When AMC announced earlier this week that Breaking Bad will premiere its fifth season on July 15, it was met with so much rejoicing that many missed the second half of the press release: AMC will also be premiering the first of eight episodes in a new reality series called Small Town Security, about “a family-owned private security company in Georgia.”

Even for AMC, which has made several high-profile missteps over the past few years, this seems like a strange detour. Over the past year, the network has dabbled in both talk shows and reality shows with Talking Dead, Comic Book Men, and The Pitch. But those series were clearly piggybacking on the success of AMC’s two most prominent (and most profitable) successes: The Walking Dead and Mad Men.

It’s admittedly harder to make a reality series about manufacturing meth, though I’d definitely tune in for a Breaking Bad talk show (Talking Bad? Breaking Chat? Just spitballing here). But Small Town Security is AMC’s first step toward standalone reality programming.

The conventional narrative – and in my opinion, the correct one – is that AMC grew too fast, too soon. After quietly rolling along as the premiere channel for commercial-filled American movie “classics” for decades, the network experimented with original content and hit two unprecedented home runs: Mad Men and Breaking Bad. But quality costs money, and each of AMC’s attempts to curb the costs of its original programming resulted in an embarrassing loss of face, from protracted salary and creative arguments with Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner to rumblings about Breaking Bad moving to FX, amid rumors that AMC was demanding a shortened (read: cheaper) final season.

I’m a TV critic, not a businessman, and I’m well aware that my priorities are different than the priorities of AMC executives. But I can’t see how it’s a good idea to invest in reality programming that has no ties to AMC’s flagship series. Small Town Security is being developed by producers Ken Druckerman and Banks Tarver, whose biggest success is VH1’s so-bad-it’s-awful Mob Wives. The sky certainly isn’t falling – AMC has already greenlit pilots for two new scripted dramas – but I don’t know any Breaking Bad fans who will stick around to watch a reality show that would seem much more at home on Discovery or A&E.

High-quality television obviously costs money, and if the price of Mad Men and Breaking Bad means filling other time slots with cheap-to-produce supplemental content, I can live with it. But it wasn’t so long ago that the network was investing in genres that no other network would touch, which led to successes like The Walking Dead and failures like the miniseries remake of The Prisoner. I don’t see any of that pilgrim spirit in AMC’s latest moves. That may be good business. But let’s not forget that AMC’s willingness to invest real money in something risky and brave is how we got Mad Men and Breaking Bad in the first place.

With Savages, a movie about a pair of pot growers and their shared girlfriend, who gets herself kidnapped by goons attached to queenpin Salma Hayek, Oliver Stone’s become the latest director to cast Mexican drug cartels as the villains in a flashy action movie:

Navy SEALs movie Act of Valor portrayed a tunnel system run by Mexican cartel leaders as a valuable aid to al Qaeda. Tony Scott’s working on Narco Sub, a movie about the submersibles the cartels used in smuggling operations. Breaking Bad‘s most recent season came up with a novel, moving, bloody twist on a cartel story, but it relied heavily on the visuals of sparkling pools, heavy gold jewelry, hot girls and hotter cars to set the scene. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to come up with a novel movie villain, or wanting to tap into new and different current of global anxiety. But there’s something weird about the assumptions of all of these movies that the most interesting stories you could tell about the cartels involve their impact on individual Americans rather than on Mexican society. It’s almost like there are compelling stories you could tell about Mexican characters that wouldn’t overstate the impact of drugs in the United States.

If you like seeing Aaron Paul make sad puppy addict eyes and need your fix until the return of Breaking Bad; still haven’t gotten your heart back from Mary Elizabeth Winstead after seeing Scott Pilgrim vs. The World; wish The Help would mainly serve to get Octavia Spencer better parts; or wonder what it would be like to hear Ron Swanson talk dirty to one of the Tammys, Smashed may be the movie for you. This slight addiction drama, which I saw at Sundance, feels unfortunately abbreviated, but it’s anchored by one hell of a performance by Winstead. And it’s honest and explicitly ugly about addiction without being grotesque, striking a difficult and effective balance.

I imagine it’s not news to any of you that the dude who portrays Jesse Pinkman can play an addict. But as Charlie, half of a married couple, both of whom are drunks, Paul tones thing down a bit. His alcoholism means he’s reckless—he’ll ride a bike drunk—and that his relationship to the universe is often blurred and softened. When he wakes up to find that his wife Kate has wet the bed in an alcoholic stupor, he jokes that his real job is to change their sheets. But Charlie is a music blogger, and apparently successful and functional enough in that occupation (plus, his parents helped buy the house he and Kate live in) that his drinking is never going to force a crisis.

That is not the case for Kate, whose alcoholism appears to be somewhat more severe than Charlie’s. She doesn’t just work outside of their house—she teaches elementary school, an environment that’s not particularly friendly to people with hangovers so bad they throw up in class. To avoid confessing that she’s a drunk, Kate lets her class and her coworkers think she’s pregnant, an impression that’s particularly dangerous giving that her principal (Megan Mullally) has never been able to conceive, and gets overinvested in the idea of Kate having a child.

As Kate stumbles towards recovery, stops drinking, and relapses, Winstead gives a remarkably un-vain performance. Bottom for her turns out to be not just the night she drunkenly decides to take a hit of crack and wakes up under a bridge, but relieving herself on the floor of a liquor store that refuses to sell her more wine. And the movie is blunt about exploring the link between Kate’s drinking and her sexual aggressiveness. In one disturbing scene, when Charlie falls asleep while he and Kate are having sex, she hits him while trying to keep him awake, and then continues to have even when he can’t be roused. When Kate relapses, she pushes herself on Charlie even when he’s trying both to get her to stop drinking and rejecting her advances. Stories about women assaulting men tend to be treated as if they’re non-existent or limited to police procedurals, and I appreciate that Smashed has the integrity to treat Kate’s behavior for the disturbing boundary-crossing that it is. Kate may not be a feminist ideal, but presenting her actions with honesty and nuance means the movie is a refreshing break with gender types in these sorts of stories.

I wish the movie had spent a bit more time showing Kate digging her way out of the enormous hole she’s dug for herself. We get to meet Jenny (Octavia Spencer), her sponsor, who tells us that “All I knew about taking care of myself was fucking people over…Maybe I’ve have replaced alcohol with chocolate chip cookies and nacho cheese…From now on I will enjoy my donuts. but I prefer them to hangovers” but it would be nice to see more of her life beyond her role as a mentor to Kate. And while I appreciate James Ponsoldt’s decision not show Kate in the cliche throes of detox, the movie could have spent more time watching her rebuild a sober life. Drinking isn’t like a breakup: leaving alcohol behind has required Kate to rebuild her entire life, and I’d have been curious to see more of her path to professional, emotional, and sexual health.

This post contains spoilers through the January 17 episode of Justified.

Before plunging into what looks to be a tremendously exciting season of Justified, a thought: why is it that our great prestige television about cities that aren’t New York, Los Angeles, or Washington, DC has to be about the drug trade? Baltimore is defined by the drug trade in The Wire. We see Albuquerque largely through the lens of people who participate in the meth trade, or who are trying to shut it down in Breaking Bad — the city’s geography is bounded by the houses of the participants, Los Pollos Hermanos, the laundry, and Hank’s office. And Justified gives us a Kentucky populated by a colorful variety of narcotics wranglers. The Sopranos is a notable potential exception, though drugs are certainly part of the mix, and there’s an extent to which the show is about New Jersey’s relationship to New York.

I understand why we tell stories about criminal enterprises in general and drugs in particular. Cops and robbers, chase and race are both classic storytelling models. And the networks and problems of production, trade, and distribution make for fascinating character and power relationships between criminals and present substantial challenges for law enforcement officers. But are drugs really so psychically important to our country that they deserve this level of attention? I know I’m not alone in considering the War on Drugs both an over-investment and a failed strategy. And while I appreciate living in a neighborhood that isn’t blighted by drug-linked crime, I’m also not exceptionally concerned about Marlo Stanfield or Walter White showing up and upsetting that balance. So is this pattern just a result of the structural rewards of telling drug stories? Or do we see something rotten at the heart of America, a blight worse than the troubles we identify in our great cities?

I wanted to start on that note because I appreciate the way the show used Quarles’ arrival in town to set up a running conversation about real estate, and by extension, territory and a sense of home. When he first showed up, I actually assumed he was talking about the city of Detroit, rather than the criminal enterprise based there that he happens to represent. It quickly becomes clear that it’s not, but I like the idea of Detroit as a criminal conspiracy, the city’s profound troubles providing opportunities for men like Quarles to rise. “You picked a shitty time to get into commercial real estate, and now you’re under water. Detroit did not make an investment. It made a loan,” he warns. “Things are getting tough all over. So if you can’t have the money here by tomorrow, I trust you tell me right now.” He makes good on the threat by the end of the episode, but he’s set a theme that persists for the rest of the episode. There’s Boyd and Raylan fighting over Raylan’s broken promise, with Raylan spitting, “You think we’re in the holler? I’m a deputy U.S. Marshal.” Geography will reach out to pull you back, if you let it. And Raylan and Winona, they lie in bed after making love for the first time since Raylan was shot, property and geography become a proxy for talking about commitment. “Maybe we need more room,” Raylan proposes, baby planning. “After all the time I’ve spent redecorating?” Winona asks, a prickliness that’ll come up again when Raylan tentatively proposes naming their baby Felix, like the cat. “It’s sweet. It’s sweet that you think you have a say in the name,” she tells him.

Those twitchy power dynamics are all over the episode, and make for some of its best moments. “Didn’t wear your suit,” Raylan observes as he meets Boyd in the conference room. “Why do you say that as if I’ve only got one suit and not the whole closetful?” Boyd complains. And they poke at each other over the question of asset forfeiture. “How sizeable, Raylan?” Boyd asks.”Well over 10 dollars,” Raylan tells him. “If I had that kind of money, I’d be in Mexico by now,” Boyd tells him. One of the reasons things get so nasty is because the stakes are smaller than they are in Albuquerque, but the people involved need the money and the assertions of power more. When Ava clocks Devil with the frying pan and is told she didn’t have to, she forcefully asserts that it is, “Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it.” Duffy slaps back at Raylan by treating him like a low priority, saying, “I would love to be of more help but I’ve got to get back to watching women’s tennis.” And Fletcher Nix, who on another show would be a great season-long villain, projects his air of menace in Raylan’s house in part by playing naive. “I look like I know anything about watches?” he asks Raylan. “I could take those off your hands. Give you $20 a piece for them,” Raylan plays along, a little bit classy and a little bit cheap. But he beats him by playing very, very cool. It’s going to be a terrific season.

One of the best things about writing about multiple media is that you’re not subject to the tyranny of Best Of lists. I could no more decide between Shame and Hugo for a numbered slot than I could pick between Revenge and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (though can we please get Kanye writing rhymes for and about Emily Thorne? I need an update on Snoop Dogg and his Sookie Stackhouse obsession). However, there were a lot of things that made me happy this year, and because Oprah’s not rockin’ it anymore, here is a semi-chronological-but-unranked list of my 26-odd favorite things to consume or discuss in 2011. A similar list of my least favorite things will follow tomorrow.

1. Frank Ocean makes us all hurt so good: I’m more irritated than anything else by the antics of Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All. But it’s worth it for Frank Ocean, who rocks specific melancholia like nobody’s business. “Novacane” was one of my favorite songs of 2011.

2. Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch: Before y’all accuse me of getting all Armond White up in the business, let me be clear. I don’t think Sucker Punch is an affirmatively good movie or that Snyder is a visionary director (though I appreciate that he actually has a distinctive visual style). But as aestheticized meditation on the horrors of lobotomy, a frightening and overlooked part of American mental health history, I found it unexpectedly moving. Plus, Snyder circumvented a ban on female leads with the movie.

3. Cedar Rapids sets Ed Helms loose: Up In the Air, but for people who actually live in flyover country, and Parks and Recreation with a deeper undercurrent of bitter darkness and isolation. There should be more popular culture about the struggle to be fundamentally decent.

4. War photographers movie The Bang-Bang Club and HBO’s biopic of the Louds, Cinema Verite: After the death of Tim Heatherington and as Joao Silva recovered from his injuries, The Bang-Bang Club offered a look at what it takes not just to put yourself in danger as a war photographer, but at what it means to be an observer rather than someone who intervenes. Conversely, Cinema Verite went back to the invention of reality television to explore what it means to be watched — and dissected — by a mass audience.

5. Game of Thrones is brilliant, and even the frustrating A Dance With Dragons is grist for the mill: I worry that George R.R. Martin’s universe is spiraling completely out of control, too big for any series to contain. But the first season of the HBO adaptation featured great performances, particularly by a host of very young actors and a smart sense for cuts and world-building. I don’t know if we’ll reach the end of this fascinating, maddening saga any time soon. But the ride looks like it’s going to be delightful.
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No matter how much we love our favorite bits of popular culture, we know that even the best shows — and the best characters — aren’t perfect. Here are 10 shows and franchises that could learn from each other — and that would produce some of the greatest, wackiest crossovers of all time.

1. Sons of Pawnee: I originally got this idea while talking to Maureen Ryan about who seems to have better stimulants: the Sons, or Leslie Knope. But it makes sense that Charming’s family-oriented motorcycle gang and Pawnee’s relentlessly cheery city government would go great together — if you could figure out which one represents the immovable object and which the irresistible force. First, Pawnee has a ridiculously traumatic history, from massacres to Death By Ice Flow for indecent exposure. SAMCRO’s arrival in town would just continue that noble tradition, and the creators of Pawnee’s public art could make up for the fact that Clay Morrow is pretty terrible at graffiti. The gang could carve Leslie up a new table to commemorate the City Council seat she’ll inevitably win. Gemma and Leslie could collaborate on a Taste of Pawnee. Chris could date Tara, who is literally the best small-town doctor on television. Joan Callamezzo and Tig Traeger can carry on a torrid affair. Now that Ben’s out at City Hall, he could take care of the Sons’ books. And if things went sideways, Ron would make sure that the Parks Department wasn’t short on guns, the Tammys could throw down with the SAMCRO Old Ladies, and Leslie and Tom could do surveillance and plan efficient, stylish counterstrikes.

2. Breaking Bad and Breaking Dawn: One of the most notable things about the Twilight books and movies is how bad Bella Swan’s parents are at their jobs. Renee, her mother, is a flake who basically dumps Bella with her father Charlie so Renee can gallivant around with her younger husband. Charlie has essentially no way to respond to Bella’s severe depression except by hoping she’ll end up with a different guy who can cheer her up. Neither of them is capable of having a real conversation with Bella about the fact that she’s not going to college and is getting married as a teenager, just as they did. Now, Walter White is no great shakes as a father either, whether he’s getting Walter Jr. drunk to the point of vomiting, buying his son a car the family can’t keep, or exposing his infant daughter to the dangers of meth dealing. Skyler White is a world champion self-deceiver, and only a mediocre plotter. But I bet the One Who Knocks, and the woman Who Protects This Family From the Man Who Protects This Family would have things to say about their daughter getting married out of high school to a totally mysterious dude who wrecked her emotionally. And failing that, some chemicals strong enough to blow up a vampire or dissolve him in a bathtub.

3. Doctor Who and Ugly Americans: I’m fond of the Doctor, but man does that guy get himself into a lot of trouble with all his gallivanting around. Clearly, what he and the Daleks need is a social worker with extensive experience in alien mediation and an integrationist approach to sharing a galaxy and a planet. Plus, it might be refreshing for him to have a male companion for once: less sexual tension, more TARDIS mini-fridges and dude-bonding. So the Doctor should totally rescue poor Mark Lilly from his zombie roommate and his terrible Craigslist New York apartment. But even then, there’s the risk that the Doctor and Mark would make a new enemy, one very irritable half-human, half-Devil supervisor at the Department of Integration.

4. Game of Thrones and Revenge: A Lannister always pays his debts. So, it turns out, do the Clarkes. Except they’re way more organized about it. While Cersei Lannister is revenge-fucking her brother to pay back her terrible abusive husband, turning into a drunken sot to get back at the people who doubt her, and continuing a pattern of humiliating her younger brother for the sin of being born; and while said younger brother is grousing about how he wants to rape and kill his older sister while tramping all over Westeros and Essos, Amanda Clarke is getting stuff done. Her training at the hands of a mysterious Japanese man appears to have been much more efficient (and less painful) than Arya Stark’s education in Braavos. And while it’s admittedly easier to wreak havoc on a bunch of unsuspecting rich people in the Hamptons than it is to take down a bunch of paranoid and heavily fortified nobles in Westeros, girlfriend is getting it done. Amanda should really set up an academy somewhere and get the Starks and various and sundry other heavily wronged people ready to kick ass for fun and profit.

5. Glee and Party Down: As graduation approaches for some of the members of New Directions and the Troubletones, their perpetual freakouts about what they’re going to do for the rest of their lives is getting more intense. The Party Down crew could explode all of their illusions, reminding them that even if you make it to the big city, sometimes you end up catering an eccentric array of parties rather than hoofing it on Broadway or the sassy gay friend on a Bravo show. Glee is at its best when its all kinds of dark. And while teenagers may not need their illusions crushed and then milled into a fine, tragic grain, it’s probably worth a reminder that a decent job and a good relationship aren’t failures.

The bridge is yours.

-For the distinguished meth or television connoisseur in your life, Walter White sneakers.

-The cultural exchange that made the Tintin story The Blue Lotus so good.

-Watchmen 2 is a thing. Everything is terrible.

-Sounds like Valentine Wiggin’s going to have true grit.

-Are we on our way to usage-based billing?

This post contains spoilers through the October 23 episode of The Walking Dead.

I wrote in the Atlantic last week that I thought the most frightening thing about The Walking Dead wasn’t necessarily the zombies themselves, but the obstacle they present to things that ought to be normal and routine. That was certainly the case last night, where the two biggest risks are ones that wouldn’t have been a problem in the apocalypse: T-Dog’s infected cut and the possibility that Carl won’t survive surgery.

T-Dog gets most directly at the irony of it all. “Wouldn’t that be the thing,” he tells Dale as they wait by the RV for the rest of the group to return from hunting for Sophia. “The world gone to hell. The dead rose up to eat the living. Theodore Duggs get done in by a cut on his arm.” This is what’s really scary about living through a zombie apocalypse. What if you safeguard your humanity, and it turns out not to matter in the slightest because your humanity isn’t of any use to you? Rick may be willing to give all the blood in the world, but in the absence of anesthetics or a proper surgical theater, it may not save his son, and it may weaken him to a point of extreme danger.
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One of the things that’s struck me about the interviews Vince Gilligan’s done after this season’s finale of Breaking Bad is the extent to which they reveal not just that the show has all of these meticulously planned and executed episodes (it may be the most beautifully shot show on television right now), but that these meticulous episodes are coming together really fast. As he tells James Poniewozick:

Season four was pretty close to that in execution. In other words, we knew what had to happen at the end of the season. We knew that Walt would have to finally defeat his nemesis Gus and while we didn’t have every single detail nailed down, we talked about it. We would spend time every week in the writer’s room talking about where we were going. We would take breaks from where we were at that particular moment on any given episode and we would jump ahead to where we were going with the story. So, yes, we had the the plot of the last episode figured out probably three or four episodes in advance.

And in his conversation with Maureen Ryan, Gilligan reveals it wasn’t actually clear going into the fourth season who would live and who would die:

Back in the early days of plotting out Season 4, we did indeed realize that this was the season where it would all have to come to a head and there would have to be some resolution one way or the other. And we even briefly discussed, “What if it is Walt that gets killed”? We got to realize pretty quickly that we couldn’t actually go that way. But we try to make the writer’s room a safe place and let all ideas wind up on the table at some point or another, even if only for 10 or 20 seconds.

We discuss every possibility. We discussed, “What if Walt dies or is horribly wounded?” Or “what if” [scenarios involving Hank, Skyler or Jesse]. We do try to discuss every possible permutation that we can conceive of. But at a certain point we also have to choose between the least of all evils, I suppose. I’d hate to think of this show without Aaron Paul on it. Obviously, I don’t think we’d have a show without Bryan Cranston.

I’m intrigued by this, because it offers an intriguing insight into how fast the show has evolved from a significantly realistic show about health care, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the thin veneer that separates the middle class from the working poor in Albuquerque into a full-on horror show. Listening to this week’s TV On the Internet podcast, I both agree with Libby Hill that the show has evolved in concert with its main character, becoming more monstrous as Walt does, I also share some of Todd’s concerns about the show going slightly off the rails.

I guess I’d feel comforted if I knew which story the fifth and final season of the show was going to tell. It makes sense that we’re going to have to see what happens with the networks left behind by the cartel’s decimation and Gus’ sudden death, but I think somehow I’d be disappointed by a show that’s so intensely about morality giving Walt the chance to go out as a kingpin. Instead, wouldn’t it be more fitting the show’s worldview to have Walt stuck running the car wash, which, as some folks pointed out on Twitter, would be a fitting forced return to invisibility for a man who is desperate to be recognized for his greatness? But in either case, I’d really like to know that Vince Gilligan knows how this is all going to end even if he isn’t going to tell any of us yet.

Reflecting on it, I don’t think the manner of Gus’ death, which felt a bit like the show calling on the makeup crew for The Walking Dead just because they could, was an actual shark-jumping moment. The show’s always pitted the wildly grotesque against the realistic, particularly in the defeat of the Cousins by Hank, a crude human potato with remarkable, but not totally implausible, panic-fueled resilience. But I do think the end of this season, from the wild cackle that closed out “Crawl Space” to the literalness of “Face Off” raises questions about how Gilligan is going to deliver his moral coup de grace: through crushing banality, or through operatic shock?

I’ve been so focused on this fall’s crop of television shows about women that I haven’t spent that much time checking out the roster of shows about How to Man Correctly. The always-excellent Linda Holmes at NPR makes a persuasive argument that for once, television is actually handling men worse than it’s handling women. So if you don’t want to watch How to be a Gentleman but do to think about masculinity, try one of these currently airing shows — or watch them with a new focus.

1. Parks and Recreation: I give this show infinite props for its awesome feminism, but it’s actually a stealthily terrific show about what it means to be a man. From Tom, who thinks the road to happiness lies through the achievement of a particular lifestyle; to Ben who’s trying to prove that he’s worthy of responsibility after a burst of teenage arrogance; to Andy’s maturation from unemployed lump to husband, the show is all about how to be a grown-up man without any resort to extreme violence or Pickup Artist-style womanizing. And that doesn’t even get us to the Swanson Pyramid of Greatness:

The only thing that even comes close is Jack Donaghy’s video for his unborn son. But on 30 Rock, Jack’s really the only man, so there isn’t much of a conversation about masculinity.

2. Breaking Bad: I sort of assume everyone here is watching Breaking Bad already, but in a way, it’s a perfect dramatic counterpoint to Parks and Recreation. Walter White’s journey from decent cancer victim to monstrously pathetic wannabe kingpin is fundamentally steered by a toxic conception of masculinity: that he should be willing to do everything to provide for his family. That rationale’s evolved from a motivation for Walt to cross a previously unthinkable line to an excuse for him to behave terribly. As Skyler, Walter’s wife told him this season, “someone has to protect this family from the man who protects this family.”
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