Salon.com > TV http://www.salon.com Fri, 03 May 2013 03:47:40 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Alex Jones: Conspiracy Inc. http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/alex_jones_conspiracy_inc/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/alex_jones_conspiracy_inc/#comments Thu, 02 May 2013 11:45:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13287148 It’s good to be Alex Jones. Matt Drudge, the conservative Web entrepreneur and news aggregator, proved prophetic when he predicted that 2013 would be “the year of Alex Jones.” The longtime conspiracy broadcaster is finally breaking into the mainstream consciousness after a buzzy interview with Piers Morgan and his Boston bombing conspiracy, and traffic to his websites has never been higher. The conspiracy business is booming.

And make no mistake, it is a business. That’s not to say that Jones isn’t a believer -- there are easier ways to make money -- but Jones has built a multi-platform new media empire in his Austin, Texas, Free Speech Systems LLC that reaches millions of believers and promises advertisers that it will “direct lucrative buyers to you from our daily audience of active enthusiasts.” And all told, Jones is very likely raking in millions.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/alex_jones_conspiracy_inc/feed/ 127 “The Americans’” creators discuss the season finale http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/the_americans_showrunners_discuss_the_season_finale/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/the_americans_showrunners_discuss_the_season_finale/#comments Thu, 02 May 2013 03:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13287209 "The Americans," FX's excellent and exciting spy series about two married, deep-cover KGB agents, Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, living in 1980s America, finished its first season in fitting fashion: with a finale full of, but never overrun by, action. The season ender contained not one but two covert missions, a sting, a high-speed car chase, and a shooting, but ended quietly, with the CIA momentarily foiled and Philip and Elizabeth, a bullet wound in her side, finally reconciled. Next season has near endless juicy material to explore: Nina, now a USSR double agent, is out to flip Stan; Elizabeth may want Philip to come home, but one of his alter-egos is still married to Martha; the Jennings' daughter is getting suspicious of her mother; and the Cold War is only escalating. "The Americans''' two showrunners, Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, also the series creator and a former CIA agent himself, spoke with me about the finale, season 2, the intentional lack of cliffhanger and those super wigs.

How much of what happened this season did you know was going to happen when you began?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/the_americans_showrunners_discuss_the_season_finale/feed/ 6 “Inside Amy Schumer,” a female-centric take on bro-comedy http://www.salon.com/2013/04/30/inside_amy_schumer_a_female_centric_take_on_bro_comedy/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/30/inside_amy_schumer_a_female_centric_take_on_bro_comedy/#comments Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:20:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13285585 Amy Schumer’s new sketch comedy show “Inside Amy Schumer” begins tonight on Comedy Central, a female-centric take on bro-comedy, raunchy and dedicated to exploring the ways girls can be crazy. Her persona combines Whitney Cummings’ bawdiness and Mindy Kaling’s entitlement with a self-proclaimed slutty streak ("I am sluttier than your average bear," she proclaims), a familiar combination that feels original only in flashes. Schumer is sharper than her material.

In one sketch, Schumer plays a girl who starts to plan a wedding with a one-night stand who barely knows her name, going so far as to buy them side-by-side funeral plots. A clueless woman behaving insanely because she’s so desperate for a relationship is both an easy target and an archetype we’ve seen before. (In another sketch, Schumer sits on the couch stuffing pasta in her face, sending unsexy text messages to a dude who gets off anyway. If I never have to see a fictional woman stuffing carbs into her face, it will be too soon.) But Schumer adds a grace note at the very end that should have been the focus of the whole bit: The woman in question is totally unflappable, unperturbed when the guy doesn’t know who she is, moving on immediately to the next dude. She’s not just pathetic, she’s also obliviously overconfident.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/30/inside_amy_schumer_a_female_centric_take_on_bro_comedy/feed/ 3 “The Good Wife” finishes a fantastic season http://www.salon.com/2013/04/29/the_good_wife_finishes_a_fanastic_season/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/29/the_good_wife_finishes_a_fanastic_season/#comments Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:48:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13284615 “The Good Wife” finished its fourth season last night, overshadowed as always by TV’s other blockbuster Sunday offerings, from “Homeland” to “Game of Thrones” and “Mad Men.” This season had a rocky start— Kalinda and her implausible, raunchy ex-husband, he of the perverse ice cream— but boy did it recover. The last two thirds of the season have been fantastic, a sprawling, entertaining, tightly plotted, non-didactic (yes, that is a “Mad Men” dig), razor sharp examination of power, ethics, and corruption, as serious and seriously entertaining as anything on cable.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/29/the_good_wife_finishes_a_fanastic_season/feed/ 12 “Game of Thrones” Recap: Flaming swords! http://www.salon.com/2013/04/29/game_of_thrones_recap_now_were_cooking_with_hot_swords/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/29/game_of_thrones_recap_now_were_cooking_with_hot_swords/#comments Mon, 29 Apr 2013 02:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13283407 Let’s start with the most substantial aspect of this episode: man butt. “Kissed by Fire” is the episode of “Game of Thrones” where the writers finally said, “OK, OK, we will do something about our show's gross nudity imbalance across genders.” So after Ygritte takes off her clothes, it’s John and Jaime’s turn to flash some tush, and then Loras’s conquest/Littlefinger’s spy puts a new twist on the “random character we have never met going full frontal” role just by being a man, instead of woman.

Even more remarkably, the camera opts not to ogle Brienne of Tarth, treating her with the sort of restraint it usually reserves for its male characters. Jaime climbs in the bathtub with her and goads her into anger; she lurches up at him in the altogether. But while Jaime gets a good look at the whole Brienne, the camera stays squarely on her face and shoulders, never straying down. We see a flash of her backside, but that's exactly the amount of nudity usually asked of the fellas. This is both respectful and complicated: Brienne, who is more ‘masculine’ than the other female characters, more attuned to the idea of male honor, gets treated with visual restraint. I’m sure, if she knew, she would appreciate the courtesy. But maybe all the other women on the show would prefer not being objectified too?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/29/game_of_thrones_recap_now_were_cooking_with_hot_swords/feed/ 27 Must do’s: What we like this week http://www.salon.com/2013/04/27/must_dos_what_we_like_this_week_8/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/27/must_dos_what_we_like_this_week_8/#comments Sat, 27 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13283273 BOOKS

Laura Miller, who generally does not have “patience for the touchstones of foodie literature,” was pleasantly surprised by Michael Pollan’s “Cooked,” written from the perspective of a journalist and gardener rather than a celebrity chef:

His effort to deepen his understanding of the process of turning food into meals is the subject of his latest book, “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.” I wish I could say “Cooked” is entirely free of moments of flabby philosophizing (“Isn’t it always precisely when we are most at risk of floating away on the sea of our own inventions and conceits that we seem to row our way back to the firm shore that is nature?”), but they are rare. Admittedly, the book’s thematic structure is also a shade precious. It’s divided into four sections according to what the ancients perceived to be the four elements — fire, water, air and earth — each attributed to a different cooking method — grilling, braising and other forms of cooking in liquids, baking and fermentation. As ever, Pollan makes each of these themes the occasion for real thought as well as some energetic reporting.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/27/must_dos_what_we_like_this_week_8/feed/ 1 “Mary Tyler Moore” Rewind: It’s wonderful, current, not funny http://www.salon.com/2013/04/26/mary_tyler_moore_rewind_its_wonderful_current_not_funny/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/26/mary_tyler_moore_rewind_its_wonderful_current_not_funny/#comments Fri, 26 Apr 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13282113 “The Mary Tyler Moore Show" began airing in 1970, but its DNA is still all over TV. It is the progenitor of every comedy starring a woman, single, working or otherwise — “30 Rock’s” characterizations are closely modeled on “Mary Tyler Moore’s”; “Sex and the City” took “Mary Tyler Moore” story lines and made them explicit — but also every workplace sitcom, every friends-as-family sitcom, and every sitcom aimed squarely at adults. So most comedies. A book about its making is about to be released. It is all over most "best TV ever" lists. Because of "Mary Tyler Moore" costar Valerie Harper's illness, she has been making the talk show rounds with Tyler Moore, Cloris Leachman and Betty White. Hannah Horvath recently fell asleep watching reruns. It could not be more current, except for one thing — and this is some weapon’s grade sitcom sacrilege — it’s not that funny.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/26/mary_tyler_moore_rewind_its_wonderful_current_not_funny/feed/ 94 “The Bletchley Circle,” a feminist murder mystery http://www.salon.com/2013/04/26/the_bletchley_circle_a_feminist_murder_mystery/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/26/the_bletchley_circle_a_feminist_murder_mystery/#comments Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:28:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13282799 When it comes to TV, Sunday nights are already more overstuffed than a turducken. Between “Mad Men,” “Game of Thrones,” and “The Good Wife,” and with “Walking Dead,” “Breaking Bad” and “Downton Abbey” waiting in the wings, it’s a DVR's busiest night of the week. You can now add PBS’s “The Bletchley Circle” to the list of worthwhile Sunday night programming, though this at least is one you can record to watch on some non-Sunday — no one is going to spoil it on Twitter — or track down after Don Draper has slunk his mopey, existentially despairing self through the ninthcircle of hell and into “Mad Men’s” off-season hiatus.

“The Bletchley Circle” is a refreshingly brief — three episode — miniseries from ITV; more precisely, it is a feminist, period, murder mystery miniseries from ITV. The first episode, which aired last week, began during World War II at Bletchley Park, the center of British code-breaking, with four women cracking a code about German troop movements. The series picks up in 1952, with those women — and everyone else who worked at Bletchley Park —  having signed the Official Secrets Act, forbidding them from disclosing their work during the war, a return to normalcy that has left some of them unfulfilled.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/26/the_bletchley_circle_a_feminist_murder_mystery/feed/ 9 Ke$ha and Ryan Lochte get the reality TV treatment http://www.salon.com/2013/04/24/keha_and_ryan_lochte_reality_tv_stars/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/24/keha_and_ryan_lochte_reality_tv_stars/#comments Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:38:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13280727 ‘Ke$ha: My Crazy Beautiful Life,” a reality show about the glitter-loving, jack-swishing pop star, began last night on MTV. “What Would Ryan Lochte Do,” a reality show about the grill-wearing, ab-having Olympic swimmer, began on Friday on E! Both shows are about people with physically demanding, time-intensive, all-consuming work lives. On tour, Ke$ha spends her days going from place to place so at night she can sprint around stage covered in body paint. While training, Lochte gets to the pool before most people are awake. Both shows are also about people who have cultivated — or, in Locthte’s case, maybe wandered into — reputations as partiers. Ke$ha’s songs are anthems to drinking and misbehaving. Lochte has convinced many that he’s a dim, brotastic douchebag. (Don’t ask him what that "douchebag" means, though: As he explained in his show, he really has no idea.) These shows are built around the second aspect of their stars' personas — that they are wild and vibrant and fun —  when it’s the first that's worthwhile.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/24/keha_and_ryan_lochte_reality_tv_stars/feed/ 11 Judging Amazon’s comedy pilots http://www.salon.com/2013/04/23/judging_amazons_comedy_pilots/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/23/judging_amazons_comedy_pilots/#comments Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:41:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13279737 On Friday, Amazon made the pilots for eight sitcoms (and six kids shows) available to be streamed for free. After watching, viewers can opine and check boxes about the series in a survey, similar to a course evaluation form. Based on the responses, as well as focus group information and viewing data, Amazon will give some of these shows a 13-episode order. When ABC picks up a sitcom about two working-class guys who start to dress in drag to secure jobs, one wonders what on earth ABC executives were thinking. If Amazon picks up a musical comedy set at a faux-Huffington Post where Bebe Neuwirth plays Arianna Huffington and sings about how she is “someone with whom not to fuck,” we will only have ourselves to applaud.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/23/judging_amazons_comedy_pilots/feed/ 2 “Rectify”: Off death row, but not quite free http://www.salon.com/2013/04/22/rectify_off_death_row_but_not_quite_free/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/22/rectify_off_death_row_but_not_quite_free/#comments Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:25:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13278764 “Rectify,” the excellent and patient new drama that begins tonight on the Sundance Channel, is about a man just freed from death row. At 18, Daniel Holden, an odd boy from a small Georgia town, was found cradling the bloody, raped corpse of a girl he went to high school with. He was arrested and confessed to the crime. A friend testified to having witnessed both the rape and the murder. He was convicted and placed on death row. His sister, years younger than him, continued to sit in math class with the murdered girl’s brother. Twenty years later, as “Rectify” begins, Daniel (Aden Young, who looks not unlike Damien Echols) is set free by DNA evidence proving he was not the rapist. Daniel has spent his entire adult life in a small cell and he comes back into the world, to the town he grew up in, like a newborn, but not an innocent.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/22/rectify_off_death_row_but_not_quite_free/feed/ 1 “Game of Thrones”: “Or is the little girl the bravest one here?” http://www.salon.com/2013/04/22/game_of_thrones_or_is_the_little_girl_the_bravest_one_here/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/22/game_of_thrones_or_is_the_little_girl_the_bravest_one_here/#comments Mon, 22 Apr 2013 02:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13276807 At the beginning of this season, one of “Game of Thrones'” TV overlords, David Benioff, told Grantland’s Andy Greenwald that "Themes are for eighth-grade book reports.” There is a reason the people who make stuff don’t get the final say on the meaning of that stuff. “And Now His Watch Is Ended” was particularly theme-y — the theme being revenge — but it also demostrated how little “Game of Thrones” cares about creating “normal” episodes of television. The huge cast of characters have been flitting in and out all season. Now they are starting to show up for what amount to special appearances, both short — Bran appeared in one scene — and long — Daenerys gets the most fist-pumping segment of the season thus far, but only in the episode’s last 10 minutes. Four episodes in, it still feels like the season’s pieces are being put into place, and it seems that the best way to watch would be to wait and binge on it all at once.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/22/game_of_thrones_or_is_the_little_girl_the_bravest_one_here/feed/ 9 Does “Downton Abbey” perpetuate gay stereotypes? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/21/downton_abbeys_gay_valet_subtly_subversive_or_walking_cliche_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/21/downton_abbeys_gay_valet_subtly_subversive_or_walking_cliche_partner/#comments Sun, 21 Apr 2013 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13276512 IT WAS A SEASON OF SADNESS, a season of tsuris; the anti-Passover, I guess, as at the last minute the Angel of Death, that occasional writing partner of Julian Fellowes, stopped at Downton Abbey after all. Yes, Season Three of the most successful drama in PBS history ended with both a death and a birth, as Fellowes is a generous host. If you didn’t watch, you can read on without fear; here be no spoilers. I’ll just say that we were left with a Major Character dead on a country road, blood leaking from (gender unspecified’s) mouth. Season Four, which we won’t get for a year, will pick up six months after the Sadness. Maggie Smith, in the role of Maggie Smith, will once more in her Don-Rickles-with-a-title mode trot out the zingers, his Lordship will disapprove of something or other, and Lady Edith will defy the example set by her late sister Sybil that Girls With Ideas come to early ends. Shit may, as they say, happen at Downton, but Fellowes believes that just getting on with it is the best revenge, a worldview that helps him infallibly locate and dramatize the perfect balance between what needs to change, and what must never change, with the latter given the weight.
Los Angeles Review of Books

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/21/downton_abbeys_gay_valet_subtly_subversive_or_walking_cliche_partner/feed/ 7 Must do’s: What we like this week http://www.salon.com/2013/04/20/must_dos_what_we_like_this_week_7/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/20/must_dos_what_we_like_this_week_7/#comments Sat, 20 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13276792 BOOKS

Laura Miller recommends the memoir of Alexandra Aldrich, a descendent of the prominent Astor family, which provides a glimpse into a less privileged, less happy childhood than one would expect:

In premise alone, “The Astor Orphan” sounds like some delicious children’s novel, the kind of thing you’d gobble a dozen times over by the age of 8. In reality it’s a mournful, curious tale of an anxious child’s longing for security. Aldrich, who kept a diary from an early age, apparently sticks closely to it; her book has a halting, episodic rhythm. It lacks the fluency of truly accomplished storytelling, but the story it tells is so extraordinary, and Aldrich’s tone is so baldly honest, that the reader’s attention will not flag.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/20/must_dos_what_we_like_this_week_7/feed/ 3 The sprinting, sloppy TV news coverage of the Boston manhunt http://www.salon.com/2013/04/19/the_sprinting_sloppy_tv_news_coverage_of_the_boston_manhunt/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/19/the_sprinting_sloppy_tv_news_coverage_of_the_boston_manhunt/#comments Fri, 19 Apr 2013 20:35:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13276692 If you woke up after 7:30 EDT this morning, there have been no new developments in the manhunt for Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, the white-hat-wearing 19-year-old suspect in the Boston bombing, since you got out of bed. If you have been following the story closely on television — or Twitter — it most certainly feels like this could not be the case. Over the past nine hours, news coverage has been in a flat-out sprint, continuous and unending, huffing and puffing to supply us with the latest news when there is no new latest news. The news networks are treading water but trying to make it look like they are free-styling by hysterically flailing their arms in a forward motion. At one of the rare moments when there is a huge, breaking news story, TV news is having just as rocky, sloppy and manipulative a time filling its schedule as when it is struggling to find stories to cover. How can this be?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/19/the_sprinting_sloppy_tv_news_coverage_of_the_boston_manhunt/feed/ 18 Gary Busey auditions for reality show on Mars http://www.salon.com/2013/04/19/video_gary_busey_auditions_for_reality_show_on_mars_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/19/video_gary_busey_auditions_for_reality_show_on_mars_partner/#comments Fri, 19 Apr 2013 17:13:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13276431 PajibaOn Jimmy Kimmel last night, Gary Busey showed his audition reel for Mars One, a reality show that it being planned by a non-profit organization in order to create a settlement on Mars (for real). It’s basically a one-way trip to Mars, where apparently viewers at home can watch the participant expire. In space.

Good times.

Anyway, Busey’s audition reel is hilarious and kooky and everything you’d expect from a Gary Busey audition reel for a one-way trip to Mars. “I don’t let anything get me down,” he says, “because I am positive. If you’re not positive, don’t go to Mars, because you’ll get trapped in your own eating habits. When you find yourself eating part of your calf muscle, you should not be on Mars.”

Wise. Insane. Busey.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/19/video_gary_busey_auditions_for_reality_show_on_mars_partner/feed/ 2 Newsrooming it: How Aaron Sorkin reframed bad media behavior http://www.salon.com/2013/04/18/newsrooming_it_how_aaron_sorkin_reframed_bad_media_behavior/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/18/newsrooming_it_how_aaron_sorkin_reframed_bad_media_behavior/#comments Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:06:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13275063 Last July, the most widely ridiculed episode of Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom” aired. Titled “I’ll Try to Fix You,” it climaxed with the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords. The staff of “News Night,” assembled at the office on a Saturday, quickly went into action, as the sound of Coldplay’s “Fix You” began to play on the soundtrack. Other news agencies— NPR, and then Fox, MSNBC and CNN— began to report that Giffords was dead. The crass head of ratings stormed into the newsroom and demanded that the “News Night” team “call” Giffords’ death: “Every second you’re not current a thousand people are changing the channel! That’s the business you’re in,” he shouted, looking to his typical ally, the cynical producer Don, for support. Don didn’t provide any: “She’s a person. A doctor pronounces her dead, not the news,” he said. Jeff Daniels’ Will McAvoy then made the righteous choice, deciding not to announce Giffords’ death on air, but to stick to the facts. Seconds later, word came that Giffords was alive and headed for surgery. The “News Night” team, virtuous resistor of peer-pressure, had made the right call. The Coldplay swelled.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/18/newsrooming_it_how_aaron_sorkin_reframed_bad_media_behavior/feed/ 10 Discovered: Crackerjack Danish political drama “Borgen” http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/discovered_crackerjack_danish_political_drama_borgen/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/discovered_crackerjack_danish_political_drama_borgen/#comments Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:15:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13272834 Each episode of the Danish TV series “Borgen” begins with a quotation from Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” and as the show proceeds, Denmark’s first female prime minister, an attractive and immensely likable moderate named Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen), gets a systematic education in that collection of cynical wisdom. One could almost say that “Borgen” is a lesson built on the old saw about power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely – but Birgitte is the head of a shaky coalition government in a European social democracy, not a tyrant, and what keeps us watching is the knowledge that she always has good intentions.

No doubt Americans by the thousands have found ways to watch “Borgen,” whether strictly legal or not, since Stephen King declared it his favorite TV show of 2012. Now the first season of this intimate and addictive political drama is finally available on Region 1 DVD, so no mastery of streams and torrents, or ownership of an all-region player, is necessary. I for one am grateful: This is an immensely more satisfying and realistic show than the American version of “House of Cards,” not least because it depicts retail politics in a small European country with its own distinctive traditions, where left-right tensions often wear a deceptive veil of civility.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/discovered_crackerjack_danish_political_drama_borgen/feed/ 9 “Top of the Lake’s” superb finale http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/top_of_the_lakes_great_finale/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/top_of_the_lakes_great_finale/#comments Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:51:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13272334 The stupendous Jane Campion-Elisabeth Moss collaboration “Top of the Lake” finished on the Sundance Channel last night: if you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for? If you have, you know that the last two hour installment masterfully wrapped up the series major mystery without forgoing its lyrical, steady tone. A dramatic and vast shot of a teenage boy plummeting off a cliff was balanced with scenes of that same teenager and his friends having an outdoor slumber party, that same teenager comforting his friend by cutely demonstrating how a baby might worm its way out of the birth canal. The small moments were not drowned out by the large.

We now know who impregnated the 12 year old Tui, or at least the circumstances under which she was impregnated. The police chief Al, a strange guy who has never shown that much urgency about the rape, who kept hitting on his colleague Robin (Moss), who was pretty chummy with Tui's father and town druglord Matt, but who seemed harmless enough, was actually running an underage sex ring. This reveal made sense of many things— no wonder this town has had such a lackadaisical attitude towards rape— without feeling like the heart of the drama. The scene of Robin, drinking alone and considering suicide, felt more like an emotional climax than her epiphany about Al. Tui shooting Matt in the back felt more like the dramatic climax than Robin shooting Al in the chest.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/top_of_the_lakes_great_finale/feed/ 6 Boston Marathon explosion: On cable, the same footage, best behavior http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/boston_marathon_explosion_on_cable_the_same_footage_best_behavior/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/boston_marathon_explosion_on_cable_the_same_footage_best_behavior/#comments Tue, 16 Apr 2013 02:42:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13272026 In the immediate aftermath of national tragedies, TV news becomes a kind of collective waiting room: You’re there because you can’t be anywhere else. There’s nowhere else to go, nowhere else to channel your fear and anxiety, or at least nowhere else that could maybe inform you, in five minutes or five hours, of something that you might need or want to know, something that will make sense of what happened. So for hours and hours you wait, because waiting is all there is to do, with news teams that have real, serious, tragic news to report -- but too much empty time to report it in.

Immediately after the bombing at the Boston Marathon, all of the network news channels, the cable news channels, and ESPN were airing nonstop commercial-free coverage of the catastrophe. Shamed by recent misreportings brought on by working too fast and carelessly — falsely IDing Ryan Lanza as the shooter at Newtown, claiming Gabrielle Giffords was dead, botching the Affordable Care Act decision— the news programs tried to be cautious. They were careful not repeat something just because it had appeared on Twitter (or in the New York Post). They didn’t want to speculate — the anchors kept saying they didn’t want to speculate — but they did have time to fill, and so on-air experts started talking about whether the attack was "sophisticated" or "homegrown,” whether it was perpetrated by al-Qaida or a lone wolf, whether the presence of shrapnel suggested the bomb makers had overseas roots or a working knowledge of the Internet. Speculation accrued.

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