This week's Demski Five, inspired by Sunday night's Breaking Bad, covers five episodes of television that left me simultaneously awestruck and dumbstruck as the credits rolled - whether it be because of a crazy-intense final sequence, or out of admiration for truly masterful writing and storytelling.
The episode covered in Day 1 - Twin Peaks "Lonely Souls" - was notable for bringing many story-lines to a head, including the reveal of Laura Palmer's killer, and ended with a mind-blowing scene that managed to convey a mixture of intensity, sorrow, horror, and despair. Today's episode isn't quite as flashy. Instead, it appealed to me as a writer in ways that Breaking Bad often does. Breaking Bad encourages you to become emotionally invested in its world by cutting the intensity of its meth and murder plot-lines with fantastic character-based humor. In today's "flawless" episode, the writers bravely explored the real sadness behind the characters we'd been laughing at throughout the previous two seasons, and the result is an episode that still moves me - as both a viewer and a writer - each time I watch it.
So, without further ado:
2. Extras - "Christmas Special"
Throughout Extras' second series, we watched Andy Millman simultaneously succeed as a writer and actor while selling his soul to the gods of broad humor and catchphrases. Yet, his success was not just at the expense of his dignity; he also managed to alienate and hurt all of those who had supported him on the way up. So, in the Christmas Special, we get to see never-content Andy wallowing in the pain of his success, Darren (Stephen Merchant) and his sidekick "Barry from Eastenders" enthusiastically embracing their hilarious / sad new roles as salesmen at the Carphone Warehouse, and poor Maggie realizing that she's been forgotten, abandoned, left in the dust and now must face the consequences of spending most of her twenties and early-thirties goofing off and supporting another person's success. The Extras Christmas Special ends on a pretty low-key yet positive note, but Gervais and Merchant present the hour as more of a comic tragedy, or perhaps a tragic comedy, pushing away from the more blatantly comedic tone established earlier in the series. But, of course, the episode is still peppered with gems like this:
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