Day #14 of the 30 Days of Television Challenge

[shadowkat]

This is Day #14 of the 30 Days of Halloween Challenge.

The prompt is:

Television Series you thought you wouldn't like and ended up loving

My choice:

Breaking Bad

I had to be talked into it. I tried it - didn't like it. Various people online loved it. Then I had a co-worker, frustrated screenwriter/current co-manager, who talked me into it. He intrigued me, and explained the third season is the best.

So...I gave it a second chance and got pulled in.

This happens more often than not with shows. Often I'll think, meh, and then somewhere around the second or third season - I get sucked in.

Comments

[shadowkat]

Justified is kind of within the Modern Western trope. The Modern Westerns are more diverse and a tad darker than the Westerns you grew up with. I know a lot about Westerns. Kind of an expert. Took a class on it, and everything. Actually Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Wars are both templated off of the Western trope and structure.

Elmore Leonard is behind Justified, his son was on the writing team, and he executive produced and consulted on it. You may know Leonard - from such works as Get Shorty. He's a mystery/detective novel writer - who was the king of dialogue. Also wrote books as if they were screenplays - minimal description, emphasis on dialogue. Want to learn how to write good dialogue? Read Leonard. Good characterization? Again, read Leonard. There's a few writers who wrote similar.

Leonard also was very good at defying cliches and stereotypes, and writing well-rounded characters.

Justified is based on and adapted from a series of stories and books by Leonard. So good source material.

There are quite a few excellent Westerns out there that comment on the trope and explore it in a meaningful way.

BTW - your complaint about Western genre, can pretty much be applied to all genres at a certain point. Actually it can be applied to all media and art. Why? Because art is an expression of those creating at the time. And often in the case of television and film - those in power at the time. Being female I most likely notice more - mainly because the misogyny is obvious to me across all the genres.

So, it depends on which ones you see or discover.

Red River - isn't about Indians really at all. It's about a conflict between two men, John Wayne is actually the villain in the tale.
The Searchers - again Wayne is weirdly the villain, it's a fascinating twist of a story, in the end, it's unclear who the true monster is - both however are human ones.
The Wild Bunch - a dark Western about the collapse of an outlaw band - chased into Mexico.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Once Upon a Time in the West - Henry Fonda Plays the Villain
My Name is Nobody - about the contest between an up-and-coming sharp shooter and an aging gunfighter
High Noon - conviction vs. morality in an old town
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - the height of the spaghetti western, no one is good in this one.
The Unforgiven - which comments on the negative tropes of the Western mythos
Big Country - a fight over water rights
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
My Darling Clementine - the first about the famous shootout at the OK Carrol in Dodge City
The Cowboys - about a bunch of boys moving cattle across the country.

Oh, there's so many good ones out there. I'm sorry you've only seen the bad ones.

(frozen)

[atpo_onm]

Of the ones you listed, I've seen and liked / appreciated Unforgiven and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. About half of the rest I vaguely remember from long ago, so I would have to hold off on any definitive opinion without watching them again.

I do stand by the gun fetishism bit, though. Gun sales are way up again as you know, including here in PA, where it seems to be considered increasingly immoral not to own as many firearms as humanly possible in many counties. Yyeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaa!!! Uhm... no thank you.

~sigh~