Word: kingpins
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...about postwar restiveness in its Kurdish population. It also dislikes the idea of a postwar pro-American government across its border. But Iran fought a bitter war with Iraq from 1980 to '88 and would gleefully watch Saddam Hussein fall. A defanged Iraq would also make Iran the undisputed kingpin in the gulf. Tehran could conceivably offer the U.S. the right to use Iranian territory to launch search-and-rescue missions, as it did during the war in Afghanistan...
...gangster drama, Kingpin (Sundays and Tuesdays, 10 p.m. E.T., debuting Feb. 2), takes a lot of supposed risks: its depiction of drug use, its heavy violence and its protagonist, a Mexican crime lord shipping coke and crystal meth to American kids. But its greatest liability may be today's yes-you-can-do-that-on-TV culture. In the wake of R-rated, critically acclaimed and successful cable shows like HBO's The Sopranos and FX's The Shield, network TV has found audiences increasingly blase about sex and violence. This season Jack Bauer killed and decapitated a prisoner...
...knew [Kingpin] would be risky and different and potentially controversial," says NBC entertainment president Jeff Zucker. "All of those things appeal to us." Risky, yes--enough so that NBC ordered only six episodes. Controversial, maybe. But different? Kingpin follows Miguel Cadena (Yancey Arias), a Mob boss who prefers to think of himself as a captain-of-industry type, who gets both support and agita from a headstrong wife and who wants to shield his son from his bloody business. If you infringed this closely on one of Tony Soprano's construction scams, your head would end up in a bowling...
...Kingpin is the most obvious effort so far to see if a network can re-create HBO's success, it also raises the question of what makes an HBO success. It's not just blood, the F word and nudie shots: even if you stripped Jill Hennessy naked and had her kill men with piano wire, Crossing Jordan would still not be an HBO show. Brad Grey, who produces The Sopranos and several network series, says the difference is a strong point of view and subtle, adult storytelling. "At times that calls for looser standards and practices than the networks...
...Some Americans may question the evidentiary standards used to determine just who is eligible for summary execution-by-drone, but such qualms are likely to be muted by claims that the Yemen strike eliminated an active al-Qaeda kingpin. The danger arises when such operations go awry, particularly on the basis of bad intelligence - as has happened more than once in air strikes over Afghanistan. Positively identifying suspects usually requires human intelligence input from the ground, and therein lies considerable room for both mistakes and manipulation. Such mistakes cost the U.S. dearly, and officials are likely to demand extra precautions...