In last season’s Mad Men finale, “Close the Door, Have a Seat,” Roger Sterling confided in Don how he’s never had to actually build something. He inherited his wealth, his position, his relationship with Lucky Strike that has made him so essential to Draper and co. In setting out and starting up Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce, he was giving himself, and those who came along, the first chance to create something new. To earn everything they have.
Wow, what an end to this episode. Terriers has been a rather good show that seemed to have came out of nowhere. The characters are solid and the story is usually pretty good. This week we are presented with not only the best episode of the series, but also one of the most meaningful and engrossing.
I thought last week’s season premiere, The Old Wagon, was great but my only real complaint was that I wished the family would have gotten together. The way all the actors play off each other makes this show one of the greatest. This week’s episode, The Kiss, granted my wish and was just as great of an episode.
Sunny returned to proper form in this week’s episode. Episodes where the characters are taken from the bar and put into different surroundings are always great.
After last week’s episode, I was hoping we could get some classic Always Sunny, but it quickly became apparent that it was not the case this week. I stated last week that these two episodes, Mac Fights Gay Marriage and Dennis Gets Divorced, are meant to be shown together and the two episodes on their own are just not up to typical Sunny quality. While it is possible that upon watching the two episodes together they could be great, as it stands this weeks episode is just as flawed and, at times, not funny.
Lock up your daughters and put the kids to bed, because Dexter is back on TV and if previous seasons are anything to go by, there will be plenty of body parts flying about. Last season ended with the death of Dexter’s wife, Rita and was perhaps the most poignant moment experienced by television audiences that year. My Bad portrays the aftermath of Rita’s murder and Dexter’s struggle to come to terms with his feelings or more specifically, whether he has any at all.
Modern Family is back and in the premiere episode, The Old Wagon, they quickly abate any fears that the second season would suffer from any diminished quality, which is rather common in Television. The show was the biggest new hit last season and if this week’s episode was any indication we are in for another great season.
Terriers has been a very enjoyable and fresh feeling show over the past couple of weeks and while this week’s episode may not be as good as the past two it is still an entertaining and engaging hour of television. The characters have been established and so has the world.
It’s hard to imagine a shower coming in with higher expectations than HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. You’ve got a legendary, Oscar-winning director behind the camera (Martin Scorsese), a creative team featuring many of the people behind the network’s first major television hit, The Sopranos (Terence Winter, Tim Van Patten), and, perhaps most shockingly, an all-time high television budget, allegedly $50 million on the pilot alone. While much of that money must have gone to the talent making the show, most of it can be seen in the set, a recreation of Atlantic City in 1920, made from a combination of physical sets and CGI.
With its depiction of a male-dominated world and characters who toss around sexist remarks without hesitation, it’s often been difficult to separate the views towards women of Mad Men the TV show from those of the characters who populate it. It’s difficult to call a show that features main characters like Don Draper and Roger Sterling as an example of feminist art, but the show’s writers have gone out of their way to show the hardships endured by women during this era (mostly in the form of Peggy), while still making sure the woman on the show are fully rounded characters, and not just symbols of their sex.
