BOSS, w/kelsey grammer, feat. martin donovan

a thread to discuss new, post-frasier, doubly-post back to you, post-x-men, post-promo ident for failed conservative network Kelsey Grammer vehicle BOSS. i just saw its first episode, it was lavish & well observed. lots of irons in the fire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcC6Qkxh-_E

good lord

lol, & i was thinking the conservative network clip was going to be the youtube to link

whereas in fact you chose a clip from the first episode of season 2 of boss ~spoiler~

post-promo ident

post-porno wed

is this what's happened to all-time dreamboat martin donovan?

http://www.starz.com/originals/Boss/ScreeningRoom#/boss-trailer

basically admits to being a motherfucker with some dark secrets in the trailer

not enough martin donovan in the trailer

i hadn't known MD was in it. psyched. kind of a left turn for him. he has a great voice.

I thought this was so great, anyway, & the different strands were really interesting, like the daughter. it was nice being in the clinic & in the church. maybe the only thing that felt 'pat' were some of KG's speeches, which were a little rigid & on autopilot, but he's generally pretty great, looks like a motherfucker w/some dark secrets. like the scene in the doctor's car, WOAH.

ok, i'm going to give this a try even tho i hate kelsey grammer

I had no idea Martin Donovan was in this! I love him, but the ads for this make this show sound terrible.

yeah that trailer for it was really bad. the ep was excellent though. visually v nice as well. i hope it sustains that post its gus van sant direction.

did you watch, mordy?

going to give this a try too even tho i hate kelsey grammer too

not yet. tnite maybe? xp

cool

still good
can't work out whether the anti-blog journalist thing is going to be hammy or awesome
daughter & dealer guy are a great charismatic duo

so good! i'd read something on the sandbox from somebody who'd seen the finale before i did, just being like woah, & yeah it was p brutal.

started this show. it's pretty good! i don't really get the visual interest stuff going on with the direction, though; the second episode was directed in a much more pedestrian network tv type way than the first and third and i found it much less distracting. agree with schlump that the daughter's storyline is compelling. i kind of like the kelsey grammer speeches tbh.

First episode was directed by Gus Van Sant, FYI.

And, yeah, this show is really good and underrated. Looking forward to its return.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/boss-season-2-kelsey-grammer-jonathan-groff-331204
whoop.

missed this thread being bumped; how's it goin, horseshoe?
the visual thing, i think it just looked distinctive, & very-literally-fit with the hazy, tired tone/content. the shallow focus, the kinda synaesthetic drifting overlap of speech and visuals. i think the daughter's storyline was a nice other sphere for the show to be able to slip into. i remember whenever i was watching like 24 or some multivalent network drama, there'd always be one boring strand that you'd be waiting to hurry up, two suit-y guys squinting pensively out of skyscraper windows. & boss had a better range.

i finished the first season! i liked it a lot, even though it was brutal, with the denouement of the kelsey grammar and his daughter storyline. also not 100% sure i bought the way things ended with martin donovan's character also now there won't be any more martin donovan, which is a tragedy! i don't have anything smart to say about it, but i am looking forward to it starting up again.

also i love the credits; is that cheesy of me?

i don't mean "bought" as in found it to be a likely plot outcome, exactly; the show's not really about plausible plotting in general. i just mean that martin donovan's character turning out to have a genuine, if warped, sense of civic duty was kind of revealed too late in the season for me to totally buy it.

everything you said otm. i don't know anything about chicago politics but i assume that just the history/phrasing of chicago politics is gonna be the deus ex machina they get to use once in a while to do stupid stuff. cf martin donovan. poor martin donovan. i guess now we have t.i. though.

i think the credits are okay, i think the music is sorta alabama-3-sopranos-credits-lite but i like the whole optical chicago thing, so.

xp no, sure. & it was one of those held-over things that they kinda spun out until the end of the season even though you could figure out mathematically that it was him a few eps prior.

i like that kels can just call in the old stumbly tracksuit guy to go pop an annoyance, though.

wait, what, t.i. is going to be on season 2 omg!

agreed that the credits song is kind of on-the-nose, but i just love that moment of chicago skyscrapers overlaid with graffiti fists so much for some reason.

chicago, man

haha! i know. i didn't think the trailer actually looked so hot but i am psyched nonetheless. xp

i think, kinda wrt the credits & stuff, part of what's good about the show is (i have never been to chicago) how it totally gets chicago. but sorta, not really that it necessarily catches some of the place but that a lot of its locations & ambient space just feels appropriate, like people are reposing in the inside of some ugly & tasteful slightly-too-bright luxury condo, or politicians are campaigning on the side of a big ugly freeway

http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/8194/vlcsnap2011110613h40m42.png

i think, kinda wrt the credits & stuff, part of what's good about the show is (i have never been to chicago) how it totally gets chicago.

Lol. But you're kinda otm, for better or worse. It feels like Chicago.

having lived in chicago and having a dilettante's interest in city politics, that seems true to me, too. it is a little weird to me how mayor daley is supposed to exist in the fictional world of boss and not just be kelsey grammar. when someone actually mentioned daley in one of the episodes it gave me a little jolt. maybe that was supposed to be daley the first? but still.

i like the chicago sense of ethnic/racial diversity, too; there's tons of it, but it's atomized.

psyched about sanaa lathan joining the cast, too. i like her.

Jenny, if you read this thread, i think you would like this show.

apparently farhad safinia, the creator of boss, previously co-wrote apocalypto with mel gibson. should i see apocalypto?

there is a mel gibson/ethnic/racial diversity joke here, i can not formulate it though

why is kelsey grammar's name kelsey grammer? "grammer" feels so wrong to type.

xp i know, finding that out about safinia made me suddenly nervous about boss's treatment of race lol

all anyone knows is that he was christened "kelsey motherfucking grammer", i think the spelling was not so much an issue

Holy shit, the new season started last night!? Way to promote yer wares, there, Starz.

ive been seeing a lot of promos for it... i dont even get starz!

i downloaded the first season a few days ago, gonna watch it just for my dude k-grams

the spectrum of female character hair colour in this show is very narrow. so many shades of blonde.

i bailed on the first season very quickly, maybe i should try to catch up?

you should, it's great, you just stopped watching or?

first 2-3 episodes just did not compel me to keep watching at the time

Yeah, this show is pretty hugely underrated. Not to say that it's quite as good as either, but it feels very "Breaking Bad (sociopathic protagonist with life-threatening physical ailment seizing & keeping power by any means necessary) meets The Wire (the effects of byzantine politics on every stratum of the city)". I'd say give it another chance. I thought the first season was much better than the much more highly-touted first season of Homeland.

i caught up on the whole run so far in the space of a week and it's really kind of not that good? not bad, some great scenes and i have the vague feeling that S2 is an uptick in quality from S1, but at times it's just embarrassing. especially whenever Kelsey's daughter acts, or during the customary OTT athletic sex scene in each episode.

I just watched the first season, and I thought it had some great moments, but it's kinda uneven... Some Dude is OTM about the pointless sex scenes; I think with Kitty and Zajac they're sort of justified (though they still feel gratuitous in their willingness to show off her body, but not his), as they both appear to be sex addicts, but with the other characters, not so much.

But my biggest problem with Boss is that, on the one hand the show tries to paint a relatively realistic picture of political manouvering, but on the other hand the main character is mayor of huge American city who apparently has no problems having people that get in his way assassinated. In Season 1 we see him do it to at least two (the guy who was supplying him with drugs, and SPOILER), but it's implied this isn't the first time he's done it (so his deteriorating mental health doesn't really explain it), and that just doesn't feel credible. And there's a similar problem with the dialogue: it mostly aims for realism, but every once in a while Kane and Stone get into big monologues that sound overtly theatrical and unnatural.

However, when the show focuses on the actual political games, I think it's still quite gripping and watchable; Kane's revenge in the second-to-last episode was masterfully executed, in my opinion. And Kelsey Grammer is pretty great in the lead role, if you don't count the aforementioned speechifying problem. When an actor is so strongly associated with one particular role, it isn't easy to shed off that old character and make the viewer accept you as someone totally different, but I think Grammer pulls it off.

Anyone watching this? I've been sort of hooked.

glad donovan still had lots of work to do so far. last few eps have been very intense. the riot one was really great, but I like explodey city more than political intrigue at this point. grandfather twist was pretty good too -- like they don't even have anti-heros in this show. everyone is just *awful*.

in that sense, probably the bleakest of the cable dramas. not even a bad guy to root for.

well, it had a nice run at least.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_98LFfGq0_WU/TMwirDaiWiI/AAAAAAAAAZg/UAA2AeAodXs/s1600/BJS045.jpg

miss u martin donovan