The Sopranos Season 3
If I remember right, this is the fan favorite season of the series. A ton of great stuff goes down. Livia dies of a stroke sending things off on a different course (she originally had a big role in this season, but it obviously had to change). The feds start getting aggressive with their case by bugging Tony’s house. Christoper gets made. but he’s still driven up walls by Paulie. Richie is a complete nightmare and Jackie Jr. doesn’t listen to Tony’s warnings. That ties into Meadow’s continued presence of being an obnoxious brat (and AJ is just a dummy, I wish they made him a more interesting character). Carmela has her ups and downs, interesting seeing her go to therapy with Tony and sneaking off on her own. Despite everything she knows and chooses to ignore, it’s more or less her fear of God that keeps her next to her husband. Tony lands himself another lunatic mistress and fights her threats back with his own. This is the season with the infamous “Pine Barrons” episode where Christopher and Paulie run around the woods with a Russian. As I’ve mentioned before, these two are the greatest and this whole ordeal is genius and so well acted. Michael Imperioli has so many great lines and reactions he needs a life-size trophy of Christopher wearing the outfit in this scene to immortalize his achievement. David Chase still gets a lot of crap for making the Russian just disappear and for good reason. It’s a loose thread that could have and should have been avoided (simply having them find their car after Tony and Bobby find them would have solved it. And it’s such a ripe angle to go into for season 4 if he did make it out).
Spartacus
Watched the entire series in about a month, just as good as I remember it. With 39 episodes of tight plotting, I never got bored. One of the most intense (and dramatic) shows around, it’s some ride. They successfully made it through a major actor change from Andy Whitfield to Liam McIntyre and bring something new and interesting to each season. More sex, violence and betrayal than you can shake a stick at, Spartacus is like few other shows.  The final season, War of the Damned, is much bigger in scope than the previous 3 seasons combined. “War” is putting it mildly, no one gets out unscathed. WotD does get carried away with itself sometimes. Off putting direction choices with “Matrix” like spins and awkward cutting mar the usual outstanding fight choreography and stunt work. Overuse of slow motion where regular speed would have worked just fine. The amount of battle cries also borders on the absurd, I’m thinking Manu Bennett got paid extra for it. One big change I noticed is Vengence and especially War of the Damned use a lot less CG blood. It’s mostly old school throat appliances with fire extinguisher like geysers of corn syrup and food coloring. It was a lot of fun coming back to this series, I’ll do it again in a few years.
The Bastard Executioner
I’m tapping out. I started watching the latest episode and turned it off about 20 minutes in. It’s just not keeping me interested, so I’m going to move on.