Chicago Tribune | The Watcher

Your enthusiasm for this show makes us think we should start watching it.  You make a lot of excellent points about the current state of TV and what can be done to improve it.

Now mind you, (disclaimer) we have not seen this show but we have heard about it. Of course, we have big ears, so we hear about a lot.

A few things make us perk up our ears though -  Tolstoy?  Really? Does he mean like Battlestar Galactica was? Even though I'm sure it's good,  I'm pretty sure that War and Peace, it ain't.

As for some modicum of moral complexity layered atop the baseball batting, this isn't new, it's just that now it is being brought into our living rooms. Scorcese made films more interesting for awhile when he perfected the gritty realism that came to typify his early style. Unfortunately, he had his imitators too, who amped up the id and forgot about the ego.  Soon, his ego made him fall for this too, when he made technically superior dramas with lots of stabbing and little else.

Is it possible that the complexity, intelligence and interesting elements such as "randomness" are merely, really, a cheap catharsis?