Return to Rubicon
October 16th, 2010
As some of you may know, I’m in the midst of starting a PhD program, which means that there have been certain televisual casualties this fall.
Some of them have been pretty insignificant: I don’t think that giving up on Undercovers after the pilot, for example, is a huge loss considering the series’ imminent demise. However, others have been more substantial, or more accurately have become more substantial with time.
Back at the end of August, I didn’t think that falling behind on AMC’s Rubicon was going to be a problem. While I liked the show, and thought it had potential, the first five episodes were not must-see television, and so the episodes started piling up on the DVR.
And yet, over time this became more problematic: critical and fan responses indicated that the show was starting to live up to is potential, and so it became a sort of social stigma to not be caught up with the series. Thankfully, the show seems to be fairly spoiler-proof, more interested in atmosphere than “plot” movement, but I was still anxious about being behind. I can see only so many “Arliss Howard better get nominated for an Emmy” tweets before I become uncontrollably curious, and so I knew that I would need to catch up before the finale.
As a result, I set aside all of yesterday to watch the last seven episodes of the AMC series ahead of the season finale – tonight at 9/8c – and I brought (some of) you along for the ride; over a 12-hour period, I watched all seven episodes, and returned here to offer some commentary, some links to other reviews, and a record of my growing appreciation for the AMC drama.
It’s not as substantial as it would have been if I had kept up throughout the season, but I’m just excited to finally enter into this conversation that will hopefully be enough to get the series a second season.
Cultural Learnings 