My friends call me "gadget man" or the like because of my unabashed love of technological "toys." My wife Eileen kids me about it, but there is one gadget that we both embrace and would be hard-pressed to give up: our TIVO. (More on that and some of my other favorite gadgets in a coming post).
Anyway, I had a bunch of episodes of "John From Cincinnati" backed up on the TIVO and finally got around to watching them all in the space of a couple of days. The great thing about such a process is that unlike those viewing the episodes on a weekly basis where it literally takes "time" to find the riff and dig it, a TIVO orgy lets you get the groove with immediacy and clarity.
Anyway, hear this: John From Cincinnati is a great show. David Milch is truly a genius, and obviously a bit crazy in the good way. He has a great knack for "argot" (a specialized idiomatic vocabulary peculiar to a particular class or group of people, esp. that of an underworld group, devised for private communication and identification: a Restoration play rich in thieves' argot. ~ Dictionary.com), where he reached his zenith in Deadwood.
But in "John ..," he is certainly carrying the argot banner forward. I could give tons of examples, but one only has to TIVO back and forth over the dialog between Bill Jacks (played by Ed O'Neill) and his parrots to realize that Milch and his sterling writers are at it again in a different milieu. The cast is outstanding - too many for me to mention, but they're all spot-on, down to the smallest parts.
For the same reason this show "TIVO's" so well, it will be wonderful in a DVD release where those of you who don't have HBO can see it all unfold at your own pace. Tom says five stars.
P.S. My friend Michael Lally had a small part in Deadwood, and here is his early take on "John..." from his wonderful blog.
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