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Hippie ninja! lol lol
Half Round might just learn to finish things but likely not.
lol
Half Round > Short Round
Hippie ninja! lol lol
Half Round might just learn to finish things but likely not.
lol
Half Round > Short Round
UFC Fight Night: Mendes vs. Lamas. Some nice fights today.
It came on at 10am here in HoosierLand ending at 4pm.
"The Blacklist."
I have to admit, I'm slightly disappointed in this season. I like the first season a lot better. It seemed tighter, more focused than this season.
I'm waiting for it to drop into Netflix. I really enjoyed the first season, so am disappointed to read your comment. It is one of the few network shows that seemed to be approaching cable TV shows like "Homeland," "True Detective" and "Orange is the New Black" in quality. Spader was (hopefully still is) absolutely killing it as "Red."
Spader is still killing it as Red, so no worries there. However, I feel as though the show has lost its focus as far as a main focal point. The first season focused on Berlin and the organization around him. The second half of the second season (to save you spoilers) loses the focus of that and I think it suffers because of it. It's still good, don't get me wrong, but not as tightly plotted. (But I'm a writer, so I tend to judge a bit more harshly).
I've noticed with the better quality shows, "Boardwalk Empire," "Homeland," and "Downton Abbey," as examples, that they tend to have strong first seasons - as I think the original writers created a very thoughtful story arc for a season - then there is a lull in the second season as if someone said, "what, we were picked up for another season, oh, guess we have to throw a story line together," but then as the series goes on, the quality picks back up as they start planing things out for multiple seasons.
Having no inside-baseball knowledge of how TV really works, that's just my idiot viewer's sense of what happens.
Glad that Spader's still doing great - what a career revival.
I agree with you. "Downton Abbey" definitely had ups and downs with its seasons - I liked the first two, but the third gutted me (Sybil AND Matthew both dying did me in); I was pleasantly surprised at how well done the fifth season was, though I really got tired of the Anna/Bates storyline.
Throwing, potentially, a lifetime of ideas at a first season makes some sense. There's no way to know if it will be successful or if it will get picked up for another season, and they aren't one and the same. Some quality shows, with loyal fanbases, don't get picked up for second seasons. Writers and showrunners have to balance a tightrope between tossing everything they got at a first season and being prepared for a longer running series. It's yet another reason to marvel at the likes of Mad Men.
It is somewhat similar to musicians and their first album vs their second album. They have a lifetime to develop that first album. They've edited that material a thousand times. Every dream has been honed to a precision edge. They become successful, and then the record company wants another album in nine months. If they lived in a vacuum where fame, temptations, a new life, and the plethora of other distractions didn't come into play, they would still only have a short period to try to repeat something that took years to manifest. It's really what separates the artists from the players, and it is clear there aren't all that many artists.
All very good points.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Spader is the only reason I'm still watching The Blacklist. In my opinion the show is a bit better than most, but without him it would have been just another run-of-the-mill police procedural that probably wouldn't have earned a second season....Spader was (hopefully still is) absolutely killing it as "Red."
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Spader is the only reason I'm still watching The Blacklist. In my opinion the show is a bit better than most, but without him it would have been just another run-of-the-mill police procedural that probably wouldn't have earned a second season.