Brotherhood: The First Season

I mourn the (temporary) ending of another great show. I started watching this a few shows in and its scary good. No white hats to be seen. And it just finished the first season with a OMG ending, a “Good Christ, he’s my favourite character” ending which is possibly ambiguous but I’m really not sure at all. This show was based on a true story where one brother was a high ranking public official and the other a crime boss. The last episode centred around an Irish wedding (the show takes place in an Irish community in Rhode Island) and the songs were all so so bad and yet you wanted to hear them all because they captured the time and the traditional wedding song schlock (think Boston and Kansas). That was good but the song over the ending credits was the best cover version of Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice Its Alright; its sung by Mike Ness of Social Distortion.

The only other show grabbing me by the lapels and shouting in my face these days is Deadwood. The dialogue is the standout (among many pleasures); its Shakespeare crossed with a pirate ship. Never will you hear so much cursing and never will you see this affectation of language atop the roughshod boots, a pretension that takes this show and lifts it into the stratosphere.

Its been a good year with the standbys of the Sopranos, Deadwood and Rome, and now Brotherhood. And I have to cheer again Dennis Leary’s Rescue Me and The Shield (and I know the Wire would be on the list if I managed to get to it more often).