Good, Bad, Ugly

Sometimes, massive time-shifting creates unanticipated results. Watching The Shield, Star Trek: Enterprise and Angel back-to-back-to-back the other night was instructive in demonstrating what I like about TV drama.

Tuesday's Shield was solid as a rock, with a great twist in both the case of an emerging racial battle and the missing Armenian mob money. I was pretty sure the cash had gone to Mara's Lexus, but didn't really think Shane was that dumb. I was right. The important thing is that you can't be sure where the show is going at any given point. And I almost hesitate to call them plot twists, really. The writers just do a great job of giving themselves options, which allows them to take certain paths with strong narrative conviction.

Which is a lot different than Enterprise. Gee, a ship from the past shows up, I wonder if the crew will have to sacrifice themselves in order to help the current crew accomplish their mission? And I wonder if T'Pol and Trip ever hook up? This isn't an indictment of predictable plots, necessarily. It's still possible to travel that road with aplomb, but I didn't get that from this episode.

Finally, Angel just flat-out sucked. Quite possibly the worst episode of the show ever. Did Joss Whedon feel that he had to address the Buffy issue before wrapping up? Is this one of those thing where the fandom gnashes it's teeth so loudly that the brain trust of a show is forced outside of it's comfort zone? I don't know. Keeping with our theme, while I didn't know where they were going with the story, I just didn't care.