Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Vital Vinyl

I watched the first few minutes of the pilot for HBO's new series Vinyl last night... then stayed up to watch the rest of it.

It's been an while since HBO has had a series I could get into — a sad fact that has almost let me to cancel my subscription. Well they must have been using their NSA contacts to track my internal monologue and learned what a sucker I am for pretty much any historical period costume drama (srsly, you should also check out The Last Kingdom when you get a chance).

I was hooked on Vinyl from the first few minutes. What a great idea for a show. It manages to reach a terrific balance of great music, pop culture, nostalgia for a dead industry (at least, dead as we knew it) and of course dreamy Bobby Cannavale.

I've liked Cannevale in pretty much everything he's ever been in, especially that movie where he and Tyrion Lannister were super into trains. So it's awesome to see him getting a solid leading role. In the pilot, he had some great scenes showing some real emotional range.

I appreciate how they give so much love to the soundtrack. The music really is one of the main stars of this show, much like with Tremé, and not just background soundtrack. We also get a chance to see Ray Romano in another serious (though supporting, in this case) role and a cameo and (spoiler) terrific death scene from Andrew "Dice" Clay.

So, bottom line: I think I'm hooked. This should keep me interested until the new season of Game of Thrones starts.

3 comments:

  1. they really pushed with the 2 hour episode, but I persevered. liked it as well. since I spend so much time at the gym streaming a variety of stuff, it really cut down on my catching up with recorded shows on my dvr. I record Shameless, which I still like, Better Call Saul, John Oliver, few other things. But I quit watching the Daily Show, it's not the same.

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  2. Agreed on the 2-hour episode. I didn't mean to stay up until 11:45 on a school night. Totally worth it, though.

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  3. April 24, @ 9 PM, baby!

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