[aderack]

Saving this space for after Agnes has returned from vacation and I can watch the final three episodes.

Although I was vaguely aware of this series, I never paid much attention to it until about a year ago, when I started poking around Netflix at high-profile TV series I hadn't seen. For the one thing, I didn't have HBO. For another, the way people talked about it kind of repelled me. All I ever heard was gamer-flavor froth about how awesome and creative the violence was -- he hits the guy with a stapler, lollerz! -- then complaints about the scantness of it in later seasons.

I recall a couple of years ago, when I first moved here yet before I had found an apartment, I was staying with Woodard for a few days while covering the GDC with Brandon; one of his family members came to get me, asking if I watched the show, because the season finale was airing. I was kind of disoriented anyway, and it really didn't seem like a good place to start watching the series, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to in the first place -- so I begged off and did something else. More than anything, that's probably what gave me the idea to seek it out later.

Anyway, yeah. Now it's over. And turns out, it was fucking amazing. Most of the time. The later seasons have come in for some criticism; aside from Christopher's narcovacillation, I generally only found the show more compelling as it went on -- particularly as it moved from examination of one relationship to another. Season one: mom. Season two: sister. Season three: kids. Season four: wife. Season five: friends and associates. Season six: self. Always one step closer to Tony's self-actualization. To some kind of conclusion about his life. It always felt like it was going somewhere -- with this whole last season, in two parts, a kind of epic and inevitable resolution.

So hey. I hear someone is actually planning on producing Cleaver.