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Since it's pretty quiet on the tv front, I have begun a The Wire marathon. I meant to watch it for a while but it's a 5 season series and I had already current shows to watch. But now that I've started, I feel that I won't be able to stop.

I'm 4 episodes into season 1 and loving it. I'm already hooked.

The Wire reminds me of The Shield a lot, with a little bit of OZ too. Actually it's more ambitious than The Shield. It is a great show that deserves all the praises it received, although I wouldn't call it the best tv series ever made. Maybe I'll change my mind, but it doesn't have that little something, art-wise, that the shows I put in my tv pantheon (that is OZ, BtVS, BSG and Breaking Bad) have.

What can I say? This is a tv summer.

Now that I have finished watching the third season of Breaking Bad, I have to catch up with the third season of Mad Men (I heard season 4  premiered yesterday!) . It's good to have a good tv show left to watch for I'm getting bored with the usually entertaining "guilty pleasure" that is True Blood.

I really like Mad Men, it's a very good tv show with moments of elliptic brilliance, and great characters(Don Draper of course but I also love Peter, Peggy, Roger and Joan) but it has soapish sides sometimes, and often indulges in what I'd call "see how good we are at re-creating the  60's" fault. I enjoy it but I can't say that I'm truly hooked. I much prefer Breaking Bad which I find more daring and more refreshing (even though many fans compare it to the Coen brothers' films). Also, I am more emotionally invested in BB because of the core 'ship that is Walt/Jesse.

Here I want to quote this extract from the review Donna Bowman wrote on the A.V Club, about the finale of season 3:

"Tonight's finale should cement this season of Breaking Bad as one of television's finest dramatic accomplishments. And what makes it so exciting -- what makes the recognition of the current golden age so pressing -- is that the season has not been, as Noel put it in another context, "television good."  The heart-in-the-throat quality of this season comes as much from the writers' exhilarating disregard for television conventions as from the events portrayed.  Every cliffhanger produced anticipation that often as not was subverted by having what came after timed at a jagged off-angle from the shape we've internalized as expectation.
(...)
That's so far from the equation that set Walter off down this road in Season 1 that it seems like we've substituted completely different elements now.  Yet Walter still thinks he's playing by the same unchangeable, fundamental rules. Breaking Bad has taken his insights and delusions to places we never could have seen coming.  And while we anticipate seeing him to his end, let's not forget how lucky we are to be in the audience."

Oh and I may have finally found a way to watch online another critically-acclaimed show, that is The Wire....

I guess I could sing "Not an addict" like K's Choice used to. But I'm a tv show addict. I don't watch that much tv but the series I follow, I can't bear to miss one episode!

I can't wait for the new season of BSG, Lost, Dr Who...and I sooo want to see Ashes to ashes ! I guess that I will follow Torchwood despite its flaws and weaknesses, if only for Gwen and Owen. Nip/Tuck is the only show I'm not that eager to see again, I think it jumped the proverbial shark at the end of season 3 but I know me I will probably watch the 5th season nonetheless! And I will watch Grey's Anatomy too even though its soapish side often bothers me.

There are shows I'm not addicted to. I never followed Alias for instance, I saw a few episodes though. Sometimes I catch and watch Desperate Housewives or Bones on French tv but I don't follow them either. And I am not feverishly catching up with Rescue Me. Those shows aren't necessarily bad, some of them are quite decent, but I'm not hooked. Most of the time I've only seen a few episodes and missed many episodes inbetween so I never became an addict.

So apart from a very good writing and intriguing plots and endearing characters, I think it's all about the serial side of tv shows. Cliffhangers aren't what makes you keep going. Provided that the whole thing doesn't completely suck, once you're on the train, and after several successive episodes it's difficult to give up. You just go with the flow, and of course the more you do the more you're hooked. Maybe that's the reason so many Buffy viewers that obviously despised the late seasons kept watching the show while cursing Joss' choices.

As soon as you're an addict you may become a fan and do crazy things such as posting on a fan forum or discussing your favourite show on LJ. It's the next step but it doesn't necessarily happen. I'm obviously addicted to several shows, some of them I did love, but BTVS and possibly BSG are the only ones that turned me into a fanatic. If you've become a fan it's doubtful that you could ever be cured of your addiction for you will keep feeding it even after the show has ended on screen. You will watch your show on DVD, you will go on mentioning it on the Internet years after its end, you will use quotes from episodes at several occasions and gather with people from the same fandom. And of course you will read fanfiction.

One last thing. I believe that the Internet increases the possibility of becoming an addict, and of course a fan. It's so easy to get tv shows online these days. It's even easier to follow a series than on tv because you can just go by your personal RL schedule and catch up afterwards, or make up for a possible unavailablity.