TV Shows: What to Watch

Tihar is shaping up to be a lot of fun: good food, string lights everywhere, firecrackers going off at all hours, drinking, gambling, etc. We all got to give Missy (Shehrish's dog) a blessing yesterday and she wore a necklace of marigolds and was fed countless treats throughout the day. Tonight, people come around the neighborhood singing and they are given money, sort of similar to trick or treaters getting candy on Halloween. It's kind of a blend of Christmas, 4th of July and Halloween rolled into one; something for everybody.

Shehrish and I finished up a series last night and got into a discussion about the TV shows that we have watched recently. We watch TV series instead of movies because I have a horrible attention span and can only enjoy movies that are REALLY good or gripping, eliminating about 95% of what comes out these days. We started ranking the last ten shows that we have watched together and had lots of different opinions about the order of rankings. I woke up today still unsure of some of my placements, so I'm writing a blog in order to 'hash it out' for myself. If you read my blog only for Nepal experiences, exit now. I will do my best not to spoil anything unless absolutely necessary, as I hate spoilers. These are the last ten shows I have seen in entirety, not necessarily my overall top ten. Starting with #10 and going to #1...

10. Oz Oh, how I hated this show. I bought it in Thamel because it was on discount, I knew it was HBO and I had heard some positive things about it. The first season is okay, as characters are established and you feel like a narrative is coming together. Shocking things happen, with important characters being killed/executed/raped, etc., but season one ended with the show feeling like it had maintained some direction. Seasons two through six follow the exact same paradigm except with no connection to anything that came earlier. A new prisoner would come in, do some shocking things and eventually get whacked. Each season would outdo itself with countless scenes of violent imagery: swastika tattoos carved on an unwilling recipient, murders of any variety, defecating on someone's face, gang rapes etc. Stupid cameos include LL Cool J as an incarcerated drug dealer and Rick Fox (NBA guy) as a convicted rapist. One of the most important characters gets killed off in the sixth season with the murderer explaining that he did it because nothing matters in the world. The most telling scene of the entire series involves a naked Detective Stabler (Christopher Meloni, who has a big role in Oz) from Law and Order urinating into a trash can while being held in isolation. No dialogue, just five to six seconds of him actually pissing into a trash can. It symbolized the whole series: gratuitous and pointless, unless you like terrible writing and graphic violence. Big fail on my part in buying this garbage.

9. Masterchef Australia 3: This show combines three of my least favorite things in the world: reality television, cooking on television and Australian accents. It comes on cable at 9:15 nightly and I watch it with Shehrish because she sits through hours of football matches with me these days. The show basically follows the same structure as any of the other cooking shows, except for all of the contestants are smiling and beaming ALL OF THE TIME. I don't know if it's contractual for them to perpetually exude joy or Australian chefs are just the happiest demographic of humans anywhere on the planet, but everything and everyone is/are 'amazing' and 'life changing'. The show must have some serious pull somewhere in the world, as His Holiness the Dalai Lama came on as a guest judge, which I can't decide is somehow a testament to the show or a completely depressing example of how much is wrong with humanity. Watch it if you like cooking competitions and smiley Aussies.

8.Big Love: Not as well-known as the rest, but I started watching season one while visiting a friend in DC and stuck with it for awhile. I never was completely sold on the premise being particularly compelling (exploits of a polygamist family with an ambitious patriarch), but the acting and writing were good and it was filmed well with a good soundtrack. I put the last sentence in past tense because the show completely fell apart after two seasons. I Netflixed the third season about a year ago just to ride it out and passed over season four because I was into other shows and really didn't care about what happened anymore. It started being shown on HBO in Nepal, which was a pleasant reprieve from the usual prime-time movie that is shown (recent ones including Double Team with Jean Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman), and I rode out season five until it ended two nights ago.

**Spoiler time (I doubt anybody cares, but still), but I have to talk about it**

With about five minutes left in the episode, Bill, the protagonist whom the entire show is built around, gets killed by a disgruntled neighbor that did nothing important over the course of the series. Nine months later, we see that the family has remained intact and life goes on, and the show ends with a Dixie Chicks cover of the theme song. I have never been more astoundingly appalled by the ending of anything fictional in my life. The sole highlight of season five was a return cameo by Aaron Paul (Jesse of Breaking Bad), whose character was written off along with Amanda Seyfried after the third season. Only watch this show if you are intrigued by polygamy or are bed-ridden with mononucleosis and have watched everything else imaginable. You will tear out your hair over how bad it gets.

(#7-#1 are all high-quality)

7.Dexter: I know there are many out there who love this show and defend it passionately, but Dexter began to decline midway through season three, held on throughout season four due to a fantastic performance by John Lithegow as the Trinity killer and COMPLETELY fell off during season five with Julia Stiles playing serial killer sidekick throughout a comparatively weak story line. I loved the first two seasons and I think the acting is good overall, but the shows best days are long gone. The Batista-LaGuerta romance is awful, Quinn is a terrible character and Dexter's sister is just obnoxious. I think season six is currently airing, and I will watch it eventually but am certainly not missing it. I would recommend it to anyone, but would tell people to give up the moment they think the magic is gone, as it will only get weirder and cheesier.

6. Lost: I actually dropped Lost a spot down after writing about it and giving it more thought. I loved the first two seasons and most of the third, even amid some bad acting and bad characters. The show is suspenseful, innovative and becomes really intriguing as the plot thickens and layers. I remember blazing through season one with a roommate in college and immediately running over to Wal Mart to get season two, which is a strong indicator that the show is really good. Midway through season three, I felt like the show had still not really figured out what was going on, which was confirmed through a fourth season that introduced a slew of new characters and really did nothing to begin answering any of the mysteries established by seasons one through three. Then came season five, bringing a new wrinkle into the mix that literally enabled the writers to do anything and convoluting the plot to the point that it became more of an effort to follow than a show to watch and enjoy. I was so disappointed when time traveling became part of the narrative, as the mysteries of the first two seasons deserved far better treatment. It ended okay, and if the main purpose of TV is to entertain, Lost succeeds, but I still feel that the middle of the series was poor writing.

5. Boardwalk Empire: I have only seen the first season and will buy season two as soon as it comes out. This has been an amazing period piece so far with fantastic acting and is filmed in a really clever, intriguing manner. Steve Buscemi is perfectly casted as the unofficial head honcho of Prohibition-era Atlantic City and is surrounded by a great array of character actors that make for an entertaining hour of television. Having recently gone through season one, my only real complaint is a lack of real 'substance' that sets it apart. The show lacks a certain autonomy that makes better shows stand out. It's a really GOOD show, but I don't find much about it that is unique or different than many of its HBO predecessors; as much as I want to see more of Omar from The Wire, casting Michael K. Williams in a highly similar role is a bit disingenuous. But unless something I don't know about yet has surpassed it, Boardwalk is the best show that is currently halfway through a season; catch up and enjoy it.

3a. Mad Men: Dropped it a spot after really looking long and hard at what I replaced it with at #3. Mad Men is an incredible period drama that would be the only show on this list that I would recommend to anybody I know regardless of age, politics etc. Jon Hamm is simply flawless as the savvy Don Draper, the opening theme is the best of them all and the writing/directing makes an otherwise monotonous subject manner (at least compared to other top shows) seem fascinating. I would argue that of my top four, Mad Men has the largest collection of interesting characters and does the best job of balancing out story lines while maintaining direction. A character like Joan the secretary could easily become expendable (see Vito Spatafore: Sopranos) but the writing is balanced out and every single episode from season one to the present is compelling and leaving you wanting more. The ONLY negative is January Jones, the wife of the protagonist who simply cannot act to save her life. If you haven't seen it, put down what you are currently watching and rent/buy/Netflix/iPad Mad Men. I've talked myself back into it at #3.

3b. The Sopranos: I missed the bandwagon, growing up without HBO and went into the series knowing how it ended and knowing certain elements about the plot already and it still became my favorite show ever until I saw 1 and 2 on my list. Everything about the show is critically fantastic and it was the first of its kind to succeed with an antihero who is both charming and revolting at the same time. I may be off a bit on this, but it definitely was the first to thrive due to the freedom of airing on HBO; an edited episode of Sopranos simply isn't the same. It boasts the single best character in television history in Tony Soprano, a multi-faceted sociopath portrayed as a dad, mafia boss and susceptible patient in treatment for panic attacks whom you genuinely like. The only drawbacks to the series are a couple of cases of bad acting (mainly AJ Soprano) and a couple of unnecessary story lines (Ralph Cifaretto overall, Vito being outed as gay etc.), but any hate toward this show is ill-deserved. The ending is brilliant, and if you've seen the show and want to read more about it, read this. One of the only shows I would ever pay top dollar to own, and one of the best shows of all time.

2. Breaking Bad: I put it at #2 having not seen the fourth season and staying in the dark about what happens, but randomly discovering this show has been like striking oil in a field of television garbage. Shehrish was given it off of somebody's hard drive, and I went into it not knowing anything about it. I've since decided that it's the second best series I have ever seen with the best characters (debatable) and the most visually artistic/innovative style of any of the other shows (not debatable). I said that Tony Soprano was the best character ever, but Walter White of Breaking Bad is more compelling, as through three seasons he has gone from a cancer stricken family man to a ruthless drug lord who craves power and money. Unlike Tony, who constantly spills his guts to us as viewers through his psychiatrist, we can only deduce Walt's motivations through his actions. I said that Mad Men has the largest collection of good characters, but Breaking Bad has the best characters overall. The dynamic between Jesse and Walt is perfectly dichotomous and hysterical, Saul Goodman is the funniest sleazy character I have ever seen and Hank the DEA agent is incredible. Watch this show, it's the best thing currently going.

1. The Wire: I've been obsessed with this show ever since buying episode one on iTunes because I had just finished Sopranos and wanted more HBO. I was immediately hooked, but was able to watch it at the rate of one episode a night until toward the end of season one, when something absolutely crazy happens that pulls you in all the way. The Wire cult is a bit sanctimonious about its superiority, but I would argue that it deserves every bit of praise and more. The writing is hands down the best and riskiest of any show I have ever seen, and the way that different worlds of society (bureaucrats, police, drug dealers, gangsters, addicts) function under the same set of rules makes for fascinating TV. The acting is flawless, and in some cases, not really acting. The way that each season is a different narrative with different characters sets it apart. Season four largely leaves out the (arguable) protagonist of the entire series, and it is widely considered the best of the show (I say it's season 3, but whatever). I've seen it three times, read The Corner and am certainly biased, but I don't really think it can be passed by anything unless Breaking Bad turns up the quality and somehow passes it. I could write about The Wire and specific characters/scenes for hours, just watch it and thank me later.