David Milch — he of Deadwood and John from Cincinnati fame/"fame" — has sold a third drama pilot to HBO. As previously reported here, Last of the Ninth (as the series is now christened) is a gritty drama set in 1972, in the New York city Police Department. "It's about an older detective's mentoring of a young detective returned from Vietnam," Milch tells the Reporter. Meanwhile, the NYPD is "fiscally crippled" and "under attack" by "allegations of systemic corruption."The Last of the Ninth pilot, written before the WGA strike, will be shot after the work stoppage stops.
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Question: You have dealt with the issue of swearing on cable rather extensively in the past several columns; it seems to be an issue that is touching a nerve. I wonder if it's possible to admit that, no matter how opposed to censorship one might be, there is something about certain words that causes a mental or physical reaction. The F-word in particular is hard to stomach for many otherwise liberal-minded people, even in small doses. It always angers me when I'm watching a perfectly acceptable PG-13 movie, and just because the filmmakers can insert one F-word into the mix, they do. It's understandable that many viewers in the post-Sopranos era would be disturbed by the trend. Even David Chase grossly overdid it at times. But it certainly is possible to write entertaining, realistic television without these words. Look at Arrested Development, where the "scripted" bleeps were among the funniest things on the show. I think it's a blessing that this lamented masterpiece did not go to HBO ...
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• Sources tell Variety that for his next trick, David Milch (Deadwood, the deader wood John from Cincinnati) is working with former NYPD Blue exec producer Bill Clark to develop a drama about a Vietnam vet who joins the New York City police force circa 1970s. • Hot off the success of The Starter Wife, Lifetime is teaming with author Gigi Levangie Grazer on a four-hour miniseries adaptation of Maneater, Grazer's novel about a woman who bleeps her way to the top in Beverly Hills.• Fox has ordered seven episodes of Nothing But the Truth, a "game show" (my quotation marks) in which contestants are strapped to a lie detector in front of friends and family and asked 21 intensely personal questions. You may know the show as "Thanksgiving."
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Made sense that in the last moments of HBO's misbegotten John from Cincinnati, Ed O’Neill was finally reunited with his AWOL avian friend Zippy. If ever there was a show that was for the birds, it was this birdbrained mishmash of half-baked, foulmouthed, anti-dramatic allegorical nonsense.Over the last week, I attempted to catch up with last month’s episodes, hoping against hope that I’d at last see what I was supposed to be seeing in this smugly opaque world of cryptic utterances from annoyingly mannered characters. (And I thought, maybe like other HBO series, in particular the superior Wire, this could be one of those shows that plays better if you watch several hours back-to-back.) The result: torture. I made it maybe halfway through each hour before zoning out in a state of utter boredom and contempt. Forget confusion — that part of the equation left the station long ago. I was merely hoping to be entertained a little. In vain, as it turned out.At least the ...
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OK, so Shaun, John and Zippy disappeared, although Shaun's doppelgänger still found time to scare the living hell out of Barry at the hotel bar. Are his visions of Shaun simply dreams, as he tells Dr. Smith later in the episode, or is that just wishful thinking on his part? Seems to me they could be more accurately categorized as "visions." Well, I'd actually be more likely to go with psychotic episodes brought on by trauma, but in this show, with this subject matter, I think "visions" works just fine.I liked the scene when Butchie and Kai shared their thoughts on John, who they both agreed is on some kind of autopilot and simply parrots what he hears from other people because he is programmed to mimic emotions. As they discussed, it would certainly explain why he repeats such idiotic phrasings as "A+ for fume control." What do they think, though, that the guy is some kind of robot? I guess that could be interesting. I certainly wouldn't have been expecting that.The stick figur...
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