certainly not limited to primarily the first season's "I Hate These People", in which (SPOILER ALERT!) one of my favorite characters, Ray Fiske (the lawyer Patty and Ellen are up against defending Frobisher and played extra creepily by Zeljko Ivanek of Big Love and True Blood) meets his bloody fate. The character is so magnificently tortured and antagonistic that we cannot draw the line between good and evil, arguably even more so than Glenn Close's acclaimed anti-hero portrayal. The other big one, to give season two some credit, is the season premiere "I Lied, Too" in which we watch season one's main villain Frobisher (played with glorious inept innocence by Ted Danson) is visited after his injury at the end of season one in the hospital by main character Ellen, who contemplates what she wants to do to him. See below for further explanation.

Favorite Character(s): Obviously I gave away my two biggies above when I mentioned both main villain Arthur Frobisher (Danson) and his lawyer Ray Fiske (Ivanek), but I think those are everybody's favorite from season one. So let's give some love to the underrepresented: with the new badassery of Justified, we must mention Timothy Olyphant's double-edged performance in season two as Ellen's new boyfriend with an ulterior motive. Here's a guy who I thought was a throwaway actor even when I was a teenager watching him slice and dice in Scream 2, and now he's becoming one of television's most revered. Whodathunkit? Also you gots to give it up for two familiar bad guys from season two: Clark Peters (Lester Freamon in The Wire) as the mysterious powerful villain Dave and John Doman (Lt. Rawls in The Wire) as Walter Kendrick, CEO of the evil company responsible for the deaths of several West Virginia farmers. All these minor roles aside, the main actors are just as respectable, with Glenn Close pulling off a deserved tour-de-force that everyone keeps raving about, and even the not-so-amazing Rose Byrne and Tate Donovan are totally capable and sometimes captivating, even when they're shown up by their more impressive counterparts. Also, Darrell Hammond played a real evil guy and that was just weird.

Questions I Can't Wait To Be Answered: Well Damages is the kind of show that doesn't necessarily leave a lot of loose ends on purpose (they follow one particular mystery through the end of each season), but they always tend to leave some stuff hanging and smartly show that the tragedies from the beginning of the show are going to have long-lasting and always changing consequences on our main characters throughout the series' existence. This I like because, well, it all hinged on whether or not main bad guy Arthur Frobisher will try to do something stupid again, or if main good girl Ellen Parsons will decide to follow through with her inclinations of revenge against him. So my questions largely revolved around that: will she ever get pushed over the edge enough to get arrested and actually have some kind of conviction stick? How might Frobisher's new headquarters (will be a 'healing center' like he originally planned?) bring about his downfall, or will they to completely phase out his plot? Will Tate Donavan, who plays Patty's right-hand man, ever fully realize that he probably shouldn't be working for Patty? Will Patty ever get taken down enough that it'll hurt her career? Can't wait to watch the Martin Short-enhanced season three and I hope the show doesn't get canned or at least gets picked up by DirecTV like Friday Night Lights did.

So There's This Show Called...The Sopranos!

If you haven't noticed yet, we here at The Blogulator like to come up with ideas for new features. Now I've been weary about adding yet one more recurring column to the mix, especially with Qualler's introduction to another great new feature yesterday, but I've been stockpiling a lot of the same kind of post for a while now, so whether you like it or not, here's the latest one. So There's This Show Called... will serve as a venue where I dissect an old TV show that I'm just now catching up on. My basic requirement is that I must view at least the first two seasons of said show before offering my critique. In essence, I'm a DVD-aholic and I need a place to organize my thoughts on the shows I'm just now obsessing over, just often many years too late. So all I ask is that if you're a fan of the show in question and are caught up with it, please don't spoiler anything for me in the comments. That said, I will be spoiling a lot of the first two-ish seasons of these shows, so beware. But please feel free to offer up your own nostalgia based on my observations and/or things that I miss from the first two-ish seasons!

So there's this show called The Sopranos.

Reason For Johnny-Come-Lateliness: Two wretched films by the names of Analyze This and Analyze That. Luckily they make direct mention and dismissal of said films in season 2, which was brilliant. Also, I had friends that watched it when it was on but I only caught an episode here and there, thus causing my 20-year-old self to seizure with "what's going on?" impatience.

Commitment Level: I've watched seasons 1 & 2 over the past three months. Another way to look at that is that I watched the first two episodes over Christmas break and then watched the rest of season 1 and season 2 between the middle of February and last weekend.

The Episode That Got Me Addicted: The one where Tony takes Meadow to visit colleges. He recognizes a snitch that the Soprano mafia family has been looking for forever, but Tony only sees him at this point by pure coincidence, as he has morphed his identity with the help of the Witness Protection Program. The way creator David Chase and co. are able to visualize the inner turmoil Tony experiences, trying to balance his genuine love for his daughter and his inability to control his desire for revenge, with little to no obliquely related dialogue and just one final monstrous act at the episode's climax is phenomenally impressive. It's a horrifying episode that makes you love and hate Tony simultaneously. The character was allegedly the first bonafide TV drama anti-hero, and this episode alone offers some solid evidence why he'll always be remembered.

The Moment That Broke My Heart: Every good TV show has a moment that breaks your heart. Even the best sitcoms find a way to reel you in with its characters just to snap your central artery in two at a precisely timed moment to make you realize how much you care for them. The season 2 penultimate episode did this to me in spades. The moment is when, after cleaning up Richie's (see below) body, Tony returns to his sister Janice's house (which is also their mother's house once again as she moved back in once Janice decides to move in) to pick her up. As he walks in the door, we are smothered with a overly long medium-wide shot of Tony on the left, Janice on the right, and their elderly mother Olivia descending the staircase in the center (via a motorized chair that glides along a track on the wall no less). It's the first time Tony's seen his mother since he almost went through with suffocating her to death for maybe sorta kinda putting a hit out on him. It was, I feel, the heaviest singular moment, full of tension, despair, and anger, of the first two seasons, and it makes me super anxious to start the third.

Favorite Character(s): Anyone who's anyone should admit that Christopher Molanti is the most interesting and entertaining supporting character to watch, at least in the show's first two seasons. Not only is he a firecracker whose explosions you can never predict, but he is also a believable firecracker. Unlike your stock mob character with rage issues, every exaggerated reaction that actor Michael Imperioli has is meticulously crafted so that every Christopher scene that leads up to said reaction builds another layer of self-loathing, frustration, or fierce loyalty within the man, so that when the act finally goes down, it's still surprising due to sheer shock value, but is also heart-breakingly apt, because if this guy was real, I'd just want to give him a big ol' bear hug. But of course I wouldn't for fear of him shooting me in the foot (just like Imperioli got shot as a younger mob kid in GoodFellas, he did the opposite once a verifiable badass on The Sopranos). Also, a smaller guest role that I adored was Robert Patrick (aka T-1000) as a desperate gambling sports store owner father, who both idolizes Tony and gets used by him. His descent is admirably and atypically portrayed by a guy who I always thought was only good at playing stoic villains. Lastly, I really like old man Hesh, the former record label mogul, who Tony attempts for a bit to make his by proxy psychiatrist, but the two end up just yammering on about their problems to themselves while in the same room together.

Questions I Can't Wait To Be Answered: Will Tony ever make amends with his mother? Will Carmella ever cheat on Tony/will anyone dare ever sleep with Mrs. Soprano? Because what a tease with the wallpaper guy, Chase! How will the writers keep Meadow a part of the show's plot with her away at college? When will Tony start realizing he needs to start teaching Anthony Jr. tricks of his trade? Why won't Paulie and Silvio ever fully cross over into actual characters instead of remaining mere caricature capos, like Qualler has told me they do? Will the murder of Pussy come back to haunt Tony without absurd amounts of dream sequences like the ones that led up to him realizing the guy was a snitch? Will Edgar from 24 continue to play the dopey FBI guy and remind me of his awesome death scene from his more notable role? Will I finally like Junior as a character in season 3, as hinted by the end of season 2, which contained an awesome scene where his assistant literally stood with mouth agape after Junior talked to himself for a bit and then upon asking what he was staring at, said "I'm just in awe"? Where the hell else is there to go with the Dr. Melfi plot now that she's been exiled, come back, refused to treat him, started treating him again, and is now a drunk because she can't cure him nor can she convince herself it's okay to end her professional relationship with him?

Only time will tell. I can't wait to get season 3 in my grubby little hands and keep watching.

Future installments of So There's This Show Called... will include (tentatively) Damages, Veronica Mars, The West Wing, Battlestar Galactica, The X-Files, and more!