This season, they are giving us a wonderful tour of the lower depths, the place of the most desperate, resource-less, and defenseless of our society.
The framing and photography are excellent, right along with the music, and they do bleak and miserable better than anybody.
But they shoot the program so dark I had to figure out how to turn the brightness up and the contrast down on my TV set.
In fact I had to max the brightness and, surprisingly, this didn't ruin the picture on other channels or for other shows.
Didn't improve the picture, but didn't make it worse.
Surprising, how much of acting is actually in the detail of facial expressions that's lost when the picture is too dark.
Even the coarse-grained look was being lost in so many of their scenes.
Couldn't make out anything in the cattle-shed, for instance.
Or anything of Ray Seward's tattoos.
Or much of Holder's, either, for that matter.
[Aside.
Have tattoos reached the upper strata of society, as seen through TV eyes?
Holder and the runaways on the street, the pimp, and the convict on death row all have tattoos.
Does Linden have a tat?
Is this supposed to be a kind of brand worn by the inhabitants of society's lowest rungs?
As wearing multiple rings on the same hand was once a mark of the lower-class female?
/Aside.]
And the shock and horror on Linden's face upon discovering the body dumping ground at the end of the second episode were totally invisible.
Four episodes in and, to a surprising extent, it's the Holder show, this season.
They have him in a suit, like all the other dicks in the department, though he wears it like the slob he has been since the first season.
He's the only guy in the department who wears his tie half-open and his white shirt unbuttoned at the neck, even when he has the suit-jacked on.
Linden is still wearing her bluejeans and sweaters, though she resumed her place in the Seattle Police Department as a homicide dick and works in the same HQ and set of offices as Holder and the other men in suits.
And still what looks like zero makeup.
And it occurs to me she might be the only female among them.
This is actually a great show and I have no idea how they can keep it up for more seasons.
But I hope they figure it out.
Holder, now, is almost at the point of separation from his intolerable and apparently time-serving partner, Carl Reddick, a part played by a fine actor, Gregg Henry.
He was great with Lucy Liu (she was very amusing) and Mel Gibson in Payback.
It would be a shame to see the character totally written out, though I say that only for the sake of the actor.
As to the character, well, the skids were under him from the beginning, weren't they?
The actors doing the street-kid roles are doing some fine acting, too.
PS, the voices are often so low and indistinct I replay scenes on mute so I can read the captions.
And what's up with Ray Seward, a remarkably literate and perceptive man, given his family and criminal history, who seems not to be guilty of the crime for which he is about to die?
The framing and photography are excellent, right along with the music, and they do bleak and miserable better than anybody.
But they shoot the program so dark I had to figure out how to turn the brightness up and the contrast down on my TV set.
In fact I had to max the brightness and, surprisingly, this didn't ruin the picture on other channels or for other shows.
Didn't improve the picture, but didn't make it worse.
Surprising, how much of acting is actually in the detail of facial expressions that's lost when the picture is too dark.
Even the coarse-grained look was being lost in so many of their scenes.
Couldn't make out anything in the cattle-shed, for instance.
Or anything of Ray Seward's tattoos.
Or much of Holder's, either, for that matter.
[Aside.
Have tattoos reached the upper strata of society, as seen through TV eyes?
Holder and the runaways on the street, the pimp, and the convict on death row all have tattoos.
Does Linden have a tat?
Is this supposed to be a kind of brand worn by the inhabitants of society's lowest rungs?
As wearing multiple rings on the same hand was once a mark of the lower-class female?
/Aside.]
And the shock and horror on Linden's face upon discovering the body dumping ground at the end of the second episode were totally invisible.
Four episodes in and, to a surprising extent, it's the Holder show, this season.
They have him in a suit, like all the other dicks in the department, though he wears it like the slob he has been since the first season.
He's the only guy in the department who wears his tie half-open and his white shirt unbuttoned at the neck, even when he has the suit-jacked on.
Linden is still wearing her bluejeans and sweaters, though she resumed her place in the Seattle Police Department as a homicide dick and works in the same HQ and set of offices as Holder and the other men in suits.
And still what looks like zero makeup.
And it occurs to me she might be the only female among them.
This is actually a great show and I have no idea how they can keep it up for more seasons.
But I hope they figure it out.
Holder, now, is almost at the point of separation from his intolerable and apparently time-serving partner, Carl Reddick, a part played by a fine actor, Gregg Henry.
He was great with Lucy Liu (she was very amusing) and Mel Gibson in Payback.
It would be a shame to see the character totally written out, though I say that only for the sake of the actor.
As to the character, well, the skids were under him from the beginning, weren't they?
The actors doing the street-kid roles are doing some fine acting, too.
PS, the voices are often so low and indistinct I replay scenes on mute so I can read the captions.
And what's up with Ray Seward, a remarkably literate and perceptive man, given his family and criminal history, who seems not to be guilty of the crime for which he is about to die?
No comments:
Post a Comment