4 ms·

Mad Men and Breaking Bad are both masterpieces. They made them before the "streaming wars" and proved that non-major networks and studios could make good stuff

Mad Men and Breaking Bad are both masterpieces. They made them before the "streaming wars" and proved that non-major networks and studios could make good stuff. They just didn't figure out how to bottle that magic, and let it get away.

citilife 4y ago
Justified and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia was also on FX. As another example of small networks making great stuff.
- craig_s_bell 4y ago
  Also 'The Americans'
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    FX has always been a low-key prestige series powerhouse. They made The Shield, after all.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    The Americans is the rare example of a very good show which never had a dip in quality throughout its run and absolutely stuck its landing. I think one of the things that really made it for me was Keri Russell playing a character that was so different from a lot of what we were used to seeing her in.
  - chihuahua 4y ago
    "The Americans" is staggeringly good in my opinion. I am blessed with a bad memory, so after a few years, I was able to watch the whole thing again, and except for a half-dozen things I remembered, it was like new content to me. The only criticism is that you know the main characters are going to be OK, so it takes away a bit of the suspense. I wonder if you could have a similar show where the main characters are caught at some unpredictable point in the middle of a season, and then the show continues with new characters brought in to do the same job.
- Finnucane 4y ago
  Fox has pretty successfully positioned FX as a place for more ambitious shows that wouldn't survive on a bigger network. To the point where I'm willing to give a show a try just because their track record has been good.
remarkEon 4y ago
Mad Men had Matt Weiner, who wrote on The Sopranos. Breaking Bad had Vince Gilligan, who wrote on The X-Files. I suspect the common theme here for what makes good television is the creative staff in general and the writing in particular.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- vanilla_nut 4y ago
  This jives with my theory of what makes bad TV: bad writing. It's exactly why I've never revisited Lost, even though I loved the first few seasons. The suspense and mystery never paid off, and it was too important a piece of the entire show to bother trying again. Oddly, Battlestar Galactica has provided a pleasant rewatch every year or two for me for the past decade. It has good writing within each episode, and even though it doesn't hold up in the final season, the writing is overall satisfying enough that I don't avoid it entirely. I could probably write something really mean about Westworld here but I'll just instead say that it's really, really, really sad that they canceled it after season 1. I'm sure the writers would have built satisfyingly on the world established in season 1 instead of jumping off the rails and expanding into unnecessary niches of convoluted storytelling.
  - Izkata 4y ago
    > It's exactly why I've never revisited Lost, even though I loved the first few seasons. The suspense and mystery never paid off, and it was too important a piece of the entire show to bother trying again. I'm not gonna claim it was good or anything, but Lost was more than just the show - and a lot of the payoff for the island's mysteries came from the ARG The Lost Experience - https://lostpedia.fandom.com/wiki/The_Lost_Experience https://lostpedia.fandom.com/wiki/The_Lost_Experience > The narrative for the The Lost Experience was designed to be a parallel story line not part of the TV show. Considering the deep mythology to LOST, the Experience acted as a way to cover some background that could not be feasibly addressed in such depth on the main show. In particular, TLE developed the backstory to the DHARMA Initiative and its parent company, the Hanso Foundation. It also established some clues about the Island and the true meaning of the numbers.
Apocryphon 4y ago
The tragic thing is, according to the video's narrative, AMC has made some very good shows since TWD - HCF, Lodge 49, and The Terror, which were all critically well-received. Critics even liked the Preacher adaptation. But audiences just don't seem to care about AMC anymore besides Better Call Saul.
- GeekyBear 4y ago
  Lodge 49 was excellent. It was a shame that they dropped it. Also, while trying to remember the name of Jim Jefferies' very original show, Legit, I looked at a list of FX original shows and they really have had an astonishing number of high quality shows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programs_broadcast_by_FX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programs_broadcast_by_...
- tptacek 4y ago
  The Terror and Lodge 49 are both great, but AMC also had Better Call Saul, which was incontrovertibly one of the best shows on television and, by the end, the acknowledged successor/extension of Breaking Bad --- which is just to say, until very recently, AMC still had Breaking Bad as a going concern. Maybe it just shows to go you that the make/break for these networks isn't prestige content so much as broader business execution issues.
- jandrese 4y ago
  Gee, I wonder if their shitty streaming strategy could have anything to do with this?
no_wizard 4y ago
Funnily enough Breaking Bad benefitted from Netflix quite a bit [0]: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/7/14/21312595/netflix-breaking-bad-podcast-streaming-land-of-the-giants https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/7/14/21312595/netflix-breaki...
nmfisher 4y ago
Halt and Catch Fire was even better (though more niche).

citilife 4y ago

Justified and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia was also on FX. As another example of small networks making great stuff.

craig_s_bell 4y ago
Also 'The Americans'
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  FX has always been a low-key prestige series powerhouse. They made The Shield, after all.
- ghaff 4y ago
  The Americans is the rare example of a very good show which never had a dip in quality throughout its run and absolutely stuck its landing. I think one of the things that really made it for me was Keri Russell playing a character that was so different from a lot of what we were used to seeing her in.
- chihuahua 4y ago
  "The Americans" is staggeringly good in my opinion. I am blessed with a bad memory, so after a few years, I was able to watch the whole thing again, and except for a half-dozen things I remembered, it was like new content to me. The only criticism is that you know the main characters are going to be OK, so it takes away a bit of the suspense. I wonder if you could have a similar show where the main characters are caught at some unpredictable point in the middle of a season, and then the show continues with new characters brought in to do the same job.
Finnucane 4y ago
Fox has pretty successfully positioned FX as a place for more ambitious shows that wouldn't survive on a bigger network. To the point where I'm willing to give a show a try just because their track record has been good.

remarkEon 4y ago

Mad Men had Matt Weiner, who wrote on The Sopranos. Breaking Bad had Vince Gilligan, who wrote on The X-Files. I suspect the common theme here for what makes good television is the creative staff in general and the writing in particular.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
vanilla_nut 4y ago
This jives with my theory of what makes bad TV: bad writing. It's exactly why I've never revisited Lost, even though I loved the first few seasons. The suspense and mystery never paid off, and it was too important a piece of the entire show to bother trying again. Oddly, Battlestar Galactica has provided a pleasant rewatch every year or two for me for the past decade. It has good writing within each episode, and even though it doesn't hold up in the final season, the writing is overall satisfying enough that I don't avoid it entirely. I could probably write something really mean about Westworld here but I'll just instead say that it's really, really, really sad that they canceled it after season 1. I'm sure the writers would have built satisfyingly on the world established in season 1 instead of jumping off the rails and expanding into unnecessary niches of convoluted storytelling.
- Izkata 4y ago
  > It's exactly why I've never revisited Lost, even though I loved the first few seasons. The suspense and mystery never paid off, and it was too important a piece of the entire show to bother trying again. I'm not gonna claim it was good or anything, but Lost was more than just the show - and a lot of the payoff for the island's mysteries came from the ARG The Lost Experience - https://lostpedia.fandom.com/wiki/The_Lost_Experience https://lostpedia.fandom.com/wiki/The_Lost_Experience > The narrative for the The Lost Experience was designed to be a parallel story line not part of the TV show. Considering the deep mythology to LOST, the Experience acted as a way to cover some background that could not be feasibly addressed in such depth on the main show. In particular, TLE developed the backstory to the DHARMA Initiative and its parent company, the Hanso Foundation. It also established some clues about the Island and the true meaning of the numbers.

Apocryphon 4y ago

The tragic thing is, according to the video's narrative, AMC has made some very good shows since TWD - HCF, Lodge 49, and The Terror, which were all critically well-received. Critics even liked the Preacher adaptation. But audiences just don't seem to care about AMC anymore besides Better Call Saul.

GeekyBear 4y ago
Lodge 49 was excellent. It was a shame that they dropped it. Also, while trying to remember the name of Jim Jefferies' very original show, Legit, I looked at a list of FX original shows and they really have had an astonishing number of high quality shows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programs_broadcast_by_FX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programs_broadcast_by_...
tptacek 4y ago
The Terror and Lodge 49 are both great, but AMC also had Better Call Saul, which was incontrovertibly one of the best shows on television and, by the end, the acknowledged successor/extension of Breaking Bad --- which is just to say, until very recently, AMC still had Breaking Bad as a going concern. Maybe it just shows to go you that the make/break for these networks isn't prestige content so much as broader business execution issues.
jandrese 4y ago
Gee, I wonder if their shitty streaming strategy could have anything to do with this?

no_wizard 4y ago

Funnily enough Breaking Bad benefitted from Netflix quite a bit [0]: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/7/14/21312595/netflix-breaking-bad-podcast-streaming-land-of-the-giants https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/7/14/21312595/netflix-breaki...

nmfisher 4y ago

Halt and Catch Fire was even better (though more niche).