BuzzFeed: "Mad Men Creator Matthew Weiner On The Show’s Jet-Setting Final Season"

The mastermind behind AMC’s period drama tells BuzzFeed what to expect from the final go-around with the ad men and women before the April 13 premiere.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Mad Men Creator Matthew Weiner On The Show’s Jet-Setting Final Season," in which I talk to Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner about the seventh and final season of the AMC period drama.

Over the course of its last six seasons, AMC’s period drama Mad Men has taken the audience into the inner lives of the damaged ad men and women who glide through the 1960s often on a volatile mix of booze, self-loathing, and bad behavior. In the hands of its creator, Matthew Weiner, the show has offered a window into the souls of these characters, offering up their flaws and their virtues, their successes and their losses.

With the show concluding next year, it does feel as if it’s the end of an era, both for its network AMC and for the television landscape as a whole, as well as Weiner, who will have spent 15 years of his life developing, writing, and bringing Mad Men to fruition. “I feel very lucky and I feel, at times, overwhelmed,” Weiner told BuzzFeed. “There’s so much work to do that it hasn’t really hit me, but I am overwhelmed by this sector of my life coming to a close. It’s pretty gigantic. I feel a lot of responsibility — no matter what the reaction is 24 hours afterward — that these 92 hours will fit together as a whole. It’s a big piece of work done by hundreds of people and I’m proud and surprised that I’ve gotten to this point. And also, I feel really lucky that I get to end it on my own, without having the plug suddenly pulled or something. What a luxury. I keep talking about what a responsibility it is, but it’s a luxury to be able to end the story how you want.”

As the Emmy Award-winning drama approaches its final season — with two seven-episode arcs set to air in April 2014 and April 2015 — Weiner spoke at length to BuzzFeed about Mad Men’s seventh season, wrapping up the show’s narrative, and what lies ahead for Don Draper (Jon Hamm), Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), and the rest of Sterling Cooper & Partners. What follows is an edited transcript of the conversation.

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BuzzFeed: "What If Seinfeld Had Used Suggested Hashtags?"

Don’t forget to tweet using the hashtag #iwasinthepool. #MustSeeTV indeed.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest post, "What If Seinfeld Had Used Suggested Hashtags?" in which I imagine a world in which Twitter existed when Seinfeld was on the air and if NBC had used suggested hashtags on-screen for some of the show's most memorable moments. What a world indeed.

Seinfeld creators Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld may have claimed that the show — which ran on NBC from 1989 to 1998 — was about nothing, but devotees of the beloved comedy know that that’s not exactly true. Individual episodes centered around some facet of everyday life (from marble rye to a cologne that smells like you just came from the beach) and many of those so-called nothings have since become iconic moments in popular culture.

While Twitter didn’t exist when Seinfeld was on the air originally, imagine a world in which NBC could have guided our social media-based thoughts with those now-ubiquitous suggested hashtags that pop up every time you’re watching a current television series.

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BuzzFeed: "The Americans Season 2 Arrives Just As U.S.–Russian Relations Turn Icy"

After Sochi, the wolf, the bitter protests, and human rights violations, the second season of the FX Cold War drama arrives at the perfect time to look back at failed Soviet ambitions. Minor spoilers ahead.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "The Americans Season 2 Arrives Just As U.S.–Russian Relations Turn Icy," in which I review the second season of FX's The Americans.

With the closing of the Sochi Olympics earlier this week, Russia is on our collective minds once more: FX has rather cannily picked the perfect time to launch the second season of its gripping Cold War drama The Americans, which revolves around a set of married Soviet sleeper agents, Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys), in suburban 1980s Washington, D.C.

Yes, The Americans has car chases and street brawls, silly wigs and costume changes (not to mention one scene in particular that pushes the boundaries of basic cable depictions of sexuality), but these elements are window dressing for what lies at the true heart of the series: an exploration of national and personal identity. While the show might depict the high-stakes Cold War skirmishes and battles between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, there is a canny investigation of ideology, loyalty, and self-identity unfolding within these characters, even as the collateral damage they create in their wake mounts.

The risky missions and the tradecraft that the Jenningses embrace — dead drops, legends, and sleeper cell mentalities — become emblematic for thwarted Soviet ambition. Until the Sochi Olympics, this intracountry strife and its secret wars seemed so far removed from our daily life, but The Americans arrives at a time when Russia is once more at the forefront of the news cycle. The futility of these spies’ operations is a tacit reminder of the fluidity of the international stage and the shortness of memory of its participants.

In the show’s first season, the audience quickly learned the stakes for the Jenningses. They live on a seemingly placid street across from Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), who, coincidentally, is the FBI agent tasked with tracking down undercover KBG officers. And the duo is also in constant fear both of being unmasked and of having their children — Paige (Holly Taylor) and Henry (Keidrich Sellati), who initially have no idea what their parents are doing — taken from them.


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BuzzFeed: "A Girls Lover And Hater Debate The Season 3 Premiere"

The always buzzed about HBO comedy returned tonight and BuzzFeed’s Entertainment Editorial Director Jace Lacob, who’s looked forward to watching every episode of the series, and Deputy Entertainment Editor Jaimie Etkin, who’s begrudgingly watched every episode of the series, discussed the back-to-back episodes. They agreed on one thing. Maybe two.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "A Girls Lover And Hater Debate The Season 3 Premiere," in which Jaimie Etkin and I hotly debate the two-episode third season premiere of HBO's Girls.

SPOILER ALERT if you have not yet seen the Season 3 premiere of Girls!

Jaimie: I am simultaneously excited and nervous about this. My Girls rage is about to become public knowledge. I mean, I don’t have negative feels about Lena Dunham as a human or woman, but her show just makes me really frustrated. HOWEVER, I must say it was eye-opening to see how people talk to her, as exhibited by the TCA debacle last week. Dunham handled Tim Molloy’s awfully approached question about Hannah’s nudity very gracefully and of all the things I find unrealistic about the show, the nudity isn’t an issue for me. Let’s be honest: Pants are the enemy.

Jace: HA. I’m not bothered by the nudity at all within Girls. (Randomly, I’m listening to Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own” right now, I should add.) To me, it’s an integral part of the emotional reality of the show; Hannah’s willingness to bare herself is not at odds with her interest in baring her emotions to everyone around her. And the scene in the season opener, where she rolls over to answer Jessa’s call, makes so much more sense that she wouldn’t be dressed; there’s more verisimilitude because of it. Why are people still so bothered by the notion that she’s not dressed, three seasons in?

Jaimie: (Sure. “Randomly.”) Because Hannah doesn’t have the conventional Hollywood body type. And as a twenty-something woman who doesn’t either, I appreciate that. That said, I have to be honest and say, that I think it’s incongruous with her very insecure character to be wearing bikinis (as we see in the trailer), some of those short shorts, mesh tops (::cough::), and the like. That, to me, doesn’t make sense for her character. But in the comfort of her own home, it’s very honest to see her not wearing clothes because, unlike in most shows, even on cable, we see someone get out of bed with their partner and put on clothes to answer the phone or something similar, which is just not realistic.

Jace: It’s the magic of the L-shaped sheet that we see so often in television shows! To me, it’s refreshing that Hannah, for her hang-ups in other areas, is very comfortable with her sexuality and her nudity. We should celebrate that, not denigrate it. But the show itself, to me, is refreshing in the honesty of how it handles the dynamic of female, twentysomething relationships. The Hannah-Marnie dynamic — with its embedded animosity and resentments — is endlessly fascinating to me. As is that between Hannah and Jessa. I loved the scene between them at the end of the second episode: anger mixed with relief.

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BuzzFeed: "Veronica Mars and 8 Other TV Shows You Can Only Stream On Amazon Prime"

Looking to get caught up on Veronica Mars before the movie comes out on March 14? Turns out, the only place you can do so now is on Amazon Prime Instant.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "9 TV Shows You Can Only Stream On Amazon Prime," in which I run nine shows that you can only watch on Amazon Prime.

1. Veronica Mars

A long time ago, we used to be friends… and you used to be able to stream Veronica Mars on Netflix. But those days are long gone and on Jan. 9, Amazon Prime Instant announced that it had secured exclusive streaming rights to all three seasons of the UPN/CW sleuth series. And what perfect timing to get caught up (or refresh yourself) on all of the intrigues in Neptune: The feature film sequel opens on March 14, marshmallows.

2. Downton Abbey

Episodes of Julian Fellowes’ well-heeled period drama — which airs Stateside on PBS’ Masterpiece Classic and centers on the Crawley clan and their servants — can only be seen on Amazon Prime Instant these days. Downton’s first three seasons are available for streaming on the platform, while the series’ fourth just premiered earlier this week on PBS.

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BuzzFeed: "13 Returning TV Shows To Get Excited About"

Girls is back on Sunday and the onslaught of returning shows is just beginning. Set your DVRs now!

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "13 Returning TV Shows To Get Excited About," in which I run down 13 returning television series worth watching this winter. (And, yes, I know that Game of Thrones isn't on there: We still don't have an airdate.)

1. Justified (FX)

Season 5 of Justified finds Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan Givens tangling with some Florida lowlifes, relatives of Dewey Crowe (Damon Herriman), one of Harlan County’s sleaziest denizens. Plus, Boyd (Walton Goggins) tries to find a way to get Ava (Joelle Carter) out of prison… and he exacts a bloody revenge against those who put her there in the first place. Along the way, wisecracks are exchanged, along with gunfire.

Season 5 premieres on Tuesday, Jan. 7 at 10 p.m.

2. Girls (HBO)

The stellar third season of HBO’s Girls finds the quartet struggling with new challenges and the first two episodes — which air back to back as a one-hour premiere — reintroduce new realities for these characters. (The brilliant second half of the premiere is a precise and gorgeous tone poem about a road trip.) While Hannah (Lena Dunham) has settled into a life of domestic bliss (relatively) with Adam (Adam Driver), Marnie (Allison Williams) is in a perpetual state of free fall, reeling from her breakup with Charlie (Christopher Abbott). Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) is trying to find her wild side, while Jessa (Jemima Kirke) continues to create chaos in her wake. Change both big and small is on the horizon for these women, and the first few episodes of the season capture the pain and humor of self-transformation. Not to be missed under any circumstances.

Season 3 premieres Sunday, Jan. 12 at 10 p.m.

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BuzzFeed: "Season 4 Of Downton Abbey Is A Bit Of A Downer"

Has the bloom gone off this English rose? Warning: Minor spoilers ahead!

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Season 4 Of Downton Abbey Is A Bit Of A Downer," in which I review the fourth season of Downton Abbey.

After the shocking events of last season’s bloody finale — in which heir Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens) was unceremoniously killed off — Season 4 of Downton Abbey, which returns to PBS’ Masterpiece on Sunday, Jan. 5, sees an awful lot of restructuring in the wake of not one but two major character deaths. Yes, there are plots aplenty for both upstairs and downstairs as the series is now firmly entrenched in the changing times of the 1920s, when estates like Downton were in even greater jeopardy. When the series returns, the relics of privilege and luxury teeter unsteadily on a knife’s edge as the world advances without them. (There is an electric whisk in the kitchen!)

Season 4 of Julian Fellowes’ Downton Abbey picks up six months after Matthew’s death and finds a family deep within the throes of mourning: Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) is a ghostly presence in the household, a black-clad widow staring out the window with unspeakable loss weighing on her slight shoulders. And the rest of the Crawleys are concerned about her, plagued by the question of whether to shield her from further hurt or bring her back to the world once more. While Mary and her also widowed brother-in-law, Fenian chauffeur-turned-Crawley hanger-on Tom Branson (Allen Leech) are thrown together in grief, their storyline oddly splinters after a few episodes. While I’m glad to see that the two aren’t forced into a ghastly romantic subplot together, as some fans may have hoped, there’s something strange about the way their familial plot fizzles out.

This is true largely of Season 4 as well. Numerous plots are either resolved far too quickly or not at all, and slight mysteries are left dangling endlessly into Season 5.

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BuzzFeed: "Sherlock Is Back From The Dead And Better Than Ever"

The hotly anticipated British mystery drama returns with the revelation of just how Sherlock Holmes faked his death two years ago. Warning: Minor spoilers ahead!

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Sherlock Is Back From The Dead And Better Than Ever," in which I review the spectacular third season opener of Sherlock ("The Empty Hearse"), which airs Jan. 1 in the U.K. and on Jan. 19 on PBS' Masterpiece.

Just how did Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) fake his own death?

When Sherlock picks up — two years after the action of the 2012 Season 2 finale, “The Reichenbach Fall” — the facts surrounding how the master sleuth pulled off the seemingly impossible are kept firmly under wraps for much of the ingenious 90-minute season opener, “The Empty Hearse” (which airs Jan. 1 on BBC One in the U.K. and on Jan. 19 on PBS’s Masterpiece).

This is not to say that viewers are denied a revelatory sequence in which the truth about just how Sherlock faked his own death is laid out. The taut sequence that reveals how he achieved such a feat is both simple, yet cunningly complex (not to mention quite spectacular), though I won’t spoil the outcome for anything on this Earth. However, the episode’s writer Mark Gatiss (who once again pulls double duty as Sherlock’s glacially cold brother Mycroft) rather smartly withholds the reveal until “The Empty Hearse” is almost concluded, creating an ongoing mystery that continues to swirl around the minds of both the viewers and several characters within Sherlock itself.

And throughout “The Empty Hearse,” those characters fantasize about just how Sherlock may have pulled off the stunt of faking his death, though the fantasies they depict often say more about the characters themselves than they do about the great detective. Forensic tech Anderson (Jonathan Aris) sees Sherlock as a swashbuckling daredevil, crashing through windows and planting kisses on co-conspirator Molly Hooper (Louise Brealey), a fantasy that sets up Holmes as someone inherently larger than life. (Which makes sense given the obsessive Carrie Mathison-style wall of clues he’s created in his flat.) Another character sees the entire exploit as a romantic bluff by Sherlock and Moriarty (Andrew Scott), a fantasy that plays to a very particular subset of Sherlock slash fiction.

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BuzzFeed: "The 16 Best New Television Shows Of 2013"

Yes, returning shows like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Good Wife, Borgen, Parenthood, and others were aces this year. But this is all about the newcomers.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "The 16 Best New Television Shows Of 2013," in which I offer up my picks for the best new shows of the year, including Rectify, Orange Is the New Black, The Returned, Masters of Sex, Broadchurch, and Orphan Black, to name a few.

16. Bates Motel (A&E)

The story of Norman Bates — recounted in Alfred Hitchcock’s jangling Psycho — is only too familiar to most people. But under the watchful eye of executive producers Kerry Ehrin and Carlton Cuse, the Twin Peaks-esque Bates Motel offers a fresh look at Norman’s formative years (despite the fact that the series is set in the present day and in a different location), including his relationship with his overbearing, quixotic mother, Norma (a stellar Vera Farmiga) after they purchase a run-down motel on the Oregon coastline and discover that their new sleepy town holds all manner of deadly secrets. As Norman and Norma, Freddie Highmore and Farmiga are riveting to watch, their damaged psyches threatening to erupt into violence at any moment. The result is an eerie and off-kilter drama about the things that bind us.

15. The Bletchley Circle (PBS)

This three-episode British import — about a quartet of women who worked as codebreakers at Bletchley Park during World War II and reunite years later in order to entrap a serial killer when his pattern emerges — was a taut, thrilling chase as well as a nuanced portrait of the changing role of women in the 1950s, as each of the ladies struggles with a life of mundanity after playing such a pivotal role in the war. No surprise that another go-around is on tap for the amateur sleuths; The Bletchley Circle was downright gripping.

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BuzzFeed: "12 Objects That Defined The Year In Television"

From Breaking Bad’s stevia packet to Girls’ Q-tip, here are some of the pivotal objects that sum up scripted television in 2013. SPOILER ALERT for a ton of shows if you’re not caught up. You’ve been warned.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "12 Objects That Defined The Year In Television," in which I look at the 12 objects that roughly define 2013 in scripted television, from a Q-tip on Girls and a Sharpie on Homeland to an automobile on Downton Abbey and that Cytron card on Scandal.

1. This Q-tip.

Where It Appeared: Girls
What It Was: A seemingly innocuous Q-Tip, used repeatedly by Hannah (Lena Dunham), whose OCD was quickly spiraling out of control, to clean out her ears. But she inserted it too deeply into her inner ear canal.
What It Did: It punctured her eardrum (“I heard hissing,” she later said), leading Hannah to seek medical attention at the hospital.
What It Meant: That Hannah had truly hit rock bottom with her psychological condition and that she had seemingly lost control of her life and mental state. It was an excruciating scene to watch, not just because of the physical discomfort it manifested, but for the emotional fallout it wrought: At the end of the episode, she inserted a Q-Tip into her other ear and started counting once more.

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BuzzFeed: "Community Season 5 Feels Like An Old Friend Has Finally Come Home"

The long-awaited return of the NBC comedy — now back under the watchful eye of creator Dan Harmon — distances itself from its disappointing fourth season. Gas leak year, people.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest story, "Community Season 5 Feels Like An Old Friend Has Finally Come Home," in which I review the first few episodes of Season 5 of NBC's Community. (YES.)

I’ll admit that I was somewhat wary when three episodes from Season 5 of NBC’s Community surfaced on my desk last week. After all, the fourth season of the Dan Harmon-created gonzo comedy — which was Dan Harmon-less, after all — left a lot to be desired. I choose to look at it as an alt-reality version of a show that I had cherished in its first three seasons: The characters vaguely resembled that Greendale study group with whom I had spent so many virtual hours, yet they didn’t feel quite right. Something was off — the plots felt too contrived, and the show wandered into a broadness of comedy that it had previously adamantly avoided.

Given that, there is quite a lot riding on the Jan. 2 premiere of Community, which sees the return of Harmon as the showrunner of the comedy he created. Fortunately, the three episodes provided to press — Episodes 1, 2, and 4 — go a long way to reassure fans that the show is once more back in the hands of its true caretakers. (Warning: minor spoilers ahead.)

The fifth season premiere (“Repilot”), written by Harmon and the also returning co-executive producer Chris McKenna, attempts to reestablish Community’s identity after the flawed efforts of Season 4, much of which are explained away as a “gas leak year.” In fact, the episode — which both comments on the efforts of Scrubs to “repilot” itself in Season 9 and utilizes a similar formatting — distances itself entirely from Season 4, intellectually and creatively. As such, the episode has a lot to accomplish in a relatively brief running time, which might be why “Repilot” feels a little overeager and fraught: It needs to not only bring the study group back to Greendale and back together, but it also has to engineer a reason as to why they decide to stay. Bridges, both literal and metaphorical, are broken and mended.

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BuzzFeed: "Where Can Homeland Go From Here?"

Showtime’s espionage thriller wrapped up its third season and much of its overall narrative. So where can the show possibly go in Season 4? WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Where Can Homeland Go From Here?" in which I look at the third season finale of Showtime's Homeland and where the show could possibly go from here. (Answer: wherever it does, I likely won't be watching as I'm fatigued with this show at this point.)

With Sunday’s season finale of Homeland (“The Star”), Showtime’s espionage thriller seemed to fold inwards upon itself, offering up a 20-minute epilogue that felt very much like a conclusion for the series, an alternately intelligent and deeply frustrating drama, depending where in its overall narrative you were at any given time. (It was, however, renewed for a fourth season earlier this year.)

In its often maddening and meandering third season, Homeland found Carrie (Claire Danes) pretending to be on the outs with the CIA while actually on a covert operation under the watchful eye of an even-more-gruff-than-usual Saul (Mandy Patinkin). Saul, meanwhile, hatched a truly mind-boggling plot to insert a high-level asset in the Iranian government… and get Brody (Damian Lewis) — himself the subject of an international manhunt for a bombing at the CIA that killed 100-plus people — to assassinate a high-ranking Iranian official in order to put the rogue nation under U.S. control.

“The Star” managed to tie up many of the narrative’s loose ends and capped off the Carrie/Brody dynamic, offering up a season finale that may have worked more effectively as a series finale. (Seriously, stop reading right now if you haven’t yet watched “The Star.” SPOILERS!) Brody’s death — ordered by Javadi (Shaun Toub) in an effort to secure his role in this power play — is meant to be a pyrrhic victory; it’s meant to be a gut-wrenching ordeal both for Carrie — who is carrying his baby — and for the audience at large. And there is a brief moment, when Brody is raised on a crane by his neck at a public execution and he stares outwards with terror in his eyes, where his death has some actual emotional weight and consequence. And then Carrie climbs the fence and shouts his name and I remember I’m watching Homeland, which ultimately stumbles into some melodramatic excess every five minutes or so.

Brody: “So what happens next?”
Carrie: “What do you mean?”
Brody: “When we get home, what happens next?”
Carrie: “I don’t know. What do you want to happen?”
Brody: “Honestly, I never expected to get this far, so I try not to think about it.”

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BuzzFeed: "How Scandal Turned Into An Exploration Of Free Will"

Season 3 of Shonda Rhimes’ additive ABC drama offers not only a pulse-pounding thrill ride each week, but also a canny exploration of self-determination. Spoilers ahead, if you’re not caught up.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "How Scandal Turned Into An Exploration Of Free Will," in which I take a look at the third season of Shonda Rhimes' addictive ABC thriller.

Scandal’s seven-episode first season, which aired in early 2012, gave very little indication of just where this riveting drama would go by its third and current season. At first glance, it appeared to be a legal drama centering on Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) and her team of misfit lawyers, a group of very damaged people lured into the arena by Olivia’s gritty strength and forged into self-made gladiators. Their elite crisis management firm operated in Washington, meaning that the show’s title came into play fairly quickly via a slew of high-profile cases.

Olivia had ties to the fictional Grant Administration, and in particular to the POTUS, Fitz (Tony Goldwyn), for whom Olivia had worked and with whom she’s been having an extra-marital affair. Oval Office intrigue, horrific murders, and tales of jaw-dropping corruption soon followed as Scandal quickly became the sort of show that in years prior would have been referred to as a “watercooler drama,” a series that exerts a gravitational pull on the viewer so strong that they need to dissect every moment with their co-workers the following day. But thanks to the prevalence of social media in 2013, the Shonda Rhimes-created Scandal became that show for a new generation of obsessive viewers who took to Twitter and Facebook instantly to analyze the latest twist in television’s most serpentine drama.

Season 3 of Scandal, which wraps up the first half of its run on Dec. 12, has amped up the stakes in a show that already required Dramamine for those who found the rollercoaster plots moving at too high a velocity. While prying into the marriage between Fitz and his Lady MacBeth-esque First Lady, Mellie (Bellamy Young), and the complex dynamics between Fitz and Olivia, the show had wisely avoided giving away too much of Olivia’s tragic backstory. She was, after all, a gladiator. Donned in her white hat — sometimes quite literally — she stormed into the ring and took no prisoners. Olivia Pope was a blood-soaked warrior, unafraid of getting her hands dirty. But, ultimately, she was just as damaged as those she saved. In exploring her complicated backstory, Scandal has once again revealed new facets of Olivia’s character, one that refuses to be pigeonholed in the category of Strong Black Woman. Her father, Eli Pope (Joe Morton), oversees B613, a deadly black ops division of the nation’s intelligence forces whose very ruthlessness has smashed up the psyches of several characters, including Huck (Guillermo Díaz), Jake (Scott Foley), Quinn (Katie Lowes), and even Fitz himself. While on a covert operation for the Navy, the future POTUS was given an order by “Command” to shoot down an American passenger jet carrying 300-plus people aboard, including, it was believed for a while, Olivia’s own mother.

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BuzzFeed: "This Breaking Bad Alternate Ending Must Be Seen To Be Believed"

Was it all just a terrible nightmare? Malcolm in the Middle’s Hal may have eaten too many fried Twinkies before bed, according to a new DVD extra. [UPDATED]

At BuzzFeed, you can check out my latest post, "This Breaking Bad Alternate Ending Must Be Seen To Be Believed," in which I take a look at an alternate ending for AMC's Breaking Bad, one that invokes Newhart and, well, Malcolm in the Middle.

Fans of AMC’s Breaking Bad continue to mourn the death of the antihero drama in their own unique ways, but thanks to this DVD extra — from the Breaking Bad: The Complete Series DVD box set, out November 26 — fans of the science-wielding antihero have yet another chance to imagine a different fate for Bryan Cranston’s Walter White.

In this case, an alternate ending to the show itself, which — heavily borrowing from the iconic ending of Newhart (which referenced the earlier The Bob Newhart Show) — imagines that the entire narrative of Breaking Bad was a dream experienced by Cranston’s pater familias Hal from the 2000-2006 Fox comedy Malcolm in the Middle, substituting fried Twinkies for Bob’s Japanese food. Waking up terrified from his nightmare, Cranston’s Hal remarks that he was “this meth dealer,” before being comforted by his wife, Lois (Jane Kaczmarek), who reminds him that he can’t cook anything, let alone meth, and that he’s definitely not married to a “tall, beautiful blonde” woman.

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BuzzFeed: "Why The Mindy Project Is No Longer A Work In Progress, But Perfection"

Mindy Kaling’s single-camera comedy is not only hitting all of its marks in its second season, it’s surpassing them… and leaving New Girl in its wake.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Why The Mindy Project Is No Longer A Work In Progress, But Perfection," in which I write about why The Mindy Project is perfect (and what Fox's New Girl could learn from it these days).

The noticeable creative decline of Fox’s once-sterling comedy New Girl — which this season has offered some head-scratching plot developments (who exactly was calling for the full-time return of Coach?) and a dearth of actual comedy — has had a unintentional silver lining of sorts. It’s allowed the show’s winsome timeslot companion The Mindy Project — created by and starring Mindy Kaling — its own opportunity to shine.

And, let’s be honest: The Mindy Project is currently glowing with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. Season 2 of this sharp comedy has continued with the strengths of the back half of its freshman year, having jettisoned some of the show’s elements that weren’t working (such as Anna Camp’s best friend character and Amanda Sutton’s Shauna) and focusing on the quirky interplay between the staffers of a women’s health clinic in Manhattan.

The show hasn’t been afraid to make those changes either, restructuring the ensemble so that Beth Grant’s Beverly, Zoe Jarman’s Betsy, and Xosha Roquemore’s Tamra now pack as much comedic wallop as the core trio — Kaling’s Mindy Lahiri, Chris Messina’s Danny Castellano, and a presently paunchy Ed Weeks’ Jeremy Reed — and writer/actor Ike Barinholtz’s Morgan Tooks. I might have described the latter as a scene-stealer, but the truth of the matter is that each of these players can now walk off with a sequence tucked firmly under his or her arms. That’s a real feat for any comedy, particularly one that initially appeared as though it might not make it through its first season; but something truly alchemical happened along the way with The Mindy Project: It not only found its groove but pushed itself to become something truly great in the process.

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BuzzFeed: "9 Reasons Why Trophy Wife Is Amazing"

ABC’s quirky blended family comedy — the one that isn’t Modern Family — has quickly become a bright spot in an otherwise largely dull season of television.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest, feature, "9 Reasons Why Trophy Wife Is Amazing," in which I offer nine reasons why you should be watching ABC's stellar comedy Trophy Wife, which airs Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m.

Make no mistake: You should be watching ABC’s Trophy Wife. Created by Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins, this witty show — which was picked up last week for a full season of 22 episodes — might just be the best new comedy of the 2013-14 season. It’s a perfectly sweet-tart confection that focuses on a sprawling Los Angeles family connected by marriage, divorce, and remarriage.

Meet Pete (Bradley Whitford), a lawyer who’s lousy at picking spouses, a concept quickly summed up in the opening title sequence. His first ex-wife is prickly doctor Diane (Marcia Gay Harden); his second ex-wife is spacey oddball Jackie (Michaela Watkins); and his current wife, the titular character, is Kate (Malin Akerman), a former party girl who has found herself the step-mother to three kids, a detour to her life route that she has taken in her stride.

Trophy Wife could be a predictable, comedy-by-the-numbers affair; instead, it’s anything but. It’s a refreshingly charming and mercilessly funny look at modern families that are far more complicated than one might expect. The result is a wickedly funny comedy that ought to be at the top of your DVR season pass.

1. The ensemble cast is fantastic. Seriously.

Trophy Wife gives us a family that is full of rivalries, vendettas, and a lot of love. It might not look like your family or mine, but what the show explores — with humor and heart — is how families support and take care of each other, even when they’re out for blood. It helps that the entire ensemble, led by Akerman, Harden, Watkins, andWhitford and including their sprawling brood of offspring, is at the top of their game, whether it’s Albert Tsai’s scene-stealer Bert, Ryan Scott Lee’s perpetually sunny Warren (witness his Ellen DeGeneres costume in last week’s “Halloween” episode), or Bailee Madison’s twitchy Hillary. Not to mention Natalie Morales’ Meg, Kate’s best friend, who carts a tornado in her wake.

This is an ensemble that seems to have been together for a while, acutely aware of one another’s rhythms and beats, rather than a cast that has filmed only a handful of episodes. The point is that it’s impossible not to fall in love with them.

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BuzzFeed: "Your Next Television Obsession Is French Supernatural Thriller The Returned"

You won’t just become addicted to Sundance Channel’s French-language drama about people returning from the dead; it will haunt your dreams.

"Your Next Television Obsession Is French Supernatural Thriller The Returned"

In the opening sequence of extraordinary French thriller The Returned, a yellow butterfly, pinned and placed in a display case, mounted on a wall, unexpectedly flutters back to life and smashes through its glass prison. It’s an enigmatically beautiful moment, and an apt metaphor for the overall premise of The Returned (which premieres Oct. 31 at 9 p.m. on the Sundance Channel), a collision between the worlds of the living and the dead that leaves both shattered.

Created by Fabrice Gobert (who shares directing duties with Frédéric Mermoud) and based on a 2004 film of the same name, The Returned (in French, Les Revenants) is unlike anything else on television, on either side of the Atlantic, an atmosphere-laden and character-driven drama that deftly blends supernatural horror, psychological terror, and familial tragedy. (If you’d like some sort of signposts into this unknown territory, I’d argue that The Returned is The Walking Dead multiplied by The 4400 plus Twin Peaks and divided by In the Flesh and, say, Anthony Minghella’s Truly, Madly, Deeply.)

The series — which has been renewed for a second season that will air in November 2014 on Canal+ in France —depicts what happens when the dead return to a French village, seemingly unaged, and the lives of those forever altered by the death of a loved one and their return. (You might be asking, Isn’t this similar to that ABC midseason show Resurrection, which is based on Jason Mott’s novel The Returned and is about what happens to a town when the dead return? While both have resounding similarities — the dead when they come back haven’t aged and seem to be alive; there is a seemingly mute boy at the center of each show; the time between death and return is different for each character, etc. — they aren’t directly related. An English language version of Les Revenants is already in the works as well for U.K. television under the aegis of Shameless and State of Play creator Paul Abbott.)

Each of the eight episodes that comprise The Returned’s first season focuses on the death of a specific character: morose teen Camille (Yara Pilartz), who was killed three years earlier in a horrific bus accident that killed 37 of her classmates as well and splintered her grieving family; musician Simon (Pierre Perrier), who mysteriously dies on his wedding day, leaving behind a pregnant fiancée in Adèle (Clotilde Hesme); eerily silent child “Victor” (Swann Nambotin), whose presence seems to presage doom and who has an ability to conjure a person’s darkest fear. Oh, and did I mention that one of the dead is a cannibalistic serial killer named Serge (Guillaume Gouix) who likes to repeatedly stab women in a subterranean tunnel and then eat their internal organs? One of his victims, stoic nurse Julie (Céline Sallette), survived Serge’s final attack seven years earlier before he seemingly vanished, though she has been haunted by the notion that she could come face to face with him again. Especially when a local waitress, Lucy Clarsen (Ana Girardot), is stabbed in the same tunnel as Julie…

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BuzzFeed: "The Good Wife Isn’t Just On Fire, It’s A Narrative A-Bomb"

The fifth season of the CBS legal drama continues to shake up its narrative foundations. In next week’s episode, everything changes. Everything.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "The Good Wife Isn’t Just On Fire, It’s A Narrative A-Bomb," in which I review next week's extraordinary episode of CBS' The Good Wife ("Hitting the Fan").

No joke: next Sunday’s episode of The Good Wife (“Hitting the Fan”) might just be the very best hour of television you’ll see this year.
I’m not one of those Good Wife adherents who qualifies their passionate engagement with the Robert and Michelle King-created drama by adding “on broadcast television,” as the show shouldn’t be forced to carry such a backhanded compliment. Even within the FCC-driven parameters of network television, The Good Wife manages to shatter audience expectations and consistently deliver a provocative drama that is both contemplative and incredibly taut.

This is particularly apt, given the seismic changes occurring in the show’s extraordinary fifth season. Even as Alicia (Julianna Margulies) and Cary (Matt Czuchry) covertly plot their exit from the firm, biding their time until bonuses are handed out, the firm itself is already in a state of transformation when managing partner Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) is forced out of her position. While the show teased a law firm sans Diane once she became an Illinois Supreme Court justice, her betrayal of partner Will Gardner (Josh Charles), is a shocking twist, as Diane sells him out to a reporter by disclosing the $45,000 he took from a client’s account… only to realize that she didn’t need to do the interview after all.

It’s this conflation of the personal and the professional that largely powers “Hitting the Fan,” written by Robert and Michelle King (and featuring a gorgeously tense score by David Buckley), offering a look at how these lawyers define the boundaries of that dynamic. When one character says to another, “This wasn’t meant personally,” there’s the sense that most everything they do oversteps those distinct categorizations; how can Will, Alicia, and Diane untangle the personal from the professional when those spheres of their lives are tied up so tightly? When is a betrayal only strictly professional?

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BuzzFeed: "What’s Wrong With ABC’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

The Marvel espionage drama bares a lot of similarities to the early run of Fox’s now-departed Fringe — and not necessarily in good ways.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "What’s Wrong With ABC’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.?” in which I ponder just what's wrong with ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and why the show is failing to deliver on the promise of its concept.

After what I thought was an enjoyable pilot episode (save for that unfortunate opening sequence), I’ve found the subsequent episodes of ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the television spinoff from Marvel’s cinematic universe, to be rather lackluster.

That shouldn’t be the case, particularly given the participation of the Whedons behind the scenes and the fact that the show’s writers have an entire universe of pre-existing Marvel material from which to draw inspiration. Yet, for the most part, these first few episodes have bordered on being depressingly dull, static installments that haven’t advanced the character development or loaded in an overarching plot or mythology that could amp up the tension a bit.

Tuesday’s episode (“Eye Spy”) was a step in the right direction, centering on a cybernetically enhanced former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent coerced into committing high-stakes crimes for her unseen puppet master. But the plot itself reminded me a little too much of Fox’s Fringe, another series about a makeshift team investigating rogue scientists and the seemingly inexplicable and mysterious occurrences unfolding in an otherwise grounded world. Everything about this episode — from the red masked couriers in the opening sequence to the tease of a larger pattern of illicit scientific behavior — screamed Fringe, in fact. (Interestingly, former Fringe writer Monica Owusu-Breen is on the writing staff for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..)

But, like Fringe before it, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is plagued with some of the same issues the Fox drama faced in its early episodes. Despite the fact that we’re only four episodes into the show, there hasn’t been enough character development at work; the agents are largely still the same archetypes they were when the series began, and the audience has little knowledge of them besides for their names. (I still can’t keep Fitz and Simmons straight, which is saying something, especially since they’re different genders.)

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BuzzFeed: "Why Danish Political Drama Borgen Is Everything"

The Scandinavian drama, from creator Adam Price, is a dazzling exploration of the intersection between politics and the media that everyone should be watching. The television masterpiece returns to American screens — on KCET and LinkTV — on Oct. 4 for its third (and likely final) season. Minor spoilers ahead.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Why Danish Political Drama Borgen Is Everything," in which I review the third (and likely final) season of Danish political drama Borgen, which returns to the U.S. on October 4. (After writing about the Nordic Noir phenomenon last June, I named the show the best show of 2012 when I was at The Daily Beast and I stand by that metric. This is unlike anything on television.)

I’ve been passionately shouting at the top of my lungs about Danish political drama Borgen for the last year and a half. The groundbreaking and riveting show — which returns for a third season next month in the U.S. on LinkTV (and in Los Angeles on former PBS station KCET) and online — feels as if the best parts of The West Wing and The Newsroom were put in a blender and puréed… before being transformed into a gorgeously stylized haute cuisine dish. It is a staggering work of sophisticated beauty and dazzling intelligence.

Created by Adam Price, the superlative Borgen is often grouped together with its Nordic Noir kin — Forbrydelsen, which went on to be remade by AMC into The Killing, and Broen, which was adapted by FX as The Bridge — but the show doesn’t fit into the dark, dreary, and often depressing Nordic Noir category. For one thing, Borgen represents a rare streak of optimism and hope that isn’t typically seen in Scandinavian drama, which tends to revel in its almost all-consuming nihilism and darkness.

Borgen (which is often translated as “Government,” but actually means “The Castle,” a nickname for Christiansborg Palace, the seat of Parliament, the office of the prime minister, and the Danish supreme court) is gut-wrenching in its own way. The first two seasons of the show followed the ebb and flow of Denmark’s fictional first female prime minister, Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen). She’s an unlikely leader: a political moderate who ended up elected to the highest office of the country thanks to a quirk of Danish coalition government, and who struggled to balance her professional and personal lives. Her journey — attempting to improve Denmark while fighting off opposition from the left and right — was juxtaposed against that of gifted journalist Katrine Fønsmark (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen), a television news anchor with whom Birgitte occasionally crossed paths. One hallmark of Nordic television is its use of realistically rendered female characters and Birgitte and Katrine are no exception: Ambitious, flawed, and driven, they are spiritual kinsmen even while their work often puts them at cross-purposes. Ricocheting between print, online, and television media, Katrine attempted to find equilibrium in her own life, even as Birgitte’s fell apart in the wake of her national responsibilities: As Birgitte’s marriage imploded, her children’s lives became speculation for the tabloid press, embodied by the insidious presence of Michael Laugesen (Peter Mygind), the editor-in-chief of tawdry rag Expres and its online companion site.

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