lenvm

Written and directed by young people, this show features the best and worst aspects of student work. What made the first season so brilliant is that the writer hadn't been around the industry long enough to need to "unlearn" the habits of TV writers, because he never learned them in the first place.

Instead of drawing on TV clichés or on life experience, writer Nic Pizzolatto worked from the fiction and philosophy he liked. The result was philosophical dialogue which most TV writers would have edited right out, but HBO was wise enough not to try to clean it up, and this made the show wonderfully unrealistic and refreshing. The best part is the way all of this rich literary and philosophical material plays against the stunning cinematic imagery.

The second season exposed the writer for what he is: a writer who can craft wonderful sentences but can't tell a story or fashion credible dialogue. The plot of season two is far more complicated, and therefore also full of more holes as Pizzolatto tried to make the story cohere, which it really didn't.

I think it's a strong compliment to say that the first season can be seen as among the best student films ever made. It'll be interesting to see Pizzolatto evolve as a writer.

I like the way that the show seems detached from GoT even though it has the network's imprimatur. Thankfully, there are no actors or directors as guests, which would turn the discussion into a mere celebration of the show. In fact, "After the Thrones" avoids evaluating the show at all. At its best, the show offers a helpful focus on themes and "big ideas." (In this respect, it's better than the weekly discussions of GoT on TYT's "What the Flick," for example.)

The two hosts are amateurs who are unlikely ever to get another show, and this makes them likable. Their willingness to be corrected by GoT expert Mallory made them sympathetic at first, but after a few episodes this repeated format gets annoying. Other aspects of the format that seem forced are the "Who Won the Week?" discussion, as though they were forgetting that the show is fiction and not a sports contest.

The two hosts and two guest experts are likable, although they try too hard to steer a middle ground between being too geeky on the one hand, and too cool on the other; their references to "bros" and sports figures feel like forced attempts at sophistication. There's an annoying tendency to play everything for laughs.

The best parts of the discussion are when the hosts play their roles as really smart English majors and take a stab at synthesizing the big ideas. Hearing that kind of discussion is thought-provoking. It's harder to come up with an argument than with a ton of sophisticated pop-culture references. Stick with the big ideas rather than the fireworks.

This show provides very little insight into anything, really, whether into Wall Street or human psychology. But its examination of bullheaded alpha males is a lot more fun than House of Cards. The show is held together by outstanding performances and direction. The practice of using a slow zoom-in on the main characters' faces as they build up to a zinger reminds me of a graphic novel, obscene word balloons blossoming from the superheroes' mouths. The central conflict is a stylized caricature, but the cat-and-mouse game never gets dull because the editors are very good at using timing, cross-cutting, and musical cues. In the end, the key, however, is Maggie Rhoades, who is the most important, and the only psychologically complex, character on the show. At this point, halfway through the first season, it's not clear that she can maintain her delicate balance between her husband and her boss. She's fascinating to watch.