iZombie, the newest serial and procedural drama hybrid from Rob Thomas (the mind that brought us Veronica Mars) and Diane Ruggiero, is a very well crafted TV-Show. It is clearly one that has taken cues from other notable shows with procedural elements and has either refined them or done away with the ones that are less conducive to a show’s success. To illustrate what I’m talking about, here are 5 elements iZombie nails really well.
Bones, the first drama I really got invested in, and the first seemingly endless procedural I ever outgrew. Unlike with The Mentalist and the disastrous end it had with me, my break up with Bones was civil and clean. I just grew to understand that the show and I wanted different things in life, and that our continued commitment to one another would be to both our detriment. I basically wanted to settle down with a more serialized show that took more chances and had something to say, while Bones was content with falling into a routine and doing mostly the same thing over and over again. We realized we were in different places in our relationship and moved on, although it is fun to revisit and reminisce about the old days with a fresh pair of eyes.
Continue reading “Remember When Bones was Hilariously Weird About BDSM?”
*Hannibal Spoilers Below*
Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal is centred around a serial killer/cannibal, so you’d expect the show to have a lot of seriously evil people. In a way, the stories about the character of Hannibal Lecter have developed a bit of a rogues gallery. The villains of his universe are as colourful and theatrical as they are deadly, and the most despicable one of them all is Mason Verger. Sadistic, abusive to his twin sister Margot, and way too rich for everyone else’s own good, this character is the most sickening thing about a series that revolves around a cannibal. Perhaps the most disgusting thing about him is the clear and obvious delight he takes in the suffering of others. In Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal, Mason Verger is portrayed first by Michael Pitt, and then recast as Joe Anderson (which conveniently went along with his character’s well deserved facial mutilation). A lot of what he does isn’t motivated by anything other than his own sadistic tastes and historically this character really has always been scum, but Bryan Fuller takes him to the next level in terms of pure putridness. The legacy he will leave on television thanks to Fuller’s work will be as one of the most vile characters ever portrayed, and today I’m here to count out 5 times when he displayed that horribleness to us all on Hannibal.
Continue reading “5 Times When Mason Verger Was the Most Evil Character in Television”
From reading that title, I know what you must be thinking: How is it possible for a cleaning detergent to subvert anything on a TV show? Never fear, because the name “Major Lilywhite” actually refers to a character on the show, and despite having an incredibly goofy name and filling the dreaded role as the lead’s “sweetheart ex-boyfriend”, he actually turned out to be a fantastic character in his own right. I’m still pretty shocked at about it all as I type this, because I’ve never really seen something like this being done deliberately. The audience was led into thinking Major would just be Liv’s (the show’s lead) lame “perfect” boyfriend from the past who would show up every once in a while to make her feel guilty and remind her of what she could have had, but instead he’s a fleshed out character with his own world and problems to contend with. He even has a seasonal arc that runs parallel to Liv’s, which eventually converges in the season 1 finale in an explosive way. I would go as far as to argue that Major is one of the most smartly written television characters to show up in recent history.
Continue reading “iZombie Completely Subverts the ‘Boring Boyfriend’ Trope with Major Lilywhite”
A lot has changed since I last wrote about The Good Wife, and unfortunately these changes have been for the worst. After dubbing this show the most impressive show on TV following its amazing fifth season and good first half of its sixth season, the show has hit some unexpected turbulence. The second half of The Good Wife season six was as aimless as its lead was by the end of her arc. A major theme during this period on the show was that Alicia didn’t know what she wanted, which was sadly wholly appropriate for the show since it didn’t seem to know where it was going either. Hitting us with yet another election story line, isolating the Alicia from the supporting cast, and going to great pains to invalidate all of the major changes that happened over the course of the show’s fifth season really put a damper on things. For a series that is often praised for its boldness and refusal to conform to network TV standards, it seemed oddly eager to revert back to its status quo. For those who want a basic understanding of what went wrong, here is a brief overview.
Continue reading “The Good Wife – State of Affairs Post Season 6”
TV Shows and movies don’t get racism for the most part. They really, really don’t. The most common misstep is the lack of realism in portraying adolescent racism. By now, most recognize that racism in the adult world is institutional and less overt, but with young people writers just love to simplify the hell out of it. Racist people in fiction are generally loud and obnoxious punks who make thinly veiled threats at every person of colour they see. The modern racist does not behave like this at all. Perhaps several years ago that was the case, but in the new millennium that does not even come close. Thankfully we have the Neo-Noir mystery show Veronica Mars that came out in the mid 2000’s to set the record straight. Racist teenagers aren’t loud and angry rednecks, they aren’t only people of low intelligence, and they aren’t super aggressive about their prejudice either. Racism to the teens of the world of Veronica Mars (a world that exists in the fictional town of Neptune) is used as a weapon, a tool of exclusion. For the show’s first two seasons, racial and class tensions are treated with significance, and more importantly, as closely related concepts. As Veronica herself succinctly puts it, “your parents are either millionaires, or your parents work for millionaires” within the class based society she lives in.
While I’ve sung my praises for The Good Wife in another article on this site, there is one other network drama that I would consider to be on par with prestige cable dramas and head and shoulders above its network competition. That show would be Person of Interest (which I’ve talked about a bit before when I started it). This show turned what could have easily been a long running and cheesy procedural drama with sci-fi and serialized elements into what can be considered a television science fiction epic. It has honestly gotten that good as of late, and it doesn’t look like it will be slowing down any time soon. While I’m delighted that this show has improved as much as it did, I also have a nagging fear that perhaps the writers will cave into the demands of a certain type of fan. You see, there is a significant amount of viewers out there who just want Person of Interest to never try and be anything that’s ambitious and just stick to the “Case of the Week” structure. They want a show where Finch and Reese go through the same routine case after case, week after week, season after season, until eventually the show is 12 seasons old with 4 different spin-offs distinguished only by the different cities that get added to the end of their titles. Person of Interest: Miami, Person of Interest: LA, Person of Interest cross-overs between the original show and Person of Interest: SVU (where a team goes out to stop sex crimes before they happen). The scariest thing about these demands though would be how easy it would be to meet them, to just give up and release regurgitated trash in place of interesting and unique content. This show peaked in ratings during the times where it was more of a procedural than a serialized drama, and now that it has shifted in the opposite direction the show has taken a hit in viewership. This is so depressing because the show is now better than it’s ever been.
Continue reading “Why Person of Interest Needs to Continue Being the Gutsiest Show on Television”
“Well, it’s complicated for a lot of reasons”
This is a phrase uttered by Don Keefer, a cable producer and one of the stars of Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom, regarding a certain rape incident at a University. After watching the controversial penultimate episode for the series “Oh Shenandoah”, I’m not sure he truly understands the complexity of the situation or rape in general. In fact, it seems as if he’s driven by the goal of simplifying it as much as possible to follow a moral guideline that does not really apply to the issue presented here. The issue being the fact that a woman was raped at her university by two men after being heavily intoxicated, and in retaliation (and after effectively being ignored by the police) she created a website for others like her to anonymously post about their sexual assault experiences and accuse their attackers. Don’s news corporation (ACN) would like for him to track Mary (the rape victim) down and invite her onto one of their shows for a joint interview between her and one of the men she is accusing. Don, due to his reservations about the nature of this hypothetical joint interview, tracks down Mary and does everything he can to convince her not to go through with it only to fail; but he ends up stopping it from happening anyways when he lies about being unable to find her to his furious superiors. This series of events, the portrayal of Don, and the execution of the story itself is problematic for a number of reasons, but I feel those reasons got lost in a barrage of righteous indignation that came about in response to the writing.
Continue reading “The Newsroom on Rape: Misunderstood but Still Wrong”
Watching Person of Interest has been an… interesting experience (pun obviously intentional, but also made with pride). This show, like The Good Wife is a hybrid of a procedural and serialized drama. To make a long story short, our heroes (the hyper intelligent Harold Finch and the highly skilled John Reese) receive tips on “people of interest” who are about to be involved in a violent crime, and then go to stop it. Along the way they have to balance fighting various criminal organizations and evading the law since what they are doing isn’t strictly legal. It’s fun, it’s action packed, and it comes with a whole slew of fun elements to point out. I’m only 2 seasons into the show, and after a shaky first season, it has picked up considerably. This is probably going to be closer to a traditional blog post than most things I’ve got on here so here goes. Here are random tidbits of interest on this show. There’s plenty of good things, dumb things, and hilarious things abound so get ready.
I love The Good Wife. It’s clever, bold, funny, and unbelievably resilient. I mention resilience because it’s what leads me to my conclusion that this show is the most impressive one on television. After just having its 6th season midseason-finale (where the show took another in a long line of enormous risks) while being well over 100 episodes old, I continue to be in awe of its ability to still be so damn good. Often being seen as a just another CBS procedural drama from those who don’t know any better, The Good Wife is head and shoulders above the rest of TV’s network dramas and is without a doubt on the level of prestige cable dramas such as Breaking Bad and Mad Men. The acting on all fronts is phenomenal, the scripts are fantastic, and mother of God is the satire on politics and the law on point. Perhaps cable dramas are more tightly written, with less plots being dropped or going undeveloped as they have on The Good Wife on occasion, but those shows don’t have to run for half as long as it does. The ability to churn out 22 quality episodes a year is remarkable on its own, but to be able to balance so many plots, character arcs, and themes just makes me want to scream out in empathy. “That’s just way too much work!” I want to say, but all that comes out is “thankyouthankyouthankyou!”, since this show ends up doing so much right.
Continue reading “The Good Wife is the Most Impressive Show on TV”
The Kenpire 