Khandi Alexander
Cheers to Khandi Alexander for her tour de hurricane force on Treme.
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As her character, bar owner LaDonna Batiste Williams, raged at the rapist who attacked her — and the legal system that temporarily freed him due to a clerical error — Alexander powerfully embodied the citywide anger at the lawlessness in post-Katrina New Orleans. The actress, who was unjustly denied an Emmy nomination for her fiercely nuanced turn as a recovering drug-addict mother in Treme creator David Simon's 2000 miniseries, The Corner, deserves long-overdue recognition for this role.
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Wendell Pierce
In an early episode of Treme's second season, a disc jockey asks one of the show's musician characters how his new album is selling. "Selling?" the musician replies in almost disbelief. "It's jazz, man."
The dialogue is a perfect metaphor for the HBO drama, whose co-creators, The Wire's David Simon and Eric Overmyer, have always favored atmosphere and character over plot. Like that incredulous musician, Simon is more concerned with art than television ratings, because he says it's the...
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Matt Smith and Karen Gillan
Supernatural (Friday, 9/8c, The CW)
Winchesters, meet Colt! As in: the real Samuel Colt, whose infamous demon-destroying gun has loomed large throughout Supernatural's mythology. This week, Dean gets to play cowboy — Sam is less thrilled — when Castiel sends the brothers back in time to the Wild West to get some guidance from the proverbial horse's mouth. Speaking of weapons, over on Fox's Fringe in the same time period, an apocalyptic scenario is triggered when Walternate revs up the doomsday device "over there," in hopes of rocking our (and specifically Peter's) world.
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Clarke Peters, Treme
From the beginning, Treme co-creator and executive producer Eric Overmyer has insisted that HBO's post-Katrina New Orleans drama is a different animal from The Wire.
And Overmyer says Sunday's 80-minute finale (10/9c on HBO) proves the point again. While Overmyer's co-creator David Simon often ended seasons of The Wire with big thematic statements, Overmyer says their approach with Treme was to remain solely focused on the characters...
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Treme
In its own way, the sudden death of Treme co-executive producer David Mills just days before the series premiere is a potent metaphor for the show itself.
The Wire, Treme writer David Mills dies at 48
As the HBO drama's cast and crew mourn Mills' loss, they also celebrate him by continuing...
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John Doman and Clarke Peters
Cheers to Damages for signing two veterans of The Wire for its Season 2 cast. Read, discuss and vote on this complete Cheer after the jump.
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Clarke Peters, The Wire
McNulty has his ladies, Bunk his booze, but The Wire's (Sundays, 9 pm/ET, HBO) Lester Freamon is all about the cash money — the cash money laundered by Baltimore's drug kingpins and corrupt politicians, that is. He may be the master of The Wire's namesake operation — the wiretapping op that listens in on Baltimore's corner drug scene — but Det. Freamon is still ambitious enough to dig deeper, right into the drug dealers' account books and the local politicians' very well-lined pockets. TVGuide.com recently rooted out Lester's portrayer, Clarke Peters, to tap into the show's final season, eavesdrop on the cast's many off-set antics, and get all up in the all-business Lester's very personal business.
TVGuide.com: So the series is ending, how does it feel?Clarke Peters: I've had about four months to get used to it.
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