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Doux News: October 6, 2013

This Week: We’re Still Breaking Bad – Breaking Lost –Random Recommendation –This Week in Casts – Yippee – This Week in Casts – Bowie Books – Amazon TV – This Week in Cats


We’re Still Breaking Bad

Although Breaking Bad ended last Sunday with a victorious celebration of family, puppies, and rainbows, the internet refuses to let go. Here’s a round-up of some highlights:

• Sunbunny recommends Stephen Colbert’s chat with creator Vince Gilligan, available here.

• Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul discuss the real end—and the alternate endings—here.

• Columbia (the country, not the movie studio) will remake Breaking Bad as Metastasis for Spanish-language audiences; the show will air in the US on Univision. Names will be changed, so Skyler White is now Cielo Blanco, which is fabuloso.

• The Albuquerque Journal ran a paid obituary for Walter White at the behest of a local science teacher.


Breaking Lost

Damon Lindelof can’t catch a break. After the Breaking Bad finale, Twitterati took to their smartphones and couldn’t stop tweeting about how the Breaking Bad finale was so much better than the Lost finale. Since the two shows had wildly different storytelling techniques, I think that comparison is downright silly, and I wish I were Queen of the World so that I could put a stop to such nonsense.

But Lindelof seems to be okay with it, penning a thoughtful and funny column in the Hollywood Reporter on how he feels about the finales of both shows: “All story is reflective, designed to illuminate its own characters and the themes surrounding them. When a show is as brilliant as Breaking Bad, it's not just about the people we're watching, it's about those watching them. About us. In other words, the better the show, the deeper it forces you to look at yourself.” And now--thanks to Breaking Bad--Lindelof has looked inside of himself and found acceptance.


Random Recommendation

Speaking of Lost: the new TV review site Tonight’s Watch (disclaimer: I know one of the site owners, who comments on Doux Reviews, too) has a great article comparing Lost to the Hulu original series The Booth at the End. That show—which reader Henrik recommended in the comments to one of ChrisB’s New Shows columns—is a subtle, low-budget meditation on fate, free will, and the transformative power of pie, and I strongly recommend that you all check it out.


This Week in Casts

• Alicia Witt will join La Familia Crowe on the upcoming season of Justified.

• Kim Raver will return to the bizarre, traffic-free world of 24 for the upcoming reboot 24: Live Another Day.

• Nathan Fillion will guest star on Community. Hey, wait—that deserves its own section:


Yippee

Nathan Fillion will guest star on Community!


We now resume our regularly scheduled casting news…


This Week in Casts

• After his departure from Pawnee, Parks and Rec star Rob Lowe will star in a comedy about tennis called The Pro.

• RJ Mitte will have a recurring role in Switched at Birth’s third season.


Bowie Books

The Art Gallery of Ontario is hosting a David Bowie exhibit that includes many of the musician’s belongings, and they’ve included a list of Bowie’s favorite books. The list is available here, and includes quite a few excellent choices.

Now that I write up that news item, I realize it has absolutely nothing to do with television or anything else we cover. But it’s still a cool link, right?


Amazon TV

Amazon.com is continuing its foray into producing original streaming content a la Netflix. The book-selling juggernaut has given the greenlight to three new dramas, including one from Jill Soloway, who worked on the excellent Six Feet Under. Those three new shows are in addition to the Titus Welliver vehicle Bosch that I mentioned last week.


This Week in Cats




9 comments:

  1. Now, that's a reason to stick with Community!

    I loved the list of Bowie's books. What eclectic taste the man has.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What Chris said. I'm a Bowie fan. "Ziggy Stardust" is my favorite album ever, and the lyrics to his songs are amazing. That list of books is also amazing.

    Poor Damon Lindelof. I have wondered more than once (and of course, written about) what he could have done to satisfy the Lost fans, but I doubt that anything would have satisfied nearly everyone, like the Breaking Bad finale did.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I feel bad for Damon Lindelof, too. Because, even though the "internet" seems to have decided that the Lost finale was a failure, I don't think that's an accurate reflection of how audiences responded to it. Many people were unsatisfied, but just as many were satisfied. It felt like a 50-50 split to me. Unlike Breaking Bad, in which it was more like 85-15.

    But for some reason, in the interceding years, the loudly unhappy Lost fans have managed to create this impression that it was generally accepted as a big, old flop. It wasn't. I know many people that loved it and found it emotionally resonant and satisfying, including myself. And at the time, I remember reading many, many critical analyses that thought it worked just fine or better than fine. And I was happy to see that the initial wave of comments on Lindelof's piece were people letting him know that they had liked the Lost finale, and were glad he was making peace with the portion of the audience that didn't. (I looked at it right after it was published, so I don't know if the comments became a heaping pile of "You suck!" in the later days.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Here's some news for fans of The Middleman. The "Crowd Funded Franchise Resurrection" debuted this past week ---

    http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-middleman-the-crowd-funded-franchise-resurrection

    --- a project to "Help make the first new Middleman comic in seven years, create large-format editions of our previous books, and bring the TV cast back for a special reunion!" and to give "The Middleman a new home - a print-on-demand webstore where you will be able acquire both our legacy books and the new adventure, at fair prices, with new covers - in a never-before-seen large format!"

    The effort has already met its initial goal and is now going for its STRETCH goal. I know several of you out there are fans of the franchise, so I wanted to make sure to get the word out, if you hadn't heard already.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hey, thanks for the mention! But, to be absolutely fair, I only recommended TBATE because someone else recommended it in an earlier comment somewhere on this site. I couldn't, and still can't, remember who it was but it was after a specific question concerning "What to watch" (wherein I DID recommend The Bridge, The Fall and other shows).

    ReplyDelete
  6. I am pretty sure I know who recommended The Booth at the End in the comment section, haha. Check the To'hajiilee review for your answer.

    I had been following Lindelof's twitter and watching him re-tweet all of the negative comments being sent his way and it made me pretty sad. I'm glad he's decided to stop defending it though, it was ultimately his work and he shouldn't have to apologize if they didn't like his envisioned ending.

    Maybe you should send Lindelof your "This Week in Cats" section to cheer him up after what I assume was a pretty tough week for him.

    Thanks for sharing the article, by the way.

    ReplyDelete

  7. That's hilarious.

    Henrik, Daniel recommended TBatE to me in the comments to To'hajilee. I assumed that when you mentioned in ChrisB's New Shows column you meant you'd gotten a recommendation from some other site. Daniel is the writer of the article I link to that compares Lost to TBatE.

    Daniel, I'd guess Lindelof was a dog person, given how Lost ended.

    ReplyDelete
  8. You're probably right, but I am a dog person and cats doing cute things still brighten up my day. I just don't want to own one of my own (or have one own me as Sam T. Cat seems to suggest).

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  9. I might actually watch an episode of Community for the first time ever... :p

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