Washington Post- Tom Shales

[eternal student]

Shales, who can rip new ones in hilarious fashion. His reviews of Kathy Lee Gifford's Christmas specials were the highlight of my year. Here's his take on Brotherhood:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01541.html


'Brotherhood'

About the most that can be said for "Brotherhood," Showtime's new serialized drama, is that it's a first-rate secondhand "Sopranos."

Comparisons to HBO's mega-hit about a New Jersey crime family are inevitable. Showtime's version moves the locale to Rhode Island -- primarily Providence, the capital -- and concerns not a crime family but a sort of half-crime family, with a good guy doing his best to salvage the family name.

The catalyst for the drama is not the good guy, politician Tommy Caffee (Jason Clarke), but the arrival in town after seven years' absence of his prodigal brother, Michael (Jason Isaacs), a thief, thug and schemer who falls in with even more ruthless thieves, thugs and schemers. For every Mr. Big, there's a Mr. Bigger.

Writer and series creator Blake Masters fills in the details, spreading out quirks and idiosyncrasies among the characters and, with almost mathematical precision, making sure there is a scene of explicit sex or even more explicit violence every few minutes, lest viewers weary of any subtleties that sneak into the pseudo-Shakespearean struggle for power. Actually, Masters aims higher even than Shakespeare: Each of the first 11 chapters has a Bible verse for a title.

The first episode's opening image is a model of cheap meaning: The American flag flies over a ramshackle construction site, the image suggesting a devastated battlefield. Before long, the expletives are flying through the air, a viciously corrupt union boss is warning that he'd better get his "taste" of spoils from a building project -- and then, the show barely 10 minutes over, someone gets his head bashed in with a shovel while another man exclaims, half-admiringly, "Wow!"

Only a few scenes later, a man's leg is crushed by more thugs and a woman's earring is yanked out, leaving her earlobe a shredded, bloody mess. Eventually she will receive new earrings in a box -- a box that also contains someone's severed ear. Indeed, that one particular organ is so prominent in the first episode that it could have been called "All Ears." Or "An Ear for an Ear."

"I'm not who I need to be," declares Michael, the apparently bad brother. And to prove what a reformed sweetie he's become, he hands his mother an envelope bulging with cash. Cute touch: It's counterfeit. Too-cute touch: She doesn't really care. She forgives him.

Mom is played by Fionnula Flanagan, who brings something really different to the characterization. Unfortunately, mom's devotion to Michael comes off not as a testament to mother love, but as evidence that the woman is an idiot.

Annabeth Gish, meanwhile, plays another kind of mom. As hardworking Tommy's wife, she sends their three adorable little girls off to school and then gets down to a day of smoking pot (Gish's "I'm stoned" laugh is pathetic) and seducing blue-collar lover boys, among them the mailman and a department-store shoe salesman. Gish gives provocative clues as to what makes her tick.

The best things about the show are the location shooting in and around Providence -- a highly photographable area that until recently has been little seen in other movies and TV shows -- and Clarke's charismatic, multilayered performance as the "good" brother, Tommy, tireless in his attempts to upgrade the city and its image.

From the first night of "The Sopranos," you knew you wanted to see more of these people, learn more about their motivations and relationships. That simply isn't true of "Brotherhood." It will take time to develop interest in the Providential population -- more time than many a viewer is willing to give.

[Gillian]

That's an interesting comparison to Shakespeare though you could probably say the same for many of the drama's being aired nowadays. Regardless, it did remind me of an English teacher who once said Shakespeare was probably the first to popularize the "hook" -- a plot device where he would inject some kind of conflict or fight within the first few minutes of a play to capture the attention of his audience. Brotherhood, I think, will turn into an investment people are willinng to make given what the reviewers have said about future episodes.

I will say that I have to disagree with his assessment of some characters. Tommy for instance, with his backroom dealings, isn't all that 'good' and Rose is hardly an idiot. Both are much more complex, but Shales seems to have abandoned any notion past his first impressions.

Still, it's one mans opinion.

Thanks Pat.

[Hilary the Touched]

I absolutely agree, Gillian--while we hear the litany of "loyalty" repeated in most of these reviews, it didn't seem like simply a straightforward desire to protect and improve his neighbourhood that motivated Tommy--I thought that was most of the most interesting and disturbing aspects of the first episode. In a fashion that I found totally believable, the show parallels the machinations and deal-making of the brothers to show how similar their behaviour and rationalizing really is: this may look dirty, but in order to get things done, to 'help their people' and maintain their grip on whatever power they hold, this is the way it's gotta be.