The Idiot Box

Ross Douthat is right. You really ought to read Emily Nussbaum's post-partum on The Sopranos. She gets the essence of the show exactly right: It was brilliant, but like all of Tony's enterprises, it was a con, a way of making suckers of the audience while bringing them back for more. As I wrote of the first half of the sixth season, the show initially seemed to toy with making its characters sympathetic, but by the time the end rolled around, the writers had "dropped any and all pretense of the show being about somewhat lovable, likable characters." And yet, as Nussbaum points out, we kept on watching, unable to say we hadn't been told.

So now what to watch? The Sopranos is gone, BSG and Lost (which I still maintain are flip sides of the same coin) are on hiatus till 2008, Heroes went out with a ho-hum and won't be back till fall, Brotherhood and Dexter won't be back for at least a few months, and 24 is off the air for now too (and even if it was on, I doubt I could muster much enthusiasm for it -- I didn't even watch the last handful of episodes this season). Adam Sternbergh says to tune in to repeats of Friday Night Lights, and since Catherine has been raving about it pretty much non-stop, I suppose I might. I want to get into Big Love--and Ezra Klein's recent recommendation intrigued me--but I missed the whole first season, and when I tried to watch the first episode of season two, that seemed like kind of a big deal. Maybe it's time to Netflix season one?