Before FX became FX: The Home of Archer, Justified, Louie, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Wilfred, they were FX: The Home of It’s Always Sunny and a Bunch of Moody, Dark Dramas Like Rescue Me, The Shield, and Nip/Tuck. Wary of being labeled as “y’know, that channel with all those, whatcha call ‘em, angry white guys,” FX president John Landgraf turned down a project featuring THE angry white guy: Breaking Bad.
In an interview with Kim Masters on KCRW’s The Business, FX president John Landgraf explained why he turned down the show, which would later become a critical and commercial hit for AMC.
“We had three dramas with male antiheroes and we looked at that script and said, ‘Okay, so here’s a fourth male antihero,’” Landgraf recalled. “The question was: ‘Are we defining FX as the male antihero network and is that a big enough tent?’” (Via)
It’s nice to know that FX is in such a good place that its president can explain why he passed on the greatest televised drama of all-time — you wouldn’t hear a network head from Hallmark say, “We could have had Girls, but we decided to air reruns of Little House on the Prairie, instead.” But let’s imagine if Breaking Bad was on FX. There could be a crossover episode with Anger Management, and Walter White could push Tio and his rigged-with-explosives wheelchair into Charlie Sheen’s house, bombing the place to smithereens. If only.
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The greatest televised drama of all time is The Wire. Breaking Bad is second, maybe.
Stop sucking The Wire’s dick.
Everybody knows it’s Dexter.
I really really enjoy The Wire, but prefer The Sopranos on the all time list, and maybe even Deadwood, cocksuckers.
The Wire was good, excellent even, but the Shield shits all over that show.
The Sopranos? Really? What the fuck, the characters on that show sucked. AJ was a whiny little piece of shit that I hoped killed himself, Meadow was a whiny cunt that never got naked, Carmela was a bitch with an annoying voice, and I started rooting for Tony to die half way through the third season. They wouldn’t even let Ralph Siphereto make fun of Ginny Sack’s fat ass. God that show fucking sucked.
Dexter is good, but ceased to be awesome after the fourth season. They took a perfectly good angle: “What Dexter does after the human side of him is murdered,” and wound up with him killing Tony Robbins instead of actually using him as a Trinity like mentor. Don’t get me wrong I want to kill Tony Robbins too, but that was a weak ending.
Season Four of the Shield can hang with the first season of The Wire. The ending was pretty damn good and left you feeling absolutely empty. The Wire, however, left you feeling empty about the world. Leaving you feel like there’s problems that can’t be fixed, and leaving you feeling empty about that. The world never changes and all the problems still exist. Besides, The Wire has Omar, the greatest character in the history of television.
I totes need to catch Deadwood, though.
1) Homicide: Life on the Street
2) The Shield
3) The Wire
4)…. go from there.
revised:
1) Homicide
2) The Shield
3) The Wire
4) Breaking Bad
5) Mad Men
6) Friday Night Lights
7)…
The greatest scene in The Shield was Vic Armadillo’s face after he molested that little girl, and the greatest villan was Antwan Mitchell. The Wire had better villans THAT WORKED FOR THE COPS, and better scenes in weak seasons. The 5th Season of The Wire is universally recognized as the worst season of the show…and the scene where Michael dropped off Dookie and Bug before taking his new life or the scene where Bubs was let upstairs shit all over Armadillo getting his face melted off.
FNL had some serious acting and some pretty heavy scenes…I still hate the whole “high school football” angle, though.
@Omar
fair enough, but high school or not that show was the tits.
The Shield did it for 7 seasons. And Shane dropping the grenade on Lem fucked me up but good. I recommend Homicide: Life on the Street – David Simon’s first show, if you loved The Wire, if you havent seen it.
Shane killing Lem was a pretty crazy ass scene, the Vic/Shane tension was pretty killer later in the show. The scene where Dutch arrested Gardoki was pretty intense too. I’ll give you the seven seasons argument, and overall the Shield did end stronger than the Wire did. Though the close of the Wire was probably as about as good of a wrap up as you can do.
That being said: David Simon had a sixth season planned with the latino community in Baltimore and the issues that they face. Unfortunately HBO didn’t give it to him. As far as Homicide goes, I’ve heard of it, and caught a few episodes. I love Belzer and Munch in general…I just can’t find the whole series on DVD anywhere. My ISP also watches Torrents too closely. All these shows are pretty recent, there’s some pretty legit older dramas too, but an exhaustive list would take more thinking than what we’re putting in here. I wish Warming Glow would do a few lists prior to Breaking Bad coming out: (because after all who doesn’t like lists? They kill time and what else are we going to do before Breaking Bad?)
Best Shows on TV by genre and overall
Best “side characters” such as Jean Ralphio and Barry Zuckercorn ever
Maybe start a nominations and discussion process for the best of all time lists.
I also really don’t have time for another genre, speaking of Homicide. I finally caught up to Louie and after that my que is:
Parks and Rec S4 (caught a few epps need to finish it)
Luther (finish)
Sherlock
I’d like to finish up the things that’ll take me less time to watch…after that it’s a long ass list:
Game of Thrones
Boardwalk Empire
Homeland (when S1 is released on Blu-Ray)
Workaholics
Dexter S6
Last but not least I kinda want to finish up Monk so I get my dosage of campy procedurals.
This on top of keeping up with my normal TV shows. Feel free to add suggestions, though.
Oh and the US Office…I loved the UK version and I really liked Community and Parks and Rec…figure I’ll give US version another try.
really? ive been able to get Homicide on DVD relatively easy on Amazon.
the discussions about life and death, people, society, religion that goes on during Homicide is just awesome. Munch is a great side character, as is Kellerman (Reed Diamond), Lewis (Clark Johnson – later a director of The Shield including its finale), Kay (Melissa Leo), Captain Giardello (Yaphet Kotto), but the dialogue between Pembleton (Andre Braugher) and Bayliss (Kyle Secor) drive that show and made it what it was.
not a lot of action, its dialogue and character driven, but damn if it isnt live action art on your tv screen.
Louie is probably the best show on tv. US Office is good but stop after season 4.
I doubt its your jam but the first two seasons of Veronica Mars are just fantastic. You got that high school setting, but any show that opens with its main female lead having her out to solve the murder of her best friend, her own rape, and deal with her mother abandoning her and her father being a disgraced cop turned PI, has my attention and for 2 out of 3 seasons before its plugged got pulled, it was beyond worth watching.
My bud really dug Veronica Mars. He’s a legit dude, despite not eating meat, so I’ll give it a try. You got me into it with the description. Louie’s great…love that show. Greatest on TV? I dunno…I like Wilfred a lot too, Breaking Bad is tits, and I’ve heard good shit about GoT. Community and Parks and Rec are also fantastic.
The Wire is epic but I love Generation Kill that little bit more.
A tv critic I follow is adamant that Veronica Mars is “One of the best shows ever broadcast”. I’ve only ever watched the third series so wouldn’t know about that.
@Charlie Br0nze
watch the first 2 seasons. much much better. once they lost the central arcs of the show of the first two seasons, they couldnt rebound, even though it was still well written, the cancellation was probably for the best, it was a 2 part story – season 1 and season 2. it could and should have ended there.
I can understand his point; had FX picked up Breaking Bad, they would have had five dark shows featuring antiheroes running simultaneously (Rescue Me, Damages, The Shield, Sons of Anarchy, Breaking Bad), including three about outlaws (BB, SOA, and The Shield, though Vic Mackey’s relationship with law is of course rather complicated). Of the outlaw shows, The Shield was well-liked but not a runaway hit, and SOA has had solid but not exceptional viewership, so I can see how FX would think that BB would just bog them down with another 40 degree day. Wrong call, as it turned out, but the process was reasonable.
Y’ALL ARE GIVING ME WAY TOO MANY FUCKIN 40 DEGREE DAYS!!!!!!!
Isn’t the Male Antihero Tent a fixture at the Gathering of the Juggalos?
“This is too similar to our other programming. BIIIIITCH!”
-Jesse Pinkman, Studio Exec.
I don’t want to criticize decision-makers for not being able to see into the future, but isn’t turning down something you think is a good script because it’s too similar to your other programming like if the Cavs in ’03 said, “LeBron James? But we already have Ricky Davis” (For this comparison to work, I have to note that even though Ricky Davis has never made teams better, he averaged 20/5/5 the season before LeBron showed up).
Point is, if you think something is good, go with it. Especially because Nip/Tuck and Rescue Me were mediocre. That’s being kind to Nip/Tuck. It was gutter lickin’ water trash.
Well that would have given the Fox family of networks the best stable of television characters ever. Just in dramas alone they’d have:
House
Jack Bauer
Walt
Jesse
Gus
Jax
Opie
Vic
Shane
Interesting to think about, but I get the whole “too many eggs in one basket” line of thinking but I always think that Networks should play to their strengths. FX appeals to men in a split demographic, they appeal to the older angstier crowd of the 18-25 crowd and the younger crowd who hates getting old in the 25-34 demo. Their biggest shows like Louie, Wilfred, Sons of Anarchy, The Shield, Nip/Tuck, It’s Always Sunny, and Rescue Me all appeal to pissed off angsty guys in their 20s. You have to be a little bit fucked up to like those shows, and Breaking Bad definitely fits in that family of shows but it also adds the appeal of an older crowd. Every network on TV has their strengths, and I believe they should play to them: HBO has TV snobs, Spike has Bros, CBS has old people and folks with bad taste in TV, Fox has idiots that like reality TV, NBC has quirky kids, Bravo has the LGTB community, and FX has angsty guys in their 20s. I hope in the future the networks keep things like this.
Overall I’m glad they went to AMC, it fits in pretty well with their family of shows and it’s a perfect complement to Mad Men and it allows other shows like the Walking Dead and Hell on Wheels to be a great supporting cast. If only AMC had a top comedy…
“…all appeal to pissed off angsty guys in their 20s. You have to be a little bit fucked up to like those shows.”
damn. nail on the head with me.
Hey man, don’t forget us fucked up angsty ladies in our 20s who also enjoy the aforementioned shows. Though now that I think about it I’m less “angsty” and more just “angry”…
well hello there…
“really? ive been able to get Homicide on DVD relatively easy on Amazon.”
Okay, let me rephrase that. I’m cheap, lazy, and it’s not on Netflix.
Hmmm…Yaphet Kotto? The engineer in Alien….tempting. Dramas are always like the show you described and they’re always what make the show great. When the Shield was good was when Vic was fucking Aceveda and dealing with Claudette…the scenes with Lt. Kavanaugh were great too. If I wanted action I’d watch a Michael Bay movie or play video games…
unfortunately the no action warning label has to be used for most tv viewers. if you have no qualms with that and agree on what actually makes dramas great you probably wont be able to stop watching Homicide once you start. It gets a bit iffy after season 5, and season 7 is kinda meh after Braugher left at the end of s6. And then dominates once more in the tv movie that concluded the show when they brought all the characters back that had left.
but the first 4 seasons (season 2 is only like 3 episodes, somehow it was brought back, mostly for the same reason FNL kept going – the advertisers liked the demographic, albeit small, that was watching) are gold.
Yaphet Kotto is brilliant in that show btw.
Don’t get me wrong, Dramas take a while to get into. They’re all an acquired taste, it took me a couple of episodes for Breaking Bad and The Wire to really sink in too. The Shield was pretty instant, but there was a lot of action there so it has a quick hook. SamCro was kind of like that too, but I can’t watch that multiple times like I did BB and the Wire. It’s not like comedies where once you get used to the non-laugh track witty comedy like Community, Parks and Rec, and Wilfred you warm up to it right away and can’t go back. All Dramas take a minute or two to introduce you to the characters and for you to develop a relationship with them.
Again, I’m cheap AND lazy. I saw the DVDs on Amazon for like 100 bucks. Maybe I’ll check them out when I get more cash. I gotta get Homeland when it comes out and I should really check out Deadwood too. That and I play guitar and if you know any musician you know how expensive that hobby gets. Ugh…I want to be a billionaire.
The early seasons of Homicide are just amazing. I still can’t believe that ran on network TV.
ill tell you what, i give NBC a lot of shit, and rightfully so, but they allowed Friday Night Lights and Homicide: Life on the Street to run longer than any other network would have, so props on that.
i was watching Homicide on friday nights in elementary school. yeh my dad raised me right.
Homicide Life on the Street and Married with Children when i was 10 years old sup America… and i turned out alright… parenting>>watching adult tv+playing violent video games as a kid. crazy right?
Wait, a cable channel owned by Rupert Murdoch doesn’t think they can cash in on the angry white male demo?
The fuck has FOX News been doing the last decade?
I don’t get the acclaim for Mad Men. I think the show is pretty boring. I got about halfway through the first season, and I found myself thinking “Why am I supposed to care about these people again?” I guess I can’t relate to a handsome business mogul with a perfectly hot wife who still chooses to bang some ug on the side.