Breaking Bad: Season Two - Review

Tragic. Beautiful. Funny. Suspenseful. Inspired. Shocking. Challenging. Intelligent. The list of adjectives that I could use to describe this sublime show just goes on and on...

What can I say about this show that hasn't been said already. It's one of the most critically lauded shows ever and this season saw it being rightly showered with awards winning a Primetime Emmy award, . This show excels itself on what you can do with TV and perfects it to the level of high art.

The acting - brilliant. The aforementioned Brian Cranston is refined as his role as Walter White in this season. He portrays the sadness, the desperation and occasional mad fury of Walter in effortless detail. And of course he would be nothing without his White's Dr.Watson, Jesse Pinkman. In the first season I didn't think much of his performance. It's wasn't dreadful but it didn't jump out at me as much as Cranston did. But this season completely undoes all that criticism. He really opens himself up this season and all the pain and suffering he goes too feels really real, and it's all to do with the actor's fantastic performance. 

Actually fuck that. ALL the actors and actresses have fantastic performances. In particular Anna Gunn wonderfully portrays Skyler White and delivers an affectionate although very desperate performance as we watch her and Walter marriage deteriorate. Her character also has developed nicely as well, last season I don't remember her doing much important and being more of a background figure. Here however she takes a much more central role and really comes into her own. Hank as well is greatly improved form a simple macho hard-man into a real person with his own fears, hopes and also weaknesses which are needed in any character to make them believable. 

As well as re-enforcing the old characters it also craftily introduces excellent new characters. The dodgy scum bag lawyer that is Saul Goodman makes an apperance in this season and is a very clever move on the writer's part as Saul manages to easily organize things for Walt and Jessie and really saves a lot of time and enables them to get to the plot much quicker and easier. There's also Donald Marglolis played wonderfully by John de Lancie who has managed to easily bring out the sorrow and the sadness of this character and make a really sympathetic character who we feel deeply sorry for. There was also the introduction of Gusatvo "Gus" Fring and Mike Ehrmantraut each accordingly played by Giancarlo Esposito and Jonathan Banks, who had very minor roles in this season but will become very prominent and key characters as the show continues.

Oh the writing - stellar. Vince Gilligan and his team have pushed the level of what a TV show is capable off and have really outdone themself. I have rarely seen a show that manages to construct such intelligence, passion, heartache and complex intertwining storytelling and still make it engaging and engrossing to the audience. Oh and the season finale...oh my god...it's good.

So final verdict. Amazing and fantastic in pretty much everywhere I have struggled to find a fault on this season and on the show as a whole. Stop reading this review and rush out and buy it along with all the other seasons including season 4 which is coming out in the UK on October 1 2012. 

Breaking Bad Black Mirrors

This is a kid of newsy-update thing about thing's that interest me.

First off all the news that made me jump with joy is that the superb Channel 4 drama Black Mirror written by the exceptionally funny and talented Charlie Brooker has been recommissioned for a second series. 

Who would of thought that pig fucking =quality drama. 

This was thrilling news to me as I considered this show to be one of the best of 2011 and I am excited of the prospect of new episodes to fill my irrational, technophobic head. The DVD is out now and I recommend it to people who have yet to see it.  Here's the Amazon link:  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Charlie-Brookers-Black-Mirror-DVD/dp/B006B893B2/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1342126556&sr=1-1

Also possibly even bigger news Breaking Bad (AKA: the best thing ever in the history of anything) is coming back for the fifth and unfortunately last season in 3 days on the 15th of July on AMC. This show has gone from strength to strength and people will no doubt be scratching their heads as to how Vince Gilligan and his team of writers will match the level of quality we have experienced so far. Or at least in the USA, we poor fools in the UK will have to wait. But their are still the DVDs so again for those who have not yet seen it (firstly, I pity you) you have time to catch up on this gorgeous, wonderful programme.

Breaking Bad:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_12?url=search-alias%3Ddvd&field-keywords=breaking+bad&x=0&y=0&sprefix=breaking+bad%2Caps%2C156

Soooooooooooooo good.

Well that's all so far, there's more stuff waiting in the pipeline, sorry for taking such an immense amount of time writing the articles but it will be here. 

Update 6/7/12

Sorry for the long gap but I promise things are coming! I've almost finished Top 10 British Comedy Bastards  and also review of season two of Breaking bad and season one of Aqua Teen Hunger Force should be here soon.

Also I've decided I will probably drop the book part of this website as I take fucking ages when reading books and won't be able to post them regularly. I may upload a review of The Taming of the Shrew but after that It will most definitely be dropped.

So stay tuned! Or seated I guess considering you're on the internet. So stay seated!

Arrested Development: Season Two - Review

So I've just finished watching Arrested development Season 1. Arrested Development? What's that? You scum. It's sad but true that this sitcom was criminally underrated and outside hard-core comedy circles very few people will know about it. Which is a shame - as it's damn good.

The plot centres on the Bluth family, a once wealthy family which runs into trouble after the CEO is arrested for shifty accounting practices. The majority of the family are vain, lazy, puerile, childish, selfish, narcissistic,  self-centred, materialistic, manipulative, immensely stupid and various other negative attributes with the exception of the only real  sane character in the show Michael Bluth, the central character that has to get the family back on the right track. The family speaking of which is played brilliantly by a superb cast. Particular stand outs for me were Jessica Walter as the deviously nasty Lucille Bluth, Jason Bateman as the sane and sensible Michael Bluth, Will Arnett as the ridiculously over-dramatic Job Bluth and finally my personal favourite out of the entire show - David Cross as the well-meaning yet ultimately idiotic Tobias Funke.

Now, originally I had reservations about the show. Reading up on it, the majority of reviews talked about how it was "gag-heavy" and fits "more gags in and episode than The Simpsons". This originally put me off as it reminded me off Family guy. I have always loathed Family Guy for being pretty much a series of needless and absolutely irrelevant  pop culture references with little to no resemblance to the plot, the whole show is run on "gags". So I was a little wary. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that the gags and cutaways fitted in perfectly with the plot and weren't annoying or distracting.

Also, the massive 25 episode box-set seemed a quite daunting task at first. But as each episode is only 20 minutes long it really wasn't a horrendous chore that would take up all my time. So major kudos to the writers (and to some extent the editors) for managing to make brilliantly written, superbly crafted and very funny episodes in only the painfully short time of 20 mins.

So finally a sharp, fast-paced excellent show that you really should of watched by now. And if you haven't...how can you live with yourself? 

Hello.

Hi. I'm an English pessimistic, nihilistic, misanthropic, cynical, borderline paranoid social recluse and I have made this bog to discuss my love of TV, film, literature and comics. On this blog I will be posting articles about my thoughts on various aspects those subjects, reviews of them and top 10 list of them amongst other things.

So enjoy to the 5 people that will probably find this blog. Oh hang on that's a bit harsh, 2 people then. There we go. Enjoy you two people reading!