Monsters of Television

“Nothing’s going to get that taste out of my mouth.”

Aw, yeah. It’s the summer and, here it is: a podcast slightly transformed. Just a bit of break from the norm — in that Matt couldn’t make it so we’re a beast short. Karen, Nick, and Noel make do, though, by giving some serious discussion to the all set-up Game of Thrones season finale and the much ballyhooed ender to The Killing while tossing around some Lost references in Matt’s honor. Then we look at some summer programming and shrug our shoulders at it because it’s summer and we’re not supposed to take summer programming seriously. Right? That’s why television’s the way it is right now. Right? Riiiiight. So just sit back and unwind.

Here’s the blog post we mention a couple of times from @ErikaJL simply titled “Sansa.”

Running time: 77 minutes

• Game of Thrones season finale: 0:01:24
• The Killing season finale: 0:30:50
• Wilfred: 0:42:10
• Louie: 0:48:03
• Suits: 0:54:30
• Walking Skies Falling Skies: 1:00:01
• Love Bites: 1:05:29
• The Voice: 1:11:40

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Obviously, plenty of spoilers for both shows follow.

Post-apocalyptic survival has always been a great source of entertainment and storytelling and no two shows have garnered more buzz in the last year than AMC’s The Walking Dead and TNT’s Falling Skies. While the two programs give us very different looks at a very similar overall idea (scrounging for survival), the differences between the shows indicate one is clearly superior to the other.

AAAAAND FIGHT!

For starters, the shows treat action in very different ways. The Walking Dead is actually pretty boring when it comes to this point. For its six episode first season there is not a lot going on in terms of excitement. Is there peril? Sure, but there is not nearly enough ass-kicking, head-exploding action one would expect from the genre. Some will make the argument that AMC has made a “classy” zombie show. They weren’t looking to be all gore and scares, you know, things inherent of the genre. Yeah they kill a zombie every now and then and yeah there was that terrible (CG wise, not plot wise. Well…plot wise too) explosion in the finale, but I needed more! With Falling Skies, we get action left and right. Between the aliens (who we actually get to see. Take that, V!) and the mechs and the ships and the outlaw group there is plenty of stuff to shoot at, hide from and blow up.  The show is incredibly action-packed. When you’re fighting for survival it’s nice to see some actual fighting. And they did it in one-third the amount of episodes. Read more »