Gideon's Crossing

Okay, taking the cats to the vet wasn't so bad (except maybe for them). Jefferson meowed the whole way, as he always does, but he was pretty bold about coming out of his carrying case in the exam room, while Newton had to be coaxed out as usual. It was all over in about half an hour, which meant we got back home a little after 9:30. They were pretty happy to be home.

Jefferson, the oinker, weighs 15 pounds. He could stand to lose a couple. Newton weighs a little over 9, which is about right for his size.

But the work-day was mostly a wash-out. First I forgot my badge, and had to get a temporary one. On the plus side, this let me talk to the cute lady who's currently working the reception desk in our building. A cow-orker said of this, sarcastically, "Yeah, they love having programmer geeks make passes at them." She (the receptionist) is pretty funny, though. The first time I talked with her she was working in another building, and she made a joke about not having a twin sister who works in another building. (I said, "too bad".)

Anyway.

In the office, I'd installed the new build of Mac OS X, which I quickly rejected due to some outstanding bugs.

Or at least they looked like outstanding bugs. After installing the previous build, which I'd been on for over a week with no major problems, I encountered similar issues. Suggesting that it's my machine. Except Tom saw similar problems with both builds (and went back to the Public Beta build himself), so maybe it's a network problem on our subnet? I don't know. The afternoon was one big frustration because of this. All my dreams of writing code to interpret an XML file I'm generating went down the toilet. Aargh!

At least I finished writing my self-review and sent it to my boss.

Finally, yesterday I'd bought a whole bunch of candy for Hallowe'en, since last year I forgot to do so and had a whole bunch of kids come to the door, which was rather depressing. Well, maybe I got home too late tonight, or maybe they decided not to try again this year, but I didn't get a single trick-or-treater. So now I have all this candy lying around. Gah. Maybe I'll bring it to gaming. Subrata will curse my name if I do!

Well, I'm trying not to let all this get to me. But boy, it was a pretty annoying day.

I spent the evening watching television. I think I'm about three weeks behind. Here's what I watched:

Deadline: The second episode was pretty good, although the show still seems kind of unfocused. The characters are not very well-drawn. I think I see now that the "hook" for protagonist Wallace Benton is that he's supposed to be undiplomatic, and even when he's trying to be diplomatic and polite, you don't buy it. He's a snake-oil salesman, even if he does have a moral sense. It's a subtle characterization, and I don't think it works very well in the first two episodes. Which is trouble since the supporting cast is pretty thin, character-wise, so far.

Dark Angel: The second episode is encouraging in that it advances the story a little bit as far as Max looking for people connected to her past. I am somewhat annoyed by this government thug Lydecker chasing her. It's too cheesy, and too reminiscent of shows like The Incredible Hulk. Plus we have no idea so far who he is, who he's really working for, or why he's focusing specifically on Max. If they provided that up-front then I'd find it more interesting. Otherwise, he's just a generic heavy.

This second episode has a big, glaring plot hole in that Mac sticks around despite knowing that Lydecker is on his way when there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to do so. Silly.

Gideon's Crossing: In two words: Oh, my.

Advance reviews of this show can be summed up as, "Only looks so-so, but we'll watch anything with Andre Braugher." But the network got behind it by airing the pilot without commercial interruption.

And damn, is it good.

Created by Paul Attanasio, who brought Homicide to TV eight years ago, GC has the potential to be a top-flight ensemble cast show, despite being headlined by "acting supernova" (as he's been called) Braugher. The rest of the cast - only one of whom, Ruben Blades, I've heard of before - show ever sign of being able to hold their own with Braugher, although to be fair few of them interact directly with him in this episode.

Ben Gideon (Braugher) is the head of experimental medicine at a major hospital (which is named, but I can't remember the name). It's a teaching hospital, and most of the cast are interns. In the pilot, Gideon takes on Kirk Bales (Bruce McGill), a stock trader with acute kidney cancer. (I eventually realized that McGill played Major Ryan in the best of the Babylon 5 episodes, "Severed Dreams".) Meanwhile, Dr. Cherry (Hamish Linklater) takes on a dog as a patient, Dr. Shandar (Ravi Kapoor) investigates a patient with an inscrutable illness, and head intern Dr. Boies (Russell Hornsby) gets involved in a case where a woman isn't giving her son his asthma medication. We learn much about Gideon's background through his conversations with Dr. Cabranes (Blades), and we're introduced to the whole cast.

This episode really sets itself apart from Deadline by introducing its setting, and all of its principal characters in one episode, making them all distinctive. As with the best television or film, the script crackles, being clever and sometimes witty despite the subject matter, and ultimately moving. The hospital looks almost science-fictional in its design, and the background music is fantastic, and perfectly suited to the individual scenes.

Gideon's Crossing has the look of an Emmy winner. It might well give The West Wing a run for its money next year, if the whole season is this good. We'll see.

Oh, and it's worth noting that the cast includes two black men, two women (one of them with an accent, although I can't place from where; I'd guess English), a hispanic and an (Asian) Indian. And one of the two white men on the show is played by Hamish Linklater, which certainly sounds less-than-WASPish. Are there any other shows with this diverse a cast?

Dark Angel looks like the weakest of these three so far. But I may be watching all of them a month from now. Which is quite a feat given my impatience with series television generally.