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Six Feet Under

Pop Culture

What’s On At Flavorwire: Links You Need to See

By Lillian Ruiz on

With The Office finishing its run tonight, Vulture has prepared the show a Six Feet Under style send-off. Speaking of killing your idols (sorta), check out this piece on why you sometimes have to end a series to save it. Shaun of the Dead turns ten today (what?!) and A.V. Club is celebrating… Read More

Television

20 of the Best Closing Scenes in Television

By Michelle Rafferty on

After recently taking a look at some of our favorite TV pilot opening scenes, we decided it would only be fitting to look at some of our favorite closers across history. Some are wholly satisfying for their sense of closure after a long ride with characters we came to know and love, while others are equally poignant for their ambiguity, often thanks to early cancellation. Although these are just the final moments, revisiting these scenes has been enough to make us laugh, cry, and get thoroughly freaked out all over again, and we hope that perhaps they can provide you some healthy catharsis, too. Have a favorite we missed? Let us know in the comments — and beware that this post is, for obvious reasons, full of spoilers. … Read More

Art

Fantastic Posters Inspired by Your Favorite Premium Cable Shows

By Caroline Stanley on

Opening this Friday at Brooklyn’s brand new Bottleneck Gallery, More Than You Imagined: Art Inspired By Premium Cable is a group exhibition featuring work that pays homage to some of the best TV series in recent memory, from Lena Dunham’s much-discussed show Girls to some truly excellent dramas that are no longer with us, like Six Feet Under and The Wire. In other words, all of the pieces serve as a nice visual reminder of why you’ve been willing to spring for premium cable for more than a decade now, even at those times when you really, really couldn’t afford it. Preview a few of the works that will be up on display in our slideshow, and head over to Slashfilm for even more great TV-inspired art! … Read More

Television

A Collection of Great Art Made by TV Characters

By Michelle Rafferty on

We’ve done a fair amount of coverage on the burgeoning field of TV pop art in recent years, but we haven’t yet looked at the art directly from these fictional universes. From Jesse Pinkman’s Kanga-man and James Franco’s inexplicable self-portraits as “Franco” to Lily Aldrin’s nudes of both Marshall and Barney, we’ve rounded up the TV character art that has shocked, delighted, confused, and left us downright heartbroken. Have some professional criticism? Were Jesse Pinkman’s “lines” as great as Jane said they were? Is there a piece we didn’t include (and that you may or may not have facsimiled for your own wall)? Please share in the comments!  … Read More

Television

The 20 Best Opening Scenes in Television

By Michelle Rafferty on

Although we’re about settled into TV’s second wave of summer programming — namely, Breaking Bad, Louie, and Political Animals — it’s impossible to get too comfortable. Thanks to Comic-Con and the TCA tour, buzz for fall 2012 is nearly in full swing and has us bracing for the series of snap judgements we’ll have to make about the new season of television. As many showrunners have pointed out, it’s unfortunate that a TV show only has a limited window to prove itself. At the same time, we can’t complain when a series starts out with a bang. And, as shows like Breaking Bad have proved, a stellar start and well-plotted story development don’t have to be mutually exclusive. To follow up our recent look at the best opening scenes in cinema, we decided to recall some of the best TV pilot opens, taking into account style, innovation, and sheer ability to capture the attention of easily distracted brains. Have a favorite we missed? Please let us know in the comments! … Read More

Television

Quality TV Shows That Are Basically Soap Operas

By Judy Berman on

Dallas premieres tonight, and if you’re the kind of person who worships HBO’s three Davids (Simon, Chase, and Milch), you probably aren’t that excited. After all, this isn’t just a primetime soap opera — it’s a reboot of a primetime soap that already ran for 13 seasons before calling it quits two decades ago. Now, we don’t blame you for being skeptical about Dallas; we are, too. But don’t dismiss it just because it’s a soap.

As we mentioned a few months ago in a defense of Downton Abbey, plenty of  what we think of as quality TV shows fit the basic requirements for a soap opera. Although definitions vary, most sources agree that the category encompasses melodramatic serial dramas with multiple storylines and episode-ending cliffhangers. With those guidelines in mind, we’ve revealed which critical darlings are secretly soap operas, after the jump. … Read More

Television

10 TV Sex Dreams to Live in Infamy

By Michelle Rafferty on

Last week’s How I Met Your Mother pregnancy-induced sex-dream plot fell short, and it wasn’t just because it took place after the

Buffy: The sex dream that started it all 

At the beginning of Season 5 we see Spike hopping mad after another failed attempt to kill his arch-nemesis, raving: “Buffy, Buffy, Buffy. Everywhere… Read More

Television

Which HBO Series Has the Creepiest Sex Scenes?

By Judy Berman on

Girls is a hyper-realistic comedy set in present-day New York. Game of Thrones, by contrast, takes place in a fantasy world of castles, dragons, and knights. But they both have one thing in common, aside from the fact that they both air Sunday nights on HBO: creepy sex. Their strange convergence got us thinking about how often we come away from an evening of high-quality premium cable feeling a bit scarred by all the bizarre sexual contact we’ve witnessed. To try and quantify the damage that’s been done to our impressionable minds, we’ve ranked ten of its best-known series to determine, once and for all, which HBO show has the creepiest sex scenes. Let us know if you agree. … Read More

Television

15 TV Kitchens We Covet

By Judy Berman on

As we may have mentioned, we are pretty excited to see Absolutely Fabulous back on TV. We missed Patsy and Edina, we missed Saffy, we missed Gran, and we especially missed Bubble, Eddy’s walking acid trip of an assistant. But it wasn’t until we read Tom & Lorenzo’s great blog post about the show’s return that we realized we had been longing for more than just the characters. As they note, Eddy has one hell of a kitchen, and it feels great to watch the cast sip coffee and chug champagne in it again. The Monsoon kitchen and 14 others that we wouldn’t minding owning are after the jump. … Read More

Television

TV’s Greatest Dysfunctional Families

By Judy Berman on

It’s been almost a decade since Jennifer Saunders graced us with a new episode of Absolutely Fabulous, much to the dismay of fans around the world. But thanks to the magic of the BBC, where it’s never impossible to revive a great show, Patsy and Edina are finally back. To celebrate AbFab‘s 20th anniversary (yes, that makes us feel old), the original cast reunited for three half-hour specials — and the first one airs Sunday night, on both BBC America and Logo.

Having seen the first one, we can safely say that Saunders hasn’t lost her touch. Among other developments, we learn that one of the characters is in prison — and while it’s probably not who you’d think, nothing we could learn about the three generations of Monsoon women would shock us at this point. So, as an homage to one of our favorite dysfunctional families on the small screen, we’ve rounded up ten more we wouldn’t want to see on Thanksgiving but can’t stop watching on TV. … Read More