Last night The Walking Dead aired its midseason finale, “Coda.” I, like many other television viewers, utilize technology (DVRs, video services online like Amazon and iTunes) to watch the latest episodes of my favorite shows at my leisure. So you can imagine my disappointment when AMC’s official Facebook page for The Walking Dead posted a gigantic spoiler for the end of the episode at 9:59 PM EST and then re-shared it to their feed around 1 AM, presumably after the west coast feed aired. Continue reading →
The Walking Dead is a show that above all else is about inconsistencies in the quality of the writing. For me, every great episode comes at the price of two or three dull, disjointed episodes. Sunday’s finale, simply titled “A”, was something of a marriage between the disjointed and the stellar writing techniques of the series.
I’ve been really lagging behind on these TV updates, not to mention the blog as a whole. I apologize for that. I’m hopeful that things will get back to normal soon. And I hope that I’ll get back into the swing of my TV watching habits. I mean, look at this, I watched 11 episodes of television in a two-week period. That’s really unacceptable.
In the interest of getting back into the swing of things, I’m streamlining this feature of the blog and not listing watch dates and airdates. So here’s my breakdown of the TV I watched in the last couple weeks. Continue reading →
Zombies are by far my favorite movie monster. There’s nothing about zombies that scares me, per se. I would actually go so far as to say that they’re fairly low on the list of scariest movie monsters. But zombie movies, to me, are never really about the monsters. Zombies bring out the monsters that live within us and within the people we encounter every day. Continue reading →
I dropped the ball last week and didn’t get around to posting a “Week in TV” post. So now I’m posting two week’s worth of TV watching. Lucky for you guys, Shocktober has kind of taken control, so my TV watching has been considerably low. So here is what I’ve been watching for the last couple weeks. Enjoy.
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 →
Well, summer is winding to a close and television fans are starting to look toward the fall TV season. Here I’ve made a list of the shows I am looking forward to the most and a few new series that have piqued my interest. Obviously I can’t cover them all, so let me know what shows you’re most looking forward to this fall.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.
Over the last decade, there’s been a steady shift toward more cinematic storytelling on the small screen. TV has dug its heels into the consciousness of the viewer like it never has before. While the television medium has become a juggernaut of long-form storytelling, it is not without its cast of disposable, irritating characters.
Everyone has that one character they wouldn’t mind seeing buried alive on a beach, mauled to death by a female goat or drowned in a creek filled with tears of their own narcissistic self-pity. Below you’ll find some of the characters whose appearances will have me checking my twitter feed, updating my Facebook or biding my time contemplating why I would even watch a show with such an irritating character.
Fair warning, there are some SPOILERS throughout this list so read sections at your own discretion… Continue reading →
I’ve had a day to think about the season finale of The Walking Dead. I’ve considered the way the various story lines were resolved in the last two episodes and thought about the possibilities for season four. A day has passed and I keep coming back to the single question I blurted out when the third season of The Walking Dead came to a close…
The zombie genre often raises interesting questions. How would we behave if society as we know it was gone? How far are we willing to go to protect our own and when the teeth are closing in, what or who are we willing to sacrifice?
These are themes The Walking Dead has played with since day one and things are quickly coming to a head as the show soon ends its third season. Only two new episodes are left and I feel now is as good a time as any to reflect on where the show’s been and where it’s heading. Let’s start from the beginning…
(Includes spoilers up to and including S03E14 – Prey) Continue reading →
Thanks to The Walking Dead and American Horror Story, the horror genre is in the midst of its biggest television presence since Tales from the Crypt camped up the airwaves of the 1990s. Now A&E is trying to get in on the ground floor by taking a beloved character of the genre and enlisting network hit makers to create a modern day prequel series.
This comedy/drama feature debut from Matt Ratner is witty and charming with strong performances from Billy Crystal and Ben Schwartz.Schwartz plays a struggling stand up comedian who moves back home to New York where his now married ex-girlfriend lives. There he meets and bonds with an eccentric dermatologist played by Crystal. The two learn from each other a […]
Thorough documentary about the Holocaust that uses archival footage and interviews from Claude Lanzmann's Shoah that were not in his finished film. It also has present day footage of the sites of the camps and interviews from scholars, survivors, and liberators.We Shall Not Die Now's present day footage and interviews are presented in a stunning bl […]
Marriage Story blew me away. The performances are astounding. There's a scene between Driver and Johansson late in the film that packs such a punch that I'll be thinking about it for a while.Full review will be posted on ObsessiveViewer.com soon.
Man, I really don't know what to make of this one. It's a pretty audacious throwback to a certain 70s horror aesthetic. The set design and score feels like it's right out of the 1970s, evoking memories of Suspiria and a bit of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But the editing and sound design were the high points. Tension builds in a scene involvi […]
