5punk

This is New Season GoTiem Week. New Castle last night (was OK I guess. Bit of a "lead in to ongoing storyline" feel to it that left it a bit lacking in terms of a story for that episode alone, but nothing to get upset about), then there is new HIMYM (final series apparently. I guess we finally meet the damn mother. Those kids on the sofa should be relieved.), new Big Bang Theory (I don't give a shit about these accusations of it being "black face" level comedy pointed at nerds. It continues to make me laugh, so I remain happy) and SHIELD starts. I feel like I'm missing something else that's starting up again, but I forget what.

Looking forward to New Girl S3. First two seasons were very strong. If you haven't seen it don't be put off by the premise, yes it's basically a romance sitcom but it's seriously funny at times and the character are suitably wacky. And you know, Zooey Deschanel. She does things to me.

The IT Crowd - Final episode, this Friday 9PM

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQXpVhBCT7s[/media]

The last episode of the IT crowd wasn't bad, wasn't all that funny either, but it was passable.

SHIELD has some potential I think, but I need to catch up on my random marvel movies a bit too.

Castle started in a somewhat dull way, but I suspect it'll return to form over a few episodes.

This week of interest (to me at least);

LAST FUCKING EPISODE OF BREAKING BAD! (There's a reason I'm not asleep)

Simpsons, Family Guy, American dad - None particularly good any more, but a good hour of moderately entertaining. Incidentally, The Cleveland show has been cancelled, which is a good thing.

Overhaulin': apparently that came back, which is a good thing.

Brew Dogs: The chaps from brew dog travel across america sampling and making beer.

Also of note:
Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, Only just found out about this, bourdain is always good.
Hostages: Looks interesting enough.
The Good Wife: Wifey loves this, really isn't bad at all, lawyer drama with some amusing moments.
Cutthroat Kitchen: Alton brown thing, looks like it could amuse.

I'm spoilering this because of what it is, there's no spoilers, but y'know, don't wanna hype it.

Breaking bad:

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:The last episode of the IT crowd wasn't bad, wasn't all that funny either, but it was passable.

It didn't make me actually laugh that much, I don't think, but I thought it was well written and a decent send off for the programme.

spoodie wrote:

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:The last episode of the IT crowd wasn't bad, wasn't all that funny either, but it was passable.

It didn't make me actually laugh that much, I don't think, but I thought it was well written and a decent send off for the programme.

I disagree, I think it let the series down. There were a few funny bits, but nothing particularly inspiring. It wasn't as witty, not as well written, going for cheap and simple laughs not the complex and intertwined storylines that made it great.
IMO they should have left it as it was


but more importantly, BREAKING BAD... its sitting there begging me to press play but i'm stuck at the office and I think watching it without the darkened room, HDTV and surround sound would be a crime.

I also agree on the I.T. crowd thing on that it could've been better, but at least it got closure now.

And as for Breaking Bad:

I really hope other writers paid attention to this show because they could've learned a thing or two.
Despite it's success it remained simple and understandable, no over-complicated plot twists or randomly pulling characters out of their arse at the last minute. Even with the finale they didn't try to deus ex machina it. And more importantly, it never overstayed it's welcome. That's right I am looking at you, almost every show from the previous couple of decades.

Breaking Bad. Oh my. Oh my oh my. I don't use the word captivated often, but it definitely applies here. Like Berk and Mr J have said, its pacing was spot on, it didn't try and be convoluted and clever, and it finished just when it needed to. This is how television should be.

In other TV news I have just started watching Homeland (so far 3 episodes into season 2). It's good, but I find Claire Danes really irritating. She seems to have been written as yet another hysterical female character that really undermines her role (Cracked did a thing on this recently I believe, but I've not read in case there are spoilers). I really hate it when programs do this, and it just make it look like it was written by a bloke who can only write female characters in tropes. Hell, Joss Wheedon isn't perfect, but compare how he writes women under pressure compared to Homeland. Still, it's a decent enough show, even if I am distracted by Damien Lewis' whistling teeth.

I also agree on the IT Crowd front. It was a decent send off, a good tie up of some of the lose ends, but not a great one either. Certainly not as funny as series 2 or 3 and in all fairness the quality had dried up around Series 3.

Series 4 was so terrible though (Which is quite surprising as Graham Linehan is a fantastic writer), I'm surprised they were even able to make a finale.

I'm glad Breaking Bad has finished and that people are saying it's been consistently good. That means people will stop telling me I should watch it and also that I now can watch it without worrying it will disappoint me in later episodes.

I wonder if I can get Netflix to give me another free "trial", or Lovefilm for that matter as I saw whatever Walking Dead series* was recently transmitted on regular UK TV and it'd be nice to fill in what I missed.

*edit: it was season 3

Roman Totale wrote:Breaking Bad. Oh my. Oh my oh my. I don't use the word captivated often, but it definitely applies here. Like Berk and Mr J have said, its pacing was spot on, it didn't try and be convoluted and clever, and it finished just when it needed to. This is how television should be.

In other TV news I have just started watching Homeland (so far 3 episodes into season 2). It's good, but I find Claire Danes really irritating. She seems to have been written as yet another hysterical female character that really undermines her role (Cracked did a thing on this recently I believe, but I've not read in case there are spoilers). I really hate it when programs do this, and it just make it look like it was written by a bloke who can only write female characters in tropes. Hell, Joss Wheedon isn't perfect, but compare how he writes women under pressure compared to Homeland. Still, it's a decent enough show, even if I am distracted by Damien Lewis' whistling teeth.

Homeland is a prime example of a series that should have ended with season 1 instead it just goes into fucking la la land

I watched the whole first series of Breaking Bad pretty much right after my last post and found it had one very good episode, four boring ones, one excellent one and a quite good one. It ended rather abruptly, which I guess was because of the writer's strike.

I saw the first ep of season two, which was reasonably good, but half the supporting cast seem to have had a personality transplant (or they actually have personalities written for them now).

I preferred the format of the first series where the pre-credits preview happens again in context at the end of the episode, rather than later on in the series, as I guess will be the case with the pink teddy bear. I'm liking the dramtic irony where the characters jump to the most paranoid possible conclusion, when the viewer knows the real story.

Man, Breaking Bad. I think I mentioned it first here on the forums (hipster mode!) and was encouraging people to watch it but haven't been back to it after season 3. Just haven't got the desire for some reason. I did mention misgivings I had about the change in style from season 1. Contrary to most people finding it a tad slow and boring I loved the origin part of it, of him making his change, fumbling through being a criminal, avoiding suspicion and his relationship with Jesse. It was pretty down to earth, before he went hardcore mean bastard supremo, which also made it one of the very very few times I've disliked a character in a way that means I don't want to watch them. Season 2 also saw the ensemble cast break up and the story lines focused on just a few characters or even just mainly Walter, and Jesse's life and story line was separated and marginalised from Walter's - I loved them as mismatched partners.

I guess you'll tell me just to get on and watch it, huh?

Sleepy hollow is being quite watchable and rather entertaining so far.

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:SHIELD has some potential I think, but I need to catch up on my random marvel movies a bit too.

I watched a couple of these but I'm a bit lost on the chronology as I haven't seen all the films. They keep talking about things in the past tense that I guess must have happened in those films and all the characters except Agent Coulson and Nick Fury seem to have popped up out of nowhere.

I've seen Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Captain America and Thor, but not Iron Man 3 or Avengers Assemble. I don't know if the X-Men or Spiderman films are supposed to be related either.


I've gotten to the fifth series of Breaking Bad and it's been mostly good, apart from that one episode with the fly which ranked only marginally above a flashback episode. Aside from the two main characters though, there has been a bit of inconsistency with the other characters.

I've really liked Marie, but there have been patches where the character wasn't written so well. They seem to have tried to make Skyler too complex for the amount of screen-time she has, with her often disappearing for extended periods after important scenes. Badger has been consistently the most irritating - I guess he's supposed to be comic relief, but I got more laughs from the magic flying pizza.

Season 2 was a bit of a mess - it was a nice twist, but they left too much unshown at the end which had been teased all season long, which was a bit unsatisfying. Seasons 3 and 4 have been good and it wasn't until Season 5 Ep 1 that I understood why they'd carried it on as I'd thought they could have ended it there, the Lydia character popping up out of nowhere like a Luna Lovegood was a little jarring though.

FatherJack wrote:

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:SHIELD has some potential I think, but I need to catch up on my random marvel movies a bit too.

I watched a couple of these but I'm a bit lost on the chronology as I haven't seen all the films. They keep talking about things in the past tense that I guess must have happened in those films and all the characters except Agent Coulson and Nick Fury seem to have popped up out of nowhere.

I've seen Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Captain America and Thor, but not Iron Man 3 or Avengers Assemble. I don't know if the X-Men or Spiderman films are supposed to be related either.

Chronology help: The series comes after all of the films that have currently come out. I think it goes, chronologically, Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Thor, Iron Man 2, Captain America, Avengers Assemble, Iron Man 3, Agents of SHIELD. Captain America is a bit of a wild car, being largely set in the 40s, but seeing as it starts and ends in the present day I would say that its one big flashback. Really, you could watch that one at any point before Avengers and it would make just as much sense. Currently the X-Men and Spider-man films are not sharing continuity with the other Marvel films because of licence bullshit.

The reason you don't recognise anyone other than Agent Coulson and Nick Fury is because with one exception (Maria Hill, the in charge type lady from episode one played by her out of How I Met Your Mother) they are all new characters for the TV show. There is a bunch of stuff they reference in the show that you wont get if you haven't seen Avengers or Iron Man 3, so I would recommend catching up on them if that is likely to bother you. They were both good films anyway.

As far as the show goes, I'm a bit nonplussed by it at the moment. Its just about entertaining enough for me to keep watching, but I suspect that wouldn't be the case if I wasn't a Marvel fan. The bit I find weird is that there are *no* references to the existing Marvel comics universe. I understand that they might not want to tie their story telling hands by including too much stuff when fanboys would then shout at them for getting it wrong, but I am surprised they are not even dropping vague references to stuff like AIM or SWORD or namedropping people like Hank Pym, even if only as a little foreshadowing for the future films. Its not really a criticism,just surprising.

Roman Totale wrote:In other TV news I have just started watching Homeland (so far 3 episodes into season 2). It's good, but I find Claire Danes really irritating. She seems to have been written as yet another hysterical female character that really undermines her role (Cracked did a thing on this recently I believe, but I've not read in case there are spoilers). I really hate it when programs do this, and it just make it look like it was written by a bloke who can only write female characters in tropes. Hell, Joss Wheedon isn't perfect, but compare how he writes women under pressure compared to Homeland. Still, it's a decent enough show, even if I am distracted by Damien Lewis' whistling teeth.

The writers of Homeland have really excelled themselves in Season 3 - they've managed to make every character even more unlikable and irritating.

Roman Totale wrote:The writers of Homeland have really excelled themselves in Season 3 - they've managed to make every character even more unlikable and irritating.

This

They've also managed to dumb everyone down, several times an episode I find myself asking why the hell are they doing something that's obviously stupid and out of character.

A Guardian comment on episode 3 summed it up well, asking how can an episode involving the reintroduction of a key character, gang activity and people-smuggling, make for such a boring hour of television.

The latest SHIELD episode was a bit of an improvement, but that has only taken it from "quite bad" to "not great". To steal a couple observations from the Rum Doings podcast that talked about it the other day:

1) It seems to be embarrassed to be part of the Marvel universe. It seems weird to me to make a TV series set in a world of superheroes and then do your damndest to not include any superheroes or super villains.

2) Discounting Loki, there really aren't any memorable bad guys in the marvel film universe so far. This is a problem.