This topic made me sad. Once I got thinking about it, I realized that a lot of things I used to consider bulletproof examples of excellence in their field have recently faltered:

• Pixar doesn't automatically make great movies anymore.

• After Steve Jobs died, I was concerned that Apple may fall into the same business patterns as most tech companies - which seems likely if rumors of a mini iPad are true. http://mashable.com/2012/07/05/ipad-min-bad/

• Dan Harmon was fired from Community.

• Breaking Bad appears to be maintaining quality for their fifth season, but even then that's the final season.

• They're replacing The Office's cast instead of just ending the damned thing already.

• Eastbound & Down has confirmed seasons beyond the story they'd wanted to tell, presumably just for the money.

• Prometheus sucked - though that's hardly fair to group in with this list since it wasn't the first disappointing Alien movie or even representative of a shift in Ridley Scott's current quality, but fuck you I'm including it anyway.

Pretty much the only thing in the entertainment world that I still trust blindly and completely is Mad Men.

Obviously one can't and shouldn't tie their happiness into the actions of people (or even worse, corporations) they are totally unrelated to, but thinking about that all at once was certainly enough to make for a mildly disheartening morning.

Philistine!

I'm with Lamer. Breaking Bad bests Mad Men in pretty much every category.

I'm totally not the guy to be writing this, but here goes.

Mad Men feels (Key word: feels. I wasn't there, so I don't know, but it feels) like this perfect little section of history (mid 60's New York advertising culture) perfectly lifted out of time and broadcast in HD. It's a show that relies solely and entirely on it's characters, there are no magic beans or serendipitous little deus ex machina plot twists, everything is driven by the choices these characters have made and make throughout the series. It's an absolutely facsinating look at why we do what we do, whether it's a white lie here or a left instead of right there, money or family; and how those choices impact us days, months, years or decades down the line. And all of this is cast against the backdrop of an america that still believes in the white picket fence, and the 2 and half kids nuclear family, and THAT (At least for me) provides this really interesting portal view into a world I've never seen before (Remember, little baby 20 year old here) and at times can barely even comprehened as the same world I grew up in, despite only being 40 or so years ago. And honestly, more than anything really, every single character on screen is just fun to watch, the way they interact, the weird dynamics that emerge, and every single actor on screen is...yeah...just amazingly fun to watch.

EDIT: On the subject of Breaking Bad. (I'm going to try to do this as delicately as I can, don't freak out)

I enjoy it... I'll put that out there first, I do like Breaking Bad. I think it's another great example of character driving the story. BUT.

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2012-07-20 07:06:02)

And I have no idea how anyone who watched past the first couple episodes could think that. Maybe I just like subtlety*.

(*yes, this is a joke)

Congratulations, you have a life

See, that's why I'm not the guy to write that paragraph. And I absolutely agree.

Great episode. I think the point about the fact that the Pixar brass that made the Pixar films of my childhood has now spread out and can't devote the same resources and time to projects now is what sort of made me realize the most that they've definitely changed. Personally, as a huge Disney freak, I'm delighted that Lasseter is the chief creative officer for Walt Disney Animation Studios, because he gets it, man, but it is kind of sad that they're coming back down to earth after such an amazing run.

I just don't get cars at all. I mean, I don't get the premise of the universe it's set in. Is it post-apocalyptic, and all the people are dead and the cars animated? Or were there never people, and it's just a parallel universe where cars exist as sentient beings? If so, why? Do they reproduce? They date, so maybe, but, oh dear. It just doesn't work.

Last edited by TheGreg (2012-08-22 16:41:15)

It was amazing.

um...what?

Got it.