TV oh my TV

Obviously, I'm aging.

The first Rugby World Cup happened in NZ and I made the effort and got up very early to watch a few matches (I watched them with my father who was still alive then), but I was much much younger...So apparently "Les Bleus" won against Japan today but I didn't see it. Right now, England vs Argentina is on. I can't get used of seeing the English all in black. I'm sorry but this is just wrong! Anyway, the Pumas are leading but the game is boring...

I'm done with watching Babylon 5. Yes I have seen the 5 seasons this summer! It was a rather good show, but extremely uneven writing-wise. A few episodes were brilliant, others not so much. I really liked season 2 and season 3, but it went downhill afterwards, with season 4. Season 5 was better though. Had I watched it when it aired I would probably have loved the show, but now that I'm older and wiser, and much harder to please, I can't help seeing the flaws and weaknesses. That said, it's worth seeing, if only for the characters. The show delivered great characterization (once it has gotten rid of Sinclair as a main character!) and I really liked Lennier, Vir and Garibaldi (and Bester too!), but the most interesting journeys were Londo's and G'Kar's.

G'Kar is one of those iconic tv characters that can't be forgotten, a character that is one of a kind and owns the screen the way few characters do (like Gene Hunt in Life on Mars/Ashes to ashes, Spike in BtVS or Desmond Hume in Lost). I simply adored him. Londo Mollari is less likeable -- as G'Kar said "I'm a better person"-- but he's very well played and he's such a tragic character that I loved him too. Oh and on a shallow note Bruce Boxleitner was cute (and of course the british actor who played Marcus Cole was very attractive), and his Sheridan worked.

So now I can focus on current tv shows. We've got a few more weeks of the wonderful Breaking Bad ahead, and of Moffat's Doctor Who. When those are done I will resume my Deadwood watchage. To tell the truth, I won't have much time for tv shows so I will stick to the very good ones.

This Autumn, I mostly look forward to seeing second season of Sherlock and season 3 of The Good Wife (Justified too but I'll have to wait until Spring, I guess) but I know myself so, even though I'm quite worried about season 4, I will watch FRINGE as well. I'm rather curious about AMC's Hell on Wheels so I might give it a try.

Oh and there will be Tom Fontana's Borgia to check out, if I can grab the episodes online for I don't have Canal Plus...

I think that's enough, really.

So true

Stolen from David Lavery:

"When it comes to TV shows, it’s easy to forget the importance of perception. We can think of an episode, or an entire season, as a sort of single entity, and then act like that entity can be marked as “good” or “bad,” quality-wise. Simple enough, right? Like, “The third season of Breaking Bad is one of the best seasons of any show in the history of television.” That’s a bold statement, and it’s certainly possible to disagree with it, but nobody argues that you can’t say it at all. And once it’s said, if you do agree with it, that group of 13 episodes becomes more than its individual parts. You rewatch it, you see connections between scenes you might not have noticed before, that might not even have been intended by the show’s creators. And when you go into the next season, you expect that level of quality to continue, which is good and bad. On the plus side, it means every new scene, even the most mundane, will be viewed with an eye presuming genius. On the down side, if those new scenes don’t start delivering on the same (and I mean the exact same) promises the last season provided, people will get restless. It’s a dangerous line to walk."
--Zach Handlen (recapping the firs episode of Season 4 of Sons of Anarchy)