The 30 Greatest Characters on 'The Wire', #20 - #16

If you have not seen The Wire:

Step 1) Stop reading immediately (though you probably would do this anyway). There are spoilers below, and I will not be held responsible for ruining the greatest show of all time.

Step 2) Watch the entire series on HBO Go. If you do not get HBO, this is a fixable problem.

Step 3) Come back and read all of the character reviews I've completed so far.  If you enjoy good TV, you will binge all 60 episodes and finish the show before I finish the character rankings.

Step 4) Find a new job. In retrospect, that was a bad decision watching a full season of The Wire every day for five days because your employer expected you to show up to work. You need a means to pay for HBO so that you can watch all the episodes again.

Previous Installments
Characters #25 - #21
Characters #30 - #26

20) Felicia 'Snoop' Pearson

Marlo's terrifying third-in-command, while portrayed as a dangerous enforcer, provides some much needed comic relief to the Stanfield crew.  Don't get me wrong, she's extremely vicious and merciless, but tends to get more animated and vocal than the more soft-spoken Chris and Marlo. Snoop plays a lesser role in Season Three, but we see Marlo and Chris grooming her to become added muscle for their expanding enterprise, a role she takes on in Seasons Four and Five

Everyone's favorite fact about Snoop is that she's played by an actress by the same name. Felicia Pearson (the actress) was actually a Baltimore drug dealer that Michael K. Williams (the actor who portrayed Omar) encountered at a club one night; Williams then encouraged her to try out for the show.

Greatest Character Moment: I was pretty tempted to put Snoop below Ziggy and Wallace on this list, but she's responsible for one of my three favorite scenes in the entire series, in which she purchases the Cadillac of nail guns ("He mean Lexus, but he ain't know it.") from a hardware store worker at the beginning of Season Four.

19) Avon Barksdale

Avon is portrayed as a traditional drug lord, concerned with territory, respect, and family ties. He's most interesting in Seasons Two and Three, as his long-standing friendship with Stringer Bell starts to unravel over disagreements in how to run their business. While Stringer is most concerned with profiting from the business, which occasionally requires keeping the peace to avoid police attention, Avon is too proud to let other gangs' infringe on his territory without consequence.

When one sees how much Stringer is doing to grow the operation while Avon is in prison, it seems petty for Avon to return and demand that his crew get involved in violent conflict over a few measly corners. He seems like the pigheaded one, but he was right all along about Stringer's inability to make it beyond the drug trade. Plus, once the two had turned on each other, Stringer went to the police, but Avon went for the kill. You couldn't call either character "moral", but Avon's love of family and his generosity towards Cutty sure made him more likable, even if he was the less compelling character of the two.

Greatest Character Moment: His scene on the rooftop with Stringer in which the two reminisce about their past as two people who seem like the best of friends, but in reality have already turned on one another.

18) Duquan "Dukie" Weems

For a show that's so enjoyable to watch, The Wire sure throws a lot of unfathomably sad characters out there. Dukie is probably the saddest of them all.

When we first meet him, Dukie lives in a house with drug addicts and no running water. He gets made fun of by his peers because he wears dirty clothes and smells bad. Even his time with his three friends (Namond, Michael, and Randy) isn't all that great because Namond is constantly picking on him. From the outset, it feels like there's pretty much no way that this is going to end well.

Things start to improve a bit for Dukie when his eighth grade teacher, Prez, takes an interest in him. He allows Dukie to shower at school and provides him with clean clothes, while also encouraging him to build up his computer skills. As it turns out, Dukie has quite the aptitude for learning; before the end of Season Four, the schools promote him to the ninth grade. He's a genuinely nice kid that treats everyone he encounters with respect, and it was good to see him succeed, even if that was short-lived.

I think David Simon wanted to show what could be made possible through a little kindness and compassion towards a kid like Dukie. Unfortunately, the larger theme of The Wire is that everyone is trapped in their own little unjust system, and Dukie can't escape. The only person who can support him is Michael, and Michael only has the means to do so because he's been swept up in -- you guessed it -- the drug trade. When Michael's actions force him to go on the run, no one is left to support Dukie. Dukie then goes to live with a heroine addict and swindles money from Prez. Just like that, Baltimore has created another Bubbles.

Greatest Character Moment: An incident in Prez's classroom results in one girl slashing another in the face with a boxcutter. While everyone scram bles to get help for the injured girl, the assailant sits on the floor in shock. Dukie quietly slides over to her and gives her his small electric fan to help calm her down. It's just a nice moment that helps show what a kind heart the kid has.

17) Dennis "Cutty" Wise

There's success stories on The Wire, but they're few and far between. With Cutty, David Simon gave us someone we could genuinely feel good about. Upon being released from a long prison sentence, the former drug gang enforcer finds himself entangled with the Barksdale organization. He shows that he still has the intelligence and general acumen for the job, but he walks away from 'the game' when he realizes that killing is no longer in him,

In the later stages of Season Three, Cutty tries to open a boxing gym. The show does a good job of showing just how much bureaucratic BS one has to walk through just to start up something like that for the good of the community. It stops short of making Cutty just another chapter in the "everyone is trapped" novel, however; a deacon's political connections ultimately help him to get the gym off the ground. Cutty is shown to be a good mentor, coach, and friend to the kids of the community. He has mixed results with getting them to make good choices in their own lives, but it's at least nice to watch someone trying.

Greatest Character Moment: Cutty telling Avon that he can't be part of 'the game' anymore and walking out with Avon's respect is his best moment.

16) Thomas Carcetti

Carcetti shows up for the first time in Season Three as a politician who seems genuinely interested in making a positive difference in Baltimore. He's portrayed in stark contrast to others in the political realm who are more interested in their own career interests than doing anything to help the city. Carcetti decides to run for mayor and does so by promising things that are believable and earnest and he ultimately succeeds, even though he wakes up white in a city that ain't.

Yet, much like the very characters he despises, Carcetti's attention wavers from helping Baltimore in his capacity as mayor because he's more interested in making a run at becoming governor of Maryland. He gets a shock early in his mayoral tenure when he is informed that the school system is severely in debt. The governor of Maryland offers to bail him out, but only on the condition that Carcetti make the bailout extremely public, which would hurt his gubernatorial campaign. Carcetti refuses the money, and in Season Five, is shown to place an emphasis on the very statistic-based evaluation of police work that he originally opposed.

There's an argument that Carcetti's story is one of the most horrifying on The Wire, even though it doesn't involve any murder, violence, or theft. Carcetti bursts onto the scene as someone hell-bent on solving 'the problem'; once empowered, it doesn't take very long before he becomes a big part of it.

Greatest Character Moment; In the Series Finale, Carcetti finds out the truth about Baltimore's serial killer, and his reaction is stupendous.

The 30 Greatest Characters on 'The Wire', #25 - #21

I'm going to continue to post this at the top of these, just to warn people who may navigate here without having seen it on earlier posts. Sorry for any annoyance.

If you have not seen The Wire:

Step 1) Stop reading immediately (though you probably would do this anyway). There are spoilers below, and I will not be held responsible for ruining the greatest show of all time.

Step 2) Watch the entire series on HBO Go. If you do not get HBO, this is a fixable problem.

Step 3) Come back and read all of the character reviews I've completed so far.  If you enjoy good TV, you will binge all 60 episodes and finish the show before I finish the character rankings.

Step 4) Find a new job. In retrospect, that was a bad decision watching a full season of The Wire every day for five days because your employer expected you to show up to work. You need a means to pay for HBO so that you can watch all the episodes again.

On with the rankings!

25) Brother Mouzone

Brother Mouzone doesn't get a lot of screen time in the series, but he's the linchpin of several great scenes during Season Two and Season Three. Originally brought to Baltimore by Avon Barksdale to protect his operation, Mouzone doesn't have the appearance of muscle for a drug gang, what with the glasses, suit, and bowtie and all. However, it's clear from his first appearance that he means business when he shoots Proposition Joe's lieutenant Cheese with a quick draw.

Shooting Cheese alone makes Mouzone nearly satisfying enough to merit consideration on this list (apologies, Slim Charles), but there's more to him than that. Mouzone speaks eloquently and is very well-read. He commands enough respect to keep rival gangs away just by quietly sitting on a bench, perusing The Economist or whatever. Some feel that this makes Mouzone sort of a caricature of sorts, a gimmick not unlike Clay Davis compulsively blurting out "sheeeeeiiiiiiiitttttt", but I think this is just because we don't get much backstory on him, and I bet a lot of people would think the same thing about Omar if we only saw select "action" scenes. When Omar threatens to kill him, he says "I'm at peace with my god. Do what you will." You get the feeling that there's a pretty interesting history behind this guy. Sadly, The Wire never has time to explore it.

Greatest Character Moment: Who could forget the alley confrontation between Mouzone and Omar?

24) Marlo Stanfield

The primary villain of Seasons Three through Five, to the extent that one has to be designated, Marlo is the powerful leader of a drug gang from the second we meet him, and ultimately rises to be the primary kingpin in Baltimore in Season Five. We don't know much about Marlo's history, just that he's soft-spoken and you don't want to mess with him and his lackeys.

After watching the series once, I spoke to friends about what a terrible character I think Marlo is, but after re-watches and pondering it more, I think I confused "terrible" with "hateable". Marlo has pretty much no redeeming qualities and mostly just sits back and avoids doing the dirty work, issuing soft-spoken commands when necessary. He doesn't get fired up about anything until the second-to-last episode of the series. The point is, you're supposed to hate Marlo, and the show does a great job of making you desperately hope the major crimes unit will bring him down.

Greatest Character Moment: I think that most people best remember Marlo's impassioned outburst at the jail linked above, but this scene takes the cake, as he calmly steals a lollipop from a drug store in front of a security guard, whom Marlo implies is powerless to do anything about it.

Security Guard: Look, I told you I ain't stepping to. I ain't disrespecting you, son.
Marlo Stanfield: You want it to be one way.
Security Guard: What?
Marlo Stanfield: You want it to be one way.
Security Guard: Man, I don't want it to be --
Marlo Stanfield: You want it to be one way.
Security Guard: [Losing temper] Man, stop -- [pulls himself together] -- Stop saying that.
Marlo Stanfield: But it's the other way.

23) Chris Partlow

Chris is Marlo's number-two and he's loyal to a fault, committing murder after murder because "it had to be done". He's the one who kills and hides victims in the vacant houses in Season Four, a fact that evades the police for nearly the entire season and reaches ghost-story status with the kids on the street.

Yet, it's clear that Chris isn't just some bloodthirsty serial killer. He does what he does out of allegiance to Marlo and not from any sense of rage or hatred for his targets. Before pulling the trigger, he typically tells the victim to relax, assuring him/her that it will be quick. The main exception to this was when Michael Lee asked for Chris' help in dealing with his brother Bug's abusive father. Rather than a quick, painless shot to the head, Chris angrily beats the man to death, which some believe to be his way of unleashing some suppressed demons from his own childhood.

Greatest Character Moment: Aforementioned beating, shown here beginning at 4:56

22) Chester 'Ziggy' Sobotka

Ziggy is loud, cocky, annoying, whiny, and stupid. Though they don't ever share a scene together, he'd do a great job making Herc look like a model citizen and a beacon of common sense. He's extremely aggravating to watch make obvious mistakes over and over again that result in him getting robbed, beaten, or just plain ridiculed by his fellow stevedores.

That's more or less the point of Ziggy for the first seven or so episodes of Season Two, but the home stretch fleshes him out a lot more. He has one of the best epigraphs (the character quotes shown before the beginning of each episode) of the entire series: 

"How come they don't fly away?" 

Ziggy says this when observing a group of ducks that are free to leave their cage, but don't. The ducks don't leave because they have clipped wings, which effectively traps them where they are.

The parallel here is that Ziggy, too, is trapped, and the show leaves it pretty open-ended as to whether that's truly Ziggy's fault. The later episodes of the season imply that his father, Frank Sobotka, was unattentive to Ziggy as a child and we see him enabling Ziggy's bad behavior as an adult. Maybe Ziggy was always destined to be a piece of shit, but without effective guidance from his father, he turns into a raging screw-up who's always demanding respect that he never earns. That takes a turn for the tragic when he finally snaps and murders Double G, followed by turning himself in. The Wire actually makes you feel bad for this guy -- something you would have never thought possible after four episodes of his nonsense.

Greatest Character Moment: The "seeing eye duck" stunt was funny, but his best scene is his final one with Frank at the prison.  Heartbreaking.

21) Wallace

Another tragic figure, Wallace is an intelligent kid with a good heart that becomes unfortunately mixed up in the drug trade simply because that's the situation he was born into. He's seen helping out younger kids in Baltimore's projects with their math as well as bringing them food. He's the first character we see to seek an escape from his current situation, deciding he wants nothing to do with drug dealing after seeing the way in which the Barksdale crew murdered Omar's boyfriend. He cooperates with the police and is put in witness protection away from the city, and heck, that's boring, so he finds his way back to Baltimore, where he meets his demise at the hands of his best friends.

This was Michael B. Jordan's big break as an actor because everyone who watched Season One was gripped by Wallace's tragic story. He's the guy on the streets you feel for the most (outside of possibly D'Angelo) and his death was just the first of many sad ones over the course of the series' run. He is the first of the five significant characters killed off in the second-to-last episode of a season, and the second of many characters to die (or nearly die) in the same episode in which they deliver the epigraph quote. In a pretty depressing sense, Wallace's death was a true "Welcome to The Wire" moment.

Greatest Character Moment: His death scene. It's one of the worst scenes to watch, but you can't say enough about Jordan's performance here.

The 30 Greatest Characters on 'The Wire', #30 - #26

Since starting writing here, I've been thinking of a way to pay homage to my favorite (and arguably the best) television series of all-time, HBO's The Wire. It is my hope that this multi-installment review of the greatest characters on the show will do it justice.

If you have not seen The Wire:

Step 1) Stop reading immediately (though you probably would do this anyway). There are spoilers below, and I will not be held responsible for ruining the greatest show of all time.

Step 2) Watch the entire series on HBO Go. If you do not get HBO, this is a fixable problem.

Step 3) Come back and read all of the character reviews I've completed so far.  If you enjoy good TV, you will binge all 60 episodes and finish the show before I finish the character rankings.

Step 4) Find a new job. In retrospect, that was a bad decision watching a full season of The Wire every day for five days because your employer expected you to show up to work. You need a means to pay for HBO so that you can watch all the episodes again.

On with the list.

30) Kima Greggs

Kima is the series' 4th-most prominent character, so I feel like this is sort of a slap in the face to rank her this low. Truth be told, I didn't find her as compelling as most because she didn't seem that nuanced of a character in her professional capacity. As an officer, Greggs is always portrayed as intelligent, strong, and with a keen loyalty and morals.  Most of the other police either have some gray area to their work or experience growth over the course of the series.

Instead, Kima's personal life is what makes her interesting. Her partner Cheryl becomes pregnant through artificial insemination, despite that Kima is lukewarm on the idea of having a child and is far too invested in her job to be any sort of a reliable parent. Ultimately, the two separate because they were never able to see eye-to-eye on the matter.

Greatest Character Moment: I honestly have a hard time picking one. I'd probably say my favorite scene with her is the "If I hear the music, I'm gonna dance" conversation, in which Daniels tries to convince her to join the Sobotka detail in Season Two.

29) Nick Sobotka

Season Two switches the focus onto the union stevedores that work Baltimore's city docks and Nick Sobotka is one of the primary characters through whom the audience explores that world. Thanks in part to deindustrialization, there's not enough work for the stevedores to make a good living, so Nick gets involved with smuggling and drug dealing to make ends meet for himself, his girlfriend, and his daughter.

Throughout Season Two, Nick is an easy character to root for because he has a good head on his shoulders and generally makes good decisions. He earns the trust of the Greeks due to his intelligence and loyalty and constantly has to bail out his cousin Ziggy, who is brash and incompetent.

Greatest Character Moment: The time he strong-armed Frog, and felt the need to inform Frog that he's white.

28) Jay Landsman

Corpulent Jay Landsman would be considered a cartoonish character if everything about him wasn't so believable. Watch him on the show and try telling me there isn't a guy exactly like Landsman in every major police precinct in America. Usually affable and typically seen with fried food or porn magazines, Landsman is a police middle management prototype, generally loyal to those who work for him, but he shows the propensity to be a pain in the ass, such as in Season 3 when he wouldn't get off Bunk Moreland's back about finding officer Dozerman's gun. He gets good results, but is prone to the occasional fuck-up, like when he failed to inform Daniels' unit that Ziggy Sobotka had confessed to murder.

Overall though, Landsman is pretty likable for his comic relief and the fact that he's a bit of a prankster. He doesn't develop much at all over the course of the series and is usually just kinda there. But he's usually entertaining when he's on screen.

Greatest Character Moment: For me, it's a toss up between his three eulogies at the detectives' wakes or the following quote when advising Beadie Russell how to dress:

"For you, l would suggest some pantsuits muted in color. Something to offset Detective Moreland's pinstriped, lawyerly affectations and the brash, tweedy impertinence of Detective Freamon."

27) Clay Davis

The Wire is a serious drama, but it definitely has a sense of humor. For the most part, the laughs come from natural dialogue and what we know about the various characters, assisted by superb acting. There's almost no weird gimmicks or catch phrases. Almost.

Maryland Senator Clay Davis, the most corrupt politician in all of Baltimore (hopefully), is the exception to that rule, thanks to the long, drawn-out way that he says the word "shit".  I can't do it justice in text, but it says something that the most quoted line from The Wire is a one-word expression from such a minor character (Davis has the 40th-most lines of any character in the series).

Davis is the type of monster that creator David Simon wants us to be aware is prevalent in American politics. He draws money from illegal sources. He takes donations from people (notably Frank Sobotka and Stringer Bell) who hope he will advance their interests, but ultimately Davis does nothing to help them. Wickedly charismatic and capable of delivering a passionate speech, Davis' ability to spin his own image, in addition to immunity drawn from his relationship with key law enforcement personnel, generally keeps him out of harm's way despite his transgressions.

Greatest Character Moment: Just watch this

26) Cedric Daniels

Another highly visible character, Daniels appears in more episodes of The Wire than any other (58 out of 60). One of the first things we learn about Daniels is that he has something of a dirty past, having been the target of an FBI investigation for corruption. However, over the course of the series, he evolves into the character in the Baltimore PD most committed to doing good, effective police work (well, without breaking the law, anyway).

We originally meet Daniels as the leader of the detail assigned to the Avon Barksdale investigation. He originally seems to be some sort of chain-of-command barrier to Jimmy McNulty advancing the Barksdale case, but over time he proves to be capable of both earning the respect of his subordinates and giving them what they need to get the job done, even though he is often acutely aware of what he needs to do to please his superiors and advance his career.

Daniels is another easy guy to root for throughout the series' run because he typically makes the "right" decision and when he doesn't, the show does a good job of helping us to understand why. Undermined by his wife, superiors who care more about numbers than results, and occasionally incompetent underlings, Daniels fights through many challenges and sort of comes out a winner, being promoted to commissioner before being forced to resign and eventually putting his law degree to use.

Greatest Character Moment: Nothing beats pissed-off Daniels, and here's him at his pissedoffiest

Carcassonne

I'm a pretty big fan of board games, but I feel like I haven't been exposed to as many of them as I'd like to be. Growing up I used to play a lot of the standard ones like Monopoly, Life, Stratego, and the like, but nothing more involved than that.

About six years ago or so, I got to experience The Settlers of Catan for the first time on a double date and I was completely hooked. Soon after, I appropriately set up an emergency board game night with four of my friends to try it. They were probably a little confused, since I think the last time we'd all played a board game together was a seemingly neverending game of Risk our sophomore year of college, but nonetheless, we set it up. The board was ridiculously crowded because it's meant for just four players and we had five (we used Risk pieces for the fifth person, if you were curious), but nonetheless, everyone was a pretty big fan, and it spread quickly among my larger group of friends.

And so began the era of me being heavily interested in euro-style board games.

Truth be told, I can't exactly call myself a connoisseur here despite how much I enjoy them. I need to not only get more experience with the ones I have, but also expand my bank of games. Since then, I've played Ticket to Ride and Dominion, which were both very good. But, as the title implies, I'd like to talk about a different one in this post -- Carcassonne.

I received Carcassonne as a Christmas gift three years ago and it basically sat in the box for two years. Eventually I got around to playing it a couple times with a friend or two. It seemed fun, but undeserving of the hype. I had just got Ticket to Ride the previous Christmas and that seemed like the far more enjoyable game at the time; others got hooked on that easily as well. That made it difficult to get people to play Carcassonne because board game time is pretty limited at my stage of life and when I can actually get together with others to play, people are typically content to play what they know and enjoy rather than dive into something that might take experience to appreciate.

Fortunately, I had a good opportunity to give the game another go over New Years, which I spent with my wife's family. I brought Carcassonne with to the house we were staying at, pretty unsure of why I was doing so given my own reluctance to push it over the past few years. Surprisingly, my wife's cousins and I wound up giving it a try. Perhaps more surprisingly, it was an instant hit, and I gained a far greater appreciation for it.

Carcassonne is for 2-5 players and while I've given it a go with two and five, I think it plays best with three or four. The game itself is probably simpler to understand than I made it out to be in my mind, because after a few minutes it's pretty easy to figure out what's going on. You don't set up a board at the beginning of Carcassonne.  Rather, you build the board one tile at a time, gradually creating a map of cities, roads, and fields that comes together like a neat puzzle.  Along the way, you claim cities, roads, and fields and then (generally) score points upon their completion.

The concept is extremely simple but the strategy seems like it will take a hundred games to master. The feeling that I've got a lot to learn about correct play is what is really sucking me in. Never have I played a game before where I've so frequently decided I've made a (huge) mistake seconds after making a move (and that's saying something, because I'm a habitual second-guesser). While I used the puzzle analogy above, it doesn't quite work because in a puzzle, there's one piece for one location. In Carcassonne, there's a LOT of possible things you could do with each piece, many of them have their merits, and you have to do a lot of guesswork about how you think the board will build itself by the end of the game. Often times, the obvious move isn't the best one, and being able to adjust your plan on the fly to the ever-developing map is a must.

While that might imply that there's a chess-esque low level of luck in the game and that new players don't have much hope, that's certainly not the case. Drawing the right tile at the right time can make up for blunders in design, so randomness is definitely a factor, and everyone, even those with plenty of experience with the game, will make some errors. The complexity in strategy is necessary because there's no one silver-bullet A-B-C strategy that's going to make you win more than your fair share (unlike, say, Ticket to Ride, which is a great game but I feel like I follow the same basic plan every time with good results). That makes for high replayability, which is an absolute must for a great game.

I feel like I'm going to have to play this a lot more for me to assess whether it's my favorite game I've ever played, but the fact that this is a possibility at all says a lot. I highly recommend this game and hope that others will have as much fun playing it as I have.

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (no spoilers)

The much-hyped film lived up to expectations and was just flat-out fun.

First, a little background on me and Star Wars. I enjoyed the original trilogy, particularly The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.  I was "eh" on The Phantom Menace, never saw Attack of the Clones, and really liked Revenge of the Sith.  I think it's fair to say I'm a casual fan of the series.

Still, even though I've never been head-over-heels crazy about Star Wars, I absolutely got chills during the opening credits. The beginning notes of the familiar theme music really hit me with a gigantic sense of "WOW!", and for the first time, I began to understand what a truly major event this film was.  This story was set in motion about 38 years ago with the intent of setting up a nine-episode saga.  Think about that. 38 years. That's well older than I am. We're not quite talking about a situation in which each of the most recent three generations gets their own Star Wars trilogy to call their own, but there's probably been plenty of eight year-olds sitting in the theater, experiencing the saga for the first time along with their grandparents who at one point in their lives thought A New Hope was the damn coolest thing they'd ever seen on the big screen. This is a really big deal.

As implied by the title of the post, I don't want to give anything away related to the plot, but there's plenty of great things to say about the series' new primary triumvirate of characters, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), Rey (Daisy Ridley), and Finn (John Boyega). I guess Driver's on Girls or something, but by and large, this is a trio of relatively unknown actors, all of whom delivered exceptional performances, particularly Boyega. While I found Finn the most compelling, Rey gave the primarily male-dominated Star Wars saga a much-needed female heroine, and she was nothing short of a badass.

As one might expect, there's plenty of nods and winks to the previous trilogies and some neat easter eggs as well (amusingly, Daniel Craig voices a storm trooper with code name JB 007). And of course, they brought back old characters from Episodes IV - VI, most prominently Han Solo and Chewbacca. Harrison Ford may be an old dude at this point, but he still has excellent screen presence and it was a delight to watch him reprise his role.

One of the biggest criticisms of the Episodes I - III trilogy was the rigid, humorless dialogue. There's pretty much no denying that the screenplay of the first three movies (or at least the two of them that I saw) was nothing short of a dumpster fire.  The writing for The Force Awakens has a lot more life to it, and although there's more of a flavor of "modern American dialect", at least it no longer sounds like a bunch of stodgy wealthy people from the 1800s drawling their way through actionless scenes.

Then again, maybe the constant action in the movie (compared to its predecessors) helped in this regard. The Force Awakens is a real speed rap of an adventure and there's a relative lack of scenes that need to be carried by people simply speaking to one another in a calm setting. The film does a good job of "showing, not telling" to develop the characters for the audience. If that was a conscious decision, it was a good one.

Overall, the movie was a great experience and a worthy sequel to one of the greatest film sagas of all time. I suppose at this point it's pretty worthless to suggest that people should see this film because I'm the one who's late to the party. Sure, there was the occasional bit I didn't like, but to discuss the movie's imperfections at any length in this summary would be a disservice to something that should rightfully be considered a rousing success.

Television Review - 2015 (Part 4)

And now, I'll go ahead and conclude my list of my favorite five TV viewing experiences of the past year.

1. South Park (Season 19)

I've always been a South Park fan, but it's usually just a standard show I enjoy and aside from the occasional standout episode, nothing I'd consider truly great.  I can't think of another year in which I'd put South Park in my top five, let alone at number one. This season was an entirely different animal.

For those who haven't paid attention to South Park in a long time, or are just vaguely aware of what it's about, the show has evolved significantly from being just about a bunch of poorly-animated third-graders swearing and laughing at fart jokes.  To stay fresh, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have veered away from the oft-goofy plots from the first several seasons and have increasingly focused on the satirical aspect of the show. Their ability to create an episode in just a few days' worth of time allows them to zero in on current events shortly after they take place.  Over time, they've become absolute masters at social commentary, and Season 19 represents their finest work to-date.

Season 19 began with the introduction of a new principal at South Park Elementary, a buff Oakley-wearing recent college grad committed to social justice and emblematic of all things "bro".  His name? "PC Principal". PC Principal aggressively and violently combats even the slightest failure to demonstrate political correctness, such as beating the shit out of student Eric Cartman for saying "spokesman" instead of "spokesperson". He's a spectacular satire of today's "outrage culture" that has gotten completely out of control, in which people seem to be looking for ways to get pissed off and chest-puffy in response to pretty innocuous things. Of course, PC Principal is portrayed as a piece of shit who causes more harm (and even hate crimes) than he prevents. He and his PC "bros" are more interested in making it look like they stand for something and belittling other people than actually effecting positive change. Nail on the head.

Rallying against political correctness is nothing new to South Park, so what makes this (and I suppose Season 18) different than earlier seasons of the show is serialization. South Park used to be mostly a string of standalone episodes, but Season 19 is sort of like watching a 3-4 hour movie, divided into ten segments. The new format allows them to take the satire of PC culture and spin it into something bigger. And spin it, they did.

For example, South Park implies that the PC obsession has in part given rise to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, as outrage culture provokes a corresponding response in those it rallies against. It draws a parallel between PC culture and the recent gentrification trend in America's towns and cities, which creates an atmosphere of smugness and self-importance. In one episode, PC Principal tasks a student with scouring the social media posts of other students and even some celebrities to remove all of the negative criticisms, creating a veritable safe space on the internet for those too thin-skinned to handle it ("Lena Dunham just put a picture of her asshole on Twitter and only wants the positive comments"). Everyone wants to look good publicly; whether everyone wants to actually be good is of (distant) secondary importance.

Pervasiveness of advertisements, gun control, ISIS, police brutality, all of it gets woven into the rich tapestry of Season 19, and no one is safe from scathing portrayals, not even those damn charity-shaming Whole Foods checkout employees. That's what's great about South Park -- it mocks everyone and both sides of every major social issue, and that sort of nuance is something we don't see from anyone in news, social media, or even other television shows. South Park doesn't have an underlying political agenda, and its only real message is that we're all idiots, idiots who are convinced we know what's best for ourselves, others, and society while not even entertaining the idea that we could learn a little something from those who disagree with us.

Oh, and I'd be remiss not to mention that the series of episodes leading up to Season 19's conclusion was probably the most compelling South Park has ever been from a plot standpoint. I was giddy with anticipation after the penultimate episode to see how they'd wind up the season. Unfortunately, the season finale disappointed me to a degree with how quickly it had to wind everything up (tackling gun control and wrapping up the larger PC Principal-based narrative of the season proved to be too much for a 23-minute episode). Fortunately, it looks like some storylines will carry over to next year and get the conclusions they deserve (the finale all but confirmed PC Principal will return and that they're setting up coverage of the 2016 election). It's damn impressive that this show hit new highs in its 19th season, and I'm extremely excited to see what Parker and Stone have in store for us next year.

Essential Episodes: Where My Country Gone (s.19 ep.2), Safe Space (s.19 ep.5), Sponsored Content (s.19 ep.8)

Television Review - 2015 (Part 3)

Hello, and happy new year.  I have some thoughts on 2015 that I'm hoping to organize at some point, but for the time being, let's continue down the list of my favorite five television viewing experiences of the past year. Again, episodes in underlined bold are my favorites.

3. Master of None (Season 1)

Of the five shows on this list, I originally thought that I'd have the least to discuss about Master of None, but we'll see if that changes. I have a tough time resisting a good ramble.

This Netflix show is written by Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang (Fire Joe Morgan's "Junior", for the baseball fans).  Much like Louie, Master of None really only has one regular cast member, Dev Shah, played by Ansari. There are plenty of delightful recurring characters, but Dev is the only one to appear in every episode, and the story is almost exclusively told through his eyes. For that reason, along with the "show about nothing" feel, Master of None reminds me more of Louie than any show I've seen, though it doesn't share Louie's distaste for continuity or its occasional dream-like episodes.

Dev works as an actor who has had some success in commercials, but far less in television and movies. He's an engaging character to follow because he shows continuing growth throughout the season and does so in a realistic, believable way. Season 1 explores Dev's relationship with his immigrant parents (played by Ansari's actual mother and father), the amusing intricacies of latter-day dating, racism (though the show doesn't bludgeon you with life lessons here, respecting the fact that pretty much everyone watching is aware that racism is bad), the struggles of being a small-time actor, and the thrill of new love.

As you might expect from a show created from a comedian as brilliant as Ansari, there's plenty of laughs along the way as well. "30-year-old guy learns about life" wouldn't be nearly as interesting to watch if it weren't for the show's sharp wit and general sense of fun. Dev doesn't have much inhibition about new experiences. In a way, he shows us just how much the world has to offer if you're not reluctant to try things, whether that means taking a weekend trip to Nashville for a first date or simply spending the day hanging out with an old woman. We see a lot of ourselves in Dev, but in this regard, we see our "best selves".  Don't get me wrong -- he's as human as the rest of us and makes plenty of mistakes, but I think we all wish we could be like Dev more often.

I think what was most notable about my first trip through Master of None was that there really weren't any sub-par episodes.  Every installment of the 10-episode first season was of pretty good quality, with some excellent standouts.

Essential Episodes: Parents (s1. ep2), Indians on TV (s1. ep4), Nashville (s1. ep7), Mornings (s1. ep9)

I realize I just named 40% of the episodes in existence, which seems like cheating, but I couldn't in good conscience cut any of those four, and hey, I make the rules here.

2. BoJack Horseman (Seasons 1-2)

I had a really hard time choosing between BoJack Horseman and my #1 show of the year, but in the end I chose to drop BoJack to #2 because it was pretty slow in the early going before it really found its heart and hit its stride, and there's a few scattered dud episodes. But that doesn't change the fact that it's good. Like, really, really good.

"Wait wait wait, but it's a cartoon. Wait wait wait, but it's about anthropomorphic animals and humans living side by side. Wait wait wait, the main character is an alcoholic horse voiced by Will Arnett.  IT'S NOT GOOFY AND STUPID, I SWEAR!"

/me, trying to explain this show to people

Maybe that last bit isn't entirely true, because the show's first six episodes are more or less what you'd expect. The beginning string is genuinely funny, but doesn't seriously make you feel much else. BoJack Horseman is the star of a 90's sitcom (I most commonly associate his past self with Bob Saget, but that's just me) who has been out of the spotlight for a long time and begins on a quest to make himself relevant again by publishing a memoir (season 1) and starring in a movie (season 2). BoJack is obsessed with getting everyone to love him, despite generally doing little of note to actually earn that. What starts as a lighthearted comedy takes several turns for the dark, and despite maintaining a sense of humor, BoJack Horseman is truly a realistic look at depression and the struggle to make oneself happy.

Because of the nature of depression, BoJack's life checks off a ton of awesome boxes, but he still winds up feeling down and stuck all the time. If you were a recognizable celebrity with a huge, awesome house in Hollywoo (not a typo, but it's what/where you think it is), had someone who genuinely loves you, and got to work your dream job, don't you think you'd feel satisfied?  For someone like BoJack, it just doesn't work that way, and he's essentially on a never-ending quest to feel good about himself.  That quest drives him to do plenty of desperate things which are ridiculous at best (like buying a restaurant while eating at it to impress someone) and utterly despicable at worst (sorry, no spoilers).

While BoJack might be the only character that I'd say is truly fighting a battle with clinical depression, many of the people around him are also struggling for self-fulfillment, and all of their stories are compelling (well, except for maybe that of Todd, BoJack's de facto roommate voiced by Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul, but it's important that this show has at least someone on it that you don't need to take too seriously). It's weird to think that the show I watched this year with the best characters was animated, but that's truly the case, and it's helped by the fact that the voice acting is extremely good. The main cast is stellar, but there's an absurdly long list of guest stars, many of which are pretty famous.

If you haven't watched this show before, you really need to give it a try (Dev totally would!) and see it through even if you're not dragged in at first. I bet you'll both laugh a lot and feel more than you ever thought you could watching an animated show.

Essential Episodes: Say Anything (s1. ep7), Let's Find Out (s2. ep8), Escape from L.A. (s2. ep11)