Line-Up

August is drawing to a close with September being literally only a day away so it’s just about time to set our attention on the 2014 fall television line-up. I did this last year as well, looking at shows such as Chicago P.D., Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Intelligence. Some I liked, some I didn’t like and some I thought would be hits and some I thought wouldn’t last. Read that article and decide for yourself how on target I was with my assessments but I think I was on the button for most of my analysis.

For some, like Betrayal, I was disappointed that my predictions came to pass, but that is just the nature of television. Heck, Us and Them didn’t even make it on air. On paper, there might be obvious flaws but in the watching the show takes on endearing qualities. But they don’t fix the faults, so ultimately the show runs it course. No doubt some of the shows on this list will meet that same fate.  Unfortunately, there is also not enough space here to cover all of the shows available, much like how The 100 was absent from last years list. If I miss any amazing shows, please let me know. I’m always on the look out for good television shows to watch.

Anyway, that’s enough of an introduction. Here’s what is coming up this fall:

A to Z

The premise sounds cringe worthy. An online dating company details the A to Z’s of romance. Sounds like a show with a gimmick which will quickly wear thin and awkwardly titled episodes as they try to shove the letters Q and Z in an arbitrary attempt at a full check-list.  What might save it is the cast, which includes Ben Feldman, incase you’re dying to see him again since he was carted off to the loony bin in Mad Men, and Cristin Milioti, the mother from How Your Mother Played Second Fiddle to Robin (regionally known as How I Met Your Mother). It’s also narrated by Katey Sagal. Might be worth a look for the cast but it probably won’t be sticking around.

Who wore it better, Amy Pond or Nebula?

Selfie

The great thing about Selfie, aside from giving Karen Gillan a job between Doctor Who  and Guardians of the Galaxy, is that the first episode was already released on twitter. Audiences can already watch and make up their minds about the show before the season starts. Bold move. For me, it got a few laughs here and there but it’s not hilarious and I think the character would fall flat without Gillan behind the role, really throwing herself into the portrayal. It’s also good to see John Cho as well, but it already feels like know where this show is headed. Maybe it’ll prove me wrong and for the meantime, I’ll probably keep watching but I don’t see it being another breakout hit like Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

Black-ish

I like Anthony Anderson but he has not had a lot of luck with television since leaving Law & Order in 2010. Guys With Kids was charming but it didn’t last so I’m hoping, for Anthony’s sake, that this one sticks. With Lawrence Fishburne in a recurring role, it’s got that little bit of extra star power to bring in viewers but if it wants those viewers to stick around for more than one episode it’s got to be funny. Dealing with cultural identities within a modern black family has real potential to be poiyant as well as humorous. Whether it matches that potential remains to be seen.

Constantine

If you’re looking for something as dark and morally ambiguous as the comic book, you’d probably be best served to look elsewhere. This John Constantine, played by Matt Ryan, is much more likely to be a rogue with a heart of gold, probably having the abilities of a con-man but eventually using them for good. I don’t really trust David S. Goyer to write anything so complex given his scripts for Batman and Superman in the past. Daniel Cerone, having served as showrunner for Dexter, might be able to bring Constantine to life on the small screen but this is airing on NBC not Showtime. Adjust your expectations appropriately.

Gracepoint trades Sophie Chapman for Skyler White.

Gracepoint

Incase you didn’t know, this is the American remake of the British show, Broadchurch. That fact doesn’t make it any better or worse, and it doesn’t even mean that British fans will know what to expect because American remakes have a habit of changing things. What will set this apart from crappy remakes is that it’s written by Chris Chibnall who also wrote the original Broadchurch. If that’s not enough enough for you, the cast includes recent Emmy winner, Anna Gunn, and another import from the original series, David Tennant.

Marry Me

When I read the premise for this show I thought it was about the difficulties of an engaged couple, which sounded a little too simplistic and broad. After some research, it turns out that the show is about a couple trying to get engaged following some botched proposals. This feels like Betrayed or Mixology from last season. There’s an inevitable outcome to the show, the main couple are going to get married, and there’s really only so long that they hold out on that. If it’s your cup of tea, great, but beware the expiry date.

How to Get Away With Murder

In what appears to be the strangest idea for a television show, a law professor teaches her students how to get away with murder and then someone on campus is killed. So long as each episode isn’t punctuated with a lesson by their professor then this could be a gripping thriller. I’m already intrigued because I don’t know where they’re going with the premise but there is no point to a good hook if the writing that follows isn’t as equally strong.

Agent Carter could be the show to restore our faith in Marvel TV shows.

Agent Carter

This won’t air until the midseason, along with shows such as IZombie and Empire but it is worth mentioning because last year ABC had Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and that turned out to be far less entertaining than many, myself included, hoped. So why should we care about Peggy Carter? Well, firstly I think not having a direct tie to the main cinematic universe will actually allow the series to grow and flourish in its own way. Furthermore, although not directly involved, the creation of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the past will create a nice parallel to the rebuilding of S.H.I.E.L.D. as it happens in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. this season.

Alright, so I know I missed some other shows that are coming out this season such as The Flash, Stalker, Madam Secretary, Red Band Society, Scorpion, The Mysteries of Laura and Katherine Heigl’s return to television in State of Affairs. The above is far from a comprehensive list and mostly contains shows that stuck out to me as weird, wonderful or just plain bad. Still, I feel like I’m forgetting something again. I remembered Agent Carter. What could it be?

Revelations

Tonight is the beginning of the end. It seems to have taken an age to get here, but finally part B of Breaking Bad’s fifth season has arrived. While I am so ready to see what Vince Gilligan has in store for the final eight episodes, I am so not ready for it to end. Understandably, Gilligan wants to end the show before it becomes irrelevant and the story of Walter White is tarnished. It is better for the show to end now and allow the character to pass into the realm of TV legends. But the show has been incredible over the past four and a half seasons and I am not quite ready to see it go.

One reason why the story of Walter White has been engaging and continues to draw drones of fans back year after year is because of the character’s transformation. Rarely in television do the viewers get to experience the development of a character as they challenge their own morality and legacy. Plenty of characters change over time but it generally more subtle and less overarching. Spike, a vampire in Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, slowly became a force of good rather than evil as that series progressed, but he still loved fighting, especially for a passionate cause. The only real distinction that can be made is that he once fought for lust (Drusilla), but eventually fought for love (Buffy).

Jesse with a gun – but who is on the other end?

Walter White takes the literary concept of character development to an entirely different level. It is difficult to believe sometimes that the same meek, bungling science teacher who had to moonlight as a car wash attendee is the man who became the manipulative, murderous emperor of meth. And really they aren’t the same character. It was a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde arrangement, where Walter would don the hat and the name Heisenberg whenever he had something dangerous and immoral to perform. Slowly, over the seasons however, the Heisenberg persona has seeped into the man who was Walter White. Even when he is playing himself, Walter is often still playing a role. He is nowhere near as awkward as he once was and had graduated onto manipulating and misleading his own family members. The question that remains is ‘does he even know how to be Walter White anymore?’

The answer to that question will likely be addressed in the upcoming season, as Walter’s brother-in-law, Hank now knows who the elusive Heisenberg is. Hank has spent the entire series tracking the man known as Heisenberg and trying to stomp out the powerful blue meth. But every time he has gotten close, Walter has found a way to not only escape but to make his empire even bigger. And everyone around him has suffered the consequences while Walter has evaded punishment. Jesse Pinkman, his partner in crime, was brutally beaten and held at gun point numerous times, Gale Boetticher was killed, Gus Fring was blown up, Combo was shot and most recently Mike Ehrmantraut suffered a gunshot wound to the gut and bled out. Even Hank himself was nearly crippled as a result of Walter’s actions. Whatever sympathy or understanding Hank has for Walt will likely go out the window as soon as remembers that little connection.

There is one spanner in the works for Hank though. He may have the book and he may know that Walter White is Heisenberg but he can’t prove it. All the evidence surrounding the blue meth has been accumulated and there has never been any mention of a Walter White. The closest that they came was Gus’ laptop but Jesse’s big ass magnet idea put an end to that swiftly enough. Hank has already come under fire from his superiors for wasting resources in regards to Mike, and at least Mike’s name was related to the case. Using police resources to tail his own brother-in-law likely won’t go down well with the DEA, and, possibly, Hank may be reluctant to involve the authorities where his own family is involved.

This is my reaction everytime George R.R. Martin kills a character.

He may also find it difficult to gather any new evidence given that both Walt and Jesse are out of the business now. We have all heard that before. Walt briefly quit in the third season before being coerced back into cooking by Jesse and Gus and also considered stopping in the second season before he found his normal life unfulfilling. It is slightly more believable that Jesse would actually stop because he has actually lost more. In the course of the series, he has lost friends and loved ones. Not to mention, last time Jesse was on screen he was absolutely terrified of Walt. For Jesse, the meth business was always a means to make money and in the beginning that coincided with Walt’s desire to care for his family after his death. Maybe Jesse will go back to cooking but I would be surprised.

So what is the fate of Walter White to be? Even if he is out, there will likely be some opposition from Lydia and Declan, who were profiting from his scheme. Saul Goodman will be relieved, however. If he manages to free himself from those deals unscathed, and this is Walter White so anything is possible, the most probable outcome is that Hank will find some kind of evidence against him. Knowing Walter though, if the DEA come for him he won’t be taken alive. That said, there are a few revelations that have still to come out, such as ‘how did Jane really die’ and ‘who knows how to poison children with Lily of the Valley’. If the answers to those questions come to light, even Heisenberg may not be able to appease the wrath of Jesse.

Whatever the outcome, these final eight episodes are going to be an awesome ride. Gilligan has created an absolute classic story that was brought to life fantastically by Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul and Dean Norris. All three of those actors deserve all the awards that could possibly be thrown at them.

Broken

On July 15^th 2012, this coming Sunday, the fifth and final season of Breaking Bad will begin its first eight episode run, the second run will conclude in the summer of 2013. Much like House, it will be sad to see one of the best written shows end. We’ve followed Walter White, played by Bryan Cranston, as he has slowly delved deeper and deeper into the world of drug manufacture and distribution. It was extremely interesting to see the man who said he was the cook becoming directly involved with selling his product and how that changed his personality.

Walter White has always seemed like a man who has gone unappreciated for his greatness. At the start of the series, when we met Walt, we’re stepping in on the point where the straw has broke the camel’s back. After being diagnosed with lung cancer, he sets out to make sure his family are provided for after his eventual demise. As a high school science teacher and a talented chemist, who helped found Grey Matter Technologies in universe, he decides that the best way to make a large amount of money in a short space of time is to ‘cook’ methamphetamine. And in doing so, the character enters a dark and dangerous world, one that threatens to twist him and cost him all that he sought to preserve in the first place.

High school science has never been so dangerous.

Here we are, four seasons later, and Walter White is a changed man. He shows little or no remorse for any of his actions, including killing a man with his car and refuses to apologise to his wife for everything he’s put his family through. To be fair, Skylar White, his wife, played by Anna Gunn, can be a bitch even at the best of times, but Walter is no longer willing to accept that the lengths he went to in order to provide for his family were wrong. And for the most part of the series, Walter White has been somewhat sympathetic and the lesser of other evils. Tuco, played by Raymond Cruz, was out and out psychopathic while Gus, played by Giancarlo Esposito, was on a revenge mission against the Cartel. But Walt has survived both men and as we come to season five, he’s standing on the edge of a power vacuum.

With Gus dead and the Cartel severely crippled by Gus’ actions earlier in season four, there is now an absence of a major distributer of meth in Albuquerque. Once again, Walter White is faced with the choice to quit and get out of the business while he still can or stay in the game and try to become a major player. It’s like an extremely dangerous and disturbing game show. And twice in the show, once in season two and once in season three, Walter White did manage to stop cooking and go back to a normal life. In both situations, he beaome dissatisfied with his family life and his life as a brilliant chemist forced to teach high school science to a bunch of kids who laugh at him behind his back. The problem for Walt is that he knows he can do better than that. One has to wonder what might have become of Walter White had he not left Grey Matter Technologies? Would he still be the horribly insecure man looking for danger in order to make him feel alive? That would require some kind of alternate universe episode, which would feel slightly out of place in this show. But it’s interesting to consider.

Unlike many of the other times when Walt has been able to leave and get out of the game, there is little doubt about whether Walt will stay or go in Season five. Following his manic breakdown in the crawlspace and his statement to Skylar that ‘I won’, it seems like Walt is primed to take this job as far as it will go now. He is no longer the lesser evil, especially if the hints of the final episode are revealed to be true. One of the biggest questions of the final season has to be whether his partner Jesse Pinkman, played by Aaron Paul, will find out about everything Walt has done in secret that Jesse has blamed himself or others for? The more major secret isn’t even the possible manipulation in season four, but Jane’s death at the end of season two. Jesse blamed himself for giving her the drugs and it was because of her death that the plane exploded above Albuquerque. Walt has been the cause of countless deaths and the suffering of innocents as he has strived to carve a place for himself in the drug world. Tensions between Walt and Jesse have often fluctuated between bitter resentment to a rather chummy father-son relationship. But, if any of these secrets come to light, those tensions could be reignited. And it may very well be Jesse is the one who finally takes down Heisenberg, Walter’s criminal alter-ego.

Bet he regrets not staying in school now.

Of course, it would be unwise to count out Walter’s DEA agent brother –in-law, Hank Schrader, played by Dean Norris. For the past four seasons, Hank has been chasing Heisenberg and the blue meth, often coming close but never quite succeeding. Walt has gotten away with his activities under Hank’s radar so far, but with Gus gone and all other possible suspects eliminated Hank may just close in on Walter’s shady other life. If Walt is looking to make himself the new kingpin of meth manufacture and distribution he’ll become especially highlighted. Perhaps Jesse might even rat him out or tip off Hank when everything is revealed. However, Hank and Walt have grown close in four seasons, so will he even be able to bring down Heisenberg once he finds out it’s his own brother –in-law?

In any case, the fifth season looks and sounds like it’s going to be a great ride. There are so many possibilities in the way that this show could go from here that’ll it’ll be of great interest to watch it unfold. And given Vince Gilligan’s track record, both on this show and The X-Files, I think it is safe to say that the execution will be superb. Now, let’s just hope the word ‘execution’ doesn’t turn out to be a prophesy.