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New Directions in Media Studies: The Aesthetic Turn
Image: James Turrell, Dhatu, 2010 A year ago, Neil Verma and I assembled a panel for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference titled, “The Aesthetic Turn in Radio Studies,” aimed at mapping...
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Breaking Bad Breakdown: Digging Down
Sunday afternoon, I started thinking ahead to Breaking Bad in anticipation, and the question I kept coming back to was, “I wonder what they’ll do with the cold open?” The series has always used its...
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Breaking Bad Breakdown: Title Tricking
This week’s episode is entitled “Confessions.” As Jonathan Gray has discussed in his book Show Sold Separately, paratextual elements like episode titles help to shape viewer expectations and frame what...
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Breaking Bad Breakdown: Peaking Plot
In one of the most referenced axioms about suspense, Alfred Hitchcock told François Truffaut that suspense works best when the audience knows that there is a bomb under the table, but is powerless to...
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Breaking Bad Breakdown: Exploding Emotion
I’m still a wreck. It’s Monday afternoon, after a late night of obsessing, rewatching, sketchy writing, and furtive sleep. There are few episodes of television that affected me this much—Six Feet...
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Breaking Bad Breakdown: Exiling Evil
We’ve known that this was coming for quite awhile. Since “Live Free or Die” aired 14 months ago, we’ve known that Mr. Lambert would be leaving New Hampshire to settle some scores. That knowledge has...
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Breaking Bad Breakdown: Deserving Denouement
What do we want from a finale? Should it be a spectacular episode that serves as the dramatic peak of the series? Should it like any other episode of the series, only more so? Should it be surprising,...
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