Easy Money

I am really sorry I missed the CW's Easy Money during its short run on the small screen. I didn't seriously consider watching it during its broadcast run, I guess, because I tend to shy away from networks that think that retreads like Gossip Girl, 90210, and Melrose Place are worth putting on. But hey, their attitude is, speaking of easy money, if it makes money it must be good (the doctrine of commodity aestheticism).

The producers of Easy Money were, I am told, involved with The Sopranos and it shows. Great casting. Great acting. A marvelous sense of place. A little walk on the darkside of the American dream. I never really found The Sopranos particularly compelling or interesting enough to watch on a regular basis, I feel this way about a lot of the shows on HBO. It all seemed like yet another retread of the gangster/mafia drama albeit a well done and well acted one. So I was surprised at how much I liked this show. It, in my opinion, blows the Sopranos away.

It is too bad that so much on the American small screen today is guided by the commodity aestheticism dumbstick and that Media Rights Capital, MRC, the company that produced Easy Money, went belly up while it was running the CW's Sunday night prime time. It, like many who borrow money from loan sharks like Easy Money's Prestige, never had a chance. And that is too bad. But I guess that is the American way.

A brief addendum: since I wrote these words MRC has apparently cut a deal with Universal to distribute twenty of its films over the next five years. I wonder if they will have any more success than they did in 2008 with Easy Money, Valentine, and In Harm's Way.