is HBO screwing with me?

So I've been pretty busy lately. That's the shorthand version of saying I've had a lot of opportunities to imbibe cocktails over the past 2 weeks, and I took them all. All of 'em! So maybe it's all the beer and wine chipping away at my brain cells, but I get the distinct feeling that HBO is legitimately screwing with me.

Sex and the City, the Sopranos, Entourage, True Blood, and even Big Love: after all the hours of dedicated watching I can't seem to shake this feeling that I've been had. After all the awards and stellar reviews and inevitable Monday morning discussion sessions, I just have to admit that I've been sucker-punched into believing I'm watching must see TV, while it's invariably beautifully packaged nothingness.

I think we've all been there before. Remember when the Soprano's got so cerebral you wondered if you simply forgot how to speak English and that's why all the scant dialogue sounded like confused groaning? Remember when SATC was so far removed from any semblance of reality that you actually thought walk-in closets existed in New York studio apartments? Remember THE GREENS?!

Any thinking, breathing person will admit that nothing ever happens in an episode of Entourage. How to Make it in America was so aimless I often forgot what I was watching (that movie where Uma Therman is a major cougar?). I still saw the whole damn season. And now, I find myself dragged into the rapidly withering cohesiveness of True Blood. I stayed with them through the debacle of the Maryanne plot last season (drawn-out, distracting inanity) hoping for some kind of payoff. But I'm back here again, torn between giving up on an HBO series or continuing to shill away my Sunday evenings for fear of missing out on something that's actually good.

This is the conundrum and the paradox of HBO: it's the best hope for innovative programming and the most likely to leave you entirely disappointed. One could argue I'm expecting too much, but I've been taught to do so--I'm looking at you, Emmy's (and every entertainment publication, ever). Premium cable is the last frontier of television, where any amount of absurdity, profanity, nudity, and insanity is possible, with a sickeningly exorbitant budget to match. Why shouldn't the most provocative television come from them?

So we root for it and look forward to it, we religiously watch (on Sundays, no less), and then we complain when we find ourselves feeling deflated--and shortchanged of nearly a quarter of the programming time. We feel stupid and robbed of precious dollars and cents. If you're a regular viewer, I'm sure you've thought about spilling the beans that the emperor has no clothes; that most HBO series are eventually, in fact, a colossal mind fuck. But if we walk away now, we're out of the conversation, even if that conversation revolves around how a show has really gone down-hill...I mean egregiously bad. For realz! Right now True Blood has too many characters and subplots that take away the focus on its clever socio-political subtext. I'm so tried of the Sookie and Bill teeter-totter. This season really needs to deliver or I'm just not even going to...

Dammit.