They also have to give the audience some closure. For comedies or fringe shows, they may be able to cancel them without too many complaints, but Boardwalk Empire was a tentpole show with a pilot directed by Scorsese that was a big hit for them in the early seasons.
Given how they renewed Treme for a final season (even…
Dwigt
avclub-64eec0c3fb6b12c43f51ec9e9c773fed--disqus
Every arc in this season now feels like a backdoor pilot for a spin-off show:
Madame Heroine
Crocodile Nucky
Rural Richard
Missing Maggie
FBI: The Early Years
Busy Doin' Nothing: Nelson Van Alden in Chicago
National Lampoon's Boardwalk Academy
They had to put a lot of care and creativity into explaining that Michael Pitt hadn't been fired for personal reasons but that the character had been killed for creative purposes.
My favorite moment this season is the "Previously on Boardwalk Empire" from episode 2, which was basically four guys being gunned down or stabbed at various past moments of the show.
The plots are so disjointed this year, there are so many characters that have become dead weight, that the first time they'll connect two…
@avclub-63706c2231765ca840e9a60a76fae00a:disqus It has a fine performance by Will Ferrell, a welcome cameo by Tony Hale, among others, but it has the common flaw from almost any piece of fiction depicting a supposedly great work of art. The novel written by Emma Thompson is anything but the masterpiece Hoffman…
His Stranger Than Fiction was already 20 percent new Charlie Kaufman and 80 percent shit .
The Think Different/Crazy Ones commercial was narrated by Richard Dreyfuss. Steve Jobs did record a version of the speech, but it was only released after he died.
True fact: Eddie Gorodetsky is a notorious record collector which led to him being great friends with Bob Dylan, who released a Christmas compilation curated by "Eddie G." on his own label, had a cameo on Dharma & Greg and got Eddie G. as the producer for his Theme Time Radio Hour on XM.
@avclub-e646e2fec7dcbe33111f4481a96523af:disqus Plemons couldn't actually say the line right, as he never listened to Howard Stern. They had to add a reference to Stern to make it work.
Walter is definitely a brilliant scientist, there's no doubt about that. It was stated in the pilot that he did some research at CalTech (before founding Gray Matter) that contributed to the Nobel Prize in 1985 for the two lead scientists on the project. He was clearly at the time on a path to his own Nobel.
In his…
NTSF had actually:
- Robert Forster
- Skinny Pete (this week)
- Badger (in the season premiere, Comic-Con Air)
- Bob Odenkirk (Robot-Town last season)
- John de Lancie (Donald Margolis, Jane's dad, Leonardo Da Vinci in Time Angels)
Harry Dean Stanton would have been perfect for the part, but he's too old.
He won't kill her. Walter has too many targets in mind: the neo-nazis, the Schwartzes, Jesse when he finds him alive… They can't add his wife to the hit list at the last minute.
Besides, the script took great care into establishing that Flynn's reaction on the phone was his own, not what Skyler told him.
@avclub-ff25de6e5c0e0d36106e5202c92299af:disqus Here's the backstory for Gray Matter, according to Jessica Hecht (Gretchen):
Gretchen and Elliot have always been the big motivation for becoming an outlaw and going huge. It was never the family or the cash. It was his hatred of them.
The defining point in Walter's history is in episode 4, "Cancer Man". After the first cooking, Walter had given up and just wanted to use the money to pay for…
El Paso by Marty Robbins.
@avclub-9c3508e704aa16945cf79b05af57848c:disqus Thanks, that was the line that was missing in the subs.
I couldn't understand the ending of his final voice-over.
"I'm not as think as you drunk I am. All I had was [?????]"
Did anybody understand what he said?
@avclub-5dedb42b34e50082065a783265ce28a8:disqus In both cases, it's another generic relationship/family ABC sitcom.