So it seems that I’ve slipped up today. I planned to continue trying to actually write somewhat less than random words today as the  beginning of this week had proven quite fruitful in terms of fodder for this blog. Imagine! I managed to get three days worth of blogging from a late night vet trip and the aftermath the next day. But tonight after dinner and some wine, we retired to the couch to finish up season two of Downton Abbey and as we only had three episodes remaining, we pressed on despite the hour growing late and my blog deadline drawing near.

I’m afraid that I’m rather disappointed with Downton Abbey season two. We thought season one was quite good and that the show was off to such a nice start. However, it’s hard to imagine that the same person wrote both seasons! The second season’s plot lines were often highly unoriginal, sometimes right from the pages of a bad soap opera, and too often drawn out in ways that sucked the drama from them like a hungry vampire sucking the last drops of blood from an anemic victim. There were times when I felt embarrassed for the actors involved in a few of the scenes. Despite it all, the shows still watchable. I just hope that the writer got some fresh ideas and better execution of them for season three otherwise this show is or shouldn’t be long for this world.

It’s sad to see formerly good shows turn into shadows of themselves. For this show, it took but a season (and seems like a sharp change to us as we only just first watched season one over the last two weeks). For others like our once cherished Dexter, the writers managed a good five seasons of high-caliber writing before season six descended into lots of bad writing with season seven resurrecting some good writing while killing off some bad plot points (but doing so in a jarring way that showed that either the writers changed their minds and the writers were changed themselves) and still running up against plotting landmines. I’m glad that poor Dexter will be put out of his quality misery next season although we’ll still be watching it because we want to see how the writers tie things up and the quality was enough to keep us watching the characters and actors that we had come to love watching.

Breaking Bad is one show that I’ve watched where there was no discernible decline over the course of its run. I’m thankful that the show will be coming to what will no doubt be a satisfying end this year because although I will miss such an amazing show, how can it be possible to go on and maintain such stellar quality?

So looking at the time, I appear to have slipped from Friday night to Saturday morning. Ah, but it’s close – so very close. And after all, it’s still January 12th somewhere in the world. So I’ll consider myself as having fulfilled my blog entry for Friday and remain in keeping with my 2013 resolution. Phew!