The Dry Run

What is the Dry Run?

My roundups have been a bit mismatched so far, since I stupidly began this endeavour as the off-season opened. The only show I've focused on with any real weekly emphasis is Person of Interest, (but those are in-depth analyses of my favourite show, because it's my favourite show) and that's not how I intend this roundup to be.

   The ultimate goal of this blog is to briefly analyse and give my thoughts on the TV shows that I watch on a weekly basis. That would mean I'd be giving brief descriptions of what happened and analysis on that for potentially up to 16 shows each week (I counted). So why not have a practice - a dry run - while the off-season has begun and at worst I'll have to analyse 4 shows at once.

The off-season shows I'll be analysing

• The Night Shift
• The Night Shift returned two weeks ago, so I'm a little behind, but what I'll do is catch you all up on the first two episodes of season 3, and continue from there.
• Orange is the New Black
• OITNB's full 13-episode fourth season will be released 17th June. Since it's going to be released all in one go, I'll watch one per week and analyse accordingly.
• Hell on Wheels
• The 7-episode second half of the fifth and final season begins 11th June.
• Deadbeat
• The full 13-episode third season was released on Hulu on 20th April (4/20 in American dates, to align with the marijuana references permeating the show). I've not begun watching it yet but I will now, and I'll do it in the same manner as OITNB: one per week since it's all been released simultaneously.

If you watch any of these, do look out for my upcoming roundups.

Quick synopses of these four shows up to now

• The Night Shift
• Set in San Antonio, Texas, The Night Shift follows the travails, personal and professional, of a group of night-shift doctors and nurses. We have Dr TC Callahan, a rogue, bad-boy George-Clooney-Doug-Ross type, who is madly in love with (and lost a baby at the end of season 2 with) Dr Jordan Alexander. Dr Topher Zia is a hardworking family man, Dr Paul Cummings is a trainee doctor living in the shadow of his more successful family, Dr Drew Allister (another war vet along with TC and Topher) has battled with his sexuality for two seasons and is finally settled with boyfriend Rick, and Nurse Kenny Fournette is in a relationship with paramedic Gwen, Jordan's best friend.
• Orange is the New Black
• Going into season 4, the prison, run by warden Joe Caputo, has been struggling as a private firm and is about to suffer from an influx of inmates set to double the population. Piper and Alex's lesbian relationship has ended badly, and the season 3 cliffhanger has Alex in the middle of a shed with an assassin sent by the drug kingpin she used to run drugs for. Pennsatucky has been raped by a guard, Taystee is helping Black Cindy with her conversion to Judaism, CO Healy is trying to begin a relationship with prison chef Red Reznikova, Nicky and Sophia are in max sec, and Morello had a prison wedding. Daya's baby was finally born but its dad, Officer Bennett, ran off, and Piper's used-panty business is flourishing with help from all the prison demographics in spite of her dictatorial management style.
• Hell on Wheels
• This show follows the creation of the Union Pacific Railway under the management of corrupt Thomas Durant. But season 5 saw a change of setting, following the deaths of numerous main characters including Sean McGinnes (suspected of murder), the Reverend's daughter Ruth (murder), and further back the Reverend (religious fanaticism) and Durant's advisor Lily Bell (she was murdered for no reason). Psychotic murderer Thor Gundersen "The Swede" (who killed Lily) has turned Mormon and is now looking to kill the main character, Cullen Bohannon's, family, in revenge for him exposing Gundersen to the Mormon people. Freed slave Elam had a baby with whore Eva, and then was mauled in a bear attack, went crazy and had to be mercy killed by Cullen, who now has a new wife and kid and has switched to working for the Central Pacific Railway under Collis Huntington, leading to the setting change I mentioned and the introduction of a number of indentured Chinese workers including Fong (a girl pretending to be a boy to get work) and her father, Chang.
• Deadbeat
• Kevin "Pac" Paclioglu, a stoner who can talk to ghosts, helps them complete their unfinished business so they can move into the light, occasionally with the help of his useless drug-dealing friend Rufus, aka "Roofie". His rival is Camomile White, who only pretends to see ghosts but makes a good living off her lie, who has an assistant, Sue Tabernacle. At the end of season 1, Sue dies and becomes Pac's girlfriend in ghost form. At the end of season 2, Camomile dies and Sue goes into the light.

THE OVERALL PLAN

So this is how my roundup structure will work now and in the future: when the sweeps begin in September, I will watch the episode of each TV show I like that airs that week, beginning on Monday (which will be roughly 10-15). I will write brief descriptions and analyses of each show's episode as I go along, and will post that full roundup, replete with my edited summaries, the following Monday.

When will the dry run begin?

I'm going to begin this off-season roundup from next week, by which I mean I will post the first roundup this coming Monday (13th). It will include synopses and analyses of the first two episodes of The Night Shift, and the first episode of Deadbeat s3 and Hell on Wheels s5B. The following week will be the first in which I hope to incorporate all 4 shows, after OITNB is released by Netflix on the 17th.

Final thoughts

So that should all introduce you a little more clearly to the overall aim of this roundup, and alert you to the planned dry run with enough time to either go and binge the shows yourself or follow this roundup through their upcoming seasons.

Thank you for reading, see you all next time!

Sam