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.

The Whitest Kids U' Know - Season 5

The Whitest Kids will go on as a comedy troupe, but this was the final regular season of their TV show. For some reason the show actually being over is making me a little sadder than I thought it would; I guess it's just something about how these just seem like five normal guys who stumbled into an opportunity to put their wacky ideas in front of a national audience and did a lot with it. Not every sketch works, sometimes the humor is a bit juvenile, once in a while it seems like they aren't going far enough with the breadth of their concepts. They even reused a couple sketches this season, which is really hard to forgive for something that's only ten twenty-ish minute episodes. But I'll still miss their jokes about anything and willingness to do anything next year.

What was pretty interesting this time was their dedication to a single idea over the course of the entire season - a movie-length sketch called The Civil War on Drugs that played out in chunks every single week and told the story about a couple idiots in the south who mistakenly believe the recent rebellion is about marijuana and get themselves caught up in history, meeting everyone from General Lee to President Lincoln in the process. Some of the gags are pretty easy, but their dedication to the whole thing is impressive, and it's easily the most complex thing they ever did. I had an idea about how they could have easily tied the whole thing back to a sketch from the first season that's still my favorite thing they ever did, but the missed opportunity didn't bother me that much. Now that the show's over, I guess I'll probably be checking out some other sketch comedy groups that have made it on TV over time. And maybe I'll see Miss March, but I'm not sure about that one.

The Whitest Kids U' Know - Season 4

The Whitest Kids' fourth season returned to the half hour format, one I think works a bit better for a sketch show because there's more of an opportunity to let a particularly good idea breathe without worrying about it taking over the whole episode. I have some concerns about the show's future since the broadcast of these episodes was delayed for a while, but it definitely wasn't because of a lack in quality. There were definitely some of their best sketches in a while. It's hard to say what makes it so watchable despite the limited cast and low production values, though part of it is how they're willing (and allowed) to do pretty much anything for a laugh. I think there were at least five episodes this year with a sketch that starts out with somebody sitting at their computer, masturbating with hand lotion. While a lot of the jokes are pretty broad, some of my favorite bits are just minor details. In the brilliant sketch where Zach sets up a .50 caliber machine gun in a bar, why is Timmy's character so obsessed with apple butter? Because it's kind of funny and weird, that's why. Zach and Trevor continue to get the best roles for the most part, and that's still because they're the best actors in the group, though everybody definitely gets moments to shine. With how bad Saturday Night Live seems to have been for years, I'm glad that somewhere there's a show that pushes the envelope like it used to.

The Whitest Kids U' Know - Season 3

The Kids returned this year with twenty new half-length episodes, working out to provide as much content as either of the first two seasons. The show's not quite as fresh as it was at first, but it's still a lot of fun to watch. One of the things I respect is how they end the skits. If you ever watch sketch comedy, you know the hardest part about writing a skit is ending it. Saturday Night Live is infamous for not knowing how to do it, and almost no one gets it right. The Whitest Kids find a good punchline often enough, and when they don't they're not afraid to just let a bit end or completely turn it on its head to finish it. Watching it alongside Monty Python's Flying Circus made a lot of it sort of pale in comparison, but there were still some really funny sketches like the player in an online shooter who doesn't turn off his headset when he's talking to his mom, the introduction of water balloons in the wild west, and Shoshon: The Elegant: The White Tiger King. I'm not sure about the show's future especially since they're already branching into movies with the apparently not very good Miss March, but I'd be up for some more episodes if they make them.

The Whitest Kids U' Know - Season 2

Here we are again talking about a season of a comedy shortly after talking about the previous one. The biggest thing that separates season two from the first is the switch in network. The move to IFC let them go uncensored, and they capitalized in the very first sketch of the first episode where a guy is disgusted by his friend's inability to keep his balls inside his pants while they're talking. It goes on from there, with lots of the same sort of irreverent humor that we saw before, just with some more swearing and some breasts thrown in here and there. The season finale is footage from behind the scenes and on stage at a live performance, and it actually had some of my favorite bits from their entire repertoire.

Why don't I tell you what I think of the whole gang? Darren must have a thing for cross-dressing, since he seems to do it significantly more often than anyone else. It also could just be he's the best looking chick, though. I feel like he should get more parts. Sam frequently plays smaller or less intelligent roles, but he can also do some really good stuff, such as elaborate speeches in a Shakespearean accent. Trevor's essentially the leader, being the head writer, frequently having the best part in a given sketch, and apparently being the only one with musical inclinations. I think Zach might be the best actual actor in the group, and he's basically #2 to Trevor's #1 in terms of creative control of the group and quality of parts. Timmy is pretty goofy looking and plays a lot of demeaning parts, but I guess it doesn't bother him, maybe because without this he'd not have a career at all. All of them are pretty funny, though. The third season starts up later this month.

The Whitest Kids U' Know - Season 1

Starring mostly the same five guys and filmed on a shoestring budget, Whitest Kids is still some of the best sketch comedy I've seen in a while. A lot of the humor is pretty juvenile, but often enough they pull out something clever enough to make watching the whole episode worthwhile. Some sketches are more in the middle, like one of the first ones about how Lincoln was really killed, that aren't particularly smart but still completely hilarious if you can appreciate over-the-top swearing from one of our finest Presidents. Trevor and Zach are my two favorite cast members, and seem to get the lion's share of the best parts, but all of them contribute to every episode positively. Like other all-male comedy troupes that have come before them like The Kids in the Hall, they cross-dress fairly often and aren't afraid to make themselves look moronic for the sake of comedy. There's also the occasional music number, and while they aren't bad, usually I'm just waiting for them to get back to the normal stuff. Another couple great sketches are one where two Englishmen are at a stalemate when one finds he is peeing on the other's leg, and one where a guy who missed a party with his friends is painfully introduced to the new rules they came up with while he was absent. The first season aired on FUSE originally in a censored format, but for the second was moved to IFC, where the first was also reaired.