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Listen: Firewall & Iceberg Podcast No. 80

Dan and Alan review 'Wilfred,' 'Suits' and the new season of 'True Blood'

By Daniel Fienberg Thursday, Jun 23, 2011 10:08 AM

The

Happy Thursday morning, Boys & Girls!
 
Welcome to the promised bonus installment of The Firewall & Iceberg Podcast.
 
Due to some peculiarities in my schedule this week, Sepinwall and I ended up recording one chunk on Tuesday evening, one chunk on Wednesday afternoon and we're finally posting it on Thursday.
 
That means that folks who listen to us promptly will get barely early reviews of USA's "Suits" and FX's "Wilfred," plus the returns of "Burn Notice" and "Louie." And then we also discussed Sunday's return of "True Blood" to HBO.
 
Here's the breakdown:
"Suits" -- 02:35 - 15:10
"Wilfred" -- 15:15 - 26:45
"Louie" -- 26:50 - 36:30
"Burn Notice" -- 36:40 - 42:30
"True Blood" -- 42:30 - 50:00

As always, you can subscribe to The Firewall & Iceberg Podcast over at the iTunes Store, where you can also rate us and comment on us. [Or you can always follow our RSS Feed.]

 

 
And here's the podcast...

 

Firewall & Iceberg - Podcast 80

Dan-feinberg-sm
Daniel Fienberg
Executive Editor
A long-time member of the TCA Board and a longer-time blogger of "American Idol," Dan Fienberg writes about TV, except for when he writes about movies or sometimes writes about the Red Sox. But never music. He would sound stupid talking about music.
Related Searches: Firewall & Iceberg, Podcast, daniel fienberg, Alan Sepinwall, Louie, Wilfred, Suits, True Blood, Burn Notice

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  • Default-avatar

    veena sud

    Did anyone catch the multiple nods to Ingmar Bergman in "Orpheus Descending"?

    June 23, 2011 at 10:46AM EST Reply to Comment
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    Tom3345

    With all due respect, I think I'm going to skip this podcast entirely this week. I don't care about Suits or Burn Notice and I prefer to be entirely in the dark for True Blood, Wilfred, and especially Louie, because the unpredictability of the show is one of the many things that made it so great to watch last year.

    Have either of you seen any Futurama screeners, or do both of you just not care for it anymore?

    June 23, 2011 at 12:56PM EST Reply to Comment
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    Frank C.

    Will we get a Treme season preview next week? I'd love to hear your guys' take on the most-likely-great penultimate episode next Sunday and what happened last week with the shocking ending of last Sunday's episode. I really think this season has been a significant improvement over the 1st since there's been less lecturing (No Creighton will do that) and more plot-driven dialogue.

    June 23, 2011 at 1:07PM EST Reply to Comment
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    mike

    I enjoy True Blood, but I am also 100% baffled by the eight minute promo that HBO released. Whatever that part of the story is just looks horrible...

    June 23, 2011 at 1:27PM EST Reply to Comment
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      rachelmed Same here. It got a little interesting when they all turned more goblin-like but I was pretty much groaning the whole time. I like True Blood too but for a while now, I have been zoning out during a lot of the Sookie scenes and stories because I just don't care about her anymore.

      June 23, 2011 at 6:23PM EST

    • Basically, if you shared Sookie's "how bleep-ing lame" reaction on discovering she's half-fairy last season, of course this was going to make your flesh crawl to the off switch. Still, we are talking about 'True Blood' - ADHD TV at it's finest. If that bored you, there's going to be another grinding tonal shit/new half-assed storyline/gratuitous sex scene to distract you along in a minute.

      June 23, 2011 at 9:03PM EST
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    Neeek

    Just FYI Dan: My first thought when you said "flensing" was "I see Dan read Blubber at some point".

    June 23, 2011 at 2:24PM EST Reply to Comment
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    rowan729

    First off, thank you both for acknowledging Skarsgard's work on TB-he continues to be the only real quality actor of the core group of characters, and who doesn't play his part as some sort of joke-plus he looks wonderful naked.

    Yes, Dan, there are many of us who do watch simply to see who is naked this week, and that will likely continue. I know it will for me, anyway!

    And yes, the first 8 minutes are excruciatingly bad. Why on earth they thought releasing that mess early was going to help, I don't know. After seeing the finale of GOT, HBO clearly spent all of their yearly FX budget on that and BE before filming this episode. Yikes. Yuck. Just awful. Although, a small FX budget may not be responsible-Ball could actually think that nonsense looked good-wouldn't be his first overestimation of this show.

    I'm surprised ya'll didn't kinda reply to Ball's season finale statement from last year, in which he stated it would be a better show this season and please tune in again. I'm interested to know if ya'll think he followed through on his weird post-episode promise? I recall it was highly controversial last year when it aired....

    June 23, 2011 at 7:21PM EST Reply to Comment
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    Jen

    I completely agree that True Blood seriously needs to kill of some characters. I was hoping for fewer separate storylines this year, but it seems like there might even be more storylines that last season. I would like to say that it is both inaccurate and unfair to assume that what you see on True Blood is something that is pulled from Charlaine Harris's books. Alan Ball has made huge changes and the way the fairies are portrayed is a big one. He follow the books in some respects, but in many ways, he is doing something entirely different. A lot of people, including myself, agree that the show would be much better if it were only about Pam, Eric and Jessica; alas, the HBO god are cruel.

    June 23, 2011 at 7:58PM EST Reply to Comment

    • MEh... even if you slaughtered 3/4 of the cast, 'True Blood' would still suffer from Alan Ball's ADHD "throw everything and the kitchen sink at the wall and see what sticks" storytelling. Like 'Glee', there's obviously a lot of people who don't care. My partner doesn't but really I checked out when it seemed Tara (the only woman of colour in the core cast) spent two seasons basically getting raped and monologuing about how she really really deserved. To paraphrase Cee-Lo, eff you Ball.

      June 23, 2011 at 8:47PM EST
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    JanieJones

    I'm a bit tired of TB. I was a vocal supporter and then as S2 progressed onto S3, I grew disappointed.

    It was still campy but it all over the place with storylines. I found it distracting and less fun.
    I will bow out if I don't find it interesting. All the man eye candy in the world won't stop me, even Skarsgard acting abilities.

    June 23, 2011 at 9:40PM EST Reply to Comment
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    Carrie

    Regarding True Blood, the fairy awfulness HBO previewed is NOT in the books. Not like that. Those eight minutes were completely baffling to me, both as a book reader and as a person who exists in the world. Unbelievably bad.

    I've come to barely tolerate the show, but I'll still be watching this season for Eric's storyline. I'm pretty confident they are going to completely bungle it somehow, but it's prehaps the most popular story from the entire book series (and my personal favorite) so I can't ignore it.

    June 24, 2011 at 12:33PM EST Reply to Comment
    • 040_talkback_profile

      Carrie *perhaps

      June 24, 2011 at 12:34PM EST
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    rosengje

    I completely forgot to comment on the most important of this week's podcast, the reference to New Mexico:

    Dan, are you visiting the set of The Avengers?!

    June 25, 2011 at 11:11PM EST Reply to Comment
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    Erin

    FYI, the trip to fairieland was not right out of the book. It was an incredibly lame intro, I agree. I wish A Ball would keep closer to the actual books which are so well written and exciting.

    June 28, 2011 at 1:22PM EST Reply to Comment

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