nomadreader

Thursday TV is a semi-regular feature where I talk about TV....on Thursday. Feel free to grab the button and post your own Thursday tv posts on your blog too! After meaning to read Piper Kerman's memoir Orange is the New Black  since I first read an excerpt of it in Marie Claire  in 2010. I finally squeezed it in audio in advance of its premiere on Netflix last Thursday. ( It was fabulous--if you haven't read it, I strongly recommend the audio narration by Cassandra Campbell! ) So how does the show measure up? In short: it's lewd, shrewd, brilliant, hilarious, tragic, haunting and beautiful. The first few episodes are remarkably close to the memoir. The writers made some smart decisions about reordering sequences and flashbacks  that make it better tv, but almost everything in the first few episodes will be familiar to someone who has read the book. After a few episodes, however, Orange is the New Black  goes off the rails in some beautiful and ha...

Since we abandoned satellite when we moved into our house , I'm figuring out how to best keep track of what I want to watch. I'm still binge-watching Grey's Anatomy , and I'm already in the middle of season four. We've added Hulu into the mix, mostly because it lets us watch more recent episodes of shows on the television. Although it's incredibly frustrating to have to watch commercials with a paid service. It's even more frustrating that so many shows are only licensed to watch on a computer and not a mobile device (in our case, an Xbox hooked up to the television.) My Hulu queue works a lot like my DVR used to: as soon as a show I've told it I watch has a new episode online, it's added to my queue. The problem is, I'm so enjoying binge-watching Grey's  that I have yet to watch the season finale of one of my favorite shows: Chicago Fire . It has me thinking: my favorite way to read is in large chunks of time, so doesn't it make s...

When we moved into our new house, Mr. Nomadreader and I made the choice to get rid of our satellite television package. I love television, but the rising prices became untenable for me, particularly as more and more is available streaming for free or very reasonable subscription fees. There are certainly things I'll miss, but I'm actually enjoying the change. Binge watching is like binge reading I adore binge watching shows, just as I adore binge reading entire series of books in a short amount of time. Even with satellite tv, I frequently let 3-5 (or more) episodes record and then watched them in spurts. I love devouring entire seasons of shows in a few days. Given that I prefer to watch shows in large doses, it made sense to abandon an increasingly dated television system. Although I broke up with Grey's Anatomy  years ago, I began watching it from the beginning the week before we moved. I started season 3 last night, and that's in two weeks I've been packing...

Thursday TV is returning as a semi-regular Thursday feature for me to discuss television: the shows I'm watching, the shows I'm giving up on, as well as other trends. Hands down, the show I was most excited for this season was Nashville . The city itself holds a special place in my heart: it's where Mr. Nomadreader traveled for the first time for our first anniversary  Three years after that, it's where we opted to get married --at the Country Music Hall of Fame's Library . The setting of Nashville wasn't the only draw, of course. The premise sounded fascinating: two dueling divas--one who might be passing her fame prime, while one is just beginning; politics; and music. I'm a fan of country music (although not necessarily what's marketed as country music on the radio). Most importantly though was the buzz. Jace Lacob, my favorite tv writer, declared it the best new show, and he admittedly hates country music . How can this critically acclaimed s...

Thursday TV is returning as a semi-regular Thursday feature for me to discuss television: the shows I'm watching, the shows I'm giving up on, as well as other trends. If you had asked me at the beginning of the fall television season which network show would be my favorite, I likely would have guessed Nashville  (coming soon to Thursday TV) or Elementary. Instead, two months into this season, the only new fall show I genuinely love is Chicago Fire, a show I didn't even intend to watch. I'll be honest: it's not the best  new show, but it is the new show I love the most. There's something classic about this drama. It isn't necessarily breaking new ground or doing anything unconventional, but it's doing the medical/rescue drama exceedingly well. Here's why: 1. A true ensemble cast I'm a huge fan of ensemble casts, and there isn't a true star on this show. (I mean that with no disrespect, partiuclarly to those of you who know how much I ...

The basics: Homeland , a new program airing on Showtime, features Claire Danes as Carrie, a CIA analyst who is also bipolar.  In a CIA briefing, Carrie hears that a U.S. POW, long presumed dead, had been discovered and rescued in Iraq. She immediately leaves the room and goes to consult Saul (Mandy Patinkin). When an Iraqi prisoner told her an American POW had been turned, she initially dismissed the claims because there were no known POWs. Now she fears Sergeant Brody (Damian Lewis), who is welcomed as an American hero will pull off a terrorist attack on American soil. My thoughts: The first episode of Homeland  is brilliant. It's intelligent, thrilling, and wacky in the best ways. At the crux of the show is the tension between paranoia and reality. Carrie wants round-the-clock surveillance, which is a clear violation of Brody's privacy. He hasn't yet done anything. Does the word of an Iraqi prisoner trump an American hero? When the CIA won't bug Brody's h...

So Many New Shows! I have a habit of sampling almost all new scripted shows on the major networks each fall. It doesn't always work. My DVR can only record two shows at once, and we are a one television family. I do my best. Some I'll watch until they go off the air. Some I'll watch for a few episodes. Some I only make it through a few minutes. My thoughts Given the range of both premiere dates and my somewhat limited television time, some shows I've seen several times, while some shows I've only seen once. Shows Still Rocking My World (with links to their official websites so you can catch up on episodes you may missed if you're so inclined!) Ringer :  I adore  Ringer . Yes, it's improbably, ridiculous, over-the-top and cheaply produced, but it's entertaining. Sarah Michelle Gellar plays estranged twins Siobhan and Bridget. Bridget is down on her luck living in Wyoming while Siobhan is married to a man who doesn't know she has a ...

While The Good Wife  is the best show on television and among my all-time favorites, Parenthood  is a contender too. (Don't get me started on why they had the same time slot until this fall either.) I mentioned my love of Parenthood  before when it wasn't nominated for any Emmys . The new season of Parenthood started Tuesday, and it got be thinking about it all over again. Mr. Nomadreader has seen Parenthood  a few times and enjoyed it, but our schedules were so disparate we rarely got to watch television together. Now, however, we have the luxury of actually spending evenings and weekends together (it's heavenly), so we sat down to watch Parenthood  Tuesday night when it premiered. As much as I loved it, he loved it more. We both laughed and cried (quite normal activities for us when watching emotional programs). I lost count of the number of times Mr. Nomadreader uttered "this show is amazing" or "how do they not win every ensemble cast award?...

The backstory:   The Lying Game  is the latest teen drama to be premiere on ABC Family this summer. It's adapted from Sara Shepard's books of the same name (only two have been published so far: The Lying Game  and Never Have I Ever ); Ms. Shepard also writes the wildly popular Pretty Little Liars  series, which has also been adapted for ABC Family. The basics: Hear me out. Emma and Sutton are twins, but they only found out they are twins a few months ago. Sutton was adopted by a wealthy couple in Scottsdale, Arizona, while Emma is an a unenviable foster care home with a perverted foster brother in Las Vegas. When he frames her for stealing her foster mom's money, she knocks him out and runs from the cops. She alerts Sutton she's coming to Arizona because she has nowhere else to go. When she arrives, Sutton has Emma pose as her, while Sutton jets off to Los Angeles to follow a lead for their birth parents. My thoughts: While I read mostly literary fiction, my ...

The perils of working for a living: a twelve-hour delay in posting reactions to the Emmy nominations. Things That Made Me Sad: No love for Parenthood . It's one of my favorite shows on television, and I think both the writing and ensemble cast are exemplary. No love for Community . Again. It's perhaps the most inventive comedy on the air (no disrespect to my other beloved 30 Rock and Modern Family , which are the two best comedies on the air.) Community is more original and almost as funny. It deserves a spot in the Best Comedy category. No guest acting nominations for Law & Order: SVU . Looking back on this season, I struggled to think who should be nominated, but their one-time dominance in this category is gone, and it made me sad. Kyra Sedgwick was shut out. I love The Closer , but I was more impressed by her perfect-until-now streak of being nominated for Best Actress every year for the Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award. Here's hopi...

Welcome to Thursday TV , the first in a semi-regular (most Thursdays) series of my favorite television shows. First up: the best on television, The Good Wife.   My television habits: a primer I watch a lot of television. I am not one for escapist fiction (for the most part; there are always exceptions), but I am definitely one for escapist television. My DVR is a surprising mix of high-brow programming (BBC America and PBS are favorites) and low-brow programming (I watch most of Bravo's reality shows.)  As a highly visual person, I appreciate seeing the action. I love visual jokes and glimpses filled with meaning you'd miss if you looked away. I also have a fondness for episodic storytelling. I was reared on books in a series that came out monthly. Now, it's somewhat torturous as an adult reader to wait for a new book in a series I adore to come out once a year (or even less frequently.) Television fills a niche with me. Good television characters feel like friend...