TV Things

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1. I'm now all caught up with Breaking Bad. OMG SO GOOD EVERYONE SHOULD WATCH THIS SHOW. And conveniently (well, sort of...) AMC is rerunning the entire series every day until the season 5 premiere in July... granted, they're generally at 1AM-4AM-ish, so it helps to have a DVR or be on a vampire's sleep schedule, but you really should watch it. I'd say it's among the top five best shows ever. Definitely one of the best-acted, and it is by far and away the most gorgeous show on TV. Those desert vistas, man...

Talk to me, BB fans! I am now unspoilable!

P.S. Dear Jesse Pinkman, I have a blanket and a cup of tea waiting for you. Let's cuddle. Love, me.

2. Mad Men season finale? I am surprisingly meh. Granted this was much more of a denouement episode after the HUGE events of the last two weeks, but the only thing I was really thinking after the finale is that I would totally watch a spin-off of Don and Peggy MST3K-ing at the movies. Also LOL at the number of times Pete Campbell has been punched in the face this season.

3. Anyone watching Bunheads? Stupidest title ever, but it's a very Gilmore Girls-y show from Amy Sherman-Palladino, with Broadway star Sutton Foster (whom I saw in Thoroughly Modern Millie and thinks she's adorbs). I've only seen the pilot (it premiered last night, but it's been available online for a while now) and I'm still very undecided. The first episode is very heavy on setting up the premise, so I don't feel like I have a sense of what the actual show will be like.

4. New web series to check out: WIGS. It's an ongoing project that produces high quality webisodes and short films, all featuring female protagonists. I'm really enjoying "Jan," about a photographer's assistant who's trying to break into the business, and "Blue," which features Julia Stiles as a call girl who hides her job from her teenage son. There's also "Serena," a short film with Jennifer Garner, but I haven't watched that one yet.

5. Dammit! Yvonne Strahovski (formerly of Chuck) will be guest starring on Dexter next season. Now I'm gonna have to watch it. In other news, apparently the Deb/Dexter thing isn't going away. FML.

6. Burn Notice is back this week!

For the most part, though, the summer is pretty light on TV. I have a TON of shows still on the to-watch list, so I welcome suggestions as to which should be next.

Comments

[beer_good_foamy]

I would totally watch a spin-off of Don and Peggy MST3K-ing at the movies.

...I didn't know that this was missing from my life, and now I only know that I'll never have it. :(

But yes, Pete getting punched in the face makes anything better.

In other news, apparently the Deb/Dexter thing isn't going away.

And my resolve to drop the show just got an 84% boost. Man, the people behind the show really think this is a good idea, don't they?

[next_to_normal]

For the record, I would also watch a spin-off called "Pete Campbell Gets Punched in the Face." :)

Man, the people behind the show really think this is a good idea, don't they?

Apparently. It's kind of hilarious in a way, when you think of how many fandoms have really popular incest pairings (canon, subtextual, or completely non-canon), and yet this one it's like OMG NO WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? You gotta ask yourself, when even fandom doesn't want your incest, just how far from the pack have you strayed?

[beer_good_foamy]

Heh. Yeah, that's a pretty low bar they managed to stumble over. :)

[mikeda]

Fun little note on "Bunheads". According to today's "Ask Ausiello" column over at tvline.com, casting is taking place for a character who may be called Luke. And the audition scene is actually from "Gilmore Girls".

rot-13 spoiler

According to Ausiello, gur punenpgre vf gur oebgure bs gur yngr Uhooryy

(Haven't watched the show. Considering it. After all, ASP + Kelly Bishop...)

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If it turns out he owns a diner, my head might explode.

[mikeda]

Don't forget the gruff but secretly soft-hearted personality and the backwards baseball cap...

:-)

[goldenusagi]

"It's ironic that people are fine with Dexter jabbing people in the heart but mortified by this romance," says Buck.

THAT'S NOT WHY WE'RE MORTIFIED. Geez. I have no problem with fictional incest. I have a problem with fictional incest that comes out of NOWHERE. This isn't Game of Thrones or even Six Feet Under.

I'm 99% sure I'm done with Dexter. Season 6 was so awful, and I watched it getting worse week by week, and I just don't have the energy for that anymore. I never seen a show implode as spectacularly as Dexter did. To go from something so amazing to--that. And while each season is more or less self contained and S7 would be totally separate from S6, I just cannot with the Dexter/Deb. It's completely ruined the big finding out moment for me. I think the writers have completely lost sight of things. I might catch up after everything is out on DVD, but I might not. But with the way things are now, I definitely want to know what I'm getting into before I watch. But cutting Dexter loose will be easy in one way. I'm not in fandom, I don't hang out where people talk about it, so I probably will have no idea what's going on, won't keep seeing things for the show even though I don't watch it, etc. And that's more than fine by me.

[next_to_normal]

THAT'S NOT WHY WE'RE MORTIFIED. Geez.

Hahaha, right?? And like I said to beer_good_foamy, fans are generally eager to ship incest, whether it's canon or not, so you have to be screwing it up pretty badly to make them hate it.

[goldenusagi]

An excellent point. When even fandom doesn't want your incest, look at your life, look at your choices.

[beer_good_foamy]

Also, not everone is fine with Dexter jabbing people in the heart, which is another complaint I had with s6; that Dexter at this point has basically turned into one of the villains of the series, helping serial killers get away with murder and only getting rid of them when it serves him, sabotaging police investigations, etc... and the writers seem convinced that as long as the show is called Dexter, everyone will consider him the hero anyway and everything he does is automatically OK. And they're so smugly proud of it, as if they don't realise that the reason people are surprised by where they're taking the story isn't that it's brave and challenging but really obviously bad and lazy writing.

...Sorry. End rant.

[goldenusagi]

I had major problems with Dexter's characterization in S6. I've mostly tried to block S6 from my mind, lol, but it seemed like that was the most he'd interefered in police investigations, giving them false leads, etc. Not to mention revealing himself to Travis and then teaming up with him was just dumb, and leaving a video message? Whatever happened to Don't Get Caught?! And on top of that, the theme of faith and religion, which Dexter mocked so brilliantly to his victim in 6x01, went nowhere. His friendship with brother Sam came out of nowhere and went nowhere. Every supporting characters' story went nowhere. Laguerta's characterization turned on a dime. And Deb having the 'realization' of feelings after therapy was the worst writing I've seen in a while. Oh, and if Dexter is going to go 'darker' (darker than a serial killer already is) and be more like a villain, I think we should have had him go spectacularly off the rails, and have had him see Brian all season long. Because ghost!Brian instead of ghost!Harry was awesome.

Sorry. End rant.

[beer_good_foamy]

Oh yeah, ghost!Brian was pretty much the one thing I liked about s6. (OK, Brother Sam was a good character, but they never did anything interesting with him - his function, in the end, was basically to supply Dexter with a bible. Because, y'know, bibles are so hard to come by.)

And yeah, the entire faith theme was among the clumsiest I've ever seen on TV. And I've seen some pretty clunky ones.

I would have been interested in a dark Dexter arc if the writers knew they were writing a dark Dexter arc. But at this point, I'm pretty sure their baseline is that everything Dexter does will always be justified, and that this is so obvious it doesn't even need to be established.

[goldenusagi]

It's like the baseline is also 'Dexter will never get caught because he's so brilliant', when we haven't seen evidence of that in quite a while. He wasn't careful this season, he was as sloppy as he's ever been. Letting Travis see him? Talking to Trinity was one thing, but at least Dexter got to know him under an alias. Trinity figured it out because he was a good villain and showed up at Dexter's workplace. But Travis was an idiot. And Dexter doesn't kill him, but talks to him, then lets him go, then turns up at his workplace, doesn't deny that he was going to kill him, etc, and wants to team up to get the other guy (Gellar?) now. WTF? And the only reason Deb caught him was dumb luck, not because she'd been suspicious or he'd been leaving clues that she'd seen.

And even when Dexter did go 'off the rails' with ghost!Brian, he what, stole some stuff and went on a joyride? Got a blowjob from a gas station cashier? Like, this is not what should happen when a serial killer cuts loose.

Also, the dead angel tableau was one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen. I don't think it was supposed to be hilarious. And THE most hilarious thing I've ever seen was Travis' mural with devil!Dexter.

Oh, and as long as I'm at it, the 'Travis was hallucinating Gellar' thing was the most ridiculous plot twist. Eowyn said it better than me in a comment on my journal, but it was ridiculous because it broke the established POV on the show. We were 'inside' the head of a character who wasn't Dexter, and Dexter is a show that has a realistic POV when other characters are involved (Dexter has a ghost!Harry and sometimes imagines things, but no one else does). Breaking the POV for a reveal like that was cheap. And it wasn't even a good reveal on top of that.

[beer_good_foamy]

And even when Dexter did go 'off the rails' with ghost!Brian, he what, stole some stuff and went on a joyride? Got a blowjob from a gas station cashier? Like, this is not what should happen when a serial killer cuts loose.

Yep. When Ferris Bueller would think your serial killer's dark arc looks wimpy, you're doing something wrong.

And THE most hilarious thing I've ever seen was Travis' mural with devil!Dexter.

Heee! Not to mention the way the cops let him take care of that. "We think there may be a dangerous serial killer inside this house. Let's send in the blood spatter analyst for 20 minutes before we even let the SWAT team do a sweep."

Oh, and as long as I'm at it, the 'Travis was hallucinating Gellar' thing was the most ridiculous plot twist.

Not to mention so ridiculously obvious that everyone I watched it with kept going "OK, so we know Gellar can't possibly be all in Travis' mind, since they're telegraphing that so hard that obviously they just want us to think that so they can surprise... us... Oh, they really thought that was a shocking twist? Really?"

I'm still convinced that the only reason they pulled Deb/Dexter out of their collective asses was because their abridged edition of Screenwriting For Dummies only covers one single type of relationship between men and women; if they're just brother and sister and she's not in love with him, they really don't know how to write it.

[goldenusagi]

Well, they seemed to know how to write it for five seasons. I'm honestly not sure what happened. Then they just 'decided' that she's always been in love with him. Way to ruin one of the best brother/sister relationships on TV. But it also plays into the the writers' trope (or cultural trope) that the most important type of relationship is a romantic one.

I went on at length about this here last year, lol:

http://goldenusagi.livejournal.com/459836.html

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Oh, and if Dexter is going to go 'darker' (darker than a serial killer already is) and be more like a villain, I think we should have had him go spectacularly off the rails, and have had him see Brian all season long. Because ghost!Brian instead of ghost!Harry was awesome.

This would make an awesome season. Too bad the writers lack the awareness to pull it off. :(

[goldenusagi]

And they're so smugly proud of it, as if they don't realise that the reason people are surprised by where they're taking the story isn't that it's brave and challenging but really obviously bad and lazy writing.

Oh, and I get annoyed by this in general. It seems to happen in later seasons of shows, where the writers just talk about how brilliant everything is, and how this is the natural progression of the story line (and how if you don't like it, you're just not *getting* it). Instead of, you know, it just being bad writing. I remember being baffled by one interview that came out after last year's finale, which was particularly talking about Dexter/Deb. The writers were just so set on the story line, and kept going on about how ~important Deb's new feelings that had always been there for Dexter were.

[next_to_normal]

Yeah, this. Exactly. Rant away, my friends, because you're speaking for me.

Now that I've seen Breaking Bad, I can't help but compare the two, because there's a show that's totally cognizant of the fact that they've turned their main character into the villain the series. That's the whole POINT. The Dexter writers just look hopelessly clueless in comparison.

[chaila]

it is by far and away the most gorgeous show on TV

I see you Breaking Bad, and raise you Luther. :) But otherwise, I have NO IDEA how I'm going to watch Breaking Bad in real time when we have to wait an entire week between episodes. Sadly though, since I mainlined it I never really digested it or had thoughts about it, except OMG.

I want to watch Bunheads too, for I love Gilmore Girls. I heard it had really awful ratings though, so I might not get too attached. :(