John From Cincinnati

I'm not a TMN subscriber, and being a Canadian I can't subscribe to HBO directly. Unfortunately this means that I have a tough time seeing some of the new, cutting edge shows right away (though the plus side is I spend less time glued to the tele).

But last night I found myself at my parents house. We had a lovely barbecue, including beer-can-chicken (or up the butt chicken as my mother calls it) and some nice fingerling potatoes. And after the dishes were done, dessert was consumed and my parents had decided to lie down for a spell, I got to watch some television.

And not just any television, but "specialty channel" television (no, not porn...get your mind out of the gutter), including TMN. And on the TMN schedule last night, John From Cincinnati.

I'm a huge David Milch fan. NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues, great, great shows. Deadwood, even better.

Milch is an incredible talent. There are two things that have always struck me about Milch's creations. First are the characters. Deeply flawed, generally unlikable, but fascinatingly watchable (who could possibly tear their eyes away from Al Swearengen?).

Second is the dialogue. Milch is a modern Shakespeare, his dialogue on par with the Bard. Even in a show like Deadwood the writing turns all the vulgarities into poetry. No mean feat.

So watching John From Cincinnati last night was an almost surreal experience. Here's Milch's signature dialogue coming out of the mouths of a bunch of royally screwed up Californian surfers. It was....weird.

I'm really not sure what to think of it either. I had trouble identifying with any of the characters, and I found John (of the title) to be incredibly annoying. I'm sure a lot of that is because I've missed the first five or six episodes. I can safely say that John isn't all that easily accessible. That being said it's a show I'll definitely rent once it's released on DVD.

If nothing else it's a way for me to get my David Milch dialogue fix.