....I've been watching the response to Alan Sepinwall's book The Revolution Was Televised, which chronicles the television renaissance that began somewhere around The Sopranos by way of an analysis of twelve of the shows that made that renaissance happen: Oz, The Sopranos, Deadwood, Lost, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Battlestar Galactica, The Shield, The Wire, Friday Night Lights, and 24. (It's a terrific book. You should read it.)
Now, I ask you: Of those 12 shows, on how many of them would it be not at all surprising to see someone walk up and shoot someone else in the face? I'm going to conservatively say six — fifty percent — would easily embrace a straight-up face-shooting (and several of them actually had at least one), while five of the other six have had at least some gruesome deaths (remember, even the classed-up Mad Men splattered blood all over the office and delivered two suicides by hanging). The last one is about football.
This isn't because Alan cherry-picked the violent shows, either.
- "The Spatter Pattern"
descensus Averno facilis est