Mile
Zero

It's been a beautiful summer, even by Seattle standards, and Belle and I have gotten at least some good out of it. We've been camping, traveling, and lately we even broke out the grill. Take that, state-wide burn ban!

Indoors, of course, a lot of the broadcast TV we watch takes the summer off. We've been picking up a few shows via Netflix and Amazon instead. I'm not quite ready to write off our TiVo yet, but I'm impressed with the choices we've had.

Orange is the New Black

Surprisingly good. Shockingly good, even. There's none of the lazy writing and faux-transgressiveness that marked Jenji Kohan's previous show, Weeds. It's got a rich cast of characters without feeling contrived, it's funny without going broad, and it's comfortable mining a deep vein of dark humor from its setting. There have been a few comparisons between this and The Wire. Orange is the New Black isn't quite that good--what is?--but it's not an inapt pairing. Like its predecessor, Orange features a diverse cast filled with actors of color. Both shows also lack marquee names (but feature stellar performances from little-known actors). And of course, the subject material in both cases is fascinating in and of itself.

Beyond the confines of the show, it's interesting to see Netflix so clearly taking a page from HBO's book. Lots of networks have halo shows--it's only thanks to Mad Men that I can differentiate between AMC and A&E--but it was really HBO that realized shows were "stickier" than movies. And unlike HBO, Netflix doesn't force you to haggle with your local cable overlords. If they can put out more material at this quality level, their constant battles over licensing big film titles for streaming look a lot less troubling. I could definitely see keeping a Netflix subscription just for a couple of shows like this.

Alphas

A show that never really found an audience on the SciFi channel, Alphas folded after a couple of seasons, and Amazon snagged it as one of their early exclusives. It's not groundbreaking television: the special effects are decidedly bargain-basement, the writers can't decide if they want to steal from Heroes or X-Men, and the direction ranges from competent to not terrible. It's a good summer show, though, with a more thoughtful core than either of its inspirations would lead you to believe.

Alphas has three things going for it. The first is David Strathairn, an actor who is way too good to be doing a superhero show on basic cable. The second is a genuine rapport between the actors, who really sell the workplace chemistry--especially between Gary, the autistic electro-telepath and Bill, the temperamental bruiser. Finally, Alphas does manage a single clever twist on its formula: the idea that its superpowers are basically neuroses, for which most of the cast are in therapy (if nothing else, this is a wry joke at the expense of the Xavier Academy for Gifted Youth). I'm not sure it ever really embraces that fully--there hasn't been a single hero-on-a-couch scene that I remember--but it does make me feel better about my own psychological tics.

The Fall

The Fall doesn't try to hide its villain: you'll know whodunnit by the end of the first episode. Instead, it serves as a kind of character study for its chilly detective, Stella Gibson, played by Gillian Anderson. In many ways it reminds me of the BBC's prototypical female detective drama, Prime Suspect: Gibson spends as much time fighting a sexist bureaucracy as she does hunting the actual murderer.

When it's good, The Fall is very good, but it takes its time getting there. It's odd that, for a season that's only six episodes long, so much of it feels like padding. But I think part of that comes down to the delivery method. Streaming (and DVD, as well) makes it easy to burn through a show in a matter of hours. That's great for hook-driven puzzlers like Fringe or monster-of-the-week shows like Doctor Who, but it might not work so well for atmosphere-driven dramas.

It makes me wonder if we'll see a change in how people write narratives as streaming TV-on-demand becomes more common. Some people consider the non-Netflix Arrested Development to be designed for obsessive DVD rewatching. Is streaming different? More social? More portable?