in a season full of great episodes, last night’s Mad Men was a standout. as they say on the internets: it made me feel all the feelings.
(Source: scullaaay)
ngl, i’m really excited to see what this flashback is all about. the fabulousness is off the chain!
(Source: behappydienow)
is it just me or does it seem like a lot is happening with all these different characters, but not a whole lot’s actually happening? (before i continue, i must note that i haven’t read the books so i’m basing this solely on the writing for the show.) there was a severe lack of Tyrion in this episode, but Jaime, who’d been m.i.a. for awhile finally gets a fair share of screen time…but then his storyline is meh at best. and frankly, i’m also really bored with the Jon Snow in the arctic storyline. every time it cuts to him, i let out an audible groan—shit is boring…what’s Stannis and his baby mama doing? at this point, i just want to see more of what Arya’s up to in Harrenhal.
well which one is it, Draper?
(via ivyarchive)
zou bisou bisou, y’all. Mad Men is finally back!
Game Change (2012) | as nightmarish as it is reliving some of those 2008 presidential election moments and then getting a behind-the-scenes look at how the McCain campaign created the monster that is Sarah Palin, the HBO film does a great job of pulling that story together and Julianne Moore is scary/cringe-worthyly good as Palin.
WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT
bravo, sir, agreed on all counts. but just fyi: while Darabont is still listed as an exec producer, he is actually no longer a part of the show (Glen Mazzara is the showrunner now). i can’t wait to see what Rick’s gonna be up to in season 3.
Originally, I had written a very long and very decent summation of the Season 2 finale of The Walking Dead. Then my browser crashed due to my obsolete computer’s need to sabotage me at every turn. Tumblr is unable to retrieve the post, so now as a result, you get a completely new essay.
The Walking Dead is something of an anomaly in modern television. It is a horror-drama. Horror is a genre often relegated to cinema due to the visual nature of the on-screen action. It not only requires the compressed time of cinema as well as power of cinematic attraction: before The Walking Dead, television violence never entered the realm of horror. Before The Walking Dead, you would be hard pressed to find anyone who would tune in, week after week, for their gross-out’s and gorefests, rather than have it compacted to two hours or less, R-rating intact. But that’s why The Walking Dead soldiers on, establishing a new, and uncharted precedent in television genrefication, and it shows that horror, like any other genre, is viable in the televisual format.
What of the content of the show itself? Last night’s episode raises many questions about the intent of the creators as well as the course of the show going forward. After a long and harrowing season of obvious twists and painful turns, The Walking Dead went out for the season on a high note. Fans had been complaining of a lack of zombies: the show’s producers answered with more zombies, no less a Romero-homage with the farmhouse shootout. Fans were getting restless with characters that added little, or were irritating: they killed off Dale, Jimmy, and Patricia, and Shane. Dale and Shane present two specific choices on the part of the show’s creators, though.
Within the greater context of the character assemblage, Dale was the moral anchor of the group, trying to stand by some form of societal normality in the fact of apocalypse, some sort of humanistic group belief. Shane on the other hand presented us with the fierce will of individual survival. They were diametric opposites and carried that relationship throughout Season 2 until it reached a head: Shane ultimately threatens Dale’s life after a confrontation, not explicitly but through a realization on Dale’s part that Shane will do whatever it takes to keep himself (or what he perceives as an extension of himself - Laurie and Carl) alive. Dale is the only one alerted to Shane’s true nature before his betrayal in the penultimate episode, when Rick kills him. Dale dies an episode prior to this in a moment of happenstance, brought on by the perceived ineptness of Carl in the face of danger. With the deletion of these characters from the group, the equation was somehow unbalanced up until the last 5 minutes of the finale. Who would assume the moral center of the group and who would embody the individual, the loner, struggling for his own?
It is in the last five minutes of last night’s episode that we finally see the proper characterization of Rick Grimes, something that the show has been severely lacking. Having narrowly escaped the farm, their resources sapped and their future uncertain, Rick assumes the mantle of both Dale and Shane: his moral core is intact, if not bolstered by what can be see as his transition from an ad-hoc leader to a full-blown dictator. “This is no longer a democracy,” Rick spits, with almost as much venom as Shane ever spat, but not without good reason. Thus far, the foolish nature of the group has gotten them into situation after situation. There is a certain reluctance on Rick’s part, surely - you can see it in his well developed monologue to Laurie (a character who is becoming more and more unfocused (did she love Shane? Did she ever love her husband? Why is Carl never in the house?)) - and a remorse for his actions, but that is the drama that bolsters the horror. It is the horror of humanity in the face undeath, a fact we are alerted to in Season 1’s finale. As Rick explains, everyone is infected, and with that knowledge now revealed to the characters as well as the viewer, the subtext of Rick’s actions are now laid bare and the ascension to an iron-fisted leader clear. He knew the stakes and has been playing them, but what can he hope to win? The search for normalcy is now over and with Season 3’s location, the Prison, looming heavily in the last frame of Sunday night’s episode, a new search is underway. The goal of this search has yet to be divined, but the introduction of the Governor, no less the cast of the Inmates, should add a great deal of intrigue to the course Season 3 will take.
So all this time, Frank Darabont and the producers have seemingly been setting up a very realistic (albeit zombie-filled) television show. But now, what of Mishonne’s entrance into the fray? As a comicbook character she worked; as a character on a live-action television show, how could she? Her introduction creates an interesting turn in a show that was otherwise running the risk of repetition. Her presence, framed by two armless walkers chained to either side of her, samurai katana glimmering in the morning light, is a leap into the fantastical for a show that has otherwise grounded itself in conventional zombie-lore. Now ultimately, the characterization of the group in Season 3 will be determined by both the location and the introduction of a fantastic character element, no less the realization that death is no longer the end in the universe of The Walking Dead.
All in all, after a slow, lumbering start, The Walking Dead is now transitioning from a television curiosity to a show that stands on its own two feet. Whether they will be successful with the curveballs thrown in the last couple of episodes in Season 2 has yet to be seen, but the true success that The Walking Dead has ensured is that of the horror-drama as a television genre, no less giving more credence to the format & formula that AMC has created with its growing roster of exciting and challenging television programs.
![holy shit. The Walking Dead season 2 finale is [TBD]. i’m so glad this show got back on track this season—the second half of it is just full of win.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0yr52xIn11qa2ylwo1_1280.jpg)
