TV Roundup: Breaking Bad

While its more famous and popular older brother Mad Men* gets most of the attention from AMC’s crop of original programming, Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad is quietly putting an astonishingly high-quality. In fact, I’m going to make a bold claim: Breaking Bad is the best thing I’ve seen on television since The Wire ended its run in 2008.** Having seen up through the third season of this amazing show, I want to talk a little about it. Hard as it’s going to be, I will refrain from spoilers.

TV Roundup: Season 5 of Friday Night Lights, Season 1 of Game of Thrones

Friday Night Lights Season 5

The usually stupendous and occasionally transcendent Friday Night Lights had to come to an end at some point, unfortunately. The show featured a large, expensive ensemble, and was watched by so few people that NBC had no problem pawning it off to DirecTv. And so one of the best things to air on television—and especially on the networks—in many years finished its amazing run with a stellar final season. Note: Spoilers ahead for the first four seasons. If you haven’t seen them…do.

TV Power Rankings (part two)

(numbers 10-6: Extras, Firefly, Flight of the Conchords, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Deadwood)

5. Rome

Simultaneously very well-made (apparently the two seasons combined cost HBO some $100 million) and trashy, Rome would be an unequivically guilty pleasure if the quality were just a hair lower. Instead, the care put into every aspect of the show—particularly the absurdly gorgeous set designs and cinematography—work to highlight all of the sex, violence, and nudity in a manner that is, simply, glorious. The cast, which included a few actors that have become reasonably sought-after since (Kevin McKidd and Ray Stevenson especially) does a great job of both going way over-the-top and giving more conventionally strong performances, depending on the needs of a particular scene.

In short, off the top of my head, I can’t come up with any other production that so thoroughly exemplifies the term “gratuitous”. And I most certainly mean that as a compliment.

The 5 Levels of Serialization

No, not that kind.

Welcome to the first installment of the one-part series, 'Paul's Pet Theories'. In this one, I talk a little about the structure of tv shows.

Television is the least self-contained of any of any narrative media. If it lasts, a show can easily have twenty hour-long episodes for six or seven years, while a movie series is considered long at four installments. But the way that the showrunners choose to use this time varies wildly. Some have but one long story they want to tell. Others tell a different one every episode, while still others fall somewhere in between. This is the concept of serialization, and, in my opinion it falls into five main categories*. The essential question that I use to figure out where a show falls is this: how much will what happened last episode affect what happens in this one?

(*)Anything that reflects true reality (as opposed to reality television) is not included. I.e. sports and news.

Level 1:
These are the shows that offer the lowest barriers to entry and, as such, are quite popular on networks. A viewer can start watching in season four without having seen it before and understand perfectly what's going on. While no show is ever truly free of continuity, the members of this group try. Many cartoons, whatever their intended age group, fall here. The other most populous level 1 subgroup are the procedurals. A level one crime procedural would, for example, have a new case every week (with perhaps the occasional two-parter) with very little connection between them. We'll learn about the characters' backstories, but they will typically serve only to flesh them out and have little actual bearing on the plot. These shows always have a status quo that, some level of cast change aside, rarely changes. If Kenny can die in one episode and be back the next with no explanation, or just never dies at all unless his character is 'written out' of the show, it's level one. Reality shows, for obvious reasons, are rarely level 1, but most game shows are.

Examples:
Family Guy, South Park, Futurama, Modern Family, Saturday Night Live, Robot Chicken
Spongebob, Animaniacs
Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, MythBusters, Iron Chef
CSI (LV, NY, & Miami), Law & Order, Cold Case, Without a Trace