ZacharyB's TV Reviews

David Simon sure has a thing for creating TV shows. First came "Homicide: Life on the Street," which ran for seven seasons on NBC and dealt with a squad of homicide detectives in Baltimore. Later, Simon returned to the city where he worked as a reporter, creating "The Wire," considered the spiritual successor to "Homicide."

The shows don't seem to share a common timeline, but Simon's influence on both was unmistakable. Before "Homicide" was created, Simon wrote "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets," an Edgar Award-winner which yielded many of the plot lines used in "Homicide," as well as some of the dialogue. And "Wire" also has some of that. Some "Homicide" regulars also have parts in the show.

The differences between the shows are striking, however. While "Homicide" focused entirely on murders, "Wire" deals with pretty much anything - murder, yes, but also drugs, docks, journalism, whatever. As the name indicates, a lot of the show deals with wiretapping, and the detectives who try and fight back against the violence consuming Baltimore.

"Wire" is a great show, one that deserves a lot more respect than it seems to be getting. But it's not as good as "Homicide." "Wire" feels more real - it's more violent and there's a lot of cursing - and that might be its downfall. It's just too much at times. Perfect example: one scene in the first season where two detectives examine a crime scene, and their only dialogue is variations on one expletive. Yes, it's funny, but it wears out after a while. It's just too much - "Homicide," despite dealing with murder, felt more hospitable. Which is not to say "Wire" isn't good, because it is, and in some ways, it might be better than "Homicide." It's just not quite as good overall.

Why is it that the best shows never last?

Take "Firefly," the little sci-fi/western that could. In my book, "Firefly" goes down as the best show that ever graced the small screen. Fans of Joss Whedon and newbies alike will fall in love with his trademark wit and the lovable characters he crafts. Every single episode is easily worth watching again - even the least enjoyable ones are far superior to the average episode of nine out of ten shows on the air right now.

And yet, Fox cancelled the show after one season - a season in which it was preempted by the MLB playoffs, aired on a horrible time slot, had the episodes played out of order (that is, the eleven episodes that were shown - out of the fourteen that were shot), and was given bare-bones advertising.

Do I sound bitter? Pick up the DVDs and you'll see why "Firefly" is not only the best show that is or was, but also criminally underappreciated. Thank God they made "Serenity" a few years later - a major motion picture made from the ashes of a failed TV show? Impossible? Take a peek and see for yourself.

Making a TV show about a war that's still going on isn't easy. Just look at "Generation Kill," the seven-part miniseries that aired on HBO in 2008. If there's one reason this series, created by Ed Burns and David Simon - the geniuses behind the truly excellent show "The Wire" - from the book by Evan Wright, could turn people off, it's that the war is still too fresh in our minds, love it or hate it. And yes, "Generation Kill" has a litany of points to make - that the invasion was hamstrung by an incompetent bureaucracy, that no one anticipated it would last as long as it has - but to take full advantage of this show, it helps to go in viewing this as a really engaging story, one that borrows from contemporaries like "The Wire" and war stories like Michael Herr's "Dispatches," set during Vietnam.

The seven-part arc begins in Kuwait on the eve on the 2003 invasion and focuses on the men of the First Reconnaissance Battalion Marines, chief among them Sergeant Brad "Iceman" Colbert (Alexander Skarsgard) and his driver, Corporal Ray Person (James Ransone). Joining the platoon prior to the invasion is Evan Wright (Lee Tergesen), an embedded reporter from Rolling Stone who ended up writing the book that inspired this show. There is some shooting and a lot of things go boom, though with far less abundance than the cursing and military slang, all of which feels very realistic. More than anything else, the soldiers simply talk. When they're not talking about the mission ahead, they're ribbing each other while waiting for orders, or singing country and rap songs while driving. And we, like Wright, get to go along for the ride.

More than anything, this feels like a spiritual successor to "The Wire." The major gripe all of the grunts share is that their commanding officers don't seem to know how to fight a war, taking actions that oftentimes leave their lives at risk. The police in "The Wire" make similar complaints all the time.

Simon and Burns steadfastly avoid taking sides as far as the war goes, however. The invasion itself may be open to criticism, but the reasons for going in are barely addressed, and only really by Wright, who the Marines rag as a liberal - as much of a dirty word in this show as anything else.

That's not the point of the show. What the point of the show is, beyond describing the incompetence of the people in charge, is a bit of a mystery. Soldiers face doubts about what they do during the invasion, but this doesn't feel like it's about the human toll, despite a body count that rises steadily. There's talk of foreign jihadists and the war on terror making more enemies than friends, but any political statement there is quickly dropped. As things draw to a close, the Marines begin to understand what's going on, but that's where it ends.

Whatever the point is, Simon and Burns are expert storytellers, and Wright's novel gave them plenty to go on. The cast, comprised of mostly no-name actors, one or two of whom you might recognize if you watched "The Wire," is universally solid. Most are vulgar, one is concerned about a promotion, another takes his job a bit too seriously, and a couple are almost too civilized to fit in correctly, but they all work. Keeping track of them all is sometimes difficult, but some stand out on their own. The dialogue is heavy on Marine lingo, but also leaves room for plenty of (sometimes dangerous) humor. And above all, it's not heavy-handed with its messages. Again, the one potential flaw is that it comes too close to the actual war. Who wants to relive the first days when there are still car bombings today?

But if "Generation Kill" teaches us anything, it's that anything, even a war that most people now view as a mistake, can be turned into a great story.

You think Law and Order is good? You obviously haven't seen Homicide: Life on the Street, a show played on NBC from 1992 to 1999, with a made-for-TV movie shown in 2000 as its coda. Like Law and Order, Homicide is about murders, although the setting is Baltimore rather than NYC and Homicide focuses on an entire squad of homicide detectives rather than Law and Order's single team of detectives, one team of lawyers. (Three times during Homicide's history, NBC created two-part episodes where the two shows, and characters from them, worked together to solve crimes.)

So what sets the two apart? Law and Order, while a fine show, follows the same formula each time - jogger/couple/girlfriends find a body, detectives search and find a suspect, lawyers try suspect, and so on, with a few plot twists thrown in for good measure. The characters aren't human enough (with the exception of the late Jerry Orbach's Detective Lenny Briscoe) to sustain prolonged interest, because the show is all about the crimes.
Homicide, meanwhile, is all about the cops. Oh, sure, they go out and solve murders with an efficiency that would put the Law and Order cops to shame (and usually does), but they are people with problems, people with their own issues that they are trying to deal with, whether that be running a bar (yes, three detectives actually do that), trying to prepare for a baby, or anything else the show's writers can come up with. We see a human side to them that is, for the most part, left out of Law and Order.

The cast of characters, though it changes throughout, is universally excellent. Among the best are Yaphet Kotto as the leader of the homicide squad, Al "Gee" Giardello; Richard Belzer as the wisecracking Detective John Munch; and Andre Braugher as interrogation specialist Frank Pembleton. They are just a few of the reasons this show is so much fun to watch - they are fantastic actors all, and they are very well-fitted to their roles.

There is a reason this show won so many Emmys. Watch even one episode and you should see why.