The Shield
The Good Wife (albeit still airing)

Agreed.

everyone focuses upon the kleptomania in their response but it was much more than that
Marie took on an entirely different personality and was a compulsive liar when stealing.... sound familiar at all??!

Which was then unceremoniously dropped when the creative team realized no one gave a shit about Marie lying and stealing.

or it served its point

Honestly I would hardly call that a misstep. It was a minor storyline for a secondary character. The writers probably realized that it wasn't needed and that they wanted to keep the show focused mainly on Walt, Jesse, Hank, and Skyler (to some degree). I think the story served it's purpose enough to give us the idea that Marie isn't perfect either but it wasn't something that needed to be brought up time and time again. It served it's purpose and that was basically that.

^ and it also lead to Hank getting the Gale files to review for a return favor for Tim seeing that Marie was not arrested for stealing

I agree on the shield. Awesome show one of the best and just kept on bringing it each season.

Also to defend the wife taping Friends.... If there are four or so episodes that air a day she will have them taped, and if its episodes she likes she will watch them, if not she will delete them. I guess it's easier than pulling out the DVDs and searching through 9 seasons of episodes to find ones she wants to watch. Even though they are "commercial infested", they are also recorded so you can easily fast forward through said commercials. I am sure there are things that we all do that make no sense to other people....

^^ this x1000

I think season 5 is probably the weakest season, but it still has some strong stuff in it. And even if it was terrible, and I think it's far from it, the incredible quality of the series as a whole is still pretty hard to match much of anywhere, IMO. At it's best, it's pretty hard to beat. I think it's one of the few things I've seen that entirely justifies its hype. I haven't watched a single BB episode yet, so I should probably bail out of this thread before I ram into spoilerville.

I agree; I liked season 5 of the wire, just not as much as the other seasons though and it was shortened. So it ended on not the highest note it could have ended on.

But breaking bad never really slowed down at all. Some of the seasons maybe had a semi-slow start, but they all got to where they needed to get to be a satisfying season. I wouldn't worry about spoilers in this thread, but you never do know.

I don't think that's the case at all. Hank didn't go into the Gale file as a favor for Tim. Hank went into the Gale file because he was losing his mind sitting in bed and not doing police work. He feigned disinterest but really he wanted to do it.

I don't think the Marie subplot was a misstep either. I don't think it was fully realized but I think it served it's purpose. It showed the viewer that if someone is under enough stress they can lose it and do bad things. Marie didn't need to steal anything, she did it for the rush. Later on, we learn that part of the reason Walt did what he did was for the rush as well. So there are parallels there. Nonetheless, I don't think we would have missed much if they never had that story line. I still think it was done in an attempt to give us more depth to Marie but it was ultimately unneeded.

Back on topic: I also can watch any of the seasons on Netflix but for some reason I got caught up in the marathon as well. And I agree the commercials were tough but I'm enough of a heartless prick to not be too bothered by them.

Can we boycott any channel that runs more than one ASPCA ad a day?

I mean, I was watching USA on Saturday and Sunday, kicking back, watching a little SVU marathon and BAM it goes from dark depressing show to even more depressing, annoying as fuck ads for child and animal abuse. If they want to be efficient, they need to have Comcast and all other Cable providers offer a "I'll donate! Now don't show me this fucking ad again for 6 months." button.

Long story short, I now remember why I don't watch cable and will refrain from watching USA. And I also watch marathons even though these episodes were all available on Netflix (except Fault, which gets played during ever single marathon of the show.)

Yep, and it's still king in my opinion.

Send the abused animals to the hungry families. No more abused animals. No more hungry families. Problem solved.

So many go to bed hungry in this nation, yet cat food is full of tuna! I can't help but think each time I go to the zoo and see those porpoises, crammed into those tiny tanks, what a waste that is. Butcher half of them now! That's hundreds of pounds of dolphin meat that can be fed to our cats, freeing up that tuna for our nation's hungry.

So many are cold, shivering in the night, so I say, butcher those cats, skin them! Use their fur to keep hundreds warm!