Too Much TV

I am making an effort (a small one) to wean myself off of watching hours of TV each night after my day job is done and it's working (sort of). I'm trying to take time each evening to do something other than watch TV like read or write. (During the week, it's mainly reading time and my weekends are left for writing.) But I'm still watching TV (just not as much as I used to watch). Two things I'm watching now are:

1. Daisy Jones & the Six on Prime. Let me say up front that Prime has turned out to be a disappointment for me on the video front. It just isn't offering a lot of stuff I want to see. This one might get the boot before this year ends, but while I have it, I've been watching the series based on the book Daisy Jones & the Six. I read the book over the holidays and I enjoyed it, but the miniseries isn't good. I don't care for the guy who's playing Billy Dunn. There's something off-putting about him for me. His looks aren't great and his singing voice isn't either. He also doesn't look the way I imagined Billy would look when I was reading the book. I'm not crazy about the actor playing Daisy Jones either. She at least looks more like I imagined the character to look and I think her voice is okay, but I'm not bowled over by her performance either. Once I saw Reese Witherspoon was behind the film rights to the book, I should have known a movie version (or miniseries) would be messed up. Thanks to Reese, a good book was turned into a cheesy, lame miniseries. And the wigs are bad. The one they stuck on Timothy Olyphant's head is a disgrace. Ugh. It's a shame that I feel the need to mute the sound when the band starts singing, but I do. Color me underwhelmed by this one.

2. Breaking Bad on Netflix. I'm late to the Breaking Bad universe, I'll admit. I never watched this show when it aired. I only got into it after I started watching Better Call Saul (that I enjoyed), so now I'm playing catchup with BB. I almost bailed on this series early on because it wasn't holding my interest, but I just finished Season 4 and I'm all in. Bryan Cranston deserves all the kudos he received for his work as Walter White. It's amazing to me to watch a supposedly mild-mannered high school science teacher turn into a stone-cold drug dealing killer. But maybe that side of him was always there and it was just suppressed. Or maybe the circumstances he was in made him change. Whatever the reason, his story makes for good TV.