This week Tiny and I welcome our friend Greg Lenz (from We Are Libertarians) to review Steve Jobs, gush over Aaron Sorkin’s work, and draw parallels between this movie and The Social Network! In potpourri, I review Rick and Morty season 1 and indie drama Unexpected; Tiny talks about NBC drama Nashville; and Greg talks about his excitement for The Big Short and the Tarantino police boycott controversy. Continue reading →
I will be upfront here; I’m a bit out of my element with this post. I watched season 2 of The Newsroom in a vacuum, completely free from all internet chatter be it reviews or tweets. You can read my thoughts on the season itself in this week’s The Week in TV post. In this post, however, I would like to address something that surprised me.Continue reading →
Pilots are interesting beasts in the television world. They’re used to convince a studio to shell out more money for more episodes. In order to do that, a pilot needs to succeed on several more fronts of storytelling than any other single episode. A pilot needs to introduce the major characters of a series in an engaging, often standalone, story that will leave the audience clamoring for more.
Furthermore, a good pilot needs to rely on a strong cast to build a rapport in a short period of time. Writers working on pilots also have to gauge possible long-term onscreen relationships completely blind of actors’ chemistry. Because of these factors, I live by one steadfast television-viewing rule:
Never judge a show by its pilot.
But some series have such strong pilot episodes that you can and should judge them on the pilots. And so, here I have compiled a list of some of my favorite pilot episodes. They aren’t necessarily my favorite shows ever, and they aren’t exactly the best episodes of said shows. These episodes are just the most engaging series-starters that I’ve seen. They also introduce the characters and story arcs in a highly satisfying way.
You can click the episode titles in the list to buy them digitally on Amazon.
I can't remember the last time I was so invested in 2/3s of a movie only to find myself struggling so hard to hold my interest in its final act. But such is the life of the audience member of an M. Night Shyamalan movie. As harsh as it may sound, there's no denying that Shyamalan is one divisive and mercurial filmmaker. The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable […]
Split holds up very well. I was concerned that my fondness for it was based solely on the ending. Fortunately, I was invested in the story and really stunned by McAvoy's performance. He was incredible. My full review can be found on ObsessiveViewer.com.
David's arc through the movie and how it impacts his home life shows Night's growth as a storyteller when compared to the troubled marriage subplot of The Sixth Sense. In that movie, Bruce Willis' character is coming to terms with himself and his relationship in a different way. The problem is that the subplot was 100 percent pigeonholed by th […]
The Upside is a pretty middle of the road comedy that's fairly inoffensive, if unimaginative in its execution. It's a remake of the 2011 French film The Intouchables. It premiered at TIFF in 2017 and finally got a wide theatrical release now in 2019. I haven't seen The Intouchables, so I can't compare the two. But The Upside is hard to na […]
I went into Free Solo wondering what could possibly possess a person to climb anything without ropes or harnesses. It is a lifestyle that I am so far away from, I simply can't fathom it. And right off the bat, the documentary addresses this question in the form of an interview that Free Solo's subject, Alex Honnold, was in on television. His ration […]
