THE Best Show on Television

We just got finished watching episode 5, season 3 of Brotherhood. It is astonishing to say the least. This is a small scene of its authenticity. But, you must begin from the beginning to truly grip the drama of this show. Below this clip is an excerpted, marvelous review from the New York Times. I am saddened that it will end in three weeks. I wish I were you who have never seen it and could watch it all over again.



“Brotherhood” seems to suffer under the misfortune of timing. Had it arrived 10 or 15 years earlier, when long-form narrative was not the dominant form on cable television, it would have been felt, arguably, more as an explosion than a trickle. The series has at least so far failed to find a large audience, indicating perhaps how much we have come to take good serial drama for granted.

It is a sign of how quietly the show has been received that it produced a landmark moment in modern television last season that went almost entirely unnoticed. Believing that a career criminal suffering from a mild form of brain damage would not exactly make for an ideal father, Michael’s girlfriend, Kath (Tina Benko), aborted the baby they were going to have, without agonizing later that she had made the gravest mistake of her life.

This amounted to one of the most honest depictions of unplanned pregnancy in any medium in quite some time, and seemed to stand out especially on television, where women are typically saved from unwanted children by the convenient and politically neutral plot device of the miscarriage. (Or alternatively, they decide, like Miranda on “Sex and the City,” simply to have them.) Among its many virtues, “Brotherhood” isn’t in the business of life lessons.

What do the Top 20 Shows on Television Tell us about Ourselves?

My friend was telling me last Tuesday she had ICLE class (a class for new New Jersey lawyers), but the professors were going to let them out early because American Idol was on and it was the finale. I reminded her did the professors also realize Kentucky and Oregon were voting and we are picking a President? Silence even from lawyers.

The Top 20 Shows of the season were released after sweeps week. Below are the actual top five shows for the year. It is simply pathetic. Maybe Daddydan was right, who cares about the writers strike if this is what we are stuck with? There is not a show on here I actually watch or would ever watch for that matter. Does that make me out of the mainstream? Weird? Out of touch? Am I one of those crazy liberals those white working class voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, W. Virginia and Kentucky talk about? I am an elitist because I cannot stomach this garbage. The #6 show is the first actual drama in the list and that is the ever eventful and laughably bad Desperate Housewives. And of course CSI and House - also garbage. I cannot decide which is worse the reality shows or the ridiculous piles of shit they put on television as drama. The only sitcom on the list is Two and Half Men, led by the genius of Charlie Sheen.

I guess I am an elitist. We have become so dumbed down by what is on television. We actually reach out and say this is good when ten years ago it was ridiculous. It is shock and awe on the little screen with a lot of sex and no substance. Pathetic. We bought HBO again last night just to have something worthwhile to watch on the little screen. I can't wait for Recount. Of course no one will watch it and that my friends is how we get stolen elections, preemptive wars, torture and executive power with no end.

1.“American Idol” Tuesdays - Fox - (28.75 million)

2.“American Idol” Wednesdays - Fox (27.78 million)

3.“Dancing With the Stars” Mondays - ABC (21.67 million)

4.“Dancing With the Stars” ABC - (19.58 million)

5.“Dancing With the Stars” Tuesdays results shows ABC - (19.56 million)