I’m going to sign off the Internet tomorrow morning, because I don’t want to risk being spoiled on the finale of “Breaking Bad” before I’ve had a chance to watch it. Yes, me! The Queen of Spoilers doesn’t want to be spoiled before she can finally watch the “Breaking Bad” finale, first thing Monday morning. (I told Darin to rearrange his schedule so that we could watch it before he goes to work, but now I’m so tense I think I want to watch it before the kids get up in the morning.) 

Anyhow, many people have pointed to this NPR essay on “How So Many Rooted For ‘Breaking Bad’s’ Walter White.” And while I think many of the things said in the essay are true, I think the answer is a lot simpler than that.

Here’s why so many viewers have rooted for Walter White: because Vince Gilligan gives us a familiar story that human beings just love: Ordinary person discovers they have superpowers! Who doesn’t secretly believe that somehow, one day, they’re going to have superpowers too? How many times have we seen that story? Harry Potter, Buffy, even Jesus. (Is there a more indelible myth than finding out your father is actually God?)

Everyone wants to believe they’re the smartest guy in the room like Walter White is. If only we had some kind of magical, mystical experience, we too would get superpowers and show everybody how really awesome we are. We will. 

The brilliant thing Gilligan has done with just about every character on this show is to show us that SUPERPOWERS DON’T HELP. In fact, they may be a big detriment to your quality of life. Saul Goodman is, under the sleaze, a really good lawyer — it doesn’t help. Gus Fring is a both a badass kingpin and a badass fast food salesman — and wow, does having those qualities not help him. Hank, for all his bluster and panic attacks and foolishness, is a very good DEA agent — and it REALLY doesn’t help. And let’s not discuss what superdude Walter White has gotten himself into, okay?

Pretty much the only thing Jesse has going for himself as we head into the finale is that he doesn’t have superpowers. He is the Zeppo, and that’s why a lot of us are still rooting for him to survive.

There’s only one person who had better die tomorrow — I know Gilligan is going to zag when we expect him to zig on this story, but I expect complete and total fan service on killing this one guy. Don’t let me down, Vince.

As long-time readers of this blog know, I’ve been a fan of Kevin Spacey for years. 

I also have been a fan of the original BBC version of House of Cards for years. I loved it so much that I ordered the original books from whatever Amazon UK was before it was Amazon UK. I couldn’t believe how awesome Francis Urquhart was! He was evil! He was smart! And he played to win! 

When I heard Kevin Spacey was going to be the main character in the new version of House of Cards, I was like, “OMG, this is too much awesome in one place.” And David Fincher was going to produce and direct the first two episodes! And! And!

After having watched the entire thing, I can confidently state: If they bring back this series next year — possibly in some Americanized “To Play The King” — not even Kevin Spacey can bring me back to it. 

House of Cards is the story of an ambitious politician who has grand plans for his political future and shows us exactly what he’s willing to do — blackmail, secret deals, and worse — in order to achieve what he wants. The best thing about the UK House of Cards was how smart it was: tight writing, smart characters, assumed the audience could keep up. And when you have your main character talking to the audience about the horrible things he’s doing, the only smart play is to be funny. 

How overdone and self-important is the US series? They go to the trouble of renaming the US character “Francis Underwood” and then never make one of the jokes from the original about the media talking about “F.U.” How can you not make the F.U. joke? It’s right there in his name. Name him something else if you’re not going to F.U. him.

The major story problem with the US version is the ending. The ending of the book was one thing, the end of the UK series was something different. The ending of the US version is (so as not to give spoilers) just lame. The ending of a story has to do a couple of things, and one of the main jobs is bring the audience back for Round 2. It’s a tough job. But still: you have a high-profile series, work the ending. 

And here’s the major casting problem with this version: Kevin Spacey.

Oh, how it pains me to write those words.

The worst thing about Spacey’s performance is the accent. He’s supposed to be from South Carolina, and maybe he just has fond memories of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, but he should have just said, “No” to doing an accent for this. His accent is unbelievably awful. They couldn’t have invested in an accent coach? Not only is his accent all over the map, it disappears for scenes at a time. It disappears in the middle of scenes. At one point he’s doing a British accent (I kid you not). Whenever Spacey loses the accent and concentrates on what he’s supposed to be doing, he’s fabulous. Whenever the accent (some version of it) comes back, he clearly loses the plot and he’s spending too much energy just trying to stay in character.

Fabulous find from House of Cards: Corey Stoll as Peter Russo, the deeply flawed Congressman from Philadelphia. I hope he’s parlaying this into lots of roles, because wow, was he good.

Rating: C. I am deeply disappointed by this show.

I love the idea of original programming, Netflix. Now try harder. 

As I’ve mentioned before, we no longer have a cable/satellite TV setup. We either watch older series on Netflix Streaming or we buy current series off of iTunes. (And the price for internet connection + TV shows roughly works out to the price for a monthly cable bill with HBO, and this way we don’t have TV flooding in our house unchecked.) 

So we are always looking for new shows to watch together. if something sounds half interesting, we download a show or two, check it out, and then buy the series. 

One that we started watching is Being Human, the UK version. 

Being Human story of a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost (and eventually, the werewolf’s girlfriend) who all live together and the problems and/or hilarity this causes. Annie, the ghost, is too damn “nice” for her own good. Mitchell, the vampire, is at war with his own baser, bloodier urges. And George, the werewolf, is a regular guy who finds himself with a completely unwanted and brutal power. (Reportedly the original inspiration for this story was the writer wanted to have a sex addict, an agoraphobe, and a person with anger management issues living together. I’m not sure I believe this. It’s a great story, though.)

The actors were all pretty good without having that too-beautiful-for-you thing that American TV actors always have. We’d seen the guy playing George the werewolf, Russell Tovey, in a couple of other things and already really liked him — he has the likable everyman thing nailed down. And I adore Lenora Crichlow’s hair. In general, the show’s story lines were always interesting…although UK TV dramas can be deeply frustrating in a few ways. Possibly because they have to fill 57 minutes instead of 42. One thing you have to admit for Hollywood, they have cracked the damn formula for how to make satisfying TV and movies. British shows can be wildly uneven in their drama, coming up with interesting situations and characters, only to let them drop, or not really use them, or weaken them at the last moment.

(Or even worse, moments that are completely not earned by what’s come before.  The end of the first series of Being Human made me crazy for exactly this reason: the ghost, Annie, has been completely victimized by another character. She has been a complete doormat. And at the end of the season, she whispers something in the bully’s ear that creates utter and complete terror. Um, no. Sorry, that’s not fair. You have to tell us what she said. And I think the writers know there’s nothing she could have said, and so they cheated by having her whisper something.)

Despite going back and forth on how much we liked the show overall, we bought and watched the first three series. 

And then came the surprise at the end of the third series. If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean.

Followed by the related surprise at the beginning of the fourth series. 

I’m being oblique for a reason (in case you haven’t seen it). Let’s just say that most shows would simply close up shop at this point. 

But they didn’t. Instead, they added a few new interesting characters. Including this guy:

His name is Damien Molony, and if there is any justice in the world, you will be hearing his name a LOT in the future. 

This is a show about a ghost, a werewolf, and a vampire living together, right? I love SF/F shows but I accept that there’s a basic line of ridiculous in them. I am amazed at how the actors in these shows can deliver most of the lines without cracking up.

In episode two (I think) of the fourth series Molony, as the vampire Hal, said something that made no sense. If you read it in a book, you’d probably snicker about how completely ridiculous it was. But seconds later in our living room the conversation went something like this:

                   DARIN
         Who is this guy?

                  DIANE
         I have no idea. He’s amazing.

                  DARIN
         How did he do that?

                  DIANE
         According to IMDb, this is like this guy’s first job.

(According to this interview, it really is his first job.)

It’s actually a little unfair, when one of the actors in a show is so much better than everything else going on around him, but I swear to God, this one guy made Being Human go from “Well, okay, let’s watch this” to “I must see the next episode NOW.” I think it’s the only time I’ve been annoyed that there are so few episodes in a season of a British show. 

 And despite how the fourth series ended — let’s just say there was a setup in the overarching plot for the season that a US show would find a loophole in and then resolve very, very differently — I cannot wait for the fifth series. 

The fourth series isn’t on Netflix Streaming yet, but the first three are, so you can catch up on them while waiting for the fourth to be posted.