I discovered Justified
Cool! How you liking it? My favorite 'new' show I discovered last year.
Boardwalk EmpireBeen watching the 3 seasons for the last couple of weeks. Must admit I wasn't entirely unbiased after the fanboy ragings of certain individuals on this thread but I gave the show a fair shot. That said, I really can't understand the rave reviews this show is getting. Now it is a solid show, but it's basically Mad Men meets Sopranos and struggles to be anything more than that.
The faults of the show are mainly due to writing, plotting and pretentiousness. It seems like the writers of the show can't decide if they want to make a documentary or a TV show, but that's forgivable because they really try to make the period work. Apart from that there are so many frustrating elements that it's hard to really feel for it. Pointless plotthreads that go nowhere (Agent Van Alden, I'm looking at you), characters that behave a certain way because the story demands it (Mss Schroder for example) and there's a lot of repetition, even for a TV show. I mean, how many assassinations can you fuck up? How many scenes of guys looking important while smoking and looking out of a window do you need to see? Annoying characters get way too much screentime and cool characters are under constant threat of being written off without any proper reason. During the course of the 3 seasons I've had at least 1 or 2 moments
per season where I felt like skipping the whole series. When at the end of season 2 one of the key characters get offed in what was probably meant as a big unexpected finale, I found myself not caring at all.
But after 2,5 seasons things start to pick up and the season 3 finale was a proper one. I will definitely stick with it. Despite my ranting it does have a lot going for it. Acting and art direction are both spot on. Buscemi is and will always be the man, and he is indeed the highlight of the show, even though half the show isn't about him at all. Interesting characters like Chalky White, Eli Thompson and WWI veteran Richard Harrow are what makes this show great, and I hope the writers realise that in this sense less is more. The annoying characters seem to have largely been terminated (in one - literal - way or the other) and the tempo/coherence has picked up as well.
30 RockDidn't know this 7th season was also the last one so it came as quite a surprise when I was watching the 150th episode and realised that after this there would be no more 30 Rock, one of my most beloved TV shows ever.
But what a send-off, In my book one of the greatest/well-fitting endings for a comedy show. The writers held a filrm grip on their baby over the course of 7 years and seemed to know what they were doing right untill the end. Kudos for that since a lot of longer running shows seem to get stuck in some uninspired (but not necessarily boring) routine.