OUAT (A new twist on Peter Pan)

Finished watching my two favorite tv series - Once Upon a Time and The Good Wife, both are a lot of fun. And the sneak peek at The Good Wife this season - was great. But no time or room to discuss it here.

Once Upon a Time was not what I expected. Rather relieved by it, actually. These writers do not appear to be traveling down the trite love triangle of doom road, also the introduction of the new villain was inspired.

( eh spoilers )

2. The Good Wife was good tonight, but not great. It lined up a few things, but spent far too much time on the case of the week - which I found a bit preachy and cliche. Yes, yes, the death penalty and yes it's inhumane and torture, I know. That's one of the many reasons I'm against it. The only people who are for the death penalty are uninformed or ignorant of what it actually entails and the criminal justice system as a whole. The death penalty is not justice - it is vengeance.

The portions of the episode that were not focused on the death penalty were interesting.
( spoilers for The Good Wife )

But I found the episode a wee bit disappointing due to the case of the week or B story line. What's coming up however...

Breaking Bad - Felina - series finale.

Didn't sleep well last night, so did next to nothing on my day off. Played in Lj, vaccumed my floor (only thing worse than vaccuming is attempting to spell vaccuming.)
Also watched the series finale of Breaking Bad, along with a rewatch of OUAT and well my soap opera. I'm anything if not diverse in my tastes. In short spent the day not wandering around, because if I don't, I don't hurt. Nice to have one day of no pain. Digestive issues, but no pain. Struggling with the whole food thing at the moment.

Breaking Bad

Better than expected. I don't know what I was expecting - but from last weeks internet reviews and commentary, I was beginning to fear the worst - ie, a dark nihilistic episode which ended with Lydia and Todd riding off into the sunset together, while everyone else lay twisted and broken in their wake. I really shouldn't read commentary and trust my own views more in regards to television. Because the story thread clearly was not headed in that direction.

At any rate, say what you will about Breaking Bad's uneven fifth season, it did deliver perhaps the best series finale that I've seen to date. (I was not overly found of Battle Star Galatica's, Lost's, Buffy's, or various others including MASH. The finale's of televisions serials either go one of three ways: 1) open-ended (see Buffy and Angel), 2) sappy and sentimental (See MASH, LOST and Battlestar Galatica), or 3) surreal interpretative art that makes relatively little sense whatsoever to about 75% of the audience (see Sopranoes, St. Elsewhere, Quantum Leap, and from what I've read online...apparently Dexter).)
As a result, I watch them with low expectations. I don't why this is - but television writers tend to suck at two things - beginnings and endings. Except that is for Vince Gilligan and Breaking Bad - which has a very good pilot and beginning and an extremely good ending. Bravo.

If you can get past the premise, and the, ahem, unlikable characters and situations, I highly recommend the series on the writing, acting, direction and production value alone. It is to date the best written and tightest plotted television series. But you do have to get past the violence and the premise.

People have compared it to Dickens, but I think Shakespeare is a better comparison - in particular Shakespear's darker plays, MacBeth, Corianlus, Richard the III and Titus Andronicus. Dickens is a bit too black and white, too karmic a universe - GRRM reminds me more of Dickens, which may explain why I have troubles with GRRM's writing style, I'm really not a fan of Dickens - I think both overwrite. Have similar issues with Victor Hugo.

( spoilers for Felina and Granit State )