Image Credit: Comedy Central
Last night on The Colbert Report, the host, fed up with the power of Michelle Obama to have already secured the upcoming season of Downton Abbey, exacted a kind of revenge of the polity. He got Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan’s permission to have the cast of Downton Abbey enact scenes from the upcoming season of Bad. READ FULL STORY »
Below, my picks for some of the best TV shows of 2012, in handy video form.
Anyone who reads this blog regularly can probably predict a few picks. I’ll tell you in advance that I stuck to a list comprised of regularly scheduled series, no arch stunt-picks, like the Presidential election coverage or some wheezy old anti-Here Comes Honey Boo Boo rant. Upbeat, that’s my motto! READ FULL STORY »
Jimmy Kimmel presided over a mostly very funny, fairly briskly paced, and quite surprising Emmy broadcast on Sunday night. It just goes to show what a great year it was for dramas that Breaking Bad could lose in so many key categories and I’m still happy… because Homeland‘s sweep of best drama, actor, actress, and what seemed like 42 other Emmys was heartily well-deserved. And the cat-nap I took during the back-to-back, too-long acceptance speeches by Jessica Lange and Tom Berenger helped sustain my viewing energy. READ FULL STORY »
Culminating in a scene that gave new meaning to the term “info dump,” the mid-season finale of Breaking Bad on Sunday night was at once revelatory and frustrating, sweet and sour. The hour was constructed around what has become a familiar framework this season: It spent much of its first half tidying up the loose ends of last week’s episode, and then spent the second half creating another fine mess. READ FULL STORY »
On Sunday night, we will come to the end of the first half of the final season of Breaking Bad. What will happen? I have a few ideas in the following video review. READ FULL STORY »
Breaking Bad‘s penultimate episode of the first half of its final season (deep breath) further developed Bryan Cranston’s Walter White’s character, which is to say, demonstrated how much his character (his moral character, his behavior) is shriveling with each hour of the series. In what may prove to be creator Vince Gilligan and Cranston’s most audacious move, they are taking a character who was once richly complex, and reducing him to a two-bit chiseler — a genius one, to be sure, but a man grown stunted, petty, and cheesily tyrannical. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Ursula Coyote/AMC
The key line in this week’s episode of Breaking Bad was probably Hank’s retort when his DEA partner said that Jonathan Banks’ Mike was a “pro.” Even pros makes mistakes, said Dean Norris’ Hank, and that was not only true within the context of the episode, but also of the people behind the camera this week, since I’m of the opinion that while the hour had a number of moments that furthered the pleasure to be taken from Walter White’s increasingly complex, morally bankrupt empire-building and built to a terrific climax, this edition — as is inevitable in even a superb series — also contained a few of Breaking Bad‘s less effective moments.
This would now be your SPOILER ALERT. READ FULL STORY »
This week’s Breaking Bad climaxed with a thrilling heist scene, hatched from a plan so outrageous in conception yet executed with such tightly edited realism that the final-scene horror was — not to be too heartless about this — icing on a beautiful cake. Once again, Jesse came up with the brilliant idea, Mike objected right up until the moment he was overruled and took part in the scheme anyway, and Walt? Well, Walt was, as much as ever, the man who manipulated everyone without seeming to exert himself all that much… which is one measure of a leader in firm control. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: AMC
If you wanted to break down this week’s episode of Breaking Bad to its essentials, in the way it fits into the pattern of episodes thus far, you might say that if last week was all about Walter White convincing himself he was in control of his new business partner Mike, this episode, titled “Fifty-One,” was about Walt convincing Skyler (and us) he was in control of his wife. But that, of course, is reductive. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Ursula Coyote/AMC
Where most thrillers thrive on macho posturing, making heroes and villains cool for the way they brag and speak in hardboiled threats they may or may not carry out, Breaking Bad exists partly to deconstruct that genre staple. Thus this week’s episode, “Hazard Pay,” was full of tough talk by Jonathan Banks’ Mike undercut by Walt’s more quiet, understated, but ultimately more ruthless ideas and actions. READ FULL STORY »
