If you flashback to the early 00’s, there was still a sense of excitement and anticipation at the announcement of Ridley Scott working on a new project. This was a visionary director who’s expansive, ambitious and heart capturing visual eye had given the world of cinema such wonders as Alien and Blade Runner, masterpieces of …
Fiction always has a habit of overlapping, whether intentionally or not, since storytelling is built on only a few choice templates. Your plot can include three headed aliens in an intergalactic pissing contest with ghost humans, or simply be a gritty fable about the perils of alcoholism and social stigma, it doesn’t matter. The plot …
The Following, Season 1, Episode 15: “The Final Chapter” Written by Kevin Williamson Directed by Marcos Siega Aired Mondays at 9pm (ET) on FOX As just an episode, “The Final Chapter” of The Following is a slight step up from the past many (inevitably, since everything set up in the pilot has been saved for this entry); …
There is no denying the role other animals have played in fueling our species’ dubious ascent to world mastery. We have eaten them, competed with them, ridden them, made deals with them and yoked them to the plow. It is, to put it mildly, a tragic record of unchecked instrumentalization – and of course, with the advent of factory farming, it’s only getting worse.
Still, we can’t really blame The Following for at least being what it is. It’s been a long road with many melodramatic detours to even get to this point. So, when we get an episode that deals with the show’s actual preoccupations—the cult itself and Ryan and Joe’s past/present/history—we have to be thankful. It’s not good, but it’s not like last week’s actively bad, and no character comes off like a complete dunce for the sake of tension in the episode (well, except Parker, but they’ve been dumbing her down for a while now).
So far, there are three major types of episodes in The Following: the big conflict episodes where the main characters face off, the psycho-of-the-week episodes to fill FOX’s “x-treme” body count quota, and the table setting episodes for those previous two types—by far the worst of them all.
One of the unexpected comedic hits of the Fall 2011 tv session was the Fox sitcom New Girl. Originally advertised as a star vehicle for up-and-coming actress Zooey Deschanel, the show, created by No Strings Attached scribe Elizabeth Meriwether, quickly found a voice as an ensemble comedy, with co-stars Jake M. Johnson, Max Greenfield, and …
One of the breakout stars of NBC’s long-running sitcom The Office was Mindy Kaling, whose Kelly Kapoor had been a mainstay at Dunder-Mifflin since the show’s inception. Following the publication of a hit nonfiction book, Kaling received a development deal for her own sitcom at Fox, which made its debut in the fall of 2012 …
The Following, Season 1, Episode 7: “Let Me Go” Written by Seamus Kevin Fahey Directed by Nick Gomez Aired Mondays at 9pm (ET) on FOX So, let’s get this straight. Joe broke out of prison in the pilot episode, but then committed another murder to mess with Ryan and get caught again (which always did …
The Following, Season 1, Episode 4: “Mad Love” Written by Andrew Wilder and Kevin Williamson Directed by Harry Bronchtein Aired Mondays at 9pm (ET) on FOX In the best episode so far, The Following finally serves us some fun this week. It’s hard to tell how, maybe because the dreary, serial killer love triangle story-line …
One of the staples of American network television is the procedural. Despite the increasing prevalence of serialized storytelling, procedurals (standalone, case-of-the-week series) remain the networks’ main source of original dramatic programming, and of these, nearly all fit into at least one of three categories- police, medical, and legal. Series from each of these subsets date …
We’re waist-deep in TV’s “Premiere Season”, and several new shows are vying for our viewership and a coveted top spot in the ratings. Below I’ve chronicled my take on the new shows I’ve had an opportunity to watch. Read, enjoy and when you’re done let me know your thoughts on the latest offerings to spill …
At long last, the cult series Millenium may be paying a visit to the big screen. The show was one of the darkest series in both subject matter and texture to ever grace television screens. It was very stylized, with a neo-gothic colour palette. Key to the series was Lance Henriksen, who starred as Frank …
“Arrested Development creator Mitchell Hurwitz and his co-executive producer James Vallely are working on a screenplay for the long-debated feature version of their short-lived Fox series…Hurwitz would also direct the Fox Searchlight feature.” The groundbreaking series launched the career of future Juno star Michael Cera (a newcomer at that point) as well as making a …