The season premiere was last night. It feels weird having one of these prestige cable dramas airing on Fridays; aren’t they all supposed to be on Sunday?
I rather enjoyed the first season. A heavy dose of grimness is built into the show’s DNA, but I hope they find some way to provide moments of lightness or relief, and can avoid falling into an “everything and everyone is irretrievably fucked & hopeless” cycle; I don’t know if I can stick with a show like that, no matter how much I like the direction, music, etc.
I was curious to see how they’d handle Thack’s opiate withdrawal. I mentioned it a little in last year’s thread, but they made kind of a baffling error last year. The symptoms of cocaine withdrawal are primarily fatigue and depression: basically, Thackery should have been nodding off in meetings. The symptoms they portrayed, however – restlessness, aches, cold sweats, etc. – were a textbook example of opiate withdrawal.
So, what the heck were they going to do when he *actually *goes through opiate withdrawal? It seems they copped out of the problem: during his very brief detox, Thack just seemed irritable. Meh. Not that important, I guess.
Anyway, I liked the first episode just fine, and I’m looking forward to the season. Anyone else following it?