Swearing and Boobs

One of the lifestyle upgrades B and I indulged in when we moved to SC was Netflix.* We burned through (no pun intended, MPAA) loads of movies we'd meant to see and/or wanted to see again. Then we hit the inevitable Netflix wall, the point at which you've watched all of your A-list movies and are wondering how to best spend your 16 bucks a month subscription. Urged on by our homies, we started in on HBO shows.

Now, I love me some HBO shows. The thing is, there are really only three things that they can't do on regular television that they can do on HBO:

1. Swearing.
2. Boobs, and so on.
3. Really gnarly violence.

But the thing is, number three is questionable - there's tons of really gnarly violence on mainstream television.** What I find remarkable is that, along with good writing and acting, what really makes HBO shows stand head-and-shoulders above network television shows is really numbers one and two. People swear in real life. People get naked. The inclusion of those factors makes everything on HBO shows seem so much more real, especially when you're talking about a setting like the so-called Wild West, which takes on a distinctly un-wild demeanor in TV shows since everyone is basically going around screaming "darn you!" and keeping their pants on.

The best shows we've done so far have been Deadwood (yes, E, we made it all the way through and loved it), Rome, and Carnivale. The former two are well-known and did well in their day. Carnivale is, for some reason, much less-well known but is easily the equal of the other two. It was abruptly canceled after two seasons, so it kind of rushes to its climax, but it's still worth summoning via the interweb. All three benefit enormously from the inclusion of swearing and boobs.

Now we're on The Wire, which everyone won't stop freaking out about but so far just seems like a good cop show (with swearing and boobs, granted.) I'm keen on seeing Sopranos at some point, but B's hesitant. We'll see how that goes.

In other news, Tuesday is my 9am - 9pm day on campus and I've still got about 5.5 hours to go.

* The others were cable TV, cable internet, and me getting a cell phone.
** This is my longest-standing complaint about American culture and American media. Violence is bad and sex is good, but the logic of American media censorship implies the opposite; you can crack open a guy's head on primetime TV, but god forbid anyone takes their clothes off...