American Horror Story's Sarah Paulson Reveals Her First Reaction to Freak Show: "Holy S--t!"
Come one, come all to the scariest show on television!
The cast of American Horror Story is gearing up for their fourth installment of the critically worshipped series, and flying high after the spellbinding success of Coven—aka the most-watched season in AHS' history—our chameleon cast is ready to embrace a new terrifying twist with Freak Show.
Set in Jupiter, Florida in 1950, the consistently incredible Jessica Lange will play a German ex-pat who is managing one of the last freak shows in the United States. With Oscar winner Kathy Bates, Angela Bassett, Frances Conroy and many more of AHS' all-star cast ready and willing to transform themselves into some of the strangest characters we've ever seen, Freak Show is already shaping up to be the most intriguing season yet.
To feed your AHS addiction, we caught up with everyone's favorite Supreme, Sarah Paulson, at an American Horror Story: Coven screening and Q&A last week to find out absolutely everything we could about Freak Show.
Paulson, who has already read the very first script for Freak Show thus far, said that her initial reaction was best summed up in two words: "Holy s—t!"
"I feel like that's the appropriate reaction you want when you read the first script of American Horror Story," the Emmy nominated actress explained with a laugh. "So it's very exciting and totally nerve-wracking in the best way because you think, ‘How the hell am I going to pull this off?!' And as an actor, I think that's an exciting thing to feel."
As for next season's tone, Paulson spilled that Freak Show is looking to be "a kind of beautiful hybrid between Coven and Asylum." Our mouths are already watering because that sounds like a perfectly horrifying combination!
"There's going to be a little bit of a richer and potentially darker tone the way Asylum had, but with the humor infused from Coven," she said. "When you add Kathy Bates to the story, she's so funny, and Emma Roberts was so funny last year as Madison, I just think it's going to be a really beautiful mix of both."
Dressed in a black Marc Jacobs dress that was very Coven-esque, Paulson revealed that she is thrilled to see what AHS creator and executive producer Ryan Murphy is going to manifest this year.
"His interests tend to go towards the female and the intricacies of the female heart and mind and I love him so much for that because, boy, he has thrown the ball at me in a really beautiful way," the 38-year-old actress said. "I worship at the altar of Ryan Murphy and I always will."
So what kind of unique trait has Murphy asked Paulson to master in preparation for her new role? "Well, I don't know if it's a trait," the actress slyly teased." But it's requiring a lot of physical things." Hmm, any ideas, AHS fans?!
Whatever her new role may be, Paulson revealed that there is no fear she won't conquer for American Horror Story. "I've had live snakes on my body. I've had to feign masturbation on television, which my father would have to watch. I had to simulate abortion, I had to breastfeed one of my best friends who is a 35-year-old man," she said with a laugh.
"I mean you name it and I've had to do it on American Horror Story. There's nothing I won't do at this point—and that's what's terrifying."
NBC Cancels Revolution, Dracula and 3 More Shows—Get the Details
NBC is cutting off the power.
The network has officially canceled Revolution, Eric Kripke and J.J. Abrams' action-drama, which is currently in its second season. The network also put a stake in Dracula, its vampire drama starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
Also axed by NBC was freshman comedy Growing Up Fisher, which starred J.K. Simmons. Believe, the freshman drama from Gravity director Alfonso Cuarón and Abrams, was also canceled. It debuted at midseason to 6.5 million viewers, before dropping to 4.2 million viewers and a 1.0 demo rating. Crisis, NBC's other midseason freshman drama starring Dermot Mulroney and Gillian Anderson, was also axed.
Revolution's season two ratings decline has been a particularly steep one as the drama, which started Billy Burke, Elizabeth Mitchell and Giancarlo Esposito, was the No. 1 new show last year, with its series premiere setting a ratings record for NBC. The most recent episode of Revolution brought in just 3.82 million viewers and 1.3 rating.
The cancellations comes on the heels of NBC's decision not to renew Community for a sixth season.Faring better than Community, Revolution, Believe, Crisis and Growing Up Fisher were Hannibal and About a Boy, which were just renewed for their third and second seasons, respectively.
Also renewed by NBC? Law & Order: SVU, Chicago PD, Chicago Fire, The Blacklist, Parks and Recreation and Grimm. Reality series The Voice and Celebrity Apprentice were also picked up.
NBC has yet to decide the fates of freshman dramas Crisis and Believe, the latter of which also comes from Abrams.
Nashville Renewed for Season 3 by ABC
We've got some great news, y'all!
ABC has officially picked up Nashville, the Country music soap starring Connie Britton and Hayden Panettiere, for a third season, the network announced on Friday.
"Congratz and welcome back for Season 3 to @Nashville_ABC@conniebritton@CharlesEsten@CallieKhouri, the whole Nashville team and loyal fans," ABC co-president Ben Sherwood tweeted.
Nashville has averaged 5.3 million viewers and a 1.4 rating in the adults 18-49 demo in its second season, which wraps up on Wednesday, May 14.
The drama joins a slew of other series to be renewed by ABC, including Scandal, Grey's Anatomy, Revenge, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Castle.
Before Nashville's renewal, we chatted with star Eric Close, who was feeling confident about the show's chances for survival, given its bubble-watch status throughout season two.
"I got to tell you, I'd be really shocked if it doesn't go another year," he said. "What I've noticed over the last year is that a lot of fans are really interested in introducing the show to their friends…I think we have a great following that's growing and the shows are interesting."
ABC recently sent several of the show's stars, including Charles Esten, Clare Bowen, Sam Palladio, Chris Carmack and Jonathan Jackson, on the first ever Nashville concert tour, where they performed songs for fans in Chicago, Washington D.C., Philadelphia and New York City.
Though the network picked up a bunch of shows, including Modern Family and The Middle, five series weren't so lucky; Trophy Wife, Mixology, Suburgatory, The Neighbors and Super Fun Night were are all canceled.
Game of Thrones Director Explains Horrifying Rape Scene—And Why the Actors Giggled During Filming
Anyone else suffering from PTGOTSSD (post traumatic Game of Thrones sex scene disorder) this morning?
Sunday night's all-new episode of Game of Thrones tackled the aftermath of King Joffrey's (Jack Gleeson) sudden and deliberate death at the Purple Wedding. Naturally Cersei (Lena Heady) was a complete and total wreck, and while she was somberly looking over her dead son's body, her brother (and the father of her son) Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) approached and started to make love with his sister—with Joffrey's cold corpse less than a foot away.
But wait, it gets worse. While book fans remember this scene to be a consensual moment, Jaime forced himself upon Cersei despite her demands to stop. "It's not right," she cried, to which Jaime snarled, "I don't care." Yikes!
Game of Thrones' director, Alex Graves, revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that although he is "never that excited about going to film forced sex," he did want to make this a truly unforgettable moment in the HBO hit's history.
"But the whole thing for me was about dead Joffrey lying there, watching the whole thing," Graves revealed. "(Showrunners) David (Benioff) and Dan (Weiss) loved that, and I was like, I wanted to make sure I had Jack in there as much as I could."
So why was it so important to have Joffey's recently poisoned body just inches away from this dirty deed? "He is their first born. He is their sin. He is their lust, and their love—their everything. If he's gone, what's going to happen?" Graves continued, "Jaime is still trying to believe as hard as he possibly can that he's in love with Cersei. He can't admit that he is traumatized by his family and he's been forced his whole life to be something he doesn't want to be. What he is—but has to deny—is he is actually the good knight, like Brienne."
Despite the darkness of the scene, Heady and Coster-Waldau continuously erupted in a fit of giggles every time Graves would give a directorial correction. Graves revealed, "I wanted to make sure I had Jack in there as much as I could. Of course Lena and Nickolaj laughed every time I would say, "You grab her by the hair, and Jack is right there," or "You come around this way, and Jack is right there."
And we can never unsee that godawful scene. Mission...accomplished?
Game of Thrones airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.
2014 May Finale Spoiler-rama: Scoop on the End of All Your Favorite Shows!
But wait, you might be saying to yourself, "Self, it's only April 17. Why are those crazy TV people at E! Online talking about finales already?!" (*= we might be crazy.)
Well, we are not crazy* because three of our favorite shows are signing off for the season tonight: Scandal, Parenthood and Community!
So what can you expect from the "explosive" Scandal season three finale? And who will be returning in Parenthood's season ender? To help you better prepare for 20134s May finale season, we've compiled teases on over 30 (!) of your favorite shows.
Of course, you may want to prepare yourselves now as quite a few shows will be killin' off one of their characters, including Revenge, and The Originals, to name but a few.
But it's not all death and sadness as quite a few series will also be stepping up their game in the romance department before they sign off for the summer. We're looking at you, Castle and The Mindy Project. Plus, Glee, Arrow and The Vampire Diaries are set to welcome back some familiar faces and Supernatural boss Jeremy Carver previews the brothers' big battle.
Without further ado, we present to you the 2014 May Finale Spoiler-rama gallery, which is filled with scoop of all varieties, from heartbreaking to hopeful. Just don't shoot the messenger, mmmkay?
And don't worry, as we get closer to May, we'll be bringing you even more finale scoop, so make sure to keep checking back!
Girl on Top 2014 Begins: Nominate Your Favorite TV Ladies Now!
Now that Jensen Ackles has continued his unbeaten streak as the winner of our Alpha Male Madness tournament, it's now time for the ladies to have their turn! That's right, Girl on Top 2014 is about to begin!
But before the voting can officially kick off, we need to find the 64 lucky ladies who will enter into the fierce competition that is Girl on Top. Previous winners include Chuck's Yvonne Strahovski, and, most recently, Lost Girl's Zoie Palmer.
We're asking you to nominate your favorite TV ladies and the only rules are that the show the actress is on has to currently be on the air or very recently gone off the air.
You have until Sunday, April 20, at 5 p.m. to nominate your favorite ladies, with round one of our tournament kicking off on Monday morning.
So what are you waiting for? Head on down to the comments and start nominating now. Plus, make sure to spread the world by using the #GirlonTop hashtag on Twitter.
Game of Thrones' Jack Gleeson Talks Purple Wedding Shockers, King Joffrey: Spoilers Ahead!
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Inarritu's 'Birdman' Starring Michael Keaton Set to Open
this October
Birdman, co-written & directed by Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu (of Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel, Biutiful), has been described as a dark comedy. A washed-up actor, played by Michael Keaton, who once played an iconic superhero must overcome his ego and family trouble as he mounts a Broadway play in a bid to reclaim his past glory. Stone is playing Keaton's daughter just out of rehab ands his assistant; Watts is playing one of the actresses in the play and Galifianakis is the producer. The script is based on a short story by Raymond Chandler. We expect the film to premiere at a film festival later in the fall season, like Venice and Toronto, before opening in limited theaters in October. Stay tuned for a trailer.
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Is‘Almost Human’ on the Verge of Cancellation?
So Fox’s latest sci-fi offering, Almost Human, had an uphill battle ahead of it to begin with. The series may share some of the creative team as the network’s cult hit Fringe, including Star Trek Into Darkness director J.J. Abrams as executive producer. Furthermore, it has Dredd‘s Karl Urban and Think Like a Man star Michael Ealy as a human and android police team solving crimes in a compelling futuristic setting. The show was destined to be a hit, right?
According to TV by the Numbers, Almost Human actually may be on its way off of Fox’s schedule altogether. The site has brought its prediction for the show’s fate down to “likely to be canceled,” indicating that its chances of being renewed for a season 2 are slimmer than ever. While ratings haven’t been extraordinarily low, the show isn’t cheap, and the fact that the network hasn’t ordered any additional episodes beyond the initial 13-episode order doesn’t bode well.
Even worse, it seems that Fox is moving proven hit Bones back to its original timeslot and pushing Almost Human out. This shift could imply that the network has lost faith in the show’s ability to draw an audience and simply intends to burn through the remaining episodes by plugging Almost Human elsewhere in its schedule. Of course, this should be taken with a grain of salt, as Fox has yet to issue an official word on Almost Human.
After a strong narrative start, it’s unfortunate that the prospects for Almost Human are slimming. There’s still a chance that the series could hang on for another season, but perhaps the writing was on the wall to begin with. After all, the series lost a showrunner before it even aired, and Fox hasn’t aired its episodes in the intended order (another sign of network neglect).
While some may believe that the network’s failure to extend Almost Human‘s maiden season to a full 22 episodes is just another example of the short-and-sweet approach Fox is taking with Sleepy Hollow, the fact is that the show’s more episodic tone makes that far less likely. As always, time will tell.
Do you think Almost Human will make it to season 2, Screen Rant readers? How do you think Fox can help boost the show’s profile? Let us know in the comments section.
Almost Human airs Mondays @8pm on Fox. Stay tuned to Screen Rant for updates on the show’s status.
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This New 24 Trailer With Kiefer Sutherland and Yvonne Strahovski Is Making Us So Happy Right Now
We have your first loook at Chuck's Yvonne Strahovski teaming up with Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) for Fox's new limited-run series 24: Live Another Day and it is a sight to behold. Chills on top of chills!
The two have crackling chemistry—and spoiler alert, things get rough! And we would like the record to show that no one looks better at kick assery than one Miss Yvonne Strahovski. Her casting is so much win. Well played, 24 bosses!
Also starring in this 12-episode event? Benjamin Bratt, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Tate Donovan and more.
24: Live Another Day was shot entirely on location in London, and focuses on Jack saving the day (duh), and the world (duh), because no one does it better (duh). The series looks even more slick and slightly more epic than the 24 of yesterseason, thanks to the bigger budget and impressive Londontown landscape. And...you know, Strahovski.
24: Live Another Day debuts on May 5 with a special two-hour premiere, and will air every Monday on Fox after that--until the day is done.
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Divergent Franchise Gets a Fourth Movie: Allegiant Will Be Produced and Released as Two Separate Films
The final book in the Divergent series will be split into two movies, Summit Entertainment announced Friday. This isn't uncommon when young adult novels have been adapted for the big screen, as the final installments of three other blockbusters—Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—all received the same treatment.
"[Author] Veronica Roth brings her captivating story to a masterful conclusion in Allegiant, a rich, action-packed book with material that is ideally suited to two strong and fulfilling movies," Lionsgate Motion Picture Group co-chairmen Rob Friedman and Patrick Wachsberger said in a statement. "The storytelling arc and world of the characters lend themselves perfectly to two films, a storytelling strategy that has worked very well for us on the two Twilight Breaking Dawn films and about which we're tremendously enthusiastic for the two upcoming Mockingjay films of The Hunger Games franchise."
VIDEO: What advice does Kate Winslet have for Shailene Woodley?
Divergent has earned $117 million at the domestic box office in its first three weeks of release. Its sequel, Insurgent, begins production next month and is scheduled to hit theaters on March 20, 2015. Allegiant - Parts 1 & 2 are slated for release on March 18, 2016, and March 24, 2017, respectively.
The first film in the franchise was directed by Neil Burger and starred Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Kate Winslet, Ashley Judd, Jai Courtney, Zoë Kravitz, Miles Teller, Mekhi Phifer, Tony Goldwyn, Maggie Q and Ansel Elgort; many of the actors will reprise their roles in Insurgent, directed by Robert Schwentke.
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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
The show everybody wanted to love has sort of crashed and burned in that
department. Its ratings slipped pretty consistently since its
premiere.Coupled with disappointing and uneven storytelling, it's
looking like it could go either way for S.H.I.E.L.D.
However, its DVR playback is good and the powers that be are making
efforts to make the show feel more Marvel-ous. Upcoming Marvel flicks,
including a tie-in with Captain America 2 and a guest spot by Thor star Jaimie Alexander, could help the show's chances for survival.
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'Breaking Bad' Finale Review, 'Felina': The Big Finish Felt Small At Times
From a structural standpoint, it's hard to be too hard on the "Breaking Bad" finale as a discrete unit. The last hour of the series took all the story threads that were still dangling and wrapped them up, not quite in an elegant bow -- more like a blood-drenched metal chain.
In the last few scenes, creator Vince Gilligan, who wrote and directed the finale, went with a Shakespearean solution, one of those "and then everybody died" situations that you find at the end of some of the Bard's plays. Out in the New Mexico desert, the bright, shining exception to the general bloodbath was Jesse, whose deliriously relieved exit from the Nazi compound was the best moment of the finale.
Yet in the future, I can't imagine many people will think of this as a classic hour of "Breaking Bad." Gilligan himself called "Ozymandias" the finest hour the show ever produced, and it's hard to argue with that assessment. It's fairly common for cable shows to kick out the jams in their penultimate episodes, but "Breaking Bad" went out in a slightly different way. "Ozymandias," the third-from-last installment, had an almost unbearable impact.
In many ways, that hour felt like the show's final destination; the story and the people went furthest they could go in a dozen ways. It placed many viewers (including myself) into an emotional and psychological vise and made "Game of Thrones'" Red Wedding look like a cocktail party. "Ozymandias" was hard to watch, but it was the culmination of almost every idea, theme and story the past five seasons had set in motion. It braided together everything that makes "Breaking Bad" phenomenal and was nearly toxic in its crystalline purity. It was majestic, cathartic, harrowing and great.
"Felina" was not that. The last two episodes, for all their good moments and sturdy attributes, feel like mopping-up exercises, to some extent. Perhaps the choices made at the start of Season 5 ultimately constricted and constrained what the last hours could do. I wasn't expecting another "Ozymandias," but a finale that was often concerned with logistical details and a plot to get rid of minor characters wasn't quite what I was expecting either.
"Felina" was not without excellent moments, and it goes without saying that the performances were top-notch. In the first third of the finale, there were some well-constructed twists and turns; the sequence at the Schwartz house was its own little effective thriller. In the middle, there was an elegiac spareness and a quiet grief in the final scenes of the White family. The reveal of Walt in Skyler's kitchen was a terrific -- and chilling -- moment, and Bryan Cranston and Anna Gunn played a full range of emotions from both characters -- especially Skyler -- with fantastic restraint and an ever-present tinge of sadness.
Still, there are some nagging areas of disquiet in the back of my brain, especially as the endgame played out.
For one thing, the finale spent a lot of time on the resolutions of characters (the Nazis, the Schwartzes, Lydia) I barely knew and I didn't care much about. More importantly, it did not spend much time on Walt and Jesse's final moments. Jesse's absence was especially pronounced in the finale, and that may partly account for why the last hour felt kind of lopsided and off. Without Jesse, and with so much attention paid to structural detail, "Felina" ended up coming off as a bit mechanical and remote. The final pieces that the puzzle that "Breaking Bad" has been assembling in Season 5 were slotted into place, but the kind of brain-melting impact of the show's best episodes wasn't present in this hour.
I will admit to wrestling with how much Walt got to control his own narrative (again), and that's what accounts for the fact that I didn't post this until 4 a.m. I'm betting I'll be wrestling with that for some time to come (Ryan McGee and I will publish a Talking TV podcast about the finale Monday evening, in which we'll discuss these matters once again. Update: The podcast on "Felina" is here and below).
Did the fact that Walt had finally stopped lying to himself and his wife, and the fact that he had one final reckoning with Jesse over the barrel of a gun, make it OK that he got to arrange his last hours to his own satisfaction, more or less? When Walt left this Earth, he was on generally civil -- if not friendly -- terms with Skyler and Jesse. Going from the events of "Ozymandias" to these resolutions is not necessarily illogical, but it is fairly swift, all things considered.
Given how much he's wanted to control events and other people, I thought the finale might find Walt struggling at times with forces that tried to overcome him. To not have the upper hand rankles Walt to no end, and he mostly got to have the upper hand here. Now, much of what he controlled and directed benefited others, and there was an evolution in his ability to be self-aware and honest. But I wrestle with the fact that Walt got to call the shots, for the most part.
The case for that scenario: It was Walt being Walt -- why would he change who he basically is at this late date? That makes sense, believe me. The case against Walt having the upper hand: It allows a man who's done many bad things to control key outcomes yet again, and it's perhaps not as dramatic if Walt encounters no real obstacles in his endgame. He ticks items off his list and that is basically that.
I think I can kind of buy the way things were left in the case of Skyler. Walt giving her the grave site of Hank and Gomez, providing her with a way to avoid prison and making that admission -- "I did it for me. I liked it." -- well, the first two things were the least he could do, and that last admission represents a shift in the thinking of Walter White. Thank goodness he didn't try to apologize again, and thank goodness he finally admitted the truth about what's made him tick all this time.
In the past, Walt's often portrayed himself as being driven primarily by a desire to help others, when the truth was, benefiting other people usually came lower on the priority list than helping himself. But not everything Walt did in his final hours was driven by a rampant ego hiding behind self-serving lies. Selfless impulses had drifted up the list (though the list of priorities, let's face it, is still a mixed bag).
Will those relatively peaceful resolutions with Skyler and Jesse allow some "Breaking Bad" fans to banish Walt's previous actions from their minds and present the man's moral ledger as balanced (or in the black)? Will some viewers walk away from the Albuquerque saga thinking that Walt's slate -- as a human being, a father, a friend, a relative and a partner -- has been wiped clean? I think so, and I know I shouldn't care about that, but I do.
Part of the problem with how "Granite State" and "Felina" fit in to the endgame may arise from the structure of Season 5 as a whole. The last bunch of "Breaking Bad" episodes have had to compress a lot of time and storytelling, and thus, for me, not everything in the finale landed with the impact I'd hoped for. If it did for you, I'm truly happy about that. But for me, "Breaking Bad" at its best has been a show that values sound construction and moral rigor equally. Walt was hypervigilant about keeping the lab spotless and productive, and "Breaking Bad" has been just as conscientious about both entertaining us and making us think. Something was missing from "Felina," and it wasn't soy milk or tableside guacamole.
Several of my concerns came together in the final moments between Jesse and Walt. They nodded at each other, as if all their scores had been settled by what just transpired. The last time these two people saw each other, Walt revealed Jesse's hiding spot to the Nazis and then told him how he'd let Jane die. There is some distance to cover between Walt's confession about Jane and those nods, and I'm not quite sure "Felina" quite had time to cover it. As it happened, we barely saw Jesse before "Felina's" bullet-strewn endgame played out.
Earlier today, I watched the first two episodes of "Breaking Bad," which reminded me that the rage and resentment that drove Walt for so long were present before he began cooking meth. There's the scene of him telling his car-wash boss, Bogdan, to "f*** off," and there's the moment in which he physically attacks boorish idiots in a clothing store who are mocking his son. In those moments, he became addicted to the feeling he got from acting on his anger. It became a drug, an addiction he couldn't shake. And those incidents at work and at the store happened before he even went on the ride-along with Hank.
I'm firmly convinced that Walt would have broken bad someday, with or without cancer, with or without Jesse in his life. But he did break bad with Jesse at his side.
Jesse was the catalyst that greatly enhanced and sped up the chemical reaction that had already begun in Mr. White. But he was also the tortured soul who gave us a vital prism through which we could view Walt's actions, his mixture of self-pity and regret, self-loathing and arrogance. Jesse's humanity was a key part of the "Breaking Bad" cooking process.
Why, then, did Jesse get around the same amount of screen time as Lydia, Todd or Jack? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he got out of his Nazi hell and his exulting screams as he drove away were terrific. But he was missed in the end. Walt may have been the great brain behind "Breaking Bad," but Jesse was its heart.
As Jesse rode off into the night, the sirens Walt heard recalled the ones that wailed so long ago in the pilot. These sirens weren't going to pass him by, as the earlier ones did. Surrounded by metal and machines, a song -- Badfinger's "Baby Blue" -- played. The singer talked about a "special love" and a man who "got what I deserved."
"I am awake," Walt told Jesse in the "Breaking Bad" pilot. "I was alive," he told Skyler. Now he is neither.
Did Walt get what he wanted, or what he deserved? Are those the same thing? Perhaps the fact that we'll be talking about this for days to come is the point. When the show began, Walt was a man who was forgotten, passed by, passed over, mocked, disregarded. Everyone he knew paid a terrible price for his transformation. Chemistry wasn't just the process of change for him, it was a chain reaction he couldn't quite control. Was the last thing he wanted to touch cold metal? Probably not, but it was the only thing that was there for him.
The finale aside, in the bigger picture, "Breaking Bad" remains a phenomenal accomplishment. When it debuted five years ago, who knew that it would take us to so many dark, difficult, dangerous and fantastically entertaining places? We had no idea what the show would end up doing for us and to us.
But we got what we deserved.
A few more bullet points:
- Lydia, that is what you get for putting soy milk in chamomile tea. Seriously, who does that?
- We now know the name of the finale came from the Marty Robbins song "El Paso." It's also, obviously, an anagram of "finale."
- The moment when those red dots came up on Elliot and Gretchen made me jump out of my seat.
- In the final moment, Jesse truly broke free of Mr. White, psychologically. Todd had merely kept his mind and body captive, but Mr. White had kept his soul in a cage for a long time. Seeing him free of all of that was not a bad thing (and yes, I know that Jesse is not a blemish-free individual without faults. The killing of Todd was an ugly thing to witness, even if I completely understood where that urge came from).
- The beleaguered waitstaffs of Albuquerque restaurants will not be sorry to see the exit of any of these people.
- "You know, I don't exactly know how to feel about all of this." "For real, yo, the whole thing felt kind of sketchy, like, morality-wise." Badger and Skinny Pete, the Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern of the meth game. Fingers crossed for their upcoming science-fiction projects.
- Marie was not in her typical purple in the last scene, which was much more about blocks of black and white -- and yet her kitchen was filled with light, which makes me feel a little optimistic about her future.
- Jesse's learned quite a bit about chemistry, am I right? Maybe down the road he becomes a chemistry teacher and settles for a quiet life. A decade from now, I think he'll be working some quiet job and spending every spare minute in his home woodshop. If there is a God, he's found a way to be at peace. Yo.
- So what happens to the Nazis' money? In my mind, one day years in the future, Brock is out hiking in the desert and finds it.
- Quick, Instagram reactions from "Breaking Bad" cast members, as well as several TV writers and critics.
- All the previous Talking TV podcasts (on "Breaking Bad," "Homeland," "Masters of Sex" and many more shows) are here; last week's "Breaking Bad" chat is here. They're all on iTunes as well. Update: A new Talking TV podcast about the finale is here and is also below.
- Throughout this journey of writing about the show, I've been truly honored by the attention and feedback of everyone who chose to read my work. I'll miss this show, and I'll miss the conversations. Stay in school, don't do drugs and let's keep meeting like this.
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'Strike Back' Renewed For Final Season
"Strike Back," the brawny Cinemax action series, has been renewed for a fourth season, which will arrive next year.
The bad news: It'll be the final season of "Strike Back" adventures.
For three seasons, a growing fanbase has followed the adventures of Sgt. Michael Stonebridge (Philip Winchester) and Damien Scott (Sullivan Stapleton), special-forces soldiers who track terrorists and carry out dangerous missions every week.
The excellent third season recently ended, and Cinemax is currently airing "Strike Back: Origins," a prequel season starring Richard Armitage ("The Hobbit") and Andrew Lincoln ("The Walking Dead").
The fourth season will consist of 10 episodes and shoot in Asia and Europe, Cinemax said in a statement.
Will Stapleton and Winchester be back for the last season? Let's hope so. Cinemax's press release noted that Michael J. Bassett and James Dormer, among other writers, directors and producers, will definitely be back. As for actors, the release said, "returning cast and additional crew will be announced at a later date."
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