Something happened that has shaped my view of movies and TV. On the insistent advice of many people I started watching Breaking Bad a TV series available on Netflix. I found it to be of such extraordinary quality that I re-watched it. On the second viewing I saw many details overlooked in the first viewing.
I rank Breaking Bad somewhere with the greatest pieces of literature. I have only re-read a few books including Herman Melville, Mark Twain and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Of course I have seen and read many Shakespearean plays repeatedly. I only recall seeing one movie a second time.
Breaking Bad has made me hypercritical of movies and TV. I now avoid movies unless they come close to Breaking Bad in providing character development, complex narrative and a storyline that is driven by consequences rather than deux a machina.
There are still a number of movies that I can go to and a number of TV shows that I can watch. For TV it is now common to have intelligent people as lead characters. This is particularly true in ‘police procedurals’ where a laboratory person or computer person is portrayed as intelligent and their intelligence drives the narrative.
The whole point of this blog is to call your attention to the fact that for every intelligent character in 1980s TV or movies there are a dozen today.
That is appropriate for a society where high-tech is the world of glamour and digital competence is increasingly respected.