The Jeff Rubin Jeff Rubin Show: TV Critic Alan Sepinwall

This week on the Jeff Rubin Jeff Rubin show, Jeff is joined by TV critic Alan Sepinwall.

Jeff talks to Alan about his new book The Revolution Was Televised, and the 12 TV shows that are the premise of his book: The Sopranos, Oz, The Wire, Deadwood, The Shield, Lost, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 24, Battlestar Galactica, Friday Night Lights, Mad Men and Breaking Bad among a bunch other shows. They discuss their impact on people and the importance of a show’s ending.

“Because the shows are now playing on the level of the best movies, and you are getting 13 to 22 hours of them a year, and it is coming into your house, it becomes a much more powerful relationship than the one you have with Ryan Gosling or Bradley Cooper who you spend two hours with a year.” — Alan Sepinwall on the popularity of TV-stars over movie stars.

“I call them reviews, other people call them recaps. My take is that I am not for the most part summarizing plot. I am writing this assuming you’ve seen the show and this is a companion to your experience.” - Alan Sepinwall on reviews vs. recaps.

“A lot of these shows sort of play differently when you can marathon it vs watching it week to week. We talk about this all the time with The Wire. The Wire is a show where I tell everybody, you really want to watch the first four episodes all together otherwise you are not going to appreciate it. There is definitely a social media context and a participatory quality that you don’t get with some shows, but the really good ones are good regardless.” - Alan Sepinwall on watching a show week after week vs watching them in a row.

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The Jeff Rubin Jeff Rubin Show: TV Critic Alan […]