Now that Breaking Bad has ended and the dust has settled on the wave of articles, criticisms and adulation toward it, I feel compelled to write some thoughts. And it’s just in time for tomorrow’s final season and complete series blu-ray releases.
If you heard The Obsessive Viewer Podcast’s analysis of the finale, you would know that I had some slightly dissenting opinions about the end of Walter White and Heisenberg. Particularly, my opinion was rooted in his role as an anti-hero.
I wrote this while I was still comprehending the events of Breaking Bad’s final run of episodes. In the aftermath of Felina, I saw countless comparisons of the show to The Wire, which I firmly believe is in a class by itself in the television pantheon. What I saw surprisingly few of were comparison’s between Breaking Bad and The Shield. Below I recount how each series and each anti-hero’s final bow. Enjoy and don’t forget to follow me around the internet with the links below.
Here’s this week’s installment of “The Obsessive Viewer’s Week in TV!” This week was a little light, compared to last week at least. A lot of that is due to the kick off of Shocktober and various other things. Still, I managed to watch the series finale of Breaking Bad, Family Guy’s season premiere and start a rewatch of Game of Thrones. Read on to see what kind of week I’ve had. 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 →
I also decided against watching the Emmys and let my ridiculous new habit of weekly HBO blu-ray purchases get the better of me. Read on and let me know what you think. Continue reading →
I’m not big on award shows. I don’t like the self-congratulatory nature of them and I can’t stand the politics behind it. Having said that, I didn’t watch the Emmys. I thought about it, I even intended to watch them and livetweet them the next morning. But I didn’t bother. I’ll still share a few thoughts about them here, albeit several days later. Continue reading →
This is the time of year when I get bogged down with all the series I follow. Some shows fall by the wayside while others get picked up if word of mouth or marketing is strong enough. Obviously I can’t devote a post every week (like with Bates Motel or Under the Dome) to every show I watch. So here’s a weekly series I’m going to try my best to work on as the fall TV season unfolds. Continue reading →
This is the time of year when I get bogged down with all the series I follow. Some shows fall by the wayside while others get picked up if word of mouth or marketing is strong enough. Obviously I can’t devote a post every week (like with Bates Motel or Under the Dome) to every show I watch. So here’s a new weekly series I’m going to try my best to work on as the fall TV season unfolds.
I’m already off to a semi-bad start considering this was meant to go up Sunday. But I’ll try my best in the future to post these when I intend them to be posted.
OBSESSIVE NOTE: My friend Mike is by far the biggest Dexter fan I know. As such, he has kindly offered to contribute his thoughts on the series’ past, present and increasingly limited future. You can follow him on Twitter at @IAmMikeWhite.
“The mask is slipping,” a line from a second season episode of Showtime’s long running mega-hit Dexter, is forever tattooed on the side of my foot – a constant reminder of one of my favorite episodes in one of my favorite seasons of one of my favorite shows of all time, and now a reminder of how far the show has fallen. I got the tattoo (during Dexter’s fourth season) as, both an homage to a fantastic show, and a way to say that good things happen when we reveal to people who we really are; for better or worse. I also really liked Michael C. Hall’s reading of the line. But man, maybe Dexter should have left the mask on a little longer…
Dexter, now in the smack-dab middle of its final season, is truly limping toward the finish line. It’s ratings are still tops over at Showtime, but more people watching the show doesn’t mean that old fans are liking what they see, and the show is severely showing its age. Continue reading →
Before you start reading, I must warn you that this is a SPOILER HEAVY list, obviously. Read at your own discretion.
I wrote this in response to the end of season 3 of Game of Thrones. When I first started watching the series, I wanted to read each season’s corresponding book before I watched the adaptation. Given the length of the novels, my impatience and fear of being spoiled I stopped about 1/3 of the way through the second book and got caught up on the series.
Thankfully, I avoided all spoilers for the end of season three. What I got in return was one of the biggest “HOLY SHIT” moments in recent television memory. It’s the moment everyone has been talking about and now that I’ve finally seen it, I’ve been inspired to make a list of the most tragic moments in television. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: Clearly this list is only limited to the shows I’ve seen. Think I missed something? Let me know in the comments, on Twitter @ObsessiveViewer or on Facebook. 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 watched Force Majeure back in 2018 and didn't care for it all that much. Downhill makes me want to revisit and re-evaluate Force Majeure.Downhill really isn't terrible. It just feels hollow. It only touches on the theme of fragile masculinity without making it a focal point of the movie, which is a big misstep. The relationship between Will Ferre […]
It's the kind of movie that thinks it's being clever despite not trying hard at all to do it. I appreciate the variety, I guess, but the tonal shifts among the different fantasies just made the whole movie feel like it was working through a genre identity crisis. The way the story tries to tie things together was a bit haphazard but better than not […]
Well-meaning and sugary sweet, but doesn't really have much of anything really profound or interesting to say. Allison Janney and the mean troop just go through the motions of being antagonists for the misfit characters. It's also got one of the strangest "group unites in an act of solidarity" scenes I've seen.Full review: https://ob […]
Weird Valentine's Day viewing. Sure. But man, talk about a 180. I saw Snowpiercer 5.5 years ago in suboptimal conditions on zero sleep.Revisiting it now, in a better frame of mind and in the as aftermath of Parasite, I can see the things that should have worked for me when I saw it in 2014. The world building and class system social commentary is a work […]
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is Netflix’s charming teen romance film based on the first of Jenny Han’s trilogy of novels. In adapting the story to film, screenwriter Sofia Alvarez and director Susan Johnson pack the ethos of classic John Hughes films into a modern teen world. They do so in an earnest and unironic way that feels refreshing in an age of c […]
