Emmy 2012 - Dream Ballot

It's Emmy time again, and tomorrow morning the nominations for the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards will be announced.  Considering how late I'm posting this, most of you will read it after the announcements.  In any case, you can see how different my tastes and the tastes of the Academy are (hint: very, very different).  I'll have a post up later highlighting those differences, but for now this is who or what I would choose to nominate if I had any say in the matter.

Breaking Bad - Season 4

I swear this show gets better every season.  Breaking Bad is about the slow build, and this season perfected the technique.  We knew from the first episode that this season would be about Walt vs Gus, and slowly over 13 episodes things would move closer and closer to that confrontation being resolved.  Then they hit you with the last string of episodes where everything comes together and things get crazy.

The Legend of Korra - 1x11/12 - Skeletons in the Closet/Endgame

I want to say upfront that for the most part, this was a pretty great finale to an overall pretty spectacular season.  Knowing that there were going to be two seasons, I kind of expected the Amon story to play out over both seasons, with this one ending on some sort of downer (a la Book 2: Earth) or maybe with a resistance building in the underground.  Instead the Amon storyline is brought to a close and done very well.  Overall, this is not a bad thing, many series do season long arcs with one big bad, a problem arises in the final wrap up though.

The Legend of Korra - 1x09 & 1x10

Real life has intruded into my writing these past couple of weeks.  You'd think there would be less things going on in the summer.  Therefore, this will be a quick post on the past two episodes of The Legend of Korra before the double episode finale tomorrow.

Game of Thrones - 2x10 - Valar Morghulis

We've come to the end of the second season of Game of Thrones, and I've had almost two weeks (so lazy) to mull over the finale and the season as a whole.  Comparing it to the first season is inevitable and I think there are ways that the second was better, and ways that it's not.

The Legend of Korra - 1x08 - When Extremes Meet

The new Team Avatar has finally been officially formed and Tarrlok has a few shady schemes he's cooking up.

Game of Thrones - 2x09 - Blackwater

The big battle has finally come.  I usually structure my reviews by locale, but due to the scale of events happening this week, the entire episode takes place at King's Landing.  The focus gives the episode a clarity that a few of the preceding episodes were lacking because of having to jump around and serve so many stories.  I wonder if the show could do this more often without viewers losing the threads of the stories left out.

Game of Thrones - 2x08 - The Prince of Winterfell

Mostly a table setting episode, but a good one none the less.  Dany and Jon get a scene each, but most things are focused in Westeros proper and even more focused are the scenes gearing up for the climatic battle of Stannis trying to take King's Landing.

The Legend of Korra - 1x07 - The Aftermath

After the attack on the stadium, the hunt for Amon has gone full force.  Lin Bei Fong and her Metalbending Police are doing their best to make up for the being blindsided at the arena.  Meanwhile, Korra thinks a friend may really be a foe.

NBC Thursday Comedies - Week 29

So we finally come to the end with a triple dose of Community and one final 30 Rock.  With a trio of great episodes, Community as we know it has probably come to an end.  Dan Harmon being fired by Sony makes it hard to imagine the show that was mostly his singular vision will not being irrevocably changed.  We can hope that it will still be funny, ambitious, and heartfelt next year, but it will certainly not be the same.  At least Dan Harmon leaves on three strong episodes that are kind of a microcosm of Community.  A high-concept episode, a parody episode, and a character based "normal" episode.