Time for another installment of Ask Alan, as I take your questions about the past, present, and future of TV.
First up this week is a question about whether anyone should feel guilty for rewatching an old TV show, even a great one, given all the option in Peak TV that nobody has time to get to. Turns out I’m uniquely qualified for this particular question, since my new book, Breaking Bad 101: The Complete Critical Companion — which required me to rewatch large chunks of the series even when I had so many other current things to get to, is coming out on October 10 (and available for preorder right now). Between that and all The Sopranos rewatching I’ve been doing in preparation for the next book after this one, I’ve experienced a lot of “But what about all those shows on my DVR?,” followed by, “Oh, man, I forgot how much I loved this part!”
After that, I list a few of my favorite examples of a show casting the same actor in multiple roles, and I look forward to your favorites in the comments. Finally, one of our periodic inside baseball questions: what kind of notes do I take, and how, when I watch a show I intend to review? Note that this method does not work for everything: my recap of the Curb Your Enthusiasm season premiere was produced note-less, because I couldn’t use my laptop at the premiere screening, and something I wrote about tomorrow night’s Halt and Catch Fire was similarly done without notes, because I didn’t decide I’d be writing about it until fairly late into the hour.
As always, you can email me questions at askalan@uproxx.com, or tweet at me with the hashtag #AskAlanDay.