After seeing a second episode I have to temper my enthusiam. I like the show, but the story and characters have already settled into a groove worn well by the sopranos as well as any number of working class family dramas.

What I loved, adored even, about the first show was less the story than the story telling— not only the visusal cues packed with information, not only the nonchalant manner with which the narrative handled momentous choices by the characters (realistic because, after all, the characters don’t really know they’re making momentous choices, they turn momentous after), but especially the way new information–sometimes in flashbacks, sometimes in real time–kept redefining the audience’s perception of the characters.

I heard Tom Stoppard on the radio last week talking about the ways in which drama works by changing up the way it shares information with the audience–I think what he said exactly was: sometimes it’s a matter of speeding up the information coming to the audience, sometimes slowing it down, and sometimes it’s a matter of the order in which the audience receives the info. On that last score episode 1 of TBDs was a masterpiece, esp. the final flashback moment which redefines our notion of Tommy Donnelly.

The best parts of last nights episode were the way it presented the saintly catholic guilt that paradoxically droves Tommy into murder most foul, and of course any time Oliva Wilde was on screen.