Friday, December 27, 2013

Five Shows To Watch During the Holiday Season

You're finally done exams, you're stressed out, all you want is sleep and rest.  Your heads been stuck in books, ignoring everything and everyone that doesn't involve your studies.  So after you throw those books out of presence and come back from your nap, you're wondering to yourself: What have missed?  Back once again, I'm here to suggest a few shows for you to watch during the holiday season.  Remember these are suggestions that I've either watched or heard good things about, I won't steer you wrong.  See how everyone turned their back on Homeland after it's third season?  Yeah I'm not one of those people.  Oh if you just want to see stupidity in 40 minutes, watch the finale of Dexter.

The Mindy Project (2 Seasons, 35 episodes)



Now when this show first came out, I suggested you skipped it mainly because it was still trying to find itself.  The cast was bloated, writing was clumsy and not very funny.  But I guess Mindy Kaling was secretly reading my blog and made the necessary changes, now the cast feels like a unit with the addition of Ike Barinholtz (Mad TV) and Adam Pally (Happy Endings) and with actual story arcs.  This show now has charm, sweetness and bellowing laughs.

The show follows Mindy Lahiri an OB/GYN has she is the practices of her office and the rivalry with the midwives upstairs in her office building and faces the challenges of being single while trying to live up to every romantic movie she's seen.  Plus Chris Messina who plays Dr. Danny Castellano is the best thing, a man's man who in the last episode before taking it's break, danced to Aaliyah's 'Try Again'.

Boardwalk Empire (4 Seasons, 48 episodes)



How more people aren't talking or watching this I don't understand.  Maybe because it aired the same time as Breaking Bad and doesn't get the hype it rightfully deserves.  It's one of the best written shows with a cast that displays unbelievably great acting.  The cast expands in every season and there's characters you'll be introduced to in the first season that doesn't return until season 2 and they have a story branch for them.  The best way to watch it is in a marathon watch.  The show is about a treasurer Enoch "Nucky" Thompson during the 1920 and 30's of the Prohibition era, who rises to power and prominence in Atlantic City. The way the story arcs and history intertwine is an amazing feat by the writers and the cast just molds so well together.  In later seasons, the position of power shifts and money changes hands as they introduce historical mob figures like Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky.  And there's a lot of naked women.

Orphan Black (1 Season, 10 episodes)



From BBC comes the very excellent Orphan Black.  The premise?  Tatiana Maslany, (Canadian btw) plays Sarah, a con artist, who finds out she's a clone.  A clone of six very different clones, possibly more.  There's Beth,  a cop, Alison, a soccer mom, Cosima, a grad student and Helena, an assassin.  And sometimes she plays two or three at the same time in a scene.  Now I know what you're thinking, doe she get naked?  No, well not really (if we're getting technical).  But you're also thinking how is this possible and how good is Maslany to play these six different characters?  Well, Maslany is pretty damn good at it, she recently received a Golden Globe nomination for best actress in a TV Drama.  For someone to play different characters with their own traits and not mirror any other character takes some real acting chops to perform.  At only 10 episodes, you can marathon through this without even getting out of bed.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine (1 Season, 11 episodes)



Whatever you feelings are about toward Adam Samberg should be thrown out before you watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine.  Whether you or not you like his SNL Digital Shorts or The Lonely Island stuff or his movies like Hot Rod or That's My Boy.  Throw all that out and wipe your Samberg hate board clean.

Andy Samberg stars in this cop comedy about a hot shot cop whose trying to solve crimes and crack jokes with his strict new captain Andre Braugher.  This is a Samberg reinvented, he's goofy but carries himself well to know there's a case to be taken seriously at the end of the day.  Created by Michael Schur (Parks and Recreation and The Office) it's different than his other shows but the subtext of an adopted family is still there.  Also Terry Crews is in it and his absolutely fantastic as this muscle bulging sergeant whose lost his edge after a few incidents and he's quite crafty, enjoys doodling but hates princess castles.

Happy Endings (3 Seasons, 57 Episodes)



It still hurts it got cancelled due to ABC's own doing.  Hmm, how can I suggest that people should watch one of funniest shows in recent years, where it's punchline ratio is better than Rudy Gay's shooting percentage?  Hmm.  Gifs.  Yep gifs!  Ooh like a Buzzfeed article!

The show is about six friends in their early 30's living in Chicago

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There's Dave whose 1/16th Navajo.


He also has a steak truck, where he created the Steak-tanic


He was also engaged to Alex, who isn't all that bright


She's also very hungry, a lot



She likes to play with her food too


Alex sister is Jane, who is married to Brad


Who likes to twirl



They are the best TV couple that every real couple wants to be like




Who like to play "games"


They like sex, a lot


Jane is a bit controlling


She also isn't a fan of surprises


Then there's Max, whose gay, who Brad met on the cancelled season of Real World: Sacramento.  Where Brad had dreads.


They're a pretty good tandem, especially when it comes to dance


Max is lazy, somewhat fat, does what he can for money and has his own set of priorities




Who likes to be the center of attention

 
He also drops the occasional Jay-Z reference



He's gal pals with Penny


Penny is constantly looking for love but when she sees a guy she likes, she knows it.


But someone it gets broken off, it's cool, she gets over it in her on way


She has her few catchphrases too



And through all of this, they laugh


They drink


They continue to make fun of Dave


But it's all love at the end.  A true happy ending.


And if you meet anyone that says anything bad about Happy Endings, just tell them to be quiet or...


And they're well aware of the Friends comparison


Honorable Mentions

Arrow: (2 Seasons, 32 episodes) DC might sucked at making movies about heroes not named Batman and Superman but what their doing on TV right now, Marvel can't touch (yeah I'm talking about Agents of SHIELD).  Arrow is the best comic book based show on television and there's a Flash spinoff that's being prepped for next year.

Orange Is The New Black: (1 Season, 13 episodes) Because everyone who owns Netflix says it's the show to watch on there.

Young Justice: (2 Seasons, 46 episodes) A different take on the DC Universe, focusing on the young core group of superheroes such as Robin, Kid Flash, Superboy and Ms. Martian.  Only 2 seasons because the people over at Cartoon Network don't know how to handle good programs and cancelled it.