Did anyone else watch Part 1 of the Spike Lee Katrina doc last night? Just gutwrenching stuff, and so much footage that I don't remember seeing before (mostly BBC, apparently). Those interviews, the music, that incredibly moving rap/song/poem at the end...I am now as angry as I was a year ago.

And then, after watching that, I saw the Anthony Bourdain Beirut special. He was really pissed too--he just kept it very tightly controlled.

All in all, a rather depressing evening of television, after the fluff of the Treasure Hunters finale (yawn!).

Did anyone else watch Part 1 of the Spike Lee Katrina doc last night? [..] And then, after watching that, I saw the Anthony Bourdain Beirut special.

I see you are on the sarameg tv diet! (not that I saw either of those cause rabbit ears, but...) I have a tendency towards going on tragedy-and-doom marathons without even meaning to. I keep wanting to rent Syriana, Munich and Paradise Now to top my previous issue-oriented depressing triad of Year of Living Dangerously, Welcome to Sarajevo and Three Kings, but that might be just a little much.....

Those are the 2 things I wanted to watch last night but did not have the energy to do so. (both mental and physical) I'm hoping to catch them at some point in the near future.

I watched Vanished just because it's set in Atlanta. There were some false Atlanta notes, mostly in the form of wrong pronounciations, and it's unlikely that one of the characters would be living in Chamblee, which is not pronounced like it's a town in France. I think it's trying to be "24" meets "The DaVinci Code," but the characters are not particularly compelling so far and about half the scenes were so dark that the people were just ghostly forms on my screen. Still, it's probably not fair to judge anything on the first episode.

I watched it too, Ginger. So far, it's notable for criminally wasting its lead actors, especially Gale Harold. I plan to give it another episode, but it better become a lot less predictable.

Hey, I thought that Bourdain didn't actually do the Beirut thing.

Huh.

If Sophia moves to Alaska we must F2F there -- wouldn't that be fun? Okay, pricey.

but the characters are not particularly compelling so far

Most of the characters are suspects, which means that they will have to remain cyphers for most of the season.

I love Gale Harold but I have grown weary of the angry, tormented, "I'm right and the rest of the world is wrong" law enforcement officer character. Maybe it will get better. Or maybe Kidnapped will be better.

I did enjoy envisioning Brian Kinney as the FBI agent, though. He'd have cornered the senator in a bathroom, fucked him, and rolled his eyes at everyone else's histrionics.

Does the role allow him to sneer at everyone as if they were something scraped off his shoe? That is his strong suit.