Unlikely Words

Icon

A blog with delusions of grandeur

It will shock you how much it never happened.

This never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened.


So Mad Men is pretty great, and this was my favorite quote from last week's episode. I wanted to memorialize it on my corner of the web for Googlesterity (Google + Posterity = Googlesterity, get it?). I read somewhere about how Aaron Sorkin probably watches Mad Men every week and kicks himself. The best thing about Mad Men is that AT LEAST once an episode I'm blown away by a scene. Just like when West Wing was excellent.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

World War Z is the best book I've read in about forever. A fictional history of an event that happens in the future, WWZ touches on what I usually find missing in apocalyptic stories (and what I liked so much about Jericho): the breakdown of the state. Creative and clever, there are so many subtle references to events that could be further fleshed out in future stories.

Mad Men Season 1

We are behind the early adopters on Mad Men, (still ahead of the tidal wave, though), but I'm glad we got to it before the start of season 2. I hear myself describe Mad Men to others (about guys at an advertising agency on Madison Avenue in 1960) and imagine the pitch for this show must have been something else to get green-lighted. Highly stylized, detailed, and fascinating.

Deadwood Season 1

Wow! The dialogue was my favorite part, and not for all the salty cussiness. It's as well written, and has its own distinct rhythm/music/sound, as West Wing, if not, (gasp) better.

The Wire Season 5

I can't review The Wire Season 5 without spoiling it for those who haven't seen it, but I'll do my best. There's a scene towards the end of the last episode where a character has a monologue pretty much summing up the entire 5 season run of The Wire and I was thinking, "This is what the show has always been about," and then something unexpected happens summing up the series EVEN BETTER. I don't know what else to say except that I wish there was going to be The Wire Season 6.

Friday Night Lights Season 2

Although Friday Night Lights Season 2 unabashedly started with a transparent audience grab in the first couple episodes, the season calmed down to deliver enough of what I like about it to keep me loyal and hoping for a satelite savior. In Season 2, football became less of a focus as the series continued it's "issues based" writing: one week it's teen sex/pregnancy, one week it's race, one week it's stealing from a meth dealer, even the mortgage crisis impacted Riggins this year. I'm hoping for a couple more seasons, if only to see how the creators deal with the problem facing every high school drama - graduation - though, admittedly, keeping a high school football player back a year, and in the series another season, isn't even that big of a stretch.

Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

This is a classic that had been sitting on my shelf for years. It's a great story -- aristocrats of the future use advanced technology to rule a distant human colony as the gods of the Hindu pantheon -- and it's extremely thoughtful and well-written. On top of that, it's basically a story of increasingly bad-ass people doing increasingly bad-ass things: totally awesome.

The Wire Season 3

Wow, politics, too? Now it's starting to get interesting. Like I said, watching all the seasons in such a quick succession causes them to all blend together into one long Kabuke opera.

The Wire Season 2

I liked how this season focused on another subject along with the drug/street situation. Also, the characters were better developed and created a greater sense of empathy. We took a bit longer with this season than Season 1, which I think was a healthy idea.

The Wire Season 1

I watched 10 of the 12 episodes of this season in one day. Because of that, I think of first season of The Wire more as a long ass movie than a TV show. I was a little underwhelmed, but that's to be expected when everyone I know has been calling The Wire "THEBESTSHOWONTELEVISIONOMGYOUHAVETOWATCHITNOW!"

Welcome!

Thanks for visiting Unlikely Words. If you liked what you read:
Subscribe to RSS, check out our About Page, read some of our favorite posts, or follow us on Twitter or on Facebook, or on Tumblr.

Subscribe by email

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Archives