Certain shows’ protagonists are not always the most honest, upstanding “heroes” that the good-guy-always-wins Hollywood has trained us to expect them to be. Some shows feature down right criminals and monsters and somehow build a story around them that causes the viewer to sympathize with, and even root for, the antihero. Not all of these…
Mad Men with doctors. That must have been the elevator pitch (lift pitch?) for Breathless, the three-part series that started on Masterpiece Mystery on August 24. For all I know the working title was “Harley Men,” scrapped later when it was determined that American audiences would be expecting motorcycles and not Harley Street physicians. Now…
Author's Note: I've updated the post to include the winners. Some predictions went well! Some, not so much. I'll be reacting in the comments, so join me there as we complain about everyone who was wronged! The 66th Primetime Emmy Awards will air this upcoming Monday, August 25, and I’m here to try and figure…
Do you love Mad Men, True Detective, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones? Well, you might just love them even more when you see Kids Reenact Emmy-Nominated TV Shows. The Emmys air this Monday, do you have a favorite show that you're rooting for—or worse, one that was snubbed? Does this video make you excited…
It’s become standard practice for us to talk about the novelistic nature of series television, but this shorthand is somewhat misleading. Certainly, now that shows like The Sopranos or The Wire can be viewed in their entirety we can appreciate the long character arcs, the deliberate progress of narratives over the course of a season,…
It is becoming conventional wisdom—if not yet a cliché—to note that we are in a golden age of television. The recent four-part PBS documentary America In Primetime pretty much pushed this idea with every episode: television has reached a new level of sophistication and artistry. Groundbreaking premium cable shows like The Sopranos and The Wire…
After allowing myself to become sucked into the agonizing five-year vortex that was Lost, I vowed I would never again commit to watching an American dramatic television series. Not for me Mad Men, C.S.I. in any of its myriad incarnations or the interminable West Wing. I wasn’t about to become invested in another relationship that…
Can you imagine Don Draper, from AMC’s Mad Men, as a cold-blooded killer? No? Well, I can’t either, but Jon Hamm’s character and that of Darwyn Cooke’s Parker could come from the same family. When their respective stories open, they are, essentially, a blank slate. Nothing is known of their past, and the only conclusions you can…
