Showing posts with label friday night lights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friday night lights. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Emmys 2012: How 'Downton Abbey' might affect the drama races By Rick Porter July 11, 2012 7:19 PM ET (ZAP IT)



When the Emmy nominations are announced on July 19, you'll probably see quite a few repeat nominees. It's what the Emmys does, to a large extent, and as discussed previously, it's unlikely that any new shows not named "Homeland" will get a bucketful of nominations.

There is one returning show, however, that has the potential to shake up several races: "Downton Abbey." PBS' British import is moving from the movie/miniseries field to the drama series categories this year, and it wouldn't be surprising to see the show come close to matching the 11 nominations it received in 2011.

If "Downton" scores a big nomination haul, though, that means other shows and performers might get left out in the cold.

Here's a look at how "Downton Abbey" might affect several big drama races at the 2012 Emmys.

Drama series

Chances of a "Downton" nomination: Very high. The TV academy has a long history of embracing PBS' "Masterpiece" offerings both as miniseries and dramas. The show was also something of a phenomenon this season, pushing the public broadcaster's ratings to much higher levels than usual.

2011 nominees: "Boardwalk Empire," "Dexter," "Friday Night Lights," "Game of Thrones," "The Good Wife," "Mad Men" (winner)

Most likely to be pushed out by "Downton": Last year was the swan song for "Friday Night Lights," so let's say the returning "Breaking Bad" gets that spot. With "Downton" and "Homeland" both likely to score series nods, the bet here is that "Dexter" and "Boardwalk Empire" go by the wayside.


Tuesday, December 6, 2011

NY Magazine's Top 10 TV shows of 2011

Jihadi double agents, meth mayhem, premium-cable dragons, and dinosaurs that fail to entertain

1. Breaking Bad
Vince Gilligan’s perfectly plotted methodrama kept flying high four seasons in, as once-mild-mannered chemistry teacher Walter White continued his breakneck moral descent, a chilling trajectory that led to the year’s most memorable, and least hollow, “Holy shit, did that just happen?” moment. Tie-straightening will never be the same again.


2. Downton Abbey
If Jane Austen made TV, it would be something like the first season of Julian ­Fellowes’s British-import late-Edwardian costume drama, bursting with witticisms, romance, a class system, and, stealing her every scene, Dame ­Maggie Smith.

3. Louie
Louie C.K.’s perverse, thoughtful, low-budget FX sitcom feels like being in his peculiar head—where masturbation, heartbreak, the anxiety of fatherhood, and observations about duck vaginas jangle together hilariously. Plus it finally made Dane Cook seem cool.

4. Homeland
A post-9/11 drama with a nuanced worldview and ­national-security perspective, it’s also a thriller that actually thrills. And Claire Danes makes for an extremely convincing hard-nosed, potty-mouthed, mentally ill government agent.

5. The Good Wife
For the first half of the year, The Good Wife was the best drama on television, a realpolitik procedural obsessed with meaty current events and also a serialized drama with a clear-eyed perspective on the sordid things people are capable of.

6. Parks and Recreation
In its third season, Parks and Recreation’s already strong Amy Poehler–led cast got stronger with the additions of Rob “Stop Pooping” Lowe and Adam Scott. The series’s distinctive comedic style forgoes mean-spiritedness and humiliation to celebrate kindness and competence.

7. Friday Night Lights
When coach Eric Taylor, the most decent man ever to anchor a TV show, tried to teach his new football team “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose” in the series finale, his signature phrase still packed enough emotional gravitas to bring a tear to the eye.

8. Community
As of this month, Dan ­Harmon’s meta-sitcom Community will go off the NBC schedule. What a shame: There aren’t any other series with the guts or ambition to do a genre-exploding, episode-long homage to My Dinner With Andre that climaxes in an existential epiphany brought about by sudden-onset diarrhea.

9. Justified
Margo Martindale, as a backwoods matriarch, turned into TV’s most richly developed villain—on a show that has no shortage of great bad guys. ­Justifiedperfectly paced a season-long cat-and-mouse game that balanced genre staples with a consistent sense of humor.

10. Happy Endings
Proving yet again that in comedies it’s not concepts but chemistry that counts, what initially seemed like little more than a Friends knockoff developed its own fresh style by filling out its zany gang with heretofore unseen character types, like Adam Pally as an incidentally gay bro, and Damon Wayans Jr. and Eliza Coupe’s horny goofball marrieds.


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Sorry about the last one, Mods! Guess thats what happens when you make a post in the library instead of writing the essay that's due in tomorrow...