Showing posts with label television addiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label television addiction. Show all posts

Monday, July 07, 2025

The Newsroom: TV Series Review



This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost.  For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE:

This is also part of my Television Addiction series.  For my explanation of what the Television Addiction series is and why I'm doing it, see: https://youtu.be/T5CEQ9-35xA and http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2021/04/television-addiction-article-on.html


The Newsroom

          I mentioned a while back that I had been watching this show.
            I first started watching this show because it was recommended by the magazine Asia Life, one of the expat magazines out here in Cambodia.

            I was only a few episodes in before I started wondering what in the world the editors of Asia Life were thinking.  The show was so cheesy, and so contrived, and just…well, ridiculous really.
            (The AVclub has an episode by episode rundown of the show that do a very good job of highlighting all the ridiculous points about this show).

            And yet, despite all the problems with the show—despite the cheesy soap opera relationships, the contrived plot points, and the arrogant 20/20 hindsight smugly applied to every news event, I still found myself watching episode after episode.
            Aaron Sorkin may mess up a lot of things, but he still understands the mechanics of screenwriting very well.  Each episode may be terrible objectively if you focus on the plot, but Aaron Sorkin still knows how to keep the dialogue snappy and he knows how to keep the forward momentum of the story going.  So the show may be terrible, but it never really gets boring.  And, I have to confess that even while I was rolling my eyes at how cheesy the plot was, I still kept watching it.
            Also, if you’re a political junky, then all the political diatribes mixed-in with the soap opera drama is another guilty pleasure.  On several of the polemical speeches throughout the series, I think Sorkin did a very good job of sticking it to the Republican Party.
            Of course when Sorkin bashes causes I’m sympathetic to, like Occupy Wall Street, then I enjoy it a lot less, but I guess that’s just my liberal bias double-standard showing through. (I think actually there’s actually good case to be made for the strength of a grass roots bottom up leaderless movement.  But the straw-men Occupy Wall Street characters that Sorkin created were never able to give a good defense for this.)



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Tuesday, July 01, 2025

House of Cards Season 1: TV Series Review


Links to stuff mentioned:

This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost.  For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE:

This is also part of my Television Addiction series.  For my explanation of what the Television Addiction series is and why I'm doing it, see: https://youtu.be/T5CEQ9-35xA and http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2021/04/television-addiction-article-on.html


House of Cards

          I had high hopes for this series.  I love political dramas, and I’m a big fan of Kevin Spacey.
            Alas, I regret to say that the series was awful.  So awful, in fact, that I didn’t even bother finishing the last few episodes.  (What was the point?  None of the characters seemed at all like real people, and I the plot was obviously manufactured and contrived.)
            The AVclub has an excellent rundown of all this show episode by episode, and I basically find myself in agreement with their analysis of all the show’s faults.


Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

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Sunday, June 15, 2025

Carnivàle: TV Series Review


Links to stuff mentioned:
* Carnivàle vs. The "Kill 'em Young" Manifesto by Whisky Prajer: https://whiskyprajer.blogspot.com/2012/02/carnivale-vs-kill-em-young-manifesto.html

This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost.  For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE:

This is also part of my Television Addiction series.  For my explanation of what the Television Addiction series is and why I'm doing it, see: https://youtu.be/T5CEQ9-35xA and http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2021/04/television-addiction-article-on.html

Carnivale

          I watched this because Whisky Prajer strongly recommended it to me after my last post confessing all the TV shows I’ve wasted my life on.
            I’ve got mixed feelings about this show.
            On the one hand, the general idea is really cool.
            In my review of The Butterfly in Amber, I said that it was a cool idea to mix historical fiction with fantasy, because I think most of us already have this unconscious feeling anyway—the feeling that there must have been something mysterious and magical going on in the times before we were born. 
            And, at least in terms of just creating an atmosphere, Carnivale does a great job of mixing in a magical fantasy element with the real events of the 1930s.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the opening credits:


           Furthermore, I think it was an interesting idea to try and re-imagine the life of Father Coughlin (W) and the pro-fascist forces as part of a wider spiritual battle between good and evil.

            But the pacing of this show just killed me.
            I can handle a mystery getting teased out for an episode or two before it’s resolution, but when a mystery is just endlessly teased out and never resolved, then I start to get impatient.  And when the writers seem intent on adding just more mysteries and questions while appearing to forget about the ones they’ve already introduced, then I just get frustrated.
            This may just be a personality preference.  I like nice neat logical stories where everything ties up neatly at the end.  Furthermore, if I’m forced to choose between the two, I generally prefer story to atmosphere.  People who have different personalities than mine will probably enjoy Carnivale more than I did.
            For Whisky’s take on Carnivale—SEE HERE.
            Another interesting link is this article: Carnivale Broke My Heart.  (Link via Whisky.)


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Saturday, June 07, 2025

The Awful Truth with Michael Moore: TV Series Review



This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost.  For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE:

This is also part of my Television Addiction series.  For my explanation of what the Television Addiction series is and why I'm doing it, see: https://youtu.be/T5CEQ9-35xA and http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2021/04/television-addiction-article-on.html


Michael Moore’s The Awful Truth

          This wasn’t my first encounter with The Awful Truth.  I’ve seen it before back in the day.  But when I saw the DVDs in the store, I decided to buy them and work through the series again anyway.
            Parts of The Awful Truth I remembered very well.  Parts of it I didn’t remember at all.  (I’m not sure if that’s because I never saw the whole thing, or if it’s just because my memory is so lousy).  But anyway, I’ve now worked my way through the entire series.
            Like most liberals, I have a lot of ambivalence towards Michael Moore (something - I’ve- expressed in this blog before).  I sympathize with his politics, but I believe that anything that misinforms or misleads does a disservice to the political discourse.
            (The extent to which Michael Moore’s movies are misleading is always a source of controversy.  Part of the problem is that most of the right-wing hatchet men who attack Moore’s movies are seldom any more honest than Moore is, and this leads to a lot of claims and counterclaims that just make my head spin.)
            However, the great thing about The Awful Truth is that it isn’t a documentary—it’s just pure political theater, so you don’t need to worry about fact checking it, you just enjoy the theater.  Michael Moore does some great political stunts like getting throat cancer victims to sing Christmas carols at Philip Morris, for instance.   Or driving around a Sodom mobile to every state where sodomy is still illegal.
            In the course of the show, Michael Moore of course manages to really piss off a lot of rich and powerful people—making me a little bit suspicious about the fact that the show was mysteriously cancelled after two seasons despite getting good ratings.
            And yet, much of the format of The Awful Truth—sending correspondents out to conduct satirical interviews with people who don’t realize they’re being satirized until it’s too late—is what The Daily Show  is still doing. 
            And in fact, considering The Daily Show manages to produce 4 episodes a week (compared to The Awful Truth’s 12 episodes a season) The Daily Show is arguably doing Michael Moore’s job a lot more efficiently than Michael Moore ever did.




Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

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Sunday, May 18, 2025

The White Queen (TV Series): Review


* The AVclub review of this series: https://www.avclub.com/the-white-queen-1798177622

This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost.  For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE:

This is also part of my Television Addiction series.  For my explanation of what the Television Addiction series is and why I'm doing it, see: https://youtu.be/T5CEQ9-35xA and http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2021/04/television-addiction-article-on.html


The White Queen

          Back in January, I did a post listing all the historical events I would like to see get serialized into a television series.  I said now that Game of Thrones had proven that television audiences have the patience to keep track of the history of several fictional aristocratic families fighting for the throne, then why not just do the real thing and produce a television series based on the War of the Roses.  
            …And then low behold, I’m walking around the DVD shop, and I see that they actually have gone ahead and made a TV series based on the War of the Roses.  (All I had to do was ask for it apparently.)
            This series only covers the tail end of the War of the Roses, so I guess I’m still waiting for the epic series that would trace the entirety of the conflict from the beginning to the end.  But it was still good history for what I got.
            Now, I know this series got pretty terrible reviews [See Wikipedia.  Also the avclub article].  And yes, a lot of the acting could have been better.  And yes, the pacing also should have been better.  (Some events that really should have received more dramatic importance—like the death of King Henry VI—just got muddled through very quickly).
            But, for all its flaws, I still found this series fascinating to watch. 
            If you don’t like history, you should probably stay away from this series.  But if you’re a history geek like I am, then you’ll be willing to forgive a lot of bad acting for a good historical story, and inspite of everything I found the underlying story fascinating.
            It’s a complicated part of British history, and they did a very good job of trying to provide some sort of narrative to it.  It is also interesting to compare their portrayal of Richard III with Shakespeare’s play.  Roughly the same events happen, but they put a very different interpretation on the motivations of the characters.




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Monday, May 12, 2025

Roots: The Next Generations (TV Mini Series): Review


Links to stuff mentioned:
* At the moment, you can watch Roots: The Next Generation on Youtube.  Who knows how long it will stay up, but for the moment at least here's a link to the first episode: https://youtu.be/uWVXScIrKpg?si=lTMSySBKpzC6qVTi

This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost.  For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE:

This is also part of my Television Addiction series.  For my explanation of what the Television Addiction series is and why I'm doing it, see: https://youtu.be/T5CEQ9-35xA and http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2021/04/television-addiction-article-on.html


Roots: The Next Generations

          I was first introduced to Roots when my 5th grade school teacher showed us the first couple episodes.
            It wasn’t until years later, when I was in Japan, that I finally got my hands on the whole series.  (The Japanese video rental store near my town had the series in stock—in English with Japanese subtitles.)
            But I’ve never had an opportunity to watch Roots: The Next Generations until now when I stumbled upon it at a DVD store in Cambodia.
            Before I watched this series, I had always assumed that Roots: The Next Generations was just an attempt to milk more money off of the original Roots.  But I was mistaken.  This is the ending of the story, and without this sequel the series would not have been complete.
             Roots: The Next Generations came out in 1979 just 2 years after the original Roots, and it picks up right where the original Roots left off.  And it completes the goal of the TV series which, like the book, is to follow Alex Haley’s family tree all the way from Africa to the present day. 
            I suspect what happened is that the book got split into two different TV shows for economic reasons—the TV company wasn’t willing to commit to the whole story until it knew it had an audience, and only after the success of the original Roots did they agree to complete the story.
            But now that the whole series has been produced, they should really just stop selling it separately as Roots and Roots: The Next Generations and instead put box up both DVDs together into one package and sell the whole thing as Roots, because it really is just one continuous story.
            The TV show is from 1979, and has a lot of the hallmarks of television drama from the late 1970s/early 1980s that strike us as cheesy today—over-acting, overly dramatic music that swells up at the end of each episode just as a character looks off into the distance and says some sort of dramatic line, a complete lack of any subtlety, et cetera.
            And yet, inspite of all its flaws, it’s still incredibly addictive to watch. The cheesy 70s television drama still has a strong narrative appeal, and I found myself getting sucked in episode after episode and unable to pull myself away from my couch.    (I guess it was not for nothing that Roots was one of the the most watched mini-series in American television history.)
            All the famous actors who participated in the series also make it fun to watch: Peter Fonda, Marlon Brando, James Earl Jones, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis.




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Thursday, May 01, 2025

I, Claudius (TV Miniseries): Review



This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost.  For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE:

This is also part of my Television Addiction series.  For my explanation of what the Television Addiction series is and why I'm doing it, see: https://youtu.be/T5CEQ9-35xA and http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2021/04/television-addiction-article-on.html

I, Claudius

            I didn’t expect to see this 1976 BBC miniseries in the Cambodian DVD shops, but I was very happy to stumble upon it.
            Actually, I’ve been wanting to get my hands this series for about 20 years now, ever since I read the book I, Claudius by Robert Graves back when I was 14. 
            (Robert Graves actually wrote two books about the life of Claudius: I, Claudius, and the sequel Claudius the God.  I never went on to read Claudius the God because our school library didn’t have it, but I,Claudius made a big impression on me.  The BBC miniseries covers both books.)
            Considering how old this series is, it holds up remarkably well, and in my opinion is every bit as interesting to watch as more recent historical dramas. 
            It also shows how great historical fiction about ancient Rome can be produced on a small budget.
            And a final bonus: I, Claudius has some great famous actors in it: Brian Blessed, John Rhys-Davies, and for Star Trek fans, a young (well…younger) Patrick Stewart playing Sejanus. 



Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

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Tuesday, April 15, 2025

The Untold History of the United States TV series by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick: Review


The Martin Luther King speech on Vietnam that I mentioned: https://youtu.be/HISxIFwjO70?si=5e1jWkolBHL_wowO

This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost.  For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE:

This is also part of my Television Addiction series.  For my explanation of what the Television Addiction series is and why I'm doing it, see: https://youtu.be/T5CEQ9-35xA and http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2021/04/television-addiction-article-on.html

Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States

          Another history documentary.
            This documentary series is at times spectacular.  Oliver Stone is no stranger to cinematic storytelling, and, in the earlier episodes especially, he brings all his storytelling abilities to this project.  The archival footage, the dramatic music, and the bold narration all contribute to the feel of watching something epic.
            The first 5 or 6 episodes are examples of documentary history at its absolute finest.
            The problem, from an entertainment perspective at least, is in some of the later episodes the editorializing gets in the way of the story telling.  For example, the episode on the 1980s is less a coherent narrative than it is just a list of all the reasons Reagan sucked.  The episode on George W. Bush  is the same.  I don’t disagree with Oliver Stone’s politics, but the powerful narrative thrust of the early episodes gets a bit muddled in the later episodes.
            Still, inspite of the fact that the narrative quality of the series is not entirely consistent over all 10 episodes, the high points of this series more than make up for the low points.  It’s well worth checking out.
Sidenotes:
1). I’m not sure all this information has ever been in one documentary series before.  I remember having to learn all my information about the untold history of the United States in piecemeal fashion.  I learned one thing here, another thing there, and just gradually accumulated knowledge. 
            Now it’s possible to just watch this documentary, and in 10 short hours accumulate all of this knowledge in one go.  Which brings me to my next point:
2) It’s really surprising they allowed this to be on TV. 

And 3). One last observation: Oliver Stone is famous for his conspiracy theories in his movie JFK, but fortunately he largely stays away from conspiracy theories in this series.  (He hints that relations between Kennedy and the CIA were not good, but stops short of trying to explicitly connect any dots.)  In The Untold History of the United States, Oliver Stone largely sticks to facts that, while they may not be largely reported, are not contested. I think this series is credible.
            (In my youth I was on-board with some of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, but over time I’ve come to agree with Chomsky that spending too much time speculating on unknowns is a waste of time.  For Chomsky’s thoughts on why we shouldn’t waste time speculating about conspiracy theories SEE HERE.)


History Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x52uI39vSXVrJvUFjdN9QkL&si=dICJTZngZlwi8WIT

Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

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Saturday, April 12, 2025

A History of Britain (TV series) by Simon Schama: Review


This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost.  For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE:

This is also part of my Television Addiction series.  For my explanation of what the Television Addiction series is and why I'm doing it, see: https://youtu.be/T5CEQ9-35xA and http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2021/04/television-addiction-article-on.html


Simon Schama: A History of Britain

   I’m a huge fan of documentaries, and this one was very well done and well produced.
            Also, added to Monarchy and This Sceptred Isle, this show helped to complete my education about Britain’s long history.
            When I first started watching the show, I expected it to be another This Sceptred Isle—a show that would methodically go through all the centuries of British history.
            I was slightly disappointed then when I realized that the series was skipping over large parts of history entirely.  The series would chose on event to examine in detail, and then jump ahead 100 years or so to the next event. 
            The English Civil War, for example, was very well done, but other interesting events like the War of the Roses got skipped over completely.
            Nonetheless, it did a very good job with the stories that it did chose to focus on.


History Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x52uI39vSXVrJvUFjdN9QkL&si=dICJTZngZlwi8WIT

Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

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Friday, June 04, 2021

Game of Thrones: Television Addiction



This is part of my "Television Addiction Series" which I explained about HERE.  The Television Addiction series is part of my so-called "Scripted Review Series", which I explained about HERE.  For the original 2013 post on which this is based, see: Television Addiction Part 2: Oh the TV Shows I’ve Seen!


Game of Thrones
          When this series was first airing, it generated quite a lot of buzz around my office.  People were talking about this series, and people were really enjoying this series.
            So I checked it out of course.
            It takes about 5 episodes or so to get into this series, because initially the series just throws a bunch of characters at you without giving you a reason to care about them.
            Once you get about 5 episodes into it, and start getting into these characters, it is highly addictive.  Perhaps the most addictive show I’ve seen yet.  Every time I finished an episode, I had to watch the next one immediately afterwards.  The week I was watching this show I was low on sleep and hardly ever went out.
            Why is it so addictive?  Well that’s a little bit harder to explain.
            The show is classified as fantasy, but as viewers know the fantastical elements are not center stage.  Rather, this show is part of a genre I like to call “fake history.”  It’s the story of a fictional civil war in a fictional country.
            As I watched the show, I kept asking myself, “Why am I so interested in this when it’s not even real?”

            One of my colleagues, a fellow history geek, once said to me, “The reason I read history instead of fiction is because history is always more interesting.  The stuff that happens in history—you couldn’t make that up if you tried.  Cortez and the conquest of the Aztecs?  The French Revolution?  The American Civil War?  World War II?  Show me the fiction writer who could possibly match those stories!”

            I agreed with him on the spot, but since I started watching Game of Thrones I’ve started to question the assertion.  As I watch Game of Thrones, I keep asking myself, “Is this more interesting than real history, or would a real historical drama have been a more interesting show?  Would all of the time and money needed to make Game of Thrones been much better employed depicting a real historical war instead of a pretend one?"

            20 years ago, the argument probably would have been that historical dramas make for poor television because history is too complex.  You could never ask an American audience to keep track of all the various factions and nobles during The War of the Roses, could you?
            And yet, Game of Thrones seems to be mocking this idea.  It blatantly makes its fictional history more and more and more complex.  (One of my co-workers even told me he had started making a chart on his wall to keep track of who everyone was while he watched Game of Thrones).  And yet Game of Thrones is one of the most successful television shows ever.

            So, now that Game of Thrones has shown modern audiences are not adverse to complex plots or ideas, I have a whole list of historical incidents I think would make for great television.  But I’ll save that for the next post.

            (For Whisky’s thoughts on Game of Thrones and history versus fiction, see LINK HERE)

Bonus Link
My Game of Thrones Season 8 (episode by episode review) playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x5UJWJ7DkyzvKG5Ljx7zG2U

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The Borgias: Television Addiction



This is part of my "Television Addiction Series" which I explained about HERE.  The Television Addiction series is part of my so-called "Scripted Review Series", which I explained about HERE.  For the original 2013 post on which this is based, see: Television Addiction Part 2: Oh the TV Shows I’ve Seen!

The avclub article in which they call these dramas “Wikipedia historical fiction.” https://tv.avclub.com/the-borgias-1798167800

The avclub article in which they compare The Borgias to Game of Thrones: https://tv.avclub.com/the-borgias-season-one-1798168422


The Borgias (1 and 1/2 seasons only)
          I understand this was put together as Showtime’s follow-up to The Tudors. 
            I have yet to see The Tudors from start to finish.  (My brother-in-law and me worked through several episodes when I was last back in America, but its tough to watch a series straight through when the DVD rental place only has one copy, and other customers are renting the same discs you want.)  However I enjoyed what I did see of The Tudors. I know it’s not perfectly historically accurate, but it seemed to me to be largely historically accurate.  (Granted I’m no expert.  Almost everything I know about Henry VIII just comes from Monarchy and This Sceptred Isle. But The Tudors lined up nicely with what little I knew about King Henry VIII).
            The Borgias, by contrast, seems much less historically accurate.  Eventually I just had to stop watching halfway through the second season.  What was the point of watching a historically drama that wasn’t even historically accurate?
            It’s a pity, because the idea for a historical drama around the Borgia family is a great idea.  What a great subversive way to remind people of all the terrible history behind the papacy.  And for historical geeks, what a wonderful opportunity to get into some of the fascinating Papal power struggles, and 16th century politics on the Italian peninsula.
            However, as each episode just got more and more ridiculous, and further removed from the actual history, I eventually had to ask myself, “Why am I watching this?”
            I know it’s an article of faith in Hollywood that you should never make anything truly historically accurate, because then no one will watch it, but I disagree.  I think there’s a huge audience for accurate historical dramas.  Just think how many people love watching documentaries.
            The pity of The Borgias is that the actual history would have been interesting enough.  It would have been interesting simply because it had been real.  Because they made up their own story instead, it made things less interesting.
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Tuesday, June 01, 2021

Cougar Town: Television Addiction



This is part of my "Television Addiction Series" which I explained about HERE.  The Television Addiction series is part of my so-called "Scripted Review Series", which I explained about HERE.  For the original 2013 post on which this is based, see: Television Addiction Part 2: Oh the TV Shows I’ve Seen!


Cougar Town
          Actually pretty funny.
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Monday, May 31, 2021

Entourage (Television Addiction)



This is part of my "Television Addiction Series" which I explained about HERE.  The Television Addiction series is part of my so-called "Scripted Review Series", which I explained about HERE.  For the original 2013 post on which this is based, see: Television Addiction Part 2: Oh the TV Shows I’ve Seen!


Entourage
          Surprisingly addictive, although after you finish watching several seasons, you do wonder what the point was.  The show managed to pull me in for several seasons, but I hated myself for watching it when it was all over.
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Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Television Addiction)



This is part of my "Television Addiction Series" which I explained about HERE.  The Television Addiction series is part of my so-called "Scripted Review Series", which I explained about HERE.  For the original 2013 post on which this is based, see: Television Addiction Part 2: Oh the TV Shows I’ve Seen!


The Clone Wars
          Based on Whisky Prajer’s recommendation I decided to check this out.  It is pretty impressive for a kids cartoon, and does manage to recapture the fun spirit of the old film serials Star Wars is supposed to be based on.
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Saturday, May 29, 2021

My Name is Earl: TV Series Review (Television Addiction)



This is part of my "Television Addiction Series" which I explained about HERE.  The Television Addiction series is part of my so-called "Scripted Review Series", which I explained about HERE.  For the original 2013 post on which this is based, see: Television Addiction Part 2: Oh the TV Shows I’ve Seen!

Some of the articles I mentioned: 
WHY DID THE WORLD FORGET ABOUT ‘MY NAME IS EARL’? It had far more viewers than ‘The Office,’ ’30 Rock’ and ‘Parks and Rec’ — but as the middle child of NBC’s early aughts golden age, it failed to make the same lasting impact https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/my-name-is-earl



My Name is Earl
          The show actually looks like it should be funnier than it is.
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Friday, May 28, 2021

Chuck Season 1: TV Series Review (Television Addiction)



This is part of my "Television Addiction Series" which I explained about HERE.  The Television Addiction series is part of my so-called "Scripted Review Series", which I explained about HERE.  For the original 2013 post on which this is based, see: Television Addiction Part 2: Oh the TV Shows I’ve Seen!


Chuck
          Only one season in so far.  Not all that great, but everyone says it gets better in later seasons.
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Flight of the Conchords: TV Series Review (Television Addiction)



This is part of my "Television Addiction Series" which I explained about HERE.  The Television Addiction series is part of my so-called "Scripted Review Series", which I explained about HERE.  For the original 2013 post on which this is based, see: Television Addiction Part 2: Oh the TV Shows I’ve Seen!


Flight of the Conchords
          Because I had been living in Japan for so long, this had been off my radar for a while, but word of mouth eventually caught up to me.  (My friend Brett would make references to it.)  So I eventually checked it out.  I got a bit bored with all the songs, but I generally enjoyed it.
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Saturday, May 22, 2021

Archer: TV Series Review (Television Addiction)



This is part of my "Television Addiction Series" which I explained about HERE.  The Television Addiction series is part of my so-called "Scripted Review Series", which I explained about HERE.  For the original 2013 post on which this is based, see: Television Addiction Part 2: Oh the TV Shows I’ve Seen!


Archer
          Another show I got into just because my co-workers loved it so much.  Some of the jokes I find a bit repetitive, but a pleasant enough waste of time.
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Friday, May 21, 2021

Mad Men: Some rambling thoughts (Television Addiction)



This is part of my "Television Addiction Series" which I explained about HERE.  The Television Addiction series is part of my so-called "Scripted Review Series", which I explained about HERE.  For the original 2013 post on which this is based, see: Television Addiction Part 2: Oh the TV Shows I’ve Seen!


Mad Men
            I had actually seen the first season of this when I was still in Japan (it was popular enough in Japan that you could rent them at Japanese DVD stores.)  I caught up on a few more of the seasons while in Cambodia, although once again I horrified my co-workers by watching the episodes out of order. 
            As a history geek, I appreciate the eye for period detail.  But like Breaking Bad I felt like this show just moved at too slow of a pace for me, and I just couldn’t stay interested in the long run.
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Thursday, May 20, 2021

Breaking Bad: Part of Season 1 and Season 2 (Television Addiction)



This is part of my "Television Addiction Series" which I explained about HERE.  The Television Addiction series is part of my so-called "Scripted Review Series", which I explained about HERE.  For the original 2013 post on which this is based, see: Television Addiction Part 2: Oh the TV Shows I’ve Seen!


Breaking Bad (Second Season only)
          Everyone in my office loves Breaking Bad, so I decided to check it out myself.  The week I decided to try it out, my local DVD store was temporarily out of the first season, so for the moment I just decided to start with the second season.  (A decision which absolutely horrified all of my co-workers.  “Joel!” one of them said, “It’s like a novel!  You have to watch it in order!”)
            For whatever reason, this show didn’t really click with me.  I know everyone else loves it, and I can’t really give you a good reason why I didn’t.  Maybe it was just a little bit too slowly paced for me.  At any rate, I watched the second season, but didn’t end up going back for more.
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