Best Shows of 2018

I'm not gonna lie, Marvel is taking up too much of my TV watching time. At some point I decided to watch everything that's part of the Cinematic Universe, and that's resulted in a lot of hours spent on shows that aren't that good. Hopefully the recent Netflix purge helps with that. For now, I stand by the shows on this list, but I wish I had spent more time watching series that other people seem really into.

Best of 2018

8. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (FXX)


One of the things I appreciate about Sunny is that even in its old age it's always trying new stuff. Some of the stuff they tried this season definitely didn't work, but a lot of it did. The most notable was Ripped Mac, which both recalled Fat Mac from back in season 7, but also played into the finale, which I won't spoil but which you might already know about because it was the most talked-about Sunny episode in years. As long as this show exists I'll keep watching it just to see the next weird thing they try.

7. Legion (FX)


Legion's second season was not as good as the first. The weirdness felt like it was for its own sake more often than before, and it was a little more difficult to track whatever main plot there was. Still, I like the show a lot. Interesting characters and performances, the weird scenes are still fascinating even when they ARE weird for its own sake, and I'm really curious where things are going.

6. The Last Man on Earth (FOX)


Unfortunately, this was the final season of the show, and it was canceled before we got to see where it was going. The gang's trip to Mexico provided plenty of the expected laughs and pathos, as well as a great suspense element as flashbacks showed the possibility of a danger they had no way of knowing about. You can definitely say there was a formula at this point, but it was a unique formula that almost always worked. I'll miss these goofballs and their hopes of making a new world in the devastation of the old one.

5. The Deuce (HBO)


The Deuce's second season made a big jump forward in time, to a period when the porn industry was really getting into full swing and New York's government was trying a lot harder to crack down on the city's seedy underground. As expected from a David Simon show, there's a ton of characters and story threads that are constantly being balanced like spinning plates, and they rarely if ever fall to the ground. Sometimes I like a show with a bit more focus, but there's rarely a moment with this show that I don't enjoy on some level.

4. The Venture Bros. (Adult Swim)


I'm absolutely shocked that there was a new season of The Venture Bros. and that I liked it a lot. Due to some weird behind the scenes stuff (the writers had less time last season than they thought, so the beginning of this one is essentially wrap-up for what was supposed to happen a couple years ago) they don't really have time to develop a clear through line, so it's less about the grand overarching story and more just developing the characters some more. That stuff is always great though, so it's hard to complain. It remains the densest animated series I've seen, and assuming another season is coming, I'm ready for the long wait to see what happens next.

3. The Little Drummer Girl (AMC)


I can't really say I'm surprised that one of my favorite directors (Park Chan-wook) made an adaptation of an acclaimed novel by one of my favorite authors (John le Carré) and that it turned out well. There's nothing too unique about this spy thriller (to be brief, Israeli spies hire a British actress to infiltrate a Palestinian terrorist cell), it's just exceptionally well put-together. The story is a bit unpredictable, the acting (especially Michael Shannon and Florence Pugh) is fantastic, and Park's directing is up to par for his career.

2. The Good Place (NBC)


The Good Place's second season is one of the most daring and exciting I've seen a sitcom produce. After the twist at the end of the previous season, it was easy to see how they could repeat the formula with a few little twists. Instead, the show constantly invents new status quos and throws them out as soon as it has another cool idea. The writers realize that stagnation is the death of comedy, and when you have a whole afterlife to play with, there's no reason to drain every concept you have until its lifeless. The ensemble cast remains great as their chemistry grows and they get deeper into their characters. I guess it's worth mentioning that as I'm writing this, the third season has already concluded. But that happened in 2019, and I'm writing about TV that had its season finish in 2018. Sometimes this stuff gets weird.

1. Better Call Saul (AMC)


I'm not sure what else I can say about the team behind Breaking Bad and now Better Call Saul. They're masters of this stuff, and they knocked it of the park again. Mike's story continues to do more work establishing how the things that were already in place when Walter White arrived came to be, and it has at least one surprising turn that makes it memorable. Jimmy's story continues to be a bit more vibrant though, exploring territory that isn't quite as familiar. What I'm really curious about is how close we're going to get to Breaking Bad's beginning before the show concludes. At least one more season is coming!

Delayed Entry

This is the best show that didn't air in 2018 but I didn't watch until then.

Oz (HBO)

I partly watched Oz because it was the last show from Alan Sepinwall's book The Revolution Was Televised (a good overview of the most important TV dramas from the late 90s through the 00s) that I hadn't seen. Oz was interesting both as a cultural artifact as well as a show by itself. The cast is full of actors who have gone on to more prominent roles since, and the ways it diverges from the writing structure pretty much every other serialized drama uses are fascinating. It has recognizable character arcs and storylines that run through seasons, but rather than giving each one a few minutes of attention every episode, it's more willing to focus on specific stories for long stretches and ignore others until its time to revisit them. The show occasionally strains credibility - if any real experimental prison unit had anywhere close to the murder rate of Em City's, there's no way it wouldn't be shut down - but it was nonetheless intriguing throughout.

Best Shows of 2017

A few shows I've been watching for a while had down or least unexciting seasons in 2017, but for the most part it was a great year for TV, with several new series that really impressed me.

Best of 2017

10. Review (Comedy Central)


Review's third and final season was very brief, but it was a perfect send-off for a series that was much more fascinating than I really expected when I gave it a shot. Right up to the end they kept coming up with new ways for Andy Daly's Forrest MacNeill to torture himself, putting his obsession with doing his job over every other concern he should have. You really just have to see it for yourself.

9. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (ABC)


This was maybe the biggest surprise of the year. From the beginning, S.H.I.E.L.D. has been the dutiful television branch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that cleans up the scraps of story left by the movies and does competent but bland espionage action every week. Things were different in season four, when they finally abandoned the pretense that they were really "connected" to the movies and focused on three tighter story arcs instead of a single meandering thread. It resulted in what was quite easily the show's best season, recalling what works about the Whedon TV formula with smart plots, strong character drama, and twists that really stick the knife in. I don't know if I would tell anyone they really need to watch this show, but that season alone made the years of investment worth it.

8. Samurai Jack (Adult Swim)


Samurai Jack returned after many years to finally conclude the tale of his defeat of Aku and return to his own time. The show matured along with most of its audience, becoming more violent and bittersweet as it introduced a couple of new concepts but focused mostly on creating a proper ending for the series and its characters. I thought the climax could have used a bit more time to breathe, but it was a really good show with some of the best animated sequences you'll ever see on TV.

7. Rick and Morty (Adult Swim)


Rick and Morty's fandom really seemed to boil over into full on insufferable, ashamed-to-be-associated-with-some-of-these-people mode in the last couple years, but the show itself is about as good as ever, mixing razor sharp humor with wild sci-fi ideas and bitterly human moments at a crazy pace. It continues to be formally experimental in eye-opening ways, and a few of these episodes are easily among the most memorable half hours of entertainment to come along in a while.

6. Legion (FX)


FOX has been having a nice of run of success with its X-Men related output lately, and Legion might be my favorite thing they've done. It's a superhero story as a psychological drama. In the comics, David Haller is the son of Professor X. In the show, there are no real references to any well-known mutants to be found, but the character is intact as a mentally unstable, powerful mutant who isn't sure where his abilities end and his hallucinations begin. The show is really more of a horror series than anything else, with some truly unsettling moments as the characters fight to survive some truly bizarre situations. It stands apart from other X-Men adaptations as something truly unique.

5. The Good Place (NBC)


The new comedy from the Parks and Recreation brain trust takes place in "The Good Place", the place good people go when they die, based on a complicated point system. The problem in the first episode is the new arrival and protagonist, played by Kristen Bell, knows there's no way she shouldn't have been sent to "The Bad Place", and from there begins a whole series of complications and screw-ups that drive one of my favorite new comedies in a long time. The Good Place is ambitious, smart, and hilarious, and is story focused in a way that makes compulsive watching easy if not unavoidable. And the cast is diverse and brilliant, particularly Ted Danson as Michael, the architect of the neighborhood the show takes place in. He might be the lifetime sitcom MVP.

4. The Deuce (HBO)


David Simon's new show is a return to what he does best - rich, complicated examinations of systems of crime and neglect that inevitably end up hurting the vulnerable the most. It's about the intertwined industries of prostitution and pornography in 1970s New York, as the former is pushed behind closed doors and the latter starts gaining mainstream acceptance. The ensemble cast is reliably excellent, as is the writing, which takes time to explain how things work and why they're terrible and won't be fixed without being preachy or unnatural. There's a lot of sex in this show, but it feels illustrative rather than titillating. When you know how the sausage is made, you don't want to eat it as much.

3. Better Call Saul (AMC)


In some ways, I think Better Call Saul might be better than Breaking Bad. I don't want that to be taken the wrong way, because there are things that Breaking Bad did that no other show can do as well, and that Saul doesn't really try. But it can do subtler, smaller storytelling in ways that show this team doesn't need Breaking Bad's excesses to make one of the most consistently riveting dramas on TV. The rivalry between Jimmy and Chuck is one of the most heartbreaking family conflicts I can remember, and Mike getting himself intertwined with Gus and the cartel, knowing where that eventually goes, is always great stuff. And what the heck is going to happen to Kim? God this show is fun.

2. The Leftovers (HBO)


The Leftovers' third and final season (déjà vu) brings the story to a close in a way that satisfied, bringing more comparisons to Lost, Damon Lindelof's other show about mysterious, unexplained events. It's all a matter of perspective. While people expected certain things from Lost that the creators never intended to give them, it seemed clear from the outset that the focus of The Leftovers was how the strange disappearance of 2% of the population affected the people who remained, and not the disappearance itself. That was driven home here, as the characters struggle to find some catharsis or really anything to latch onto, as they reel from further events that spun out from the results of the "rapture". The final season was raw, emotional, devastating, and hopeful from beginning to end.

1. Twin Peaks: The Return (Showtime)


There was some trepidation about what to expect from David Lynch's return to the world of Twin Peaks for the first time in 26 years, and his first major work behind a camera in 11. Does he still have it? Will it be too familiar? Too different? The answers to those questions are yes, no, and no. Twin Peaks still resembles the old Twin Peaks, but it feels appropriately twisted. Evil has been running free for decades, and the advanced aging of the many returning cast members illustrate the toll it has taken on this world. It's like Lynch got to make an eighteen hour long movie and could do whatever the hell he wanted with it as long as it tied into a story that didn't get a proper ending the first time. There are a few moments of comfort and familiarity, but the show is frequently challenging, even frustrating, and often very experimental. It won't work for everyone, but as a fan of most of Lynch's filmography, I loved the hell out of it. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything as ballsy as that ending. Also, Kyle MacLachlan kills it. I'd love to see another season, or really anything else David Lynch wants to make.

Delayed Entry

This is the best show that didn't air in 2017 but I didn't watch until then.

The Last Man on Earth (FOX)

I'm now caught up on this show, and while it didn't quite land on the top 10, it's also another one of my favorite new-ish comedy series. Will Forte stars as Phil Miller, an oddball of a man and one of only a few who seem to be immune to a virus that wiped out almost all life on the planet (spoiler, the title of the show is quickly shown to be inaccurate). The whole cast is good, but it's really Forte who drives the thing. The show actually takes its premise quite seriously, and it has its share of effective dramatic developments and careful consideration of what would follow the near-extinction of humanity. But taking that story, and putting this character at the center, is so weird and brilliant and funny. Will Forte should have gotten his own show a long time ago.

Best Shows of 2016

Of the ten shows on my list last year, eight had their final season or just took 2016 off. Eight! That left me scrambling to come up with a list, especially since I didn't jump on many new shows to compensate. So there's a few shows here I feel strongly about, and several more than I like and haven't written about before.

Best of 2016

10. Daredevil (Netflix)


Daredevil is a messy show. It's more violent than it needs to be, and the supporting cast can often feel wasted, and the plotting is fairly inconsistent. But as Luke Cage (sorry) showed us, there are definitely worse alternatives. Daredevil has been Marvel's most consistently good comic over the last fifteen years, and the show doesn't reach that standard, but it's a fun adaptation of the darker depictions the character has had, and it has some of the best action scenes of any regular TV series I've seen. The second season added the Punisher and Elektra as foils to Matt Murdock, and while both stories had their ups and downs, their coexistence kept the show's energy high and its tone varied. Not every show needs to be great to be worth watching.

9. Todd Margaret (IFC)


Todd Margaret is sort of a hybrid of American and British comedic sensibilities that works really well. After the apocalyptic ending of the second season I wasn't expecting a third, but it shakes up the formula in a really clever way and gets a lot of comedy out of its half-rebooted premise. David Cross says this was definitely the last season, but I think he's there's another series coming with a similar concept (Cross + England = comedy gold), so I'm looking forward to that.

8. Agent Carter (ABC)


I watch and enjoy Agents of SHIELD, but I don't think it really benefits from having 22 episode seasons. Even the 13 episode Netflix seasons might be a bit long based on the amount of story they come up. Agent Carter is in the sweet spot with 8-10 episodes. Or it was, because it got canceled. I can understand why the show never built a big audience, but the fact that it was an enjoyable, charming, 1940s sci-fi spy action series starring a woman (who was great) was incredible, and I wish there were more series that idiosyncratic.

7. Broad City (Comedy Central)


I've seen Broad City described as something like the female equivalent of Workaholics, but the fact is it's actually better. Abbi and Ilana are a great classic odd couple, with their clashing personalities making their friendship richer and the show's solid emotional core. They're also hilarious, and I would watch them try to work their way through any awkward situation they care to imagine. The third season wasn't the show's best, but it was still very good.

6. Bob's Burgers (FOX)


For my money, Bob's Burgers is easily television's best current traditional family sitcom. The three kids are generally the standout characters, but the parents are great too, avoiding the cliches of moron husband and shrewish wife. The voice cast is wonderful, including the great names they get for guest voices, even for roles that might easily be forgotten without the right character quirks and performance behind them. The show seems like it should be getting long in the tooth at this point, but I still enjoy it every week it's on.

5. Decker Unclassified (Adult Swim)


Decker Unclassified is televised continuation of Decker, a webseries which was a spin-off of On Cinema at the Cinema, another webseries which was itself based on On Cinema, a podcast satirizing bad movie podcasts. So there's a weird lineage here, a lineage that helps explain what Decker Unclassified is. It's a spy show starring fictionalized versions of Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington playing special agents Decker and Kington, with intentionally-unintentionally terrible writing, acting, and production value. It's great and terrible and great because it's terrible. If that sounds interesting, check it out.

4. Stranger Things (Netflix)


I think Stranger Things has some problems. It's eight episodes long but doesn't have much more story than the average two hour 80s movie it's paying homage to, so things feel stretched. Characters often willfully withhold information for no real reason, or fail to change much over time and feel like they're stuck in place. But the core of what it does is so fun that I enjoyed it a lot anyway. The kids are generally great. The horror and sci-fi elements are well done without being too alienating. The period style isn't totally accurate, but works as a pastiche for what's obviously an homage coming from a good place. And the theme music is great. It's got flaws that I hope they improve in season two, but I kind of love it anyway.

3. Game of Thrones (HBO)


So they finally did it. The sixth season of Game of Thrones surpassed the books it's based on in the story, and it makes no apologies about that. Characters die, stories continue, battles are fought, events transpire that readers did not already have knowledge of. It was a new experience, and an interesting one. Part of me wishes I had gotten to read some of these things first, that I had more detail in my mind for what was happening on screen. But part of me also enjoyed being surprised by the show consistently. The show has the same strengths and weaknesses it always had - it's great at big moments, and not quite there on connecting those moments with quieter scenes and meaningful character work. There are two seasons left, and I'm eager to see what happens next.

2. The Venture Bros. (Adult Swim)


Six seasons in and the show is as good as ever. After the Gargantua-2 special wrapped up a lot of long-term storylines, the season proper is a bit of a refresh, as the family moves to a new headquarters in New York and quickly begins piling up new problems and distractions for them to tackle. The series has always been a hodge-podge of genre influences, but super heroes take more prominence here, as the Ventures have trouble with the neighborhood Avengers/Justice League hybrid, and The Monarch starts dressing as a Green Hornet knock-off to go after his enemies in the Guild. It's the same mix of zany plotting and humor it's always been, and I'll continue waiting however long it takes for the creators to return to the wonderful world they've been creating for the last decade-plus.

1. Better Call Saul (AMC)


In its second season, the Breaking Bad spin-off continued to wring more great material out of the backstories of two supporting characters than I thought anyone would be capable of. Jimmy realizes being part of a large law firm might not be his thing while his relationship with his brother gets more complicated and heartbreaking, while Mike finds himself slowly getting pulled further and further into New Mexico's criminal underworld. Obviously Bryan Cranston's work as Walter White was fantastic, but this show proves that it was just part of the entire team's ability to put together a show that is consistently original, beautiful, and enjoyable.

Delayed Entry

This is the best show that didn't air in 2016 but I didn't watch until then.

Friday Night Lights (NBC)

I don't usually go in for shows about sports or family and relationship drama, but there were enough voices saying Friday Night Lights rises above that I gave it a shot. It has its ups and downs, with the latter being exemplified by a pretty weak second season that ignores the show's core charms in favor of easier sensation. On balance though, it's a great drama about being true to yourself and giving everything you have to what you're passionate about. The cast is wonderful, especially Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton as the central married couple, and Taylor Kitsch as the burnout running back you can't help but love. I finally understand why he's been given so many chances in major movies. It has as much heart as any show I've ever seen.

Best Shows of 2015

Man, the competition was CUTTHROAT this year. While pretty much anything I liked made it onto the other lists, there's so much good TV from 2015 that didn't make it to the top 10. The Jinx, Show Me a Hero, Broad City, Daredevil, Inside Amy Schumer, the ends of Key & Peele, Parks and Recreation, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force... by limiting this list to ten, there's a ton of great stuff I don't get to talk about. Which tells you how much I liked what did make the list.

Best of 2015

10. Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp (Netflix)


As I mentioned in the movie post, there were a lot of sequels after long gaps last year, though Wet Hot American Summer may be the only one that moved from film to television. Well, not television exactly, since it was on Netflix... which you can watch on your television... what is television anymore? Anyway First Day of Camp tackles multiple things that are really hard to pull off. Comedy sequels are tough, and so are prequels in general, and so is waiting this long to return to a simple idea. But having pretty much the entire cast back works great, all the new faces mesh in perfectly, and the way the show plays with expectations, works in the prequel format, and develops its own running jokes while returning to existing ones all works much better than could be expected.

9. Jessica Jones (Netflix)


Of the four shows set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe last year, Jessica Jones had the most going for it. The cast is really good, particularly Krysten Ritter as the troubled but resourceful title character and David Tennant as Kilgrave, who is perfectly horrible and menacing even when he's giving you serious Doctor Who vibes. I've heard people describe Jessica Jones as barely or reluctantly a super hero show, which is a bit odd when it's much more open about its various super powered characters actually having powers when Daredevil kind of danced around it. My point is that there's a lot of variation possible within the story space of having super powered characters, and Jessica Jones finds an interesting angle, with Jessica finding that she's better at snooping on people than helping the downtrodden. There were a few moments that didn't work for me, but the cat and mouse game between the hero and the villain provides for several huge twists and thrills, and create one of the most bingeable shows this year.

8. Review (Comedy Central)


Review is plenty funny, but the comedy isn't exactly why it makes this list. Despite the premise (Andy Daly's Forrest MacNeil tries various viewer-submitted life activities and rates them on a five-star scale) sounding every bit like it would result in one of the most episodic shows imaginable, it's actually the long-term storytelling that causes it to really shine. The first season ended with Forrest divorced and depressed, punching his boss and going into hiding. The second season begins with him back in the fold, but it isn't long before the crazy things his audience asks him to try out cause his life to once again spiral out of control and deeply affect his relationships with loved ones. It's really a show where you have to see every episode, because mistakes in the past always find ways to come back and bite him again, and the darkly funny miseries he gets put through work best when you understand exactly how he gets to where he is. I'm not sure if there will be a third season, but I hope so, as much as I wonder how Forrest could possibly handle it.

7. The Knick (Cinemax)


The second season of The Knick isn't quite as great as the first, but it's still one of the most compelling dramas that aired last year. This is another one where I'm not sure if it will come back, but if it does I'll be sure to watch it. It stars Clive Owen as a cocaine-addicted genius surgeon at the Knickerbocker Hospital in New York City at the turn of the century, and explores the struggles of the personal lives of he and several others at the hospital as they try to advance medicine in various ways, some of which we know will work, and some of which we know are disastrously wrong. Historical hindsight is a real bastard on this show. Every episode is directed by Steven Soderbergh, so it's one of the most cinematic shows on TV, and the great writing and cast make sure the quality of the show goes beyond the visuals. If you don't mind something that basically jumps between horrible people being horrible and horrible things happening to the couple decent folks around, or the amazingly gruesome surgery scenes, it's definitely worth watching.

6. Rick and Morty (Adult Swim)


Being a returning show rather than a new one, it was a little easier to see where Rick and Morty relied too heavily on returning to the same dramatic constructs it keeps using or excessive violence for easy laughs, and the experience of watching it wasn't quite as magical as it was before. Still, there were six or seven episodes that were as perfect as anything else I watched in 2015, and there are bits in even the weaker ones that will stick with me for a long time. Being a great comedy and great science fiction at the same time is tough, but Rick and Morty pulls it off.

5. Justified (FX)


This might be the show I'm saddest about ending last year, because its combination of gritty crime drama with highly amusing, wonderfully-styled dialogue seems hard to replace. Being the final season, it had to stop dancing around and tie off its ongoing plot threads, and that means bringing the story of Raylan and Boyd to a close. It doesn't go quite where you expect, because it's written in the style of Elmore Leonard and there's a bunch of other interests at play so of course it doesn't, but it still works out in a way that is dramatically satisfying and fun to watch. Sam Elliott is a strong presence as the driving force behind the season's main elements, and Jonathan Tucker is remarkable as the one last hot shot villain that Raylan has to contend with. I'm glad that the last season cements Justified as one of the great modern crime dramas on TV.

4. Game of Thrones (HBO)


There was some understandable controversy over the way Game of Thrones continued to use sex, particularly sexual violence, for dramatic effect in its fifth season. At some point your audience understands that being a woman in this world is no picnic, and it stops having a purpose being shock value. It ultimately seemed small to me though, in a season that had so many good things going for it, from big fantasy action on a scale that TV basically never has, to great success at moving the story forward in important ways, and for the first time, massive surprises for people who had read the books already. Since the next one won't be out before season six airs, book fans and TV-only fans are on the same level, and it feels exciting, not know what's going to happen and waiting to see how the cast of dozens handles what comes at them with seemingly anything being possible.

3. Better Call Saul (AMC)


I wasn't even sure if I was going to watch this, with my general distaste for spin-offs, but I gave it a shot since Vince Gilligan was involved. It was much better than I expected, telling the surprisingly earnest story of Jimmy McGill, a man who tries his hardest to put aside his dishonest past and find his way as a real lawyer, but is stymied repeatedly by circumstances beyond his control. Eventually he reaches a decision, which is not unavoidable but certainly understandable, and puts himself on a path that will lead to him becoming Saul Goodman. We haven't seen that transformation yet, but it's coming, and I'm definitely excited to see how it happens. It should also be mentioned that coming from a lot of the same people as Breaking Bad, Saul maintains that show's incredible cinematography and sense of style while shifting to a notably more mundane central plot.

2. The Leftovers (HBO)


I watched the first season of The Leftovers last year and enjoyed it, but I guess it didn't really stick with me. That changed with its brilliant second season, which I loved enough to question whether I had paid enough attention the last time it was on. They shifted location from New York to Texas but kept the core cast and general tone of the show intact, which explores grief and loss through the prism of a mysterious event that caused about 2% of the people on Earth to disappear at once. A few years have passed since that happened, but things are still far from normal, and the show's exploration of its characters' reactions and inner lives delivers poignancy and "oh shit" moments at an incredible pace. It's not easy to explain why it works so well, but if you watch it knowing that the point of the show is not to answer its own mysteries but examine how they affect people, it's powerful and mesmerizing with every single episode.

1. Mad Men (AMC)


Mad Men's final season aired in two chunks over the last two years, bringing its cast out of the 60s and into 1970, as their efforts to keep Sterling Cooper as its own entity finally run their course and their lives begin to permanently alter irrevocably. Since the plot is basically driven by the decisions and personalities of the main characters rather than something more direct like an inevitable violent confrontation, it's not as easy to know what the conclusion will be or to reach it in a fulfilling way, but Matthew Weiner and his team of writers understand these people and the world they live in, and managed to find a perfect ending for pretty much everyone. There are multiple ways to interpret the final scene, but they all have the same general dramatic meaning, and its one that works as a way of summing up the whole series. I look forward to revisiting the show somewhere down the road, and I expect that to be as worthwhile as watching it all for the first time.

Delayed Entry

This is the best show that didn't air in 2015 but I didn't watch until then.

The Simpsons (FOX)

While I'm not actually done watching the show, I plan to stop well before I catch up to the current season - I just finished the 11th, and I'm really feeling the decline everyone who kept up with it experienced years ago. If you can ignore the fact that The Simpsons has been bad for longer than it was good, you can find a show that holds up as one of the best and most influential series ever made, casting a shadow over the 90s just as big as Seinfeld or anything else. The fact that it couldn't keep up after it reached double digits in years shouldn't count too much against it, since almost nothing else even gets a chance to. There's a period there, probably the 3rd through 8th seasons, where it's just unbelievable, where every joke is laugh out loud funny or at least undeniably well constructed, and where it's coining words or phrases constantly that still get used today. I'm glad I finally took the time to see why people love this show so much.

Best Shows of 2014

Now that I only use this blog to post these lists instead of writing on it all the time, I find that the TV list comes more down to "shows I want to write about" than "shows I objectively think are the best". At least, this is what sticks out to me when I look back on the year of television. It's what I really remember watching.

Best of 2014

9. Tim & Eric's Bedtime Stories (Adult Swim)


Tim and Eric have always been halfway between bizarre sketch comedy and some sort of horrible David Lynchian nightmare, so it was fun to watch them embrace that second aspect of their work. Some episodes of Bedtime Stories don't even have jokes at all, focusing instead on dark (but still oddball enough to obliquely be considered comedy) story concepts in a Twilight Zone sort of way. Other episodes are just straight comedy, and it's best to think of it as them applying their style to slightly longer-form television and really seeing where their minds will take them. It's often not a very nice place.

8. Doctor Who (BBC)


I was looking forward to seeing the first "old" Doctor of the new series, and I was not disappointed. It's Doctor Who, so of course there's some weak episodes, and I was a bit put off by the Doctor's new habit of insulting his companion Clara's appearance. But that character became a real strength for the show this year as her relationship to the Doctor changed significantly as a result of his regeneration, and her courtship with new character Danny Pink was also a huge asset. After they got on a roll, the show had a string of episodes as strong as anything I've seen the series do, and I liked the renewed focus on good individual stories over convoluted season-long plots that never end up anywhere good. I'm looking forward to more adventures through space and time.

7. Community (NBC)


I don't know if Community truly belongs up here, but just the fact that they took a show that was basically dead, brought back the original creator, lost two main cast members, and ended up with something that didn't suck, that was actually quite good, is pretty amazing. It's not up to the heights of the first three seasons at their best, but damn it, it was Community again. We'll see how the new season on Yahoo works out, but I'll always remember what they pulled off in their last year on NBC.

6. The Legend of Korra (Nick)


Despite weird manipulations and bumbling by Nickelodeon, the crew of one of the best animated action series in years managed to put out not one, but two seasons of their follow-up to Avatar: The Last Airbender in 2014. They were the better two seasons of the show, up there with the best in the whole franchise, and a great way to say goodbye to this setting, if that's what we end up doing. Korra's central characters are older than Avatar's, and that comes through in the story, which is ultimately a more mature tale about growing up and learning you have to face your own troubles before you are able to help others, and that kicking someone's ass isn't always the answer. Not that kicking ass doesn't work once in a while, as the action scenes in these two seasons are up there with anything you'll ever see on TV. It's also great to see a prominent same-sex romantic relationship come to pass in something kids might see.

5. Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (FOX)


I'm afraid Neil deGrasse Tyson will become too big for his own good. He's a great ambassador for the value and wonder of science, but he doesn't know everything, and sometimes it seems like he thinks he does. His talents are perfect for Cosmos though, his homage and successor to his mentor Carl Sagan's old series about all the wonders of molecules, galaxies, and everything in between. A lot of what you'll learn in Cosmos is stuff all adults should probably know already, but the fact that Tyson and his crew are still bringing people that information in a smart and accessible way is great, and I love how they directly confront some of the bigger human obstacles in the way of progress. At its best, Cosmos captures the awe and wonder I feel at the real size and possibility of the universe and humanity's future in it, and I think it should be required viewing for anyone with the smallest curiosity about life as we know it.

4. Boardwalk Empire (HBO)


The sense of history in Empire's final season is inescapable, as it closes in on some people, opens up possibilities for others, and brings ultimate closure to far too many. They only got eight episodes and had to skip past several years of juicy gangster dealings, but I feel like we ultimately got everything we needed. Empire isn't quite the epic of crime, family, and politics it wanted to be, but it did an admirable job of working with what it had and providing some great characters and unforgettable moments. A great deal of those moments involve people getting shot in the face, but a lot of times that's how these things went.

3. Game of Thrones (HBO)


A Storm of Swords is my favorite book in the series, and the fourth season of the show mostly adapted its second half, so of course I liked it a lot. However, they also showed a greater ability to change and shift characters and stories around where needed, which is great, because they're going to need it as they go forward into the more recent books. Not every change totally worked, especially one unfortunate sort-of-rape scene that came off worse than the original material, but on a more general level, they're doing a great job of turning a humongous epic into a manageable episodic story, without really making it feel any smaller. One of the most purely enjoyable shows to just watch from week to week.

2. True Detective (HBO)


Coming right in the middle of the McConaughey renaissance (the McConaissance), True Detective used his and Woody Harrelson's skills to their full extent to craft a great, haunting Gothic-noir-mystery-detective THING that defied easy definition and got at the heart of the struggle between good and evil. It covers years of an investigation into a series of strange killings in Louisiana that end up getting connected with a chain of Christian schools, references to an obscure forgotten city (which got me and many others to read The King in Yellow), and a whole lot of problems for the two leads. It will be hard for the unrelated second season to recapture the magic of the first, but we'll always have the lead performances, Cary Fukunaga's great direction, and the flat circle of time to think about.

1. Rick and Morty (Adult Swim)


Rick and Morty is a show about a brilliant old man with a drinking problem who brings his simple-minded but good-hearted grandson with him on trips to other dimensions for various ends which usually end up only serving him. That right there is enough for a good Adult Swim show, but Rick and Morty is definitely something more, already on the same level in my estimation as The Venture Bros. and possibly higher. There's a ton of imagination in every single episode. It will surprise you with story resolutions that are more disturbing than what they could easily get away with, and then follow that up by turning it into something that really profoundly affects the characters. It's sometimes a story about a failing marriage, and mines that for real emotion rather than simple laughs. It's also extremely funny every single week. I laughed out loud multiple times in every episode. That just doesn't happen, you know?

Delayed Entry

This is the best show that didn't air in 2014 but I didn't watch until then.

Prime Suspect (BBC)

The gritty British detective drama that I assume is the basis for the DNA of every British detective drama that followed. Over the course of over a decade, Helen Mirren played Detective Jane Tennison, one of the best realized characters in television. She's a brilliant detective, but also a flawed one; a good person, but also a flawed one. We see the arc of her career in a way you usually don't in a TV show, and along the way she investigates some truly unsettling and cleverly twisty crimes. The double length format is a bit of a slog at times, but if you watch Prime Suspect you watch the maturation of television as a medium. There aren't usually easy answers.

Glee - Season 2

Glee's three writers sort of killed the Three Glees theory when they stated that they basically all work on different parts of the various episodes, usually focusing on certain characters they tend to write well, and more or less credited themselves for the different scripts randomly. And with the absence of an actual explanation for why the show is so directionless and inconsistent, the only conclusion is that it's just a directionless and inconsistent show. I liked Glee despite myself throughout most of the first season, but it all came crashing down pretty hard in the second. Some episodes were generally enjoyable, and the show is still usually fun when somebody is singing. But a lot of it was really bad, and the way it ignored or maybe just forgot about certain character traits or stories to serve whatever stupid idea they had for that week made it hard to ever give them the benefit of the doubt. Chuck is another show that tries to be both a comedy and a drama, and often fails at both. But that show still knows what it is at its center, and it builds around a familiar cast. Glee just does whatever the hell it feels like, and that makes it really easy to turn on it when things go wrong. And they tended to go wrong often enough that it soured me on it to the point where I won't be back next year.

I'm not really sure where to start. The main character, Will, has always sucked, and he sucked even more this year when they couldn't decide whether he was a flawed but earnest teacher, or a saint who will do anything for anyone, or an out-of-touch, scheming imbecile. It's not really the actor's fault, but he doesn't exactly save it either. The kids are pretty much the same group they were before, but only the most important ones like Rachel and Kurt really get much to do - the second season is where shows are supposed to branch out and give more of the characters significant stories to work with, and while they do this a bit with Brittany and Santana (when the former isn't so stupid that she believes Jane Lynch in Grinch makeup is Santa Claus), too many of the original Glee kids still feel completely neglected by the whims of the writers. They tried to mix things up with the faculty by having a particularly mannish woman play the new football coach (how many small town schools hire people exclusively to coach athletic programs, anyway?), but their handling of that was one of their biggest bungles, and they basically forgot she existed weeks ago. Emma's OCD is a plot that refuses to go anywhere, and possibly worst of all, they basically butchered Sue Sylvester. I said last time that her absence from an episode was palpable, but this year it was actually a relief. They can't decide whether she's evil or just strangely motivated, and for every step she takes forward in real characterization she takes two steps back with another tired scheme and familiar monologue. Jane Lynch is still great, but even she can't save this writing.

So the show can't really do anything with its characters, meaning all it has is the stories and the music. The plot follows the same basic pattern as last year with not much to mix it up despite the obvious knowledge that the club is going to make it farther this time, but probably won't win the championship because it's only the second season and a lot of this show is still about failure. The show still has some interesting themes, the problem is it just doesn't explore them enough, with it being too focused on reinforcing the road to Nationals and Kurt's gigantic gay bashing/private school/first boyfriend subplot. And the music - well. I don't know. They tried some original songs in a couple episodes, and they weren't really terrible compared to the other generic pop they sing, but I didn't really feel their significance to the kids' stories. They sing songs about stuff they know, but the stuff they know doesn't amount to a whole lot. A lot of the cover choices are fine, even if they're misapplied (when Finn has a religious crisis he sings "Losing My Religion", even thought that song isn't about losing your religion), but it's the performances that are more problematic. It's not the voices, because everyone on the show can sing, even if only a few of them regularly get the chance to (It seems like more than half of Tina's performances were humorously interrupted), but just the arrangements are boring. The show originally captured everyone's attention with "Don't Stop Believin'", when they took an old song and made it interesting with a capella backing vocals. Even the mash-ups in season one, which were deployed too frequently, were occasionally interesting. But the vast majority of the performances now are just standard recreations of a familiar song, backed by a full, conveniently omnipresent band, and without much to separate them from the original recording. It's not like they never mix it up, but they should more. The show just seemed lazier this year, and while it may be content to sit around and keep doing what it's been doing and rake in money from ads and music sales, it's going to have to do so without me this fall. Big loss, I know.

The Chicago Code

Sadly, the true misfortune of The Chicago Code getting canceled after one short season is that somehow Shawn Ryan and Tim Minear managed to produce a series that I don't really care is already over. I mean, it's a solid show, certainly above average for a police drama on a network. But it rarely went beyond that, and while it certainly had potential to turn into a great show, I never really saw enough of it get realized to the point where the cancellation felt like a big blow. It was an experiment that didn't quite work, and I kind of wish the creators had really done something riskier with it, because while trying to make a grittier, more nuanced cop show that was still broad enough to attract a wide audience, they didn't really succeed at either, and they still got cancelled in the first season. I haven't seen their previous team-up Terriers yet, but I have the feeling it will continue to have a strong cult following years from now, when Chicago Code is relegated to being the answer to a trivia question, a footnote among the wide swaths of series that no one really cared about.

Which is a shame, because there really was some good stuff here. Although it's a little too teal and orange for my tastes, the show still looks pretty great, making the city of Chicago seem like a really nice place to be despite the apparently rampant gang activity and political corruption. The show does action better than most cop shows that even try (a carryover from Ryan's The Shield), with some solid chases by car or foot and exciting standoffs. Although the show relies on having a new case every week until the end to attract irregular audiences, is still does a decent job of tying things back to the overarching plot relating the main characters' attempt to nab a powerful alderman, and when they finally get around to bringing that story to the forefront, it's handled pretty well. Although the show only ended up having one really great episode in my opinion (the second to last), it was still an enjoyable ride most of the time, even if it rarely aspired for more and the resolution was too quick and easy after the buildup.

The cast is pretty good, especially the main character and his partner. Brotherhood's Jason Clarke plays a McNulty-esque cop named Wysocki who cares more about good police work than niceties, although he has a much nicer relationship with his most prominent superior. His partner is Evers, new on the force and a bit clean-cut for Wysocki's tastes. Their relationship starts off as something of a cliche, but the writing and acting of the show make it seem natural, and the thing I'll miss most about the show is probably the development of their careers together. The other main characters are an assortment of cops at various levels, and Delroy Lindo as the corrupt alderman they target, who's also good at selling his dark side without letting you forget that he does do some good for the city. The show deserves some credit for being better and smarter than networks usually allow their series to be, but it's just not enough to take it from pretty good to something truly worth missing. More than anything it just made me want to watch other things by the producers, which is fine, but doesn't really speak for how well it stands out. I would have watched season two, but I'm not terribly bummed that it isn't happening.

Family Guy - Season 9

As I hinted in the last post, I'm not really feeling this show much these days. It's just different in ways I don't like, and I'd say more different from the show when it came back from the dead than it was then in comparison to its original run. You still have most of the same characters and an unending dedication to remembering pop culture no matter how bad or obscure it is, but the style just isn't right. It feels less like a sitcom and more like... I don't even know what, it's just really weird now. They'll do murder mysteries and reenact scenes from movies and stuff like that, and they're ideas that I would have liked to have seen a few years ago, but the pace now is just so slow, and the focus seems to be more on getting all the story beats and camera moves right rather than entertaining the audience. It's like the fun has been sucked out of the process, a lot of the jokes are the same as ever, but the sense of fun is missing. There will be a scene where two characters are just talking in a car for several minutes, and you'll wonder what the hell they're trying to do with it.

They also try to have emotional moments, and they just don't work. This is Family Guy, a show for which nothing is sacred, a show that will casually toss out racial insults in increasingly non-ironic-seeming fashion, a show with a producer who was one of the idiots making insensitive comments about Japan on twitter after the Tsunami, a show that made an episode about abortion and then didn't air it but still sold it on DVD by itself for $15. So I just can't give a shit about the show pretending Brian might let himself die to give Peter his kidneys for half an episode. The show has no soul, and there's no sense trying to give it one now. It's best when it's firing a million jokes a minute and a few of them manage to land, and what they're doing now just isn't very entertaining. I won't pretend there weren't moments or even entire episodes that I didn't enjoy, but the show just isn't worth dedicating time to it on a regular basis anymore. I won't turn it off if it comes on and I'm bored, but I won't make sure to see every episode.