HBO seems to be falling on tough creative times judging by its recent spate of shows. I love The Newsroom, but even I was rolling my eyes with the second season finale. True Blood is a parody of itself. Hello, Ladies is occasionally hilarious but too often feels like it should be called “Depressing Losers Who Fail a Lot.” And now these two shows…one is a depressingly slow and quiet examination of old people living in an irrelevant time, and the other is “Getting On.” [Hyuk yuk, get it? The show about gangsters is actually boring and the other is set in a nursing home? Get it?]
Boardwalk Empire…A depressing, wholly unsatisfying finish to a painfully slow, inconsequential season. It’s beginning to drive me a little nuts that Boardwalk Empire has this enormous cast that desperately needs to be pared down, but that they keep doing that to the wrong characters. [Season 2 saw Jimmy Dormandy dead and half the show’s energy die with him, and this finale saw half-a-face war vet Richard Harrow walk off into that good night after squandering him for most of the season. Meanwhile, Margaret is still around to bore us another day along with unbelievably irrelevant plot-lines involving Rothstein, Johnny Torio, and the endless storyline with Gillian, Jimmy’s mother who hasn’t had anything to do in two seasons.]
And were any of the new additions really all that great? A lounge singer called “Daughter” Maitlin, a shithead FBI psycho, and a bunch of fools down in Tampa? The biggest disappointment—for me—was in Jeffrey Wright’s creepy (but not exactly compelling) black supremacist who’s really just a thug, Dr. Narcisse. Maybe it was the ridiculous way Wright played him (like a sinister villain from a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon) or just that his ideology was never made entirely clear, but this was a shoulda-been-compelling-heavy who just never quite connected. It was beyond disappointing to see that he’ll live to see next season while Richard Harrow and Chalkie White’s poor daughter are dead. It’s also hard to imagine that anyone will really find this a satisfying season finale and be all that excited for next year. Grade for Season Finale: C- Grade for Season: C
Getting On…A boring show set in a hospital ward for older people. Most of the characters are hard to invest in (particularly Laurie Metcalf’s shrill doctor) except for Niecie Nash, who’s playing against her image as a de-glammed, pragmatic nurse. I liked her, but hated the rest of the show. Grade: D+
Man, I thought I was the only one that thinks Broadwalk Empire is slipping. I don’t even care for the new Narssee what ever. I also think they kill off the only human characters in the show.