Now drifting into its sixth and final season, NBC’s Parenthood has spent its run alternately pegged for cancellation and heralded as the saving grace of the network’s Thursday-night lineup. Rejecting both courses, it has remained just good enough to get by, just bad enough to remain tolerable. Sometimes better, sometimes worse—but always along the gradient of mediocrity. Continue Reading »
The cognoscenti tell me that Stephen Colbert, who is a self-identified faithful member of a Church that teaches that homosexual inclinations are intrinsically disordered and that sodomy is a mortal sin, is a smart guy—a really smart guy. Evidently, his shtick is to adopt the persona of a certain type of individual whom he regards as intellectually and morally inferior to himself so that he can ridicule people of that sort. This, I’m told, is the kind of humor that people who watch Stephen Colbert, who is a self-identified faithful member of a Church that teaches that homosexual inclinations are intrinsically disordered and that sodomy is a mortal sin, relish. Continue Reading »
Okay, so a little more Breaking Bad blogging. Spoilers ahead. Over at the Atlantic, Chris Heller writes that Ozymandias was the fitting conclusion for Breaking Bad because: Nobody is saved and everybody suffers. That’s the ending Breaking Bad needed. Bleak, merciless, and tragic. I think . . . . Continue Reading »
The finale was a very entertaining and sometimes moving disappointment - though a disappointment by the extremely high standards of the show. There were many things to like (spoiler alert, of course). The reptile part of my brain enjoyed watching Jesse choke the life out of Todd. It was even better . . . . Continue Reading »
I’m up to the fourth season, but I have also been watching the last half of the fifth season. Here are several thoughts, The money isn’t really about the money for hardly anybody. One of the conceits of the show is that the drug money can’t really be spent in large, visible . . . . Continue Reading »
There is this new sitcom called The Goldbergs that is set in the 1980s. The trailer doesn’t look all that funny. When I first heard that there was going to be a sitcom set in the 1980s, my first thought was that the producers would be kind of sloppy and treat the 80s as some kind of . . . . Continue Reading »
So I’m really getting into Breaking Bad from the start. It is the show about a brilliant chemist turned failed entrepreneur, turned high school teacher, turned drug lord. Walter White has a disabled (and sweet) son, his wife is pregnant with an unexpected baby. He turns fifty and finds . . . . Continue Reading »
George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novel Game of Thrones is the first novel in a seven book series titled The Song of Ice and Fire which has been turned into a hit HBO show. This post is confined to the first book and will not address the show’s sleaziness, but those interested in . . . . Continue Reading »
They say different things, is what they do. The knowing say Ryan failed us with facts and policy and no showmanship. They say Biden was all showmanship, but that’s what counts. The hoi polloi say Ryan was marvelous, controlled and respectful, as he battled two opponents, not . . . . Continue Reading »
Fans of the hit TV show LOST speculated after the first couple of seasons that it was secretly a presentation of Purgatory. The buzz over this thesis grew to such large proportions that the producers had to release a letter denying the rumors. Now two years after the show is finished, . . . . Continue Reading »
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