What have I been doing for the past two weeks?

I stop reading a book after 200 pages because I know that I have been missing a lot of good TV shows. So that’s what I did for the last two weeks—tv series marathon every night. Here’s the list of what I watched:

1. Mad Men (season 6)

This is one of the best shows in television right now. It tells about the life of Don Draper, and his decadent life in the advertising world of the 1960s. It is awash with bias against women in the workplace, and the patriarchal society of that era.

2. Girls (season 1)

This is the kind of tv series where you are not advised to eat while watching it. You see, the spaghetti that you’re eating might get thrown out of your nose from laughing! That kind of thing.

It tells the story of four young girls in New York, and their life struggles, er, sex lives. It was created and starred by Lena Dunham (what a genius!), and I want to catch up on its season 2 pronto.

3. Hannibal (season 1)

Hannibal is dark, and delves more into the psyche of disturbed, psychotic people. The series looks to me as too dream-like, because it presents a case based on the impression of its protagonist, Will Graham, a gifted profiler working for the FBI who uses his special imaginary skills to re-create a crime scene, an identify who the killer is.

4. Dexter (first 4 episodes of season 8)

I love Dexter from the start! I love the concept of a serial killer who only kills murderers. It is now on its final season (on-going), and I am excited how the writers will end his story. It seems that they are undressing him of his identity, and will eventually has his comeuppance at the end. We’ll see.

5. The Bridge (first 3 episodes of season 1, ongoing)

The Bridge is the new tv series from FX, a remake of the Dane/Swede series. It tells the cultural divide between US and Mexico in the Bridge of America, a bridge that connects El Paso, Texas to Juarez, Chihuahua (Mexico). A serial killer is testing the patience of two police detectives (one from the US, the other from Mexico) menacing the said border. It looks really promising, after watching the first few episodes.

6. Under The Dome (first 3 episodes of season 1, on-going)

The tv series is based on the novel of Stephen King of the same title. It is about a town, Chester’s Mill, suddenly became engulfed with a huge translucent dome, leaving people inside trap.

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In the next few months, I am going to completely watch the last season of Dexter and Breaking Bad, two of my favorite tv series. But I am not complaining because there are excellent new tv shows worth watching. I have to check if Low Winter Sun (AMC) is a good show, too.

Touch

I started watching Touch last weekend because I got bored watching Mad Men. The latter is too serious a series, and there’s just a lot of smoking in every scenes that I can smell nicotine popping out of my TV screen.

So I look for a DVD of Touch. Im on my 6th episode now, and I like it. It tells the story of an autistic kid who communicated to his widower father through numbers. He writes numbers, and its up to his father to find out what it means. Usually, the numbers are patterns or symbols that will happen in the future, and its usually a bad event. The child is “saying” that in order to avoid the bad thing to happen, his father is forced to read between the numbers and connect the dots.

Nikita

Nikita reminds me of Alias, that series where Jennifer Garner wears pink hair before Katy Perry makes it fashionable. I did not finish watching that series. But this Maggie Q-starrer, loosely based on previous Nikita film and tv series, is edgy and engaging.

It tells the story of Nikita (Maggie Q),a former trained assassin working for a covert group Division. She left the group and go against it. She tap a young Russian girl, trained her and put her inside Division to be her mole inside so she can counteract any projects Division is planning. Nikita aspires to get the black boxes, a hard disc containing all the information gathered by Division for all their activities. It is an action-packed series, like a 007 movie.

I am currently watching season 2, and I intend to finish it in a few days. Season 3 will premiere this October and the story is getting intense and exciting. Cannot wait.

True Blood Season 5

So who is excited for season 5 premiere of True Blood tomorrow? Whoooot.

Scandal

My younger brother told me about this new show, Scandal, whom he initial describes as like the story of a US President with an illicit affair with an intern. Yes, like Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. So I was curious to see it. I started watching the episodes this morning and I cannot help it. It hooks me. The entire season 1 is just seven episodes, but ABC announced that it will return with a 13 episode Season2.

The story, actually, revolves around Olivia Pope, a former White House Communications Director who is now running her own crisis management firm, Olivia Pope and Associates. She gets high-profiles clients through series of episodes, but the most challenging of all is the confession of a White House employee that she and the US President is having an affair, and she’s pregnant.

The series is created by Shonda Rhimes, who gives us the medical drama, Greys Anatomy. The DVD of the entire season 1 will be released on June 12, 2012.

Suits

My kind of TV show. Excited for the new season this summer 2012. Meanwhile, Game of Thrones season 2, and The Killing season 2 will pre-occupy my tv viewing habits.

Person Of Interest

Put Jonathan Nolan in the screenwriting credit and you had me. The Dark Knight writer is a genius. His new baby is the CBS series “Person Of Interest” starring Jim Caviezel. I just saw the premiere episode and I like it. It’s like Big Brother, for good. I know that its too early to review the series (it has just release its second episode) but I like the concept. I hope the writers will sustain this.

Screen Rant said that “Person of Interest is one of the most exciting new shows on broadcast TV this year. If you’re looking for a thought-provoking thriller with solid action and storytelling, look no further – especially if you’re a fan of Nolan’s flavor of caped vigilante”.

 

A Clash of Kings trailer

New TV shows that I need to see.

Forget local TV shows. They insult my intelligence. For excellent production value, I prefer watching US TV shows because they are like movies, and the CGI effects makes it very convincing and real.

Aside from the upcoming seasons of my Glee, Dexter, The Good Wife, and The Walking Dead, there are new TV shows that will premiere this fall in the US.Terra Nova is one of them–a mix of time travel, dinosaurs, and cutthroat natural selection.

TV.com compiled 10 of these in an article. See here. Full trailer of Terra Nova below.

Breaking Bad

After watching the entire seasons (1, 2) of The Good Wife (which I like), I am now starting with another TV series marathon—AMC’s “Breaking Bad.” Below is the synopsis from its official website.

“Breaking Bad follows protagonist Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a chemistry teacher who lives in New Mexico with his wife (Anna Gunn) and teenage son (RJ Mitte) who has cerebral palsy. White is diagnosed with Stage III cancer and given a prognosis of two years left to live. With a new sense of fearlessness based on his medical prognosis, and a desire to secure his family’s financial security, White chooses to enter a dangerous world of drugs and crime and ascends to power in this world. The series explores how a fatal diagnosis such as White’s releases a typical man from the daily concerns and constraints of normal society and follows his transformation from mild family man to a kingpin of the drug trade.”