How’s one to choose between two of the most compelling protagonists on TV? Perhaps the best way to judge Carrie and Walter is to line up their experiences when involved in a real stand-off with their respective nemeses (nemesi?). Let’s recall how they fared:
READ the full article here (and don’t forget to vote):
http://www.charactergrades.com/march-madness-2013-character-crazy-off/breaking-bads-walter-white-vs-homelands-carrie-mathison
It’s the Crazy-Off Kick-Off Y’ALL! And what a better way to start than with some sex, DRUGS and rock n’ roll!
Nancy’s drug of choice is the basically legally Marijuana while Walter deals with the hillbilly elixir we’ve all come to know and love as Meth. People have been killed and houses have been burned down. Would you still rather be talking about basketball?
While the picture and the above information seem to point in one direction if you want to be really involved in The Crazy-Off process (you know like Hannah from Girls) you need to READ the entire article and VOTE now! Maybe print out a bracket while you’re there and play along? YOU WILL? THANKS!
We put our noggins together at Character Grades to decide who was the most compelling lead character of 2012. Take a look and vote for your fave below!
Fiona could probably rule the world someday, if she wasn’t constantly cleaning up the messes left by her (more than) slightly off-kilter family. She’s smart, though you wouldn’t know it from her grades; she’s beautiful, though the bags under her eyes and frazzled hair will try to tell you otherwise; and if you mess with her family, she’ll slit your throat, roll up her sleeves, and clean the blood up off the floor. She is not here for your bullshit. Fiona is the solid backbone in a show full of 50 Shades of Crazy, and you have to admire her emotional strength, because if it were me, I would’ve jumped shipped and been living in Bali with my con-artist boyfriend JimmySteve before anyone knew I was missing.
Carrie is without question a brilliant spy; what with her killer instincts and go-getter ‘tude, she has been invaluable to the CIA’s efforts to bring down America’s most wanted. The fact that she’s managed to perform such a demanding job all while battling a mental disorder puts my I-only-got-six-hours-of-sleep-and-can’t-be-productive excuse to shame. So what if she had a complete mental breakdown and fell crazy in love for her target? Girl has acted a complete fool but at no point strayed from her objective — find, capture, and punish Abu Nazir. And even at Carrie’s bat shit craziest, she’s got her eyes on the prize.
It’s been quite a season at TGS (already) for good ol’ LL. Amidst the usual antics (Tracy embarks on a Tyler Perry-like film career with Jack Donaghy as central villain, Jenna has a surprise wedding at Jack’s mother’s funeral AND super-crazy Hazel the Page is running around); Liz’s personal life is still (somehow) thriving! Not only is she finally hitting her stride in the bathing suits’ part department (the trick: Organization, it gets her super HOT), she gets married! To Cyclops! (AKA Crisstopher Chross AKA James Marsden). Everything’s on the upswing for our golden girl of comedy, the question is WHAT THE WHAT? But also, how long can this roller coaster climb before it falls? Or does it have to fall at all? BOOM. I’M A RAPPER. LEMON OUT.
There’s been much talk comparing Parks and Recreation’s Pawnee to The Simpson’s infamous Springfield. Part of the analogy is the vast cast of quirky, defined supporting players — yet another reason lies in the fact that the characters of Parks and Rec, with their goofy motivations and silly shenanigans, can feel a bit cartoony. Most of the time, this larger-than-life energy is delightful, but in certain storylines it can cheapen the plot’s stakes and undermine what the show’s trying to do. So when P&R took a small step towards seriousness by having Leslie run for Pawnee City Council, it was a big leap for Leslie’s character. The campaign not only highlighted the most loveable features about Leslie – her tenacity, passion and sugar addiction – it gave her new depth by pushing her into uncharted waters, testing her relationships and integrity. Leslie’s campaign and subsequent victory was a risk that had enriching rewards for the entire show, delivering one of the most satisfying season finales in recent memory and elevating Leslie beyond a caricature of a hero into something truly shocking – a politician worth cheering for.
The quintessential moment for the diabolical Heisenberg this season wasn’t basically condoning his henchman’s child-murdering or shooting one of his partners in cold blood or even searing his flesh off with a livewire. No, the truest instance for Breaking Bad’s fully devolved anti-hero was when he saw the mountain of money he’d earned from his meth operation. For this pile, Walter sacrificed countless innocent lives, his career, his dignity and – ironically the reason he got into the drug buiz in the first place – his family. After a season of ignoring consequences and forging ahead despite the inherent risks, Walt finally came face-to-bill with his choices. In a cold, musty storage unit, Heisenberg was forced to see just how far things had escalated. He finally realized that things have gone way too far. And in a world punctuated by full measures, he’ll soon learn what the audience (and now Hank!) are all too sure of: it’s already too late.
We put our noggins together at Character Grades to decide who made the most exciting, enthralling and entertaining power plays of 2012. Take a look and vote for your fave!
1.Wedding Planning Dowager-Style on Downton Abbey
Oh, Cousin Violet, that naughty minx. When the vicar of Downton refuses to marry William and his (completely unwilling) fiance, Daisy, Violet sits the man down, lays out every way in which he depends on her family’s kindness, and asks again with a smile. William makes an honest woman of Daisy for approximately two hours before passing on to his shared servants’ quarters in the sky, and Violet gets to be smug about it for the rest of her life. What else would you expect from a dowager who prefers not to know about “weekends?”
2. Hannah Plays Dirty on Dexter
After spending 7 years rooting for a serial killer, the audience has grown a bit tired of the “dark passenger” excuse. Enter Hannah McKay — Dexter’s most recent female counterpart with no fictitious backseat driver to slow down her killing sprees. When Deb becomes all Lieutenant-y (and a bit jealous – ew) trying to put Hannah behind bars for good, Ms. McKay decides to rattle her cage while also completely indicating herself by using her signature flower-power poison to put Deb in the hospital. Bitch, he’s mine! Something close to love (with a dash of Stockholm syndrome) motivates Hannah to go the dark route to protect herself and her budding relationship, but why is Dexter so surprised? It’s like he’s never seen a villain before.
3. Joan Harris Sleeps with Herb on Mad Men
Joan has always been the walking, talking human sex popsicle that leaves the boys of Sterling Cooper Draper Price dragging their tongues on the floor. And unlike plenty of ladies in the beautiful people bubble, Joan uses her power for good. She nudges with gentle flirtation and persuades with doe-eyed glances – all for the greater good of the company she loves. It’s all fun and games, until a whale of a man named Herb drives onto the scene and offers SCDP a contract with Jaguar in exchange for a night with our ginger heroine.
It’s hard to throw the word “best” around when you’re talking about a situation that skates over the disease-infested waters of prostitution. But with this power-play, Joan proves just how far a woman had to go to get 5% of a company in the late 1960s. Her act explored the depths of desperation that surround passion, the nuances of relationships built on mutual respect, the heartbreak of a decision you can’t undo — and a redemption that will never come. Mad Men at its best.
4. Klaus annihilates the entire Hybrid population on The Vampire Diaries
What does any king do in the face of a coup d’etat? He slaughters every person involved and their mothers. Literally. When Klaus learns that Tyler and his merry band of hybrid vampire/werewolves are going to attempt to take him out, he beats them to the punch and rips them limb from limb while “Oh Holy Night” plays in the background. Then, to add insult to injury, he drowns Tyler’s mother in the town fountain… just because he can. Tyler’s left with a family of mismatched body parts and Klaus barely breaks a sweat. How’s that for a power play? Klaus may be a sensitive, lonely, sociopathic painter, but you best believe that when confronted with a revolution, he won’t hesitate to completely destroy anything that stands in his path.
5. The Great Train Robbery of Breaking Bad
“Just because you shot Jesse James doesn’t make you Jesse James,” everyone’s favorite voice of reason Mike Ehrmantraut once told Walter White. Yet this year we found Walter wearing the (cowboy) hat of an old-time, gun-slingin’ outlaw and going so far as to commit a good, old-fashioned train robbery. This is just one of many schemes that have punctuated Walter White’s evolution to becoming a sociopathic, merciless king of meth. Every time Walter completes a Hail Mary, his ego inflates a bit more, until it dwarfs any reasonable motives and poisons all logic, creating the monster in a human shell known as Heisenberg. With each success, the stakes are raised, and it’s a credit to Vince Gilligan’s brilliance that this nuanced evolution feels believable when it’s only taken 5 seasons for Walter to go from wetting his tighty-whities in an RV to hijacking a moving train in the middle of the desert. The scene itself is wildly suspenseful, brilliantly shot and edited and capped off by a shocking turn (LANDRY, YOU BASTARD), that shows that, for all his rootin’-tootin’ scheming, Walter is just a man who won’t yet admit how heavy his head is with the crown.
Tony Soprano, one of television’s most complicated and influential characters.
See how he’s helped shape a diverse set of the tube’s best and brightest here: http://charactergrades.com/big-daddy-the-progeny-of-tony-soprano/
Talk about a character crossover! Speaking of … did you catch our Character Crossover piece? You didn’t? YOU CAN RIGHT NOW: http://charactergrades.com/character-crossover-our-dream-show-mash-ups/
You’re welcome.
(Source: thecarnivalofsadness, via jittery-zeitgeist)
For 19 episodes we watched our “hero”(?) Walter White struggle to piece his life back together after being handed a cancer-corroded death sentence. Sure, he picked up the slightly unflattering habit of COOKING INORDINATE AMOUNTS OF BLUE METH on the road to recovery, but honestly, who hasn’t done something uncharacteristically rash while dealing with a terminal illness? Unfortunately, though, his particular habit comes with catastrophic side effects. Namely, cold-blooded murder, concealed identity, and the implosion of the traditional American family. And in episode 20, just as Walt’s world is crumbling to the ground and he looks up for some answers—any answers—a shitstorm of epic proportions begins to rain down upon him.
The entire second season of Breaking Bad was peppered with grim, monochromatic teasers of half-charred, eyeless teddy bears, broken windshields, and body bags laid about the White’s property, so my natural expectation for the finale was that some damage was ultimately going to be done to Walt that personally affected him and his family. Whether it was at the hands of vengeful figures in the drug community a la Tuco and/or one of his henchman, or just a case of a bad batch gone worse, Walt’s path was inevitably leading toward destruction. And with the blood of Jane’s death still staining his misguided hands, ol’ Heisenberg was a prime target for some kind of painfully focused retribution.
But what we ended up getting was much more vast. Instead of Walt’s decisions—or sometimes lack thereof—affecting those only at arm’s length, his (in)actions managed to change the landscape of all of Albuquerque. Not only has New Mexico’s drug problem skyrocketed since his foray into the methamphetamine business, but his drug-making alter ego created a seismic rift in the foundation of his family. However the most literal of the scarring came when the Wayfarer 515 air disaster brought flaming wreckage and corpses down onto the city—an accident caused almost exclusively by Walt’s idle hand. Which is the greatest irony of all: just as Hank and the DEA are working to rid the southwest of “blue sky,” the sun-drenched blue sky of Albuquerque comes crashing furiously.
“So you understand what ‘asshole’ means. Now go get me my phenylacetic acid…asshole.”
“You back your truck over your own kid and you, like, accept?? What a load of crap!”
“Someone has to protect this family from the man who protects this family.”
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Get out the apps and zerts because we are ready to celebrate! Parks and Rec is coming back for Season 6!
That thing I said about Ros before? Never mind.
Sadface.
From Community 4.12 "Heroic Origins"
30 Rock
(october 11, 2006 - january 31, 2013)
