What Are You Saying?: As a Sopranos replacement we have John from Cincinnati from David Milch, creator of Deadwood. I yield to no one in my admiration of Milch. He is one of two people working in film and video who actually try to use the English language for artistic and even poetic purposes, rather than utilitarian dialog and narration (the other is David Mamet). But I have to admit it's hard to get a handle on John from Cincinnati.

We have interesting, well fleshed-out characters in a fairly dysfunctional community which is good. We have the dialogue which, while not soaring to the heights of Deadwood, is still characteristically lovely and playful. We have a delightful element of humor. But the premise seems muddled. Milch has stated that John... is about "borders" and how people react to crossing them. One of the borders is between the natural and the supernatural. And there is a strong supernatural element to the show -- one character levitates on occasion, one comes back from the dead, the title character is clearly magical (along with mentally disabled) in some way or another.

Having seen four episodes now I have no inkling whether this is going to mesh into a coherent narrative. It could; it took a few episodes in before I "got" Deadwood and nearly a whole season before it all come together, so I certainly not writing off John..., but the supernatural element scares me. That is such a big booby trap -- it's a deus ex machina waiting to happen; it's an invitation to focus on the mystical weirdness instead of the humanity of the characters.

Obviously, I am passing no judgment yet. I guess we'll just have to wait. Here's hoping Milch works his magic and clarifies things before the season is out. Fact is, even as it stands it's better than 90% of everything else on the tube.