Monsters of Television

I would say my verbosity on the subject of breaking bad knows no bounds but WordPress took care of that for me. The rest of season 3 below:

The Hospital Stretch (3.07-3.09)

I hate it when Jesse and Walt are in a fight. It felt like after that last episode that they might be on the same page again, after Walt tried to save Jesse and they watched their history crushed into a little wood-paneled cube, but Hank ruined everything by coming down on him with the wrath of the ancients. Hank is not a dude I want beating on my face. Not that I want anyone to beat on my face — I’m just saying those meaty fists would crush me in an instant. As they do to Jesse and he’s carted away on a stretcher. Thus begin the hospital-heavy episodes as karma sweeps its Fujisawa Fist of Justice through the Land of Enchantment.
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My original plan was to watch three episodes of the series at a time and then write about what I saw, grouping them together under clever little headings according to what I felt was the story arc for that part of the season. There were inherently two problems with that: (1) the process of watching, stopping, writing, publishing was a little slow and cumbersome and (2) once I got to late season 2, I couldn’t stop. For anything. At some point I managed to get out of the house to get supplies so I didn’t starve but, beyond the trip to Trader Joe’s, Breaking Bad and I spent a good 14 hours together this weekend.

That you people had to wait so long for tonight’s premiere is mind-boggling.

For those of you that’ve watched and are at all interested in my thoughts ongoing throughout the series rewatch, I’ve put them all here in shortened form. For those of you that haven’t watched, what exactly is it that you’re waiting for? Huh? You think someone’s gonna come to your house and put the DVD in for you? Bitch?

Sorry, got a little Jesse there for a second. You should totally watch this show though. Read more »

“I am a blowfish!”

Sadly and inevitably, I’m going to compare this show to Weeds (since Breaking Bad is a clinic in how to turn a mild-mannered person into a kingpin) in every post and I’d rather not start every piece I write by bashing Nancy Botwin. It feels repetitive to me and I’m sure it’s tiresome to you. So I’m going to compare it to Houseinstead.

Obviously, the two men, Walt and House, are not the same kind of character, particularly since Walt is a man of strict discipline and House spends a good portion of his time flouting the sanctity of such a thing. House tends toward entropy, convinced nothing can be achieved without a little bit of chaos, while Walt works best when working through a plan. What the men share are inspired moments by their cast sidekicks. How many times have you seen House, after a conversation with Wilson, do what Walt does in “4 Days Out” after Jesse mentions “battery.” To House, this is a Sherlock Holmes moment, his revelation where the puzzle finally fits together. Breaking Bad is (clearly) less procedural but his supernatural understanding of nature (comparable to House’s) allows him to have what I’ll call a Mr Wizard moment where he cobbles a plan together based on science.

I’m at once pleased to see these moments, disappointed they don’t come up more often, and glad that they are so rare. Walt’s revelation caps a nice arc where Team Heisenberg starts to feel the cost of doing business, not only with the business itself but also in how it affects them personally. And it all starts off with a great cold opening featuring the ballad of our friend Heisenberg and flashed images of Breaking Bad future. Read more »

“Nobody even noticed.”

This show is forever being compared to Weeds by people who don’t know any better and, as I approach the middle of season 2, I’m starting to see that the show is slowly drifting toward trying to be the antipode of the goofy, almost slapstick nature of the Showtime series in every way. Like Walt keeping an actual job in conjunction with his drug trade (no matter how impossible it seems that he can maintain both) vs Nancy’s flighty and short-lived attempts at legitimacy. Or Walt having to contend with struggles inflicted upon him while Nancy usually deals with problems she gets herself into. Or Walt having no need for a comedy troupe to back him up, instead partnering with a character that could easily be a cheap stereotype but is nothing of the sort.

As Breaking Bad develops, it’s almost like the show is purposefully wrecking the comparison. As we sink deeper with Walt and Jesse, another comparison comes to mind: Spring in Requiem for a Dream. Just as Tyrone and Harry come up with the idea to distribute their own product, so do our hapless heroes here. And just with that movie, as things start to go well, we can only assume disaster and doom are sure to follow. I’m not saying that Badger is going to end up in a hotel room with an old man demanding “ass to ass.” But I’m also not saying that’s out of the question.

During lunch last week, Noel and I discussed how the build up to the mid-season was where the show finally recovered from the writers’ strike and started to really build where it wanted to go. Fittingly, this is where Jesse uses the phrase “the ground floor,” and it means so many things for this show at this point of the series. It’s a new beginning for them, a new direction. And, really, it’s all downhill from here. In a good way. Well, good for us. Bad for Spooge.
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“Ding!”

Noel did a write-up of Breaking Bad Season 1 back in April but, unlike him, I’ve always been intrigued by the show but never got around to actually watching (whereas he caved to peer pressure). Part of it was because I have a tangle of other shows that dominate my weeks and part of it was that I have absolutely no excuses whatsoever. I’m inherently lazy and the thought of sitting through another show was just too much. Not to mention I had a feeling a show about a dude with cancer paying the bills by selling meth would have the same marathon effect on me that Six Feet Under would have: clinical depression and a number of medications just to stay stable.

But, happily, Breaking Bad is different than I expected and doesn’t make me feel like a raincloud-haunted iota. There’s action! Drama that’s not cancer-related! Comedy that works and doesn’t just elucidate the hopelessness of the characters’ situations, further driving you into an existential tailspin! No, Breaking Bad is a different kind of show. As most of you probably know because you’ve watched it already.

If you haven’t watched it, let me tell you now that this intends to be spoilerific (terrific in spoilers). I ask that, at the very least, you catch up on the episodes in the title (since I’m writing these posts before any knowledge of the show’s future) since, as witty and charming as I am via prose, the series itself is far better than my analysis of it.

Especially since I’m going to, inevitably, compare it to Chuck and Weeds. You write what you know.

Read on, you cool babies!

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“One sentence in and I already hate this conversation.”

So Myles and I were talking last week, you know, kicking around the old peanut, and we discussed the new seasonal problem established by “On Guard.” No, that seasonal problem isn’t Hilarie Burton being raised to season regular while Sharif Atkins still guest stars. That’s just something the troubles me. No, we’re talking about the new stakes that don’t involve Kate or the music box. This thing with the Nazi treasure and Peter cottoning to being on Neal’s tail. While I think we know that this will take a while to play out, he seems a little more pessimistic than I am, referring to the arc as being “dangled” in front of us while I felt it was going to be more integral to the plot.

I can’t say for sure that’s what Myles meant because (1) I only know him through Twitter and (2) when I say we were “kicking around the old peanut,” I meant that we exchanged about three tweets. An odd number because he didn’t answer me on the last one. Academic critics: always so high and mighty in their ivory towers.

Jury’s still out on how they’re going to use this arc against us especially since we’re so early in the season but I’m winning so far. Unlike the music box and the whole Kate fiasco, Mozzie and Neal conspiring to abscond with the Nazi treasure is figuring into a pretty heavy B-story. Neal seems to actually care what happens to this artwork (unlike the Neal-bot reacting to Kate’s death and the music box mysteries for most of Season 2) and Mozzie has a new focus. Sure, this kind of just rehashing what they did with these two in Season 2.5 but it’s better because this could actually threaten the relationship between Neal and Peter. But you know all that from last week.

This week is step 2 in raising those stakes: reestablish the Peter/Neal bond to make sure we still have something to lose. How’s the best way to do that? A treasure hunt, of course!

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“Think of it like a Kardashian: what it lacks in refinement it makes up for in cargo space.”

It has to be a difficult task to keep blue skies in a world of ethical gray.

When it has to make the choice, White Collar tends to shift more toward “blue skies” than toward the darkness that should lie in Neal’s gray heart. The heroes and villains are clear cut, the “criminals” are more than willing to help the Feds (sometimes only needing a minor amount of arm-twisting), and Neal seems to be all but reformed. Outside of a few sideglances and the occasional twinkle in his eye when he’s impressed by a heist, Neal is the model of turning away from the dark side.

And it doesn’t feel unnatural for him to do so. He and Peter have been getting along (Bomer and DeKay’s chemistry is pretty solid) and Neal clearly loves being able to use his criminal mind without having to make an escape plan. But the show blunts its edge by making it less about “once a con-man, always a con-man” serving a the man who caught him (and enjoys the spoils) in what is essentially a glorified indentured servitude and making it more of a buddy cop show where one has the police brain while the other has the street smarts. Besides hints from Neal’s thieving buddies like Alex or Mozzie, it was starting to feel like Neal had turned his back on his past, particularly with the painful music box plot out of the way.

That’s why I’m glad season 3 looks to bring more of that edge back to the show without all that “Kate” pretense. And we don’t have to hear more about the music box. And that there is (or at least should be) more opportunities for Alex to come back, especially with Hilarie Burton being raised to season regular on the show. What a nothing character she plays.

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“You objectify me then you deny me?”

With a show about New Orleans, you might expect the number of scenes featuring topless women to be much higher, especially when it follows a show like Game of Thrones (which I think is only rivaled by Dream On in the gratuitous nudity department).

That’s not to say that I feel like there’s a certain quota that needs to be met or anything (though I’m pretty sure HBO execs have it on their checklists) or that the show needs nudity to stay interesting. It really doesn’t. I keep watching every week, boobs or no, and stay pretty entertained. It’s just that, as a person that’s never been to New Orleans, the town has a certain reputation. That reputation is invested in plastic beads and some drunk women making some decisions they may not normally make. Other stuff, too, like parades and tradition. But this is what late night tells me is most important.

The reason why I bring this up is because we’ve gotten to another season’s episode dedicated to Mardi Gras and, of course, nudity is far more common when Carnival shows up. But even though there are more scenes with nudity (three), two of them are just flashes or obfuscated by chaos and only one involves actual sex. Whereas other shows use nudity as a weapon against the audience’s distraction and to bring in a certain demographic every week, it’s almost like Treme doesn’t want to call attention to it. Even the episode itself, what you would imagine would be the most important episode dedicated to the most important day in New Orleans, isn’t as climactic as you’d think.

Sure, stuff happens and it’s important but, in a show that’s not really into cliffhanger storytelling, what should be a pinnacle episode is really just another building block. This is a story of the New Orleans that is more than Fat Tuesday and that we don’t end either of these seasons during Carnival contributes to that theme. In fact, that many of the major characters of the show are either disinterested in or not in attendance of the festivities is probably an important point.

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“I’m making changes.”

Let me tell you why this was a good episode of House and it’s probably not for the reasons you think.

It’s not because of the structure of the narrative. In season finales past we’ve seen so many different ways for them to break the formula, some great (season 4) and some not so great (season 6). By comparison to those episodes, this one is pretty straight-forward. Yeah, we have interviews with Cuddy and Wilson that set up the last five minutes but nothing like Amber in the bus accident. Really, if it weren’t for the extremity of those five minutes, it would probably line up with anything else this season.

That very well might have been the intention, to keep it in line with most of the rest of the season. For most of the hour, it doesn’t even feel like a season finale of any show, let alone one in the rich tradition of this particular series. It’s kind of a rope-a-dope. But again, not for the reason many people think.

It’s not what actually happens at the end that makes this episode very good. It’s what it means. And it means a lot of things: breaking through, connection, finally getting on the other side of things after walling everyone out. But, most importantly to me, it means that all that Psych 101 Wilson, the Ducklings, and Cuddy communicate through is just as much crap as I think it is. With a single action, House looks around at everyone that claims to be the foremost experts in all things Gregory and says, “Don’t pretend like you know me.” And that is why this episode is special.

But let’s stop beating around the bush.

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“Vittore la Barba, huh? Ciao, bella. Spaghetti-ah pizza. Mammamia. It’s a-me: Mario. I send-ah the arms to-ah the bad guys.”

I hate you, Chuck, with the fire of a thousand suns. And let me tell you why.

I’ve put up with a lot from you. I fell in love with the show, even sunk so low as to be a ‘shipper for Chuck and Sarah, during the first couple of seasons. Granted, I wasn’t demanding your collective heads with every obstacle you put in front of them but I swelled with happiness, pure joy, as I watched these two crazy kids non-consummate their relationship in front of bombs, doped up on truth serum, on dates, and even rolling around together in a hotel room. I suffered the slow start to Season 3 and the subsequent cornball start to Season 4, only because the exits from your seasons have made up for so many episodes that would raise my ire.

Even though I consistently dish out hearty bowls of WTF on this blog for your show every week, you had to notice that some of those bowls were filled with love and devotion. I only pick on you because I care. I only want the best for you.

Don’t blow this for me.

You’re rolling up on the end of the season, possibly the series, which means you need to go out with a bang anyhow. Season 4 has been terribly inconsistent with astronomic highs that compete with the best of your early work and some pitiful lows that almost turned me off the series entirely. Though I suppose if I could stay through “vs The Honeymooners,” really, I can battle through anything. These last few episodes have looked promising if not up to the calibre I expect, nay, demand. But this crap — I can’t cotton to this. It’s not all bad but I’ll tell you this: the bad stuff was so infuriating that I had to go out and take a walk. And it’s raining outside. And I had to get some ice cream. So, while I sit here and eat my feelings, let me tell you what upset me so.

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