0 TV Show Review - Copper

I mostly hate cop shows. It's not that there's not a ton of potential for a police show to be awesome, but more often than not, they turn into a lame procedural thing where the cops solve a different case every week. It turns into a formula where a body turns up (for some reason, there are no cop shows about cops who investigate shoplifting), then the police start hunting up leads, then there's some sterling detective work and the bad guy is apprehended. Basically, every episode turns into a villain-of-the-week, and no matter how you try to trick it up with surprise guests and crazy murderers, after a while, it's BORING.

This is not the only reason I dislike cop shows, though it is the main reason. Even some shows with tons of potential, like Longmire or Luther, fall prey to this cookie-cutter story format, and it's a damned shame that we can't get a show about the life of a cop. One of my best friends is a cop, and his life cannot be broken down into one-hour episodes. Different stuff happens every week - he has to deal with an irritating co-worker, or he has to go out of town to chase bad guys who run to small towns, or he gets to throw the cuffs on bodybuilders who could rip off his arms if they didn't know damned well someone would kill them for it. I want a cop show that tells a story, and one that doesn't wrap every episode with a neat little bow.

Enter Copper. This show, which is on BBC America right now (sorry if you don't have cable), features Kevin Corcoran, or Corky to his friends. He is a police detective in New York - but this ain't Seinfeld's town. This is Five Points in 1864. Corcoran has been fighting the Confederates for the last four years, and comes home to find his daughter murdered and his wife missing. In the meantime, he has a job to do - and policing Five Points was a nasty job at the best of times, and a downright impossibility most of the time.

Brief history lesson for those of you who missed Gangs of New York. In the early 1800s, there were a lot of immigrants to New York. Many of these were Irish people fleeing the devastation back home. Many were Jewish immigrants. And many were black people looking for freedom in the North, and discovering that being free often meant being hungry. They all got funneled into Five Points, a segment of New York reserved for immigrants that rapidly became grossly overpopulated and dirtier than a farm hog's ass crack.

So right off the bat, Copper is about police at the very beginning of the nation's organized police force, charged with fighting crime in a place where crime was most peoples' day job. There are multiple brothels, and nobody even tries to shut them down, because when bank robberies and murders were commonplace, policing morality was less than an afterthought.

I knew I was going to like Copper when, in the first five minutes, Corcoran and his fellow coppers are surrounding a band of bank robbers. Corcoran decides to spring the ambush and leaps out from behind a wall, shoots one bank robber dead, and then yells, 'Police!' Yeah, in that order. Due process was not exactly an overwhelming concern, and once all the robbers are dead, the police chief shows up and takes all the stolen money... back to his house. These were gritty men in a gritty time, and if they did things a little questionable, there weren't a lot of people who could object. After all, the coppers might keep you from getting murdered in your bed, so if they kept some 'evidence' for their efforts, you may have been willing to let it slide.

I love the tarnished brass of Copper, but that's not enough to make me come back every week. What keeps me anxious for the next episode is the story. Corcoran's search for his lost wife is a continuing thread, as is his affair with the madame at his favorite house of ill repute. We also get to follow Annie, a very young girl who is abducted, sold into prostitution, rescued from said prostitution, and then - well, I don't want to give it away, but suffice to say this story feels a lot more believable than the one with Daddy Warbucks. And there are more bodies.

In fact, not an episode of Copper passes without someone getting, at a minimum, beaten like a cheap rug, and most of the time, somebody gets snuffed. Stabbings and shootings and throat-slittings were practically routine in Five Points, and thanks to a story that refuses to shy away from the uglier truths of our glorious nation's past, we get to see a whole damned lot of them. I do like a show with a body count, and this one even has a boob every now and then. If you ask me, that makes it a keeper.

If you prefer your police shows to follow the old tried-and-true method of busting a new bad guy every week, you'll probably be fine with Law and Order: CSI. But if you want to see a story develop, if you like to see what life was like 150 years ago, or if you just like to see good guys get away with bad things, you might really dig Copper. It's fun and violent and dark and cool, and yet hopeful and noble at the same time. It's in full swing right now on BBC America, with five episodes aired. You might be able to catch up if you have On Demand, or you can go download the episodes from iTunes or the Zune marketplace. I highly recommend it, though I gotta tell you, it's not for everyone, and certainly not fit for the squeamish.

0 TV Show Review - The Wire

When I reviewed Copper, I mentioned how little I care for most episodic cop shows. The formula of catching a different bad guy every week is trite and unrealistic, and becomes painfully difficult to believe. Hell, some of those CSI shows are practically science fiction.

But The Wire is the kind of television that lets us know cop shows can be awesome. There's no formula. There are no neat ribbon-tied endings. There's no needless drama or hair-raising feats of derring-do. There are cops who do their jobs, and there are bad guys who do their jobs, and there are all the people affected by this cycle. And then there's the story.

If I had to pick one word to describe The Wire, it would be 'natural.' Everything about The Wire happens naturally, never forced, never gimmicky. The acting is superb. The story develops organically - there's no pre-determined ending, just the sort of cause-and-effect that actually makes things happen. Dealers sell drugs; cops go after them; people get killed. There are surprises and events that you didn't see coming, but they're not tricks or plot devices. The story can surprise you because life can surprise you.

The people who made The Wire did their research, too. The show feels real because the writers did more than just have a couple police on set. I have a cop friend who is also watching The Wire, and from the stories he tells me, I have absolutely no problem believing that the writers for The Wire have an exceptionally deep understanding of how actual police work.

For one thing, The Wire doesn't pretend that all cops are superheroes. It willingly acknowledges that lots of police are less than stellar human beings. Many cops are ladder-climbing political whores. Many more are just power-tripping bullies. And a bunch, a pretty fair-sized number, are damned serious about protecting and serving, and they're hamstrung by the fact that they are all government employees.

The Wire never shrinks from blatantly indicting what are otherwise sacred cows. Corrupt black politicians who trade on their race to keep them rich and in power. Police commissioners who are more concerned with looking good on paper than with stopping crime. Incompetent detectives who are only riding their desks until retirement. Reporters who will stop at nothing to get a good story - even if it means making it up themselves. I could keep going, but I might end up spoiling something.

However, just because some of the characters are assholes doesn't mean they're villains. The top brass might be fudging crime stats, but if they are, it's because the mayor's office is putting too much pressure on them. They might be decent guys who have to do what it takes to make ends meet. The detectives might have once been gung-ho crimefighters, but now they're jaded and exhausted by a system that lets complete outsiders tell them how to do their jobs (and often prevents them from doing it at all). Even the drug dealers, the guys we assume should be the bad guys, are often quite sympathetic. They're selling heroin because it's the only thing they know how to do.

Now, I've told you how well The Wire reflects real life, but that isn't enough to make a show this amazing. To make a series as powerful and brilliant as The Wire requires more than knowledge of how things really work. To be this good, the characters and the story have to be enthralling. And they are. Which at this point is probably redundant.

The trap into which most TV writers fall is a need to make the show more interesting than real life. The hero doesn't just get in a gun fight; he blasts away at four assassins and then leaps off a pier to save a drowning infant. Cops dive to the ground just as the car bombs fill the screen with brilliant orange explosions. Dramatic last-minute rescues and perfect one-liners are the mainstay of television cops - but they're just as make-believe as Lord of the Rings.

Real life is fascinating. I could tell you about how my grandfather was one of four pilots from an entire carrier who survived an air battle against the Japanese, how he floated in the Pacific for hours after giving his lift vest to a fellow sailor. Or I could tell you stories about how my old man called in artillery on the Viet Cong, or how he was badly wounded months later. Hell, I could tell you my own stories, about being in the middle of a bush war in Uganda or how my first girlfriend and I saw a man die. Real like does not need to be tricked-up to be interesting, and the writers of The Wire know that.

The Wire does more than just show us a believable story in a realistic setting. It goes the extra mile and makes it amazing. It makes you care about the people, the kids whose parents are drug addicts and the cops with the drinking problems. It punches you in the stomach and then holds your hair back while you puke. It shows us people - real, believable, natural people - and it makes you love them, even when you hate them.

And as if that wasn't enough, it makes you think. It makes you wonder what we could do differently. It makes you want to get involved. It makes you want to take up arms against a sea of troubles (although not in a Shakespearean-suicidal-tendencies kind of way). It makes you care, not just about the fictional characters you see on your screen, but about actual junkies and homeless people and embattled cops. It makes you want to find out more, and it makes you want to be more than a spectator in your own story.

I just finished the show last night, and I am equal parts glad to have seen it through to the end, and sad that there is no more to watch. It was moving and powerful and brilliant, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and always thoroughly enjoyable. I know I'm enjoying the afterglow right now, so my opinion could be colored by the recency of the experience, but I can't think of any television show I've ever seen than was as good as the Wire. From now on, every show I enjoy will have me saying, 'it was good, but it wasn't The Wire.'

I owe a special 'thank you' to readers who commented on my Copper review for turning me on to this amazing show. Hopefully someone will read this and say, 'man, I really need to watch that,' and then I will have paid it forward.

0 TV Show Review - Oz

In my constant attempt to write about things that are absolutely not games, here's a review of an old TV show that you can't get on Netflix and won't see on regular cable. It's one of the first original series that HBO rolled out, and they're incredibly protective of their stuff. Apparently, they feel that if you get to see a man's johnson during the show, they're not inclined to let you get it for a nine-buck-a-month Netflix membership.

Oz was a cool show about life in a prison. Well, maybe 'cool' is the wrong word. 'Depressing' might be a better descriptor. This prison was apparently run by shrub-brained bobble-heads, because they were constantly allowing the inmates to kill each other and get high as balls. It was the blueprint for what would become the typical HBO drama - huge cast, lots of different story threads, and an endless parade of needless nudity.

The story of Oz follows a handful of inmates, guards and administrators who deal with life in the day-to-day doldrums of a maximum security penitentiary. There are drug dealers and murderers, priests and prostitutes, and even a few nerds. They are not so much characters, however, as they are tools used to tell a story and evoke emotion.

It's pretty obvious, when you're watching Oz, that the writers were going for a modern-day Shakespearean tragedy. It becomes especially obvious when the inmates put on a production of Macbeth. The show has three goals - to tell a compelling tale, to get you invested in the characters, and to appeal to people who want to see blood and naked people.

I'll start with that last one. If you want to see an incredible number of stabbings interspersed with full frontal male nudity, Oz can sure deliver. I mean, there are lots and lots of moments when I wanted to cover my eyes. Sometimes at the violence, sometimes at the dick parade. I'm not squeamish about either, but sometimes it's just more than you need. Some of those deaths were incredibly gruesome, and I could live the rest of my life without ever again having to see the privates of the guy who does Mayhem in those insurance commercials. You'll be lucky if you don't develop a bit of a complex watching Oz - apparently, they only hired well-hung actors.

As far as the characters, they were very well-realized. From the poor sap who is doing time for a DUI-turned-manslaughter to the Irish gangster with a talent for survival, the characters in Oz are a varied and entertaining bunch of people to watch. The only problem is, you start to root for some of these guys, but being a tragedy, nobody gets a happy ending (except in prison terms - there's enough disgusting sex that you know a lot of these dudes had a 'happy ending').

In fact, this ties into the next point. I know the show is going for tragedy, and it accomplishes that in spades, but after watching six seasons of Oz, your psyche is going to need a break. I know bad things can happen to people, and I know prison isn't exactly a Caribbean resort spa, but it's amazing how horrible things get for these people. So many people are so badly hurt that it becomes difficult to care what happens. I mean, I want to hope Beecher can find peace and freedom, but come on! How much bad crap can happen to one guy?

All that said, Oz does a remarkable job of telling a story. In the course of six seasons, the show spins a yarn of greed and hope and morality and the flaws of the human condition. It's aggressively intelligent with a powerful undertow of subtext. It even ends with a visual metaphor that manages to put a final punctuation on the story without a heavy-handed attempt to wrap up all the loose ends.

However, while the story itself may have been well-executed, Oz obviously has its flaws. As one of HBO's flagship original series, there were too many mistakes in theme, timing, and character development. They were going for Shakespeare, but they missed the mark. Even Shakespeare knew that sometimes, the audience wants to see a good guy win, at least every now and then. In order to weave their tale of corruption and darkness, the writers sacrificed believability and they opted to deny any real relief from the relentless oppression.

I did enjoy Oz, and I'm glad I watched the whole series. I wish they had made a few minor changes, and having done a little homework, I know that it was not even remotely realistic. Prison is not a pleasant place to spend your afternoons, but I think even a Russian gulag is run better than this. But for all the depression and pain, there's an entertaining story, one that will make you think. And more importantly, it will make you redouble your efforts to avoid becoming a resident at your local correctional facility. Because DAMN, prison sucks. Even in real life.

0 TV Show Review - Revolution

The best TV shows have a message, a statement that gives you something to ponder, a lesson to teach. And sometimes, even bad TV has a message. Like Revolution, in which the message is 'only attractive people will survive the apocalypse. And they will have regular access to hot showers.'

Revolution looked really cool in the trailers. All the electricity fails at the same time, and the United States is thrown into complete anarchy. One man knows why the lights went out, but he is apparently not in much of a mood to do anything about it. Another man is a douchebag who has established a really mean government and runs around killing people. And in the middle of it all, there's a pretty girl who has a crosssbow and hardly ever bothers to use it.

The story is even really fun. See, the dickbag president guy outlaws guns so that only he will have them, so everyone has bows and swords. It's all swashbuckley, because the heroes have to get into swordfights and shoot arrows instead of just blasting everybody with firearms. The first episode has this really cool fight in a hotel where the lead bad-ass guy beats the stuffing out of, like, a dozen guys. And totally kills most of them.

There are all the elements of a classic Sunday matinee pulp serial. There's a rebellion against the bastards in the militia. There's a murdered father and a kidnapped brother. There's a lost uncle with a secret past. There's even a nerd, although that's not particularly Zorro-ish.

In fact, although I'm going to spend the last half of this review saying bad things about Revolution, I really am enjoying it. I love how they show nature recapturing the wilds of our nation. The action scenes are pretty exciting. The bad guys are despicable and the good guys are properly heroic, and while the show tends to be a little predictable, it's a fun ride.

OK, now the bad stuff. For starters, it's on NBC. I honestly don't know what possessed me to watch a show on a major network, especially a serial, because they all get cancelled before they can finish the story (except for Lost, which should be a good sign, because Revolution is also a JJ Abrams story). And networks refuse to hire any actors or actresses who couldn't quit their day jobs and be underwear models, so everybody on the show is absurdly, unbelievably good-looking.

When you're watching Revolution, you may be reminded of another apocalyptic show that's a hell of a lot of fun - The Walking Dead. And if you happen to be watching both shows, you'll see where Revolution makes all the mistakes that Walking Dead avoids. The characters in Revolution are ridiculously attractive, and always very clean. They also never get scarred - sure, they are terrifically violent, perpetually getting into knife fights or fisticuffs, and yet they all manage to avoid taking shots to the face. They also have no problem finding hair gel.

The story is equally sanitized. Moral dilemmas are few and far between. Good guys will always save the bad guys when they're hanging from the edge of the cliff. The heroes are very heroic. The bad guys are mustache-twirling madmen. Deaths are profound and, among people with lots of lines, very rare. Seriously, it's like the writers are actively avoiding watching The Walking Dead, for fear it would give them any good ideas.

So Revolution is five or six episodes along - enough to make an informed decision about whether it's watchable - and I am rolling my eyes in disbelief at least once a week. Sometimes more. So why am I still watching it? Simple - I have too much free time.

No, that's not it. I mean, I do have too much free time, and  should really finish painting all these Warhammer Quest figures (the insurance gave me money for a replacement copy, but I couldn't find one that was painted). But I could watch something else, something smart and deep. But I watch Revolution because it's fun. That's it.

Yes, I can see all the stupid parts. Yes, the logical inconsistencies are almost painful. Yes, it's as shallow as a fourth-grader telling fart jokes. But sometimes, when my family is sitting around the living room eating take-out, it's fun to dial up some kid-friendly entertainment and let my mind take a vacation for an hour. Or really, more like 42 minutes - I DVR everything and just zip through the commercials.

Besides, not everything can be The Walking Dead. Can you imagine trying to eat a plate of chicken fried rice while you were watching decaying people chewing chunks out of people who get to bathe once a year? Sometimes, it's OK for television to be dumb, if it's fun. You won't find yourself at the edge of your seat when you watch Revolution. You won't wonder if the hero girl is going to get killed. You won't go to work the next day and excitedly ask your co-worker, 'so, did you see it last night?' because it will promptly leave your head the next time you see strawberry taffy. You'll have fun for as long as it takes to get to the end credits, and maybe be reminded of watching old Three Musketeers serials while you mowed through a bucket of popcorn.

If you want to get caught up on Revolution, you can probably find the first several episodes on Hulu or OnDemand, or maybe even at the NBC website. It's still in the first season, so you can't find it on Netflix or anything. It's worth your time, if you have too much time in the first place.

0 TV Review - The Walking Dead

OK, I've held off long enough. I was all, 'everybody has already seen The Walking Dead. We don't need a review of a show that anyone with two brain cells is already watching.' And then the mid-season finale was last night, and I was all, 'holy crap, this show is the best frikkin show ever,' and lost all restraint in my need to talk about how awesome The Walking Dead is.

I'll get this out of the way first - I'm not reviewing the comic book. Seriously, ever. I love it, and can't wait for December 12 to find out what happens in the next issue, but it's the kind of book that when you ask a comic book nerd what he's reading, he'll go 'Walking Dead,' and you both shrug and go, 'well, yeah, duh.'

And I wasn't going to review the show, either, for a very similar reason. If you're a zombie fan, you have to be watching this show, so what more is there to say? But after the episode I watched last night, I just can't contain myself any more. The Walking Dead is fantastic, and I simply have to tell everyone who will listen that they ought to be fans, even if they already are.

If you are a fan of the comic book who (for no possible reason I can fathom) is not watching the TV show, you should know that it follows the comic only as a general guideline. There are characters on the show who are not in the book. There are people in the book who are not in the show. There are different scenes, different stories, and completely varied orders of events. Most importantly, you never know who will die. There's no guarantee that just because your favorite lasted 50 issues in the comic book, he can't get struck down halfway through season one (not that I'm saying that happened, or even referencing a particular character or incident. It's just an example. No spoilers have been revealed).

What I can tell you, without giving anything away, is that the show is impeccably timed and incredibly tense. The storytelling is precision perfect, often gut-wrenching, and thoroughly addictive. The second half of season three won't be out until February, and man, I can't wait. It's not even just because of the horrible cliffhangers they left us last night. I want the show to come back, and not just because I want to find out what happens. I want to spend more time with the people on the show.

And that's really what has me hooked - the characters in The Walking Dead are beyond believable. I watched eight seasons of Lost, and those overly attractive castaways were never more than puppets on strings. But in The Walking Dead, I feel like I'm spending an hour every Sunday night hanging out with a bunch of people I actually know. Even the ones I hate, the ones I hope will die - I still feel like I know them, like I'm not watching from a recliner in my living room. It's like I'm sitting on a filthy plastic chair at the side of the room while they argue about where to go next.

It takes a lot more than great writing to make me this connected to a show. To feel like these people are this real, they have to LOOK real. Even the attractive people are dirty most of the time, and not all of them are good-looking. They tend to be fit, but if they were lard-asses, zombies would have caught them by now, so I can see past the fact that all the women have killer asses. They look like normal, believable people. They have bad hair days. They grow filthy beards. They wear torn clothing and sleep on mattresses that I would swear I can smell - and they smell like dog farts.

The effects and makeup are also excellent. Just one flapping rubber mask, just one off-kilter contact lens, and the illusion would break down. Not shatter, necessarily, but weaken. And yet every episode just continues to build the feel that you're not just watching this horrific world. You're in it. You can feel the sticky Southern heat, smell the rotting corpses, taste the bland oatmeal. Everything about the show brings you into their world.

I would be lying if I said the show was flawless, though. Early on, there were problems. It took a while for some of the people to grow on me, and especially around the first half of season two, the show was flat-out slow as hell. The pacing was completely off, and it was almost work to sit through another hour just to turn to my son and go, 'man, is anything ever going to happen on this show?' That problem is GONE, by the way - this season has been absolutely phenomenal. Not too slow, not too fast, just the right amount of development mixed with just the right number of gruesome deaths. But if you're plowing through the reruns, keep in mind that you have to get through some slow patches to get to the genius.

And for a long time, they were also having a lot of trouble giving me a reason to give a crap about some of the characters. One guy in particular was so irritating that I just wanted a zombie to eat him so he could be interesting (if you're watching the show, you may know who I mean. Be cool and don't spoil it). Some people seemed to be deliberately stupid. Some were just intentionally unpleasant, beyond what normal people would be. The writing has been so amazing this season that it's not hard to forget the low points from before, but they were there nonetheless.

Finally, I do have one more problem with The Walking Dead, and it relates to both the show and the comic. I am seriously over the 'people are the real monsters' drama-queen bit. Other zombie-related entertainment has shown that you can definitely tell a good zombie story where human beings are not mostly douchebags, but it still plays as a recurring theme. At this point, it seems like it's written by a bunch of crappy poets sitting around a coffee shop on a Tuesday night listen to an open mike and saying, 'deep, man, deep.' The best zombie entertainment is allegorical, but this particular allegory has been done to death.

However, The Walking Dead obviously has no intention of altering its direction, and while I don't agree with it completely, I'll be damned if I'm not entirely hooked. I can't stop watching. I know there's heartache ahead. I know there are deaths and sorrow and pain, and yet this particular story has 100% of my attention. There's no guarantee of a happy ending, and I don't care, because in this case, it's not about the ending. It's about the people and how they change as the show progresses. That, and how they totally kill a ton of different things. That part is also awesome.

Oh, one more reason I'm reviewing this tonight - there's a big marathon coming up on AMC. If you're behind on the show, or missed an episode, or just want to dive in at the beginning, you can get completely caught up when they run every episode over New Years Eve and New Years Day. Yes, it's a month away, but that will give you time to get your order in with your cable company. Because if you're not watching The Walking Dead, you should be.

0 TV Show Review - The Americans

I apologize in advance. I'm about to get all 'in my day' old-manny, and this is going to make some of you roll your eyes and think I'm a crotchety old fart stuck in the 80's. But then, I probably am a crotchety old fart stuck in the 80's, so I accept that. this story very interesting

You kids today don't know how bad you have it. Why, in my day, we had real spies, and real threats, and we were damned sure we were all going to die. And we kind of loved it, because it spawned the coolest genre of movies - the cloak-and-dagger. But ever since the Cold War spun down and Clinton decided we didn't need the CIA, the entire spy movie genre is stuck chasing people of Middle Eastern descent. Back in the 80's, spies were saving the world. Now they just save middle-income suburbanites and corporate interests. We had Red October and Scarecrow & Mrs. King; you have Covert Affairs and Burn Notice. I miss those cloak-and-dagger backroom deals and knowing that one wrong move means the end of civilization as we know it.

Which is why I was so excited to watch The Americans. It's old-school cloak-and-dagger, but updated and spun on its head. It's about a couple of spies during the height of the Reagan-era Cold War, and they're husband and wife, but the real trick here, the thing that never could have happened in 1985, is that the protagonists of the show are the Commies. They're deep-cover secret agents working to undermine the American government. They've been here for decades, they have kids, they speak flawless English - and they steal military secrets and assassinate enemies of the Party. This show never would have worked in the 80's, which is one reason I am so glad to see it now.

See, in the 80's, when we absolutely HATED the Soviet Union and people were actually patriotic (as opposed to this slipshod jingoism that makes people sing 'Proud to Be An American' and put ribbon magnets on their cars), nobody but nobody rooted for the Rooskies. James Bond put bullets in Soviets - except the hot female agents, because he put something else in them. They were the biggest villains we had ever known. Bigger than Hitler, because at least Hitler wasn't in a position to nuke the whole planet to glass.

Today, though, we just don't see the world as black-and-white as we did then. Today we have to live with the fact that our own government is taxing the piss out of us to pay off rich assholes who ripped us off. We may not be too fond of Al Qaeda, but we're also supposed to understand that most Muslims are actually decent people, even though we're blowing holes in their home countries. Our heroes are flawed, often outright villainous. So now, we can watch a TV show where sworn enemies of our homeland evade capture, commit murder, and steal our secrets - and we can hope they succeed.

Of course, it's also easy to watch a show like this when we know that the USSR didn't win the Cold War, we were never invaded or nuked, and in the end it was all mostly smoke and mirrors. When we know how the story ends, it can be fascinating to see how the other side played it. In the 80's, when The Americans takes place, we were too uncertain to root for the other side. Now we can just look at them as people doing an interesting job.

One of the best things about The Americans, outside the fact that it never could have been made twenty years ago, is the statement it makes. There were spies doing spy stuff all over the place, the threats were considerably more terrifying, and yet we would have staged a revolution if Reagan had told us he was tapping our phones. Take off our shoes at the airport? Only at gunpoint. And yet now that the world is safer than it was, when we have the audacity to believe that it's the president's job to keep us safe, we're fine with surrendering basic freedoms that would have inspired a bloody coup in the 80's. And the most ironic thing is that had the Soviets decided to really screw with us, they wouldn't have sent a half-dozen religious nutsacks with rudimentary flight training. They would have sent FREAKING MISSILES. We had a real threat then, one that scared all of us all the time. I'm less scared of Al Qaeda than I am of an angry chihuahua.

But you're not here wondering how I feel about the political undertone in The Americans. You want to know if the show is worth watching. And I am happy to report that I like it a hell of a lot. It hits a perfect balance where it's serious without being too dark, fun without being campy, dramatic without being a total queen about it. Keri Russell plays the wife, and even though she always seems like she's either angry or about to cry, she is pretty darn easy on the eyes. The real star, though, is the husband, a dude I've never seen before but who should be a household name in a few years. He steals the crap out of every scene he's in, and he's a fascinating mix of morality and ruthless determination.

Plus there's all that awesome spy crap. There's the umbrella with the hidden poison knife in the end, the clock with the hidden transmitter, secret codes that don't appear until you soak them in vinegar. There are stakeouts and tails, disguises and seduction, knife fights and gun play. I love a good spy show, and I really love 'em when the stakes are high. When a misplaced word or a botched dead-drop means the world expires in a fiery meltdown, and when the bad guys are just as well-funded and professional as the good guys, then you've got the kind of tension that makes The Americans a pretty darn kick-ass show.

I wouldn't normally review a TV show after only three episodes, because I generally like to wait and see if it can maintain. But this one is pretty damned cool, and if you have any kind of On Demand service for your television, you should be able to get caught up. If I tell you about The Americans a year from now, it could be hard to find the reruns. It's on FX, so if you have cable and like spy shows, get up to speed and see how secret agents did it back in the good ol' days.

Summary

Pros:
Great old-school espionage
Great acting, especially the husband
A thought-provoking statement that is absolutely not preachy

Cons:
Keri Russell always looks constipated

Some really bad wigs