Shall we anticipate the FIFTH SEASON of the AMC series "Breaking Bad"? I think I may.

Shield is DEF top tier

shield is corny as hell come on

Friday Night Lights for sure
OZ? Never watched it

loved Freaks and geeks - but 1 season, 30 minutes, comedy... seems like it doesn't fit

eastbound and down tho

lagoon gets it

F&G was an hour and serious enough IMO

no lagoon

yes lagoon, i mean its a fun show and all but it doesnt have the artistry to make it onto rushmore

Don't forget Mad Men. The first tier is The Wire, Mad Men, Deadwood and Sopranos. In that order. Second tier probably begins with Breaking Bad and The Shield.

xp idk actually its been a while, need to rewatch but agree re deadwood

30 Rock
Community
Parks & Rec

just Wire and Sopranos really imo

whose ops are challest

mad men was cool, and in places was the most subtle of all the shows, but it stagnated went off the rails lost its best qualities and was relegated

Sitcoms were great too but I feel like it's a different discussion

xxp none of the ops are chall so far

mad men is just behind sopranos for me in the pantheon. I think it's made me think more about tv as a *medium* than the others. it formally defies everything I would think is expected in a tv show.

bb finished strongest of all the l33t, both the wire and sopranos stumbled toward the end, deadwood got cancelled and didnt even have a real end and was kinda ruined

Chall we anticOPate the 5th Season of Breaking Bad?

I would throw in Six Feet Under in that discussion but that might be a minority opinion

people loved 6 ft under at the time now no one talks about it, might suffer from being somewhat episodic

lagoon maybe there is no 1st tier

*_*

will be interesting to see how much the ending of Mad Men will affect how it's seen in the long run - it's at an ebb point now for me - but could see it going out strong.

was also thinking about Six Feet Under - it actually wrapped up a lot more tidily than a lot of other multi-season shows, if I remember correctly

Have we all forgotten the West Wing so soon? xp

what happened in the finale of the wire i dont even remember

mock funeral wake for mcnutty was the big scene i remember

anyone still rate Homicide?

what happened in the finale of the wire i dont even remember

― lag∞n,

Omar blows up Baltimore Sun.

Mad Men seems to have less invested in a definitive ending than most of these - lacks the kind of central conflict of a crime show (ie, who will be punished/who will survive) and has been way more open-ended and just altogether different in tone from all of these others

funny how far Lost and Dexter's stock fell, remember when everyone was batshit for those shows?

“Interesting fact,” Cranston pointed out, the series “started on [Walt’s] 50th birthday,” with Walt’s cancer diagnosis, “and ended on his 52nd birthday. So he died on his birthday. What a way to go.”

Oh, so all that stuff happened in one day? He's at the diner and then later that day he's dead? Huh

1st day: goes to gretchen and whats his names place 2nd day: dennys and everything else

yeah that was made clear from Marie's phonecall

the seasonal difference between NH and NM seems like a fuckup though, or has this been handwaved away...?

xpost Same with BSG and Buffy

mad men was cool, and in places was the most subtle of all the shows, but it stagnated went off the rails lost its best qualities and was relegated

― lag∞n, 30. september 2013 20:09 (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I disagree. Man Men has been the first show since The Wire to become better through acumulation. While almost every show with a natural ending would have been better if shorter - Breaking Bad included - these two shows work by knitting together these vast webs of characters and themes, and playing new stuff directly against the older stuff.

gretchen didnt even remember his upcoming b-day, ice cold

also - in defence of The Wire's ending relative to a big pay-off like BB - the whole show was about how the system perpetuates itself, so it would have betrayed itself if it had a big dramatic ending - and also it got cancelled, right? still, it did run out of steam in the last season

it wasnt cancelled

Frederik OTM re Mad Men

funniest part of Elliot and Gretchen *shocked* at laser pointers is "omg I can feel something on my torso I will look down at it"

ive been hearing about these bar screenings of BrBa and i cant think of an environment i'd like to watch the show in less than that... glad u liked it tho

I've been watching this last half-season on a tiny laptop in hostel bunks, but went to a bar for the final ep and it was great. watching things with an audience is usually a positive, and no-one was hooting for dumb moments of ~triumph~, just quiet or gasping and enthralled. there was a burst of oohs and lols into the commercial when Lydia tipped the ristevia into her tea though.

x-posts

Gretchen probably felt bad that they didn't have anything to give Walt as a birthday present. This is why it's good to keep a stock of birthday cards in a drawer (or even little gifts - come on, Gretchen, you can afford it) in case of an emergency.

funniest part of Elliot and Gretchen *shocked* at laser pointers is "omg I can feel something on my torso I will look down at it"

― I'm not a rockist, I just hate Rap-A-Lot (sic), Monday, September 30, 2013 2:32 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fwiw they could see the lights w their eyes through the windows

oh and/but we were still there during the beginning of the embarrasing Talking Bad afterwards, and when Hardwick stammered an incoherent, fulsome, run-on non-sentence about how Gilligan is a genius bcz every single loose end was wrapped up in this one episode, I called out "Huell!" and people cheered & applauded </disgusting savage>

the ricined cup of tea must've tasted like crap, poor lydia didn't even get a nice cuppa to go out on.

idk man it's a long distance and the li'l end of the pointers is p tiny, but admittedly I don't get a lot of real or fake assassins pointing red lights at me either

Pretty irresponsible to give that money to Flynn when he'll likely use it to overdose on breakfast

"Give me all the bacon."

I'd include Larry Sanders and the UK Office in the GOAT dram showlist, inasmuch as they were dramedy-ish and GOAT.

I wouldn't have included L O S T in that list even when it was super fun and I was addicted to watching it. It was always pretty trashy. And then eventually just trash.

The Wire, Sopranos, Mad Men, Friday Night Lights and Breaking Bad seem pretty solidly all first-tier - at least limited to the current era of TV... Everything else feels like it doesn't quite feel like it fits - even brilliant stuff like Larry Sanders (a half hour) or Freaks and Geeks (one season).

Sanders is so much better than FNL though