The Emmy's Nailed It

It's very unusual that anything in Hollywood happens with few critiques. This year's Emmy awards did just that, keeping the viewers entertained and successfully avoiding any dragging moments in the entire broadcast. The night went without controversy and celebrated television in a way that only focused on the beauty of television itself. Andy Samberg came out strong in his first experience as host, keeping everything moving quickly in a light and fun way, setting the tone for the entire night. The award show was filled with beautiful moments, along with speeches that didn't make you fall asleep during those two minutes. Game of Thrones took home a record number of awards, to everyone's delight and no one's surprise. And this year we finally got to see Jon Hamm receive an Emmy for his performance in Mad Men, after 7 years of nominations. It was a touching moment that even the actor couldn't wrap his head around, saying over an over "This must be a mistake." Now if only Leonardo DiCaprio can finally get his Oscar....

The night held a few more touching moments, including ones from Viola Davis and Tracy Morgan. Davis, who won best lead actress in a drama, accepted her award with a speech that moved everyone in attendance. She spoke fiercely about how colored women are only as successful as their opportunities, and those opportunities being the only thing that separate them from anyone else. Samberg followed by saying "Hollywood fixed racism! Don't fact check that." Towards the end of the night we witnessed a touching moment as Tracy Morgan returned the stage for the first time after his car accident. He addressed his past year with both tears and laughter, warming the hearts of everyone.

The night's only major fault was their decision to tribute the shows that just ended by showing clips of their finale. Hello, major spoiler! Don't they know no one watches anything live anymore? While the intent was good, it was a bit unnecessary and the Twitter world was not happy about it.

Yet, overall, this year's Emmy show truly killed it. It was entertaining, funny, heartfelt, and never felt like it was dragging. The stage was futuristic and beautiful, and the host was a perfect choice. Great job, Emmys, you nailed it.

Mad Men

Mad Men is a AMC show created by Mathew Weiner back in 2007. Since its air back in 07, the show has been very popular, winning countless awards including 4 Golden Globes and 15 Emmy's. My Personal view on the show corresponds with the general public; I love it.

The show takes place in New York City and takes its views into a 1960's advertisement agency called "Sterling Cooper" which is a fictional company designed for the show. 

 The show follows many characters through countless different conflicts but its main character Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm  is in my opinion the most interesting. He is in the first season a business man working for the agency, but quickly gets promoted to partner by the end of the first season. His character is a very intelligent and unorthodox salesmen that does not like loosing.

Don Draper also is victim to treating women poorly like many men of this time period did. Women's rights were more limited at this point in time and it is strongly reflected in the show. the Women characters are all viewed as inferior to the men of the show. We get a direct view of the differences in the Draper household. Don's wife Betty,  played by January Jones, doesn't have any power unless she consults with Don first. If she does something with out asking him first then he often gets mad. The other female characters in the show are also viewed as a lesser to men.

While the women in Mad Men don't have much power in the show, their character often have the largest impact on the viewers. In my opinion the women in the show are extremely powerful because, as young adult, I have never known a world where women weren't equal to men (or at least considered to be). Women in our time period have all the same rights and also occupy many of the same jobs as men which would been outrageous to think of back in the 1960's.

Mad Men in my opinion is one of the best shows currently on TV. It is a very unique story isn't over-dramatic. I find it to be the perfect mix between a soap opera and a drama. If you don't watch Mad Men, I highly recommend you start. 

Cheaper is better

Many people think that to make a great movie or tv show you need millions of dollars. I disagree with this whole heartedly. Some of the best movies and shows were created because a bunch of friends had a camera and thought filming something sounded like fun. If we first look at tv there are many examples of this. One of my favorite shows, Trailer Park Boys, is a very cheaply produced shows that is one of the most popular comedies in Canada. Even after a couple year hiatus the following is still great enough to make 3 more seasons and 2 more movies. 

This is a stark contrast to a tv show like Mad Men. Mad Men had an astronomic budget in comparison and many well known actors. I find this show to be boring and slow developing. For a show that spends so much money on production they don't produce an exciting or very original story or product. The over arching story is pretty stagnant and characters not so dynamic.
 

Next is movies. A cult classic that almost everyone has heard about, Clerks, was filmed by a very small crew with a roll of cheap B&W film. It still wildly popular and beloved by many people. This shows perfectly that you don't need money to make something great.




Enders Game had a budget of 115 million bust was ultimately a flop. This movie was an adaptation from the popular book with the same title and didn't find much success. They lost millions of dollars and many fans of the book were very disappointed.

Shows To Watch Over the Duration of What Will Hopefully Be a Rather Long Lifetime

Over the years, a great many people have asked, "Ryan, what television shows are worth watching?" (Editor's Note: Only one person has ever actually asked him this.) I have spent much of my own time pondering what one's time would be put to best use, in terms of television gazing. 

And so with nothing else to do, (Editor's Note: He wrote this about an hour before a final he had not studied for at all up until that point. And he spent half an hour writing this.) I wrote up a guide to shows that deserved to be watched. Hope it is of some use to someone someday:

Essentials

- The Sopranos (My pick for the best TV show of all time.  It’s about a mob boss in New Jersey named Tony Soprano who is stricken with panic attacks. He goes to therapy to try and solve them. Through both his therapy sessions and his life, we see him struggle with sin, lust, greed, anger. Basically everything that makes us human. And it’s about whether he can overcome those things, or if he’ll be crushed by them. If Freud, Shakespeare, and Martin Scorsese all made a show together, it’d be this. There’s much more to it than that (He’s not the only character), but all this is what that’s what makes the show interesting to me.)

- The Wire (The general consensus pick for the greatest show of all time. Slow, but so worth it. It’s a very smart dissection of the drug war on a Dickensian scale, analyzing every single possible angle of “The Game”.  If you want to understand that’s wrong with the drug war, this is where to find out.)

- Deadwood (The other pick that sometimes people make for the greatest television show of all time. Of the top 3, it is probably the most optimistic, but that is not saying much. Takes place in a gold mining town in South Dakota during 1877. All about how societies slowly grows. Think Shakespeare if Shakespeare used the word cocksucker every thirty seconds. )

- Mad Men (It is The Great Gatsby on television. All about people and their attempts to acquire happiness, or what they believe is happiness, during a very iconic era of this country. Riveting stuff.)

- Breaking Bad (Favorite show of the last five years. What does it take to break a good man?)

- The Simpsons (Trust me, early Simpsons changed the game. They’re brilliant. For the 90’s, greatestAmerican satire there was. I mean, they’ve invented words that are now in Webster’s Dictionary. That’s how good it is! THEY MADE UP WORDS.)

Not Quite in Top 6 But Might As Well Still Be Essential

- The Shield (Ifyou combined The Wire and Breaking bad. Plus, best series finale to a showever. Taking place in a drug ravaged area of L.A. called Farmington, it’s all about this small squad of cops that is allowed to deal with drug dealers by anymeans necessary. Sometimes they do the right thing. Other times, they don’t. But then, what price are you willing to pay for your safety?)

- Arrested Development (If you haven’t seen this, I’ll be disappointed.)

- Battlestar Galactica (The newer one. I haven’t actually seen it yet, but the general acclaim surrounding this inclines me to say to watch this one.)

- Game of Thrones (Lord of the Rings with more blood, sex, and modern themes of power and politics. And lots of incest.)

- Louie (Modern day Woody Allen basically. Funny but introspective. I love this show to death, and one episodein particular had a massive impact on me emotionally… I am a dork.)

Some Random Great Shows That Are Not Necessarily Essential

- Justified (This show is so good that even when it is slow it is still better than 90% of what’s on tv. But I don’t want to say essential because it’s still on and they could mess it up. I doubt they will at this point though.)

- Terriers (Little known, it only ran a season, but holy shit was it great. Think a modern noir films about two shaggy private eyes working for scraps in southern California. Most fun you’ll have all year. Please watch this show, it deserves to be known!)

- Veronica Mars (Film noir that takes place in high school. Witty and dark, it is a compelling private eye shows. BUT WATCH TERRIERS FIRST.)

- Firefly (I’ll just use what Joss Whedon said. “It’s about nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things.”)

- Comedy Bang Bang (You can knock this show out in a day. Parody of late night talk shows, really absurd humor. May not be up your alley, but I love it.)

- Cheers (Not as crazy or manic as current sitcoms and more character based, but great stuff in here if you can get into it.)

Great But Flawed Shows Worth Watching

- Buffy/Angel (Great, great character work. Amazing dialogue. And some wickedly inventive plotting. That said, when it's bad, it's really bad. Which is unfortunately something that happens more often then I'd like to admit. Especially in the beginning, Buffy's rough to get through. I would just skip season one entirely, but many would disagree. Ultimately, it's your call. I haven't seen Angel, but understand that it is of equal merit.)

- Lost (People either love or hate this show. Watch it to enjoy the stellar character work, but do not expect a perfect resolution to all your questions.)

- Friday Night Lights (Another series I have not actually seen but I understand is very good, the only reason I put it on flawed is that a certain subplot in season 2 is still, to this day, routinely mocked by the TV watching populace at large.)

- West Wing (Great in the early seasons, but the seasons not penned by Aaron Sorkin are apparently lacking.)

- Scrubs

- Boardwalk Empire

- Homeland

- Malcolm in the Middle

- 24

The Doorway

This Sunday season 6 of TV's brilliantly mod drama Mad Men premiered.  I'm a bit of a fan.  If by "bit of a fan" includes owning 3 seasons on DVD and dressing up as Don Draper for halloween.  I think AMC's 4 time Emmy winner is the smartest, sleekest, and best TV show ever.  Taking place in the 1960's Mad Men follows the advertising world of New York City's Madison Ave.

The show's creator Matthew Weiner didn't just suddenly appear with a hit drama, he served as producer and writer on the HBO hit The Sopranos for 2 years prior to taking his talents to AMC in 1960.  The stories are elegantly told, with brilliant cinematography and a cast of characters that really make you wonder who is a good guy and who is bad.

One of the things I love about this show is it's historical accuracy and it's depiction of a totally different world than we live in today.  Other shows attempting to set their drama in the 60's era (The Playboy Club and Pan Am) seemed to use minor details to convince audiences of the world around them such as hair, clothes and cars.  Mad Men gives the look and the feel that you have literally time traveled for an hour and stepped into the world of social change and cultural phenomenas.   One of my favorite scenes from season 1 that really shows you how the world has changed is during a birthday party for one of Don's children.  A child who is attending the party is running around the house playing and accidentally knocks over a drink.  A man who is not the child's father immediately slaps the boy across the face as punishment. The real father of the boy then comes over and asks the child to apologize to the man who slapped him.  He then scolds him and tells him to run along and says "and tell your mother to come clean this up."

The show brings up very topical issues but puts them in a completely different context and shows the struggle with these issues from a different decade.  It deals with African-American rights and equality in the workplace.  Women's rights and a woman's struggle to enter into a career path.  It discusses divorce, homosexuality, single parenting, and adultery.  But it shows these topics how the 1960's handled them. I really feel like it's a history lesson every week when I watch.

The characters are what really keep the show going, and all actors give equally compelling performances.  Overall between the 6 acting categories at the Emmy's the cast of Mad Men has earned 25 acting nominations yet has not won a single one.  Jon Hamm and John Slattery are always nominated, as well as continuous nominations for Christina Hendricks and Elizabeth Moss.  Although the show it's self has won Best Drama Series 4 years in a row (Only to be beaten my Homeland just his year) It's actors have not gotten the full recognition they deserve.

I will continue to watch Mad Men and hope to show my children this utterly phenomenal show because I think I've learned more about the 60's watching an episode of this show, than I ever did in my high school US History class.

Best show on television

Hands down, the best show on television at lest in my view, is AMC's Mad Men. it really isn't even close. Before we get to Mad Men, it's pretty incredible what AMC has managed to do over the last five years in terms of picking up and airing critically acclaimed shows. Whether it's the walking dead, breaking bad, or mad men, the quality of AMC's shows are on par with those of HBO, Showtime, and the major networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC. Moving onto Mad Men though, what an amazing show. For those of you who haven't had the good fortune of seeing it yet, the show, which will be entering its fifth season in March, follows the lives of advertising executives in New York City in the 1960's.The show is witty, dark, mysterious, and the most well put together show on television. I began watching the show with father and he said it was like a time machine back to the 1960's. The show has won outstanding drama series at the Emmy awards the last four years, no small feat by any measure. The show is available from start to finish on netflix, but I must warn you, once you start, it is nearly impossible to stop. Enjoy, an get hooked, just like I did.
Here is the promo for season season one.