The Off-Season OT: Forget Summer Movies and Watch These Shows

To fill up the dullness of the college sports off-season, I have periodic posts on the rest of the pop culture world. Check out the first entry on the state of television…

Summer for a kid or young adult is one to spend time with the things he or she loves most without also having to deal with the casual annoyances of school work. It’s that great period of around three months where one can play video games and pick-up basketball for hours on end, go to the movies on weeknights, and have hangout sessions with friends that can last more than one day.

This summer, however, has been a horrible time for quality movies. While it’s clear that films in general have been on a decline thanks to lazy, recycled plots (or entire movies in the case of remakes) and other horrible movie-making habits occurring at all-time highs, 2011 has been especially bad for movies.

With such classics, as Green Lantern, Transformers 3, and

Paul Blart:

Zookeeper all stinking up the local Dickinson Theaters now or in the near future, sane pop culture savants such as your truly have found solace in the medium that seems to be finding its stride in terms of great acting, action, and story-telling. That medium is television, and its small screen is currently destroying the silver screen in terms of overall quality.

When you really think about it, television has all of the tools necessary to overthrow movies as our favorite past-time in terms of sitting on a couch or chair and staring at the flickering lights for hours on end, and maybe it already has. With the new freedoms of basic cable, stations such as FX and AMC are bringing great R-rated dramas to audiences that don’t pay the subscription fees for the likes of HBO and Showtime. DVR now allows us to record shows when we can’t watch them as they air, and they also allow for fast-forwarding through commercial breaks. There’s now even subscription services such as Netflix Instant, which allow us to watch entire seasons of shows from the very first episode, and all in the blink of an eye for those with a subscription, Wi-Fi, and a working computer or Xbox 360.

With all of the new features combining with an increase in quality shows that provide great stories and characters, I’ve found myself getting into a lot of television, as I pointed out on the last installment of Off-Season OT. Follow me after the jump to get my thoughts on the shows I have discovered and why you should be watching them if you aren’t already.

1. Breaking Bad

Outside of Archer (which I have followed since its premiere), Breaking Bad was the first show on this list that I got into this summer. Although I had the opportunity to follow the show from the very beginning (as with the other shows on this list), I shied away from it, mostly due to the fact that I knew Bryan Cranston best as the goofy dad in Malcolm in the Middle, and I couldn’t imagine him playing a cancer-ridden man who turns to meth cooking in order to save up some money for his family after he passes on.

Three seasons and three Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series Emmy’s for Cranston later, I picked up the first season at Vintage Stock, and was immediately hooked. Breaking Bad is the perfect combination of great acting, serious drama, and balls-to-the-wall action. Cranston is great as Walter White, but he’s supported by the rest of the cast, all of whom play their characters to a tee. The episodes move at their own pace, but always lead to brilliant climaxes such as my favorite episode of the show, Season 3’s ‘One Minute.’ The ultra-serious drama and action are also complimented by a good dose of black humor and lighter moments, all the while presenting the subject matter in both the light of a conflicted family man’s struggles to do good while also being a bad man, and at the same time promote the show as a brilliant crime/ street drama while also acting as an anti-drug commercial in the subtlest sense.

If you were to pick up any one show from the first season and watch all the way through, I would tell you to pick Breaking Bad ten out of ten times. It’s the best show on television today, and Season 4 starts this July.

2. Community

While Breaking Bad currently rules the stacked lineup of adult dramas on television (mostly basic cable), the less stellar lineup of TV comedies is ruled by Community, the perfect series for the pop culture geek.

With a completely balanced ensemble cast that doesn’t really tend to have one main character (obviously Joel McHale is the basic lead, but sometimes he spends entire episodes in the background) and bounces off each other in the shows funniest moments, Community provides the most consistent laughs on television since the early days of The Office, 30 Rock, and Arrested Development.

After a slow start to Season 1, the show has really taken off with its ability to fire jokes off faster than a gatling gun and put the group of characters in increasingly absurd situations (a space launch, a zombie infestation, paintball wars) while keeping them on the ground and in line with one basic storyline that continues throughout the entire season. A requisite amount of heart and drama is also thrown in for good measure, and it helps take Community to another level as a show.

Community is the perfect storm of a great cast, great story, great jokes and pretty much great everything else, and hopefully it can stay strong for a few more seasons without getting canceled. Dan Harmon has something special in this show, and hopefully he doesn’t screw it up. I doubt that he will.

3. Sons of Anarchy/ Justified

FX was originally at the forefront of the explosion in mature TV dramas with such shows as Nip/Tuck and The Shield, and while its most recent batch of original shows was either canceled due to poor ratings (Terriers) or canceled due to just being not that good or original (Lights Out), they still have an outstanding lineup of shows in comedy and drama, with the latter genre currently holding Sons of Anarchy and Justified, two shows that seem incredibly similar despite being so obviously different.

‘Sons’ is the family crime story of a motorcycle club that generally walks the line between a “nice-but-in-a-tough-way family that loves its town and each other” and “ruthless outlaws that will stop at nothing to rule their territory” with varying success. Despite ruling Charming, California with an iron fist, every episode I’ve watched so far (I’m about halfway through Season 1) tends to revolve around the main character’s (Charlie Hunnam) struggles between being a better person and being loyal to his outlaw biker family and the entire club’s well-being, as they always seem to be in danger of being found out as gunrunners to other gangs and drug lords.

Meanwhile, Justified is a show that is currently playing out as a week-by-week cop drama, except the cop is a U.S. Marshall played by everyone’s favorite badass, Timothy Olyphant, and his character of Raylan Givens tends to shoot first and ask questions later in the style of an old west cowboy. While (again, at the moment) this show tends to be the most normal of this list, it still works thanks to lots of good acting and plenty of fun shootouts. This is also the funniest of the bunch of dramas that I’m watching, with all of the characters generally being dry and witty about killing, being in small-town Kentucky, and other things.

Both of these shows are equal parts kick-butt and family drama, and they are nice little shows that one could get into on lazy evening. I recommend them both.

4. Game of Thrones

If there is ever any qualms I have with premium cable, it’s that they feel the need to only produce shows that will essentially need to give viewers their quota of R-rated material on television (read: nudity, more graphic violence, f-words). For some shows it is a requirement simply because without it the show would be even more awful (as in Entourage and True Blood, two shows that get by with bad acting and lots of sex and violence), but for the most part it isn’t too much trouble, especially when you can get quality programming like Game of Thrones.

Based on the huge, sprawling fantasy epic by George R.R. Martin, ‘Thrones’ plays out like a medieval version of The Wire with lots of politics, corruption, back-stabbing, and other mean things that go on in the world of castle royalty. Also thrown in are typically awesome moments that couldn’t be shown on TV such as beheadings, zombie attacks, and in my favorite scene of the series so far, a poor man getting a pot molten gold dumped on his head. It’s all very brutal and well-shot, and it makes for a great fantasy show for grown-ups.

The first season, while getting praise from its great acting across the board (especially in the case of Peter Dinklage, who is brilliant as the clever dwarf, Tyrion) and providing great action sequences, for the most part appears to be setting up even huger events in Season 2. If you don’t want to miss out what is sure to be some compelling television next year, watch the ten episodes we have so far of Game of Thrones. You will not be disappointed.

5. Archer

While cable has been great for making more adult dramas, it has also been fabulous for adult comedy too. The finest examples again come from FX, a network that has the most balanced lineup of good shows despite not having the very best (that goes to AMC with Mad Men and Breaking Bad). While It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is surely beginning its winding down phase as a show, Archer is only just getting started.

Archer, the adult cartoon about a boorish super-spy that can’t stop drinking and hitting on women, is the perfect send-up to the old James Bond films while also being a strange harbor for completely obscure pop culture jokes. It generally blends together adult humor spoofing spy flicks with general bad taste while also joking at current events and office politics at the same time. It’s horribly adult and at times hard to believe that certain jokes are allowed on TV, but at the same time one could be too busy laughing to care. I know I was.

Have any more great shows that we need to be watching instead of the next crummy superhero reboot/adaptation/remake? Specify in the comments section!