Strain(ge) Magic

As you can tell from my infrequent posting, I haven’t had a lot of time to watch TV or movies over the last few months. It has been an enormously busy summer that has included trips to Toronto, Washington DC, Baltimore (for 4 hours), and Cincinnati, as well as a new venture. This is in addition to greatly increased hours at my job and continued freelance work for movies.com (I had LOTS of fun doing 1984 marketing tie-ins to 2014 summer movies with John Gholson). That said, I have had time to fall head over heels in love with Guillermo del Toro’s jaunt into the world of television- The Strain.

Other TV Shows That Could Take Place in Minnesota

Fargo made its debut on FX this week. It was a gripping premiere, full of plenty of the shenanigans we’ve come to love from the Coen catalogue. Having lived in Duluth, Minnesota briefly, I got a kick out of hearing locations like Bemidji and Duluth referred to regularly. Then on Twitter, I saw this banter between IndieWire editor Sam Adams and Daniel Fienberg of HitFix:

ST LOUIS PARK ELSEWHERE. RT@HitFixDaniel: “Fargo” premiered well. Expect FX to greenlight “A Serious Man: It’s Always Jewish in Minnesota."

— Sam Adams (@SamuelAAdams) April 16, 2014

Naturally, this led me to wonder what other Minnesota-themed TV shows might be created.

Tales from the Synapses

The other day, I realized that I hadn’t posted anything in a few weeks. Rather than letting TDYLF remain dormant, now seemed like as good a time as any to bang out a quick article. Of course, I don’t have any specific focus. However, I do have a lot of random thoughts to dump out of my head. Let’s do this Larry King-style, with a bunch of meandering garbage that’s crept in and out of my skull in the last few weeks.

My Proposal for Saving the Walking Dead

I don’t really watch The Walking Dead so much as I hate-watch it these days. I realize that I’m part of the problem. But I have also come up with a solution. I know exactly how to save the show. Here’s my plan, in screenplay form, for how to bring the show to a conclusion.

The Great Big TV Scoreboard 2

Almost a year ago to the day (ok, within 2 weeks), I wrote about my weird obsession with ranking TV shows. It’s a side effect of the discussions I have with my friend, Marty. A lot has changed in the last year. Some shows have taken  a step forward, I’ve become familiar with others, and some shows have taken horrible steps into the abyss. It’s time to update the Great Big TV Scoreboard.

As you may recall from last year, this is all about the premium cable drama. Comedies and network shows are excluded.

Infographic: The Final Death Toll in Breaking Bad

One of the most popular pieces at TDYLF has been The Death Toll on Breaking Bad, an infographic that I created last September at the conclusion of season 5A of Breaking Bad. When people contact me, the most common request I get- by far- is to update that piece once the series is over. Well, the series is now officially over. And the infographic has been updated. Consider your requests granted.

Breaking Bad Character Baseball Jerseys

As almost all of you are probably aware, Breaking Bad is about to wrap up the entire series this weekend. It’s been one hell of a ride for my favorite (and for my money, the best) TV show. Since the next few days represent my last chance to write about it or honor it in any way, I’ve decided to blow it out with one more big visual Breaking Bad-themed article. I’ve cooked up baseball jerseys for many of the key characters. Some have Major League jersey equivalents, although you certainly don’t need to be familiar with those as any sort of precursor. Here are baseball jerseys for various key Breaking Bad characters. Enjoy!

Graph: The Skyline of Cable Drama

After mapping out the Metacritic histories of Dexter vs. Breaking Bad a few weeks back, I started to wonder how other premium cable shows would look. And so, with an idea firmly in place, I started collecting the data. I cooked up a list of Metacritic scores for every season of every drama that has either aired or is currently airing on HBO, Showtime, AMC, and F/X. Then, I had to cull the data. For instance, some shows only aired for one year. Others were missing Metacritic scores for certain seasons, a result of not enough critic reviews for Metacritic to assign a score. Those type of shows couldn’t be used. By the time it was all over, I had complete season-by-season Metacritic scores for 23 shows. After I graphed them out, I realized that it looks a lot like a skyline. Here’s the result.

A Tale of Two Series

It was the best of finales. It was the worst of finales. It was the age of crackling screenwriting, it was the age of foolish plots. It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of White, it was the season of dark passengers. In short, this noisy authority insists on two TV shows being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. What the Dickens am I talking about? Why, the final seasons of Dexter and Breaking Bad, happening concurrently, of course.

Chekov’s Pie: My Breaking Bad Theory

Breaking Bad Mania has continued all this week on the heels of what was a spectacular opening episode- Blood Money– kicking off the final 8 episodes last Sunday. The conspiracy theorists are out in full force, often with mind-blowing (and fascinating) speculation. I’ve developed my own theory, and it’s all based on what seems like a throwaway moment from Blood Money.