My BFF in high school and I loved "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart." That's one of those songs that you hear and are just transported to a specific place in time.

it had a handful of really great moments.

Yes. Most of which Ron Moore wrote.

(Bitter? Oh, a tad.)

But for the sake of an argument (and I actually mean that, since I have to do laundry and am trying to stall):

Deadwood and The Wire are deliberately slow over the first few episodes.

Is that really a plus? Deliberately boring your audience seems more obnoxious than doing it accidentally. If you said, "after the first few episodes things pick up" I'd understand, because lots of shows take a little while to work out the bugs. But when you tell me it's intentional, it sounds like the people making the show can't be bothered with mundane concerns like entertaining their audience.

Hm. Now that I think about it, I feel like the HBO shows I've seen always have a certain self-indulgent quality, to a greater or lesser degree. And that might be part of what turns me off. I dunno, it's clearly true that network TV places all kinds of goofy, arbitrary restrictions on content and storytelling and blah blah. But I also firmly believe that sometimes, working within those restrictions leads to more creative solutions.

"Um, dad? I'm pretty sure nobody was meant to identify with Lester Burnam."

Didn't TWOP call that guy Pimpdaddy McGee or some such? Or was that my wife?

Anyway, despite the greatness of the aforementioned episodes, we quit Carnivale after the first season, when it appeared that all the Clancy Brown in the world couldn't move the plot forward. Come to think of it, that's why we quit Lost, too. I wonder if it's some sort of cosmic backlash against the greatness of Clancy Brown.

Is that really a plus? Deliberately boring your audience seems more obnoxious than doing it accidentally.

I didn't find a moment of Deadwood or The Wire boring. Boring and slow are different.

Also HBO shows REALLY use season-long arcs, which means earlier episodes have less wrap-up than most viewers of hour-long dramas are used to. It's a different rhythm which takes a while to get used to. It pays off as the season progresses, though, when story strands interweave and influence each other and all build together to a set of climaxes which are much more powerful for having so much back story.

Also HBO shows REALLY use season-long arcs, which means earlier episodes have less wrap-up than most viewers of hour-long dramas are used to. It's a different rhthm which takes a while to get used to. It pays off as the season progresses, though, when story strands interweave and influence each other and all build together to a set of ckimaxes which are much more powerful for having so much back story.

Yep. This is what I loved about Oz. I'd never seen anything like it before.

The entire cast of Carnivale deserved better, really.

Corwood, I didn't think you felt it was boring (and actually I didn't either), but your post read to me like, "this is something people may find fault with, but it's intentional." And if you don't like slow, it is the same as boring. Did I misunderstand what you were responding to? It sounded like you were warning/advising people who hadn't watched it.

Not boring, just a slow build. Really. Of course, much as I try not to take it this personally, hearing "The Wire" and " boring" together... it's like "God, your date's ugly." But there was a deliberate choice not to wrap up anything in an hour, or anything like that, which can look like nothing happens, and I admit that, and I squirmed when DS compared it to Moby Dick, too. Cause I am intimidated by that one, and I *like* cop shows. In an unwholesome way. But it's also really touching and, yeah, even hilarious. And I have called POTUS Shrub Boogie for two years because of it. "So, let me get this straight. You knew he was gonna steal from you and you let him play anyway?"
"Got to. This America."

I feel like the HBO shows I've seen always have a certain self-indulgent quality, to a greater or lesser degree.

I agree, and I'd apply that even to the ones I like (Sopranos, Rome). There's a definite sense of "Oooh, I'm on HBO, check out my mad critical-acclaim skillz."

And I also agree that, for whatever reason, HBO shows tend to have less than thrilling first eps. Had I not had fifteen bajillion people tell me that the second hour of Rome was exponentially better than the first, I'd never have watched it at all. With Sopranos, it took me nearly half a season (of DVDs, so I wasn't paying for the channel) to accept that, yeah, the show was actually (almost) as good as it thought it was.

[eta that I don't feel that way about Curb Your Enthusiasm, but that may just be because it's hard to exude smug pretention when your show is about Larry David being cranky.]

Corwood, I didn't think you felt it was boring (and actually I didn't either), but your post read to me like, "this is something people may find fault with, but it's intentional." And if you don't like slow, it is the same as boring. Did I misunderstand what you were responding to? It sounded like you were warning/advising people who hadn't watched it.

Yeah, it was a little bit warning to new viewers and a little bit trying to convince you to stick with it (because I'm still always surprised when people I respect don't love the things I love, for some reason). I mean, I do think their rhythms are deliberate, and I agree that the first few episodes of each show weren't action-packed, but each introduced characters and elements that became explosive before the end of the season. I don't think that's obnoxious; I think it's organic to the form of storytelling adopted by each of those series.