Tag Archives: television

Breaking Bad

Husband and I really like Vince Gilligan’s new show, Breaking Bad. It’s really hard to explain why it’s so entertaining. I don’t even know how you’d sell it to someone.

It stars Bryan Cranston (the dad from Malcolm in the Middle) as Walt, a middle-aged Chemistry teacher in Albuquerque. He’s got terminal cancer, a teenage son with a disability, and his wife is pregnant. He’s terrified he’s going to leave his family destitute, so he teams up with Jesse, a meth-dealing former student to make some quick cash. They get an RV and cook meth in the desert while trying not to raise the suspicion of Walt’s DEA-agent brother-in-law, blow themselves up, or get killed by the local competition. And it’s a comedy.

Yeah, that’s pretty hard to sell without sounding deranged. It was smart of them to open the pilot episode with Walt driving the RV like he’s being chased by the hounds of hell while wearing only a rubber lab apron and a gas mask. How could you not want to stay to find out what’s going on?

Well, apparently we’re the only ones we know who wanted to stay to find out what’s going on, but we thought it was intriguing…

In one episode Walt and Jesse try to dispose of a corpse by putting it in an acid bath and end up with intestines all over the house. It’s vile. Yet, it’s really funny.

We can’t pay our friends to watch it with us.

Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby

Our cable was out last night and Overlord, our Tivo, failed to record Ogre.

Fortunately, the tense situation was resolved sometime just before midnight and a Torchwood crisis was narrowly averted. Later, Overlord recorded Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby.

Once again, I am in the weird-feeling position of stating, “I like another Will Ferrell movie.” (Actually, I loveStranger Than Fiction).

We remembered hearing people carry on about how bad this movie was. We must not have been listening to the right people, because we thinks it’s funny as hell. It’s worth it just for the scene where the family has the prolonged dinnertable argument about whether they should be saying grace to “Baby Jesus” or “Grown-up Jesus” (or possibly even “Grownup Jesus with a Beard.” Priceless. Or Sacha Baron Cohen’s appearance as the French Formula One driver. Fantastic.

Galactica 1980

In February 2006 the SciFi channel aired a Galactica 1980 marathon. In a series of escalating dares, Husband goaded me into watching it. Perhaps it was the gray February weather, or maybe it was the drugs. Whatever the reason, I accepted.

Later, we needed to make room on the Tivo and I only saved one episode from this precious cache. I thought I could pick them up cheap somewhere for later, more leisurely viewing. This was a mistake, as I soon learned. For some reason (basic human decency?) the show wasn’t commercially available.

Until now.

Quite by chance, I just discovered that Netflix has every heart-wrenchingly bad episode available on demand. At long last, I can complete my journey through the darkness.

Here are the original posts from that first little (mis)adventure, to help newer readers understand why they shouldn’t try this at home. Not without first undertaking a rigorous training regimen. And possibly lobotomizing themselves with a number 2 pencil.

Remember people, I watch so you don’t have to. I am a trained media professional and this is the big time. You should not, I repeat, not, try this at home.

And if you do, I’m not responsible for the psychological carnage. Nor will I come to your home and scrape the fetid remnants of your anguished soul off of your rug.

galactica 1980 marathon, part I (caution: new series spoilers)

Cousin Oliver gets kicked to the curb; or, Galactica 1980 marathon, part 2

Mormons, or, Galactica 1980 marathon, part 3

Galactica 1980 marathon, part 4, wherein I talk about Knight Rider instead because I still haven’t been able to bring myself to finish watching episode 5

Galactica 1980 post part 5; I only wish the 6th episode starred Janeane Garofalo and David Hyde Pierce

And, if you got through all that, a bonus post, at no extra charge:
The Big Score, and a minor Battlestar Galactica (new series) spoiler

Now that I’ve reread them, I have to say that those were actually entertaining, if only because they brought back lovely memories of giant spaceships full of Lucy Lawless clones, getting in trouble for calling girl scouts “sugar whores”, the 1970s sci-fi show time travel Nazi-encounter plotline fad, and, a personal favorite of mine, our fearless leader freaking out over human-animal hybrids (Manimal?) in his State of the Union. Good times, indeed.

Robot Dogs, the return

Last night we watched the pilot ep of the new Bionic Woman. A review I read (Tom Shales?) reminded me of what was missing – and by “missing” I mean “not there,” I certainly don’t mean “lacking.”

In the original series, Jaime Sommers had a bionic dog named Max.

I searched my archives because I was pretty sure I posted about bionic dogs a couple of years ago. I found the post, “In the future we will all have…robot dogs,” but notice I forgot (repressed?) Max.

70’s television writers always seemed to pull the robotic dog out of the Big Bag of Hackneyed Plot Devices when their show started to go to ground, didn’t they? I’d try to answer the question of which came first, a show’s implosion or the addition of a robotic dog, but it seems a rather “chicken or the egg” proposition. Plus, much like the last time, I’ve gotten distracted thinking about zombie dogs and already lost interest in the subject.