The Golden Age, Part IV
Featured, Television, The Idiot Box — By Jordan Green on June 15, 2010 at 8:00 am
I’ve mentioned many times that I believe we’re in the Golden Age of Television. I’m not alone in that, and I’ve heard it a number of other places.
But many of us were saying so even before shows like Mad Men, Treme, Community and Parks and Recreation. Even as The Sopranos, The Wire and Deadwood have faded away, television is getting even better (and worse…I’m aware of the low road, too).
Right up there, maybe even on top, is Breaking Bad, which concluded its third season on AMC Sunday. And the third season was something to behold. I would compare put it up with the very best seasons of The Wire. Vince Gilligan’s tale of a man driven down the path of methamphetamine production is not as important as David Simon’s death-of-a-city epic, but in the way that it crafts a story, and the way it builds tension, and the way it is almost flawless, it is nearly as good.
I follow frequently the AV Club’s recaps of shows I love, and the insight they offer is one reason I don’t write this column as often as I’d like…I’d feel guilty retreading what I’ve read elsewhere. That said, I’m going to completely retread the first few paragraphs of Donna Bowman’s recap of “Full Measures”, Breaking Bad‘s season finale. If you have finished season three, feel free to read the entire piece. If you haven’t watched the show, rent it as soon as you can. If these paragraphs don’t sell you, I’m not sure what will.
People living through a golden age often don’t know it. Extraordinary flowerings of art, technology, culture, or knowledge are obscured by intractable problems, crises, declines in other parts of the society. I try to remind my students frequently that they find themselves providentially at the very best time in all of history to be a student — the exact moment when knowledge is most plentiful and accessible, and when the wisdom it can engender is most urgently needed. But I don’t know if they understand or believe me.
It’s easy to look at television, with its 500 channels worth of endless crappy versions of the same empty ideas, and conclude that everything’s gone to shit. I have plenty of friends who are proud to proclaim the dreary, inevitable decline of entertainment, and answer my protests to the contrary with assertions that searching for the few worthwhile nuggets in that morass is a pointless waste of their time. Ironically, this pronouncement coincides with the greatest flowering of televised drama and comedy in the medium’s history. Freed by the proliferation of basic cable channels with a yen for signature programming, emboldened by the example of HBO, bolstered by fanatic followings and critical praise, the best television ever is on the air right now, in this decade. Throw in the DVR, the essential cure for the channel-surfing that hollows out the soul with its endless evidence of the wasteland, and suddenly your eyes are refocused above muck-level, where a profusion of flowers blooms.
Tonight’s finale should cement this season of Breaking Bad as one of television’s finest dramatic accomplishments. And what makes it so exciting — what makes the recognition of the current golden age so pressing — is that the season has not been, as Noel [Murray] put it in another context, “television good.” The heart-in-the-throat quality of this season comes as much from the writers’ exhilarating disregard for television conventions as from the events portrayed. Every cliffhanger produced anticipation that often as not was subverted by having what came after timed at a jagged off-angle from the shape we’ve internalized as expectation.
Tags: AMC, Breaking Bad, Television
16 Comments
If I shared my enthusiasm for LOST here I’d probably end up regretting it.
Lost rules. People who don’t like it just have low frustration tolerance and don’t appreciate mystery.
Now how much do you think I’ll regret saying that?
Some of us are still in denial that it’s over.
I can’t hate on “Lost”. I stopped watching after a couple episodes, but I intend to go back.
From what I’ve heard, though, I think “Lost” would still be considered “television good”, primarily because it was under the umbrella of network television and subject to rules shows like “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” are free of on AMC.
I’m looking forward to experiencing it myself. Somehow, I’ve managed to avoid most of the spoiler alerts.
I don’t that I’ve ever scene a show so challenging and entertaining at the same time. My next piece was actually going to be about why darker shows like Breaking Bad and the Sopranos appeal to us. So I guess I’ll just be ripping off Jordan if I do that. Maybe I’ll write about World Cup Soccer instead.
No, please do it, Steve.
yeah, i don’t really buy the idea that there’s so much crap out there that it’s not worth your time to find the good stuff. sure 95% of the stuff on tv is horrible, but it’s pretty easy to find out what’s good and when it’s on if you put in the slightest effort.
I am convinced that Band of Brothers is the best thing ever made for TV. I say this, however, with the caveat that I really haven’t watched primetime TV at all since around 2001, when I became a dad. I use the TV for DVDs now, and for sports events. What little I have seen of network TV isn’t impressing me, especially the few sitcoms left. But I don’t have cable/dish, so am in no way arguing with Jordan about Breaking Bad or Mad Men or any of those shows I have no access to. I just wanted to say that Band of Brothers was, for me, the pinnacle of TV-dom.
Oh yeah, I forgot to say that I tried to watch Lost for a year or so, but just kept getting frustrated at what seemed at the time to be a directionless story. Glad they got it corrected, from what I hear.
“Band of Brothers” was definitely excellent, and I’ve only caught a couple episodes of “The Pacific”, but it might be even better.
I would include it as a second tier program, though, but only because it was released early on the the cable television revolution, and because I bristle a little bit at “Saving Private Ryan”-style stuff.
You and I are former soldiers, and we both most likely roll our eyes at movies like Stripes. When Platoon came out, I was in the Army, and had high expectations. It was very good, but there were some things about it…..
Same with Private Ryan. But BoB seemed to have some unimpeachable authenticity, as well as acknowledgement that most of the German soldiers were necessarily bad guys, and most likely could have been friends with the American soldiers who were shooting at them, in another time and place. Best of all, it highlighted real people in a real story, whose role in history was vital. Although it had many of the same players as Saving Pvt Ryan, I felt it had as many differences as similarities.
Good point, James, and I haven’t watched it in a while.
From what I’ve seen so far, “The Pacific” does the same thing. There was a point in the first episode where the enemy was so definitively dehumanized and then humanized that it was devastating.
The other thing “Band of Brothers” was good at was not making the Greatest Generation too heroic. I loved a bit in Ken Burns’ documentary on WWII where they were interviewing these old guys and they were all like, “We had no concerns over the big picture, over whether Nazism was evil.” We treat these guys like they were extremely wise and heroic, when many were 18 year old kids forced into a situation. That’s not to dismiss their actions…if anything, I think it makes what they accomplished even more admirable.
I’m not sure they “got it corrected” with LOST. Most of the story was written from the beginning, and they told how many seasons there were around season 2. The producers said that they wouldn’t do more seasons than that, because they already knew how the story would end. I think it was more like watching a book, which is awesome, unless you try to jump in and read a chapter in the middle.
Thanks for leaving out spoilers. I saw everything up to the finale, but missed that due to moving back to the US this past week. The fact that I’m still wondering how the heck it ended is one of the many reasons it’s been my favorite show since I discovered it.
That was the great thing about this season…just when you thought you knew exactly how the season was going to end, they’d end that storyline in the third episode. Just amazing writing.
I won’t spoil it, but the finale went in a different direction than I *thought* I wanted it to go. I was excited about one thing, but when the show gave me something else, I liked it even better.
I wants me one of those Heisenberg hats, though.