Two caveats: First, this is a list of my ten favorite shows from the past year. I'm not saying they're better than your favorites; these are the ones that entertained me. That makes the list subjective, which means neither of us are wrong or right (take a philosophy class if this is unclear to you). If you don't like my list, start your own blog. Second, I'm revealing spoilers in my mini-reviews, so if you haven't seen any of these shows, but you're planning on bingeing in the future to get caught up, hit the road, Jack.
Yeah, I'm just as surprised as you are. Of all the shows that had their run and went off the air, this is not one I would have picked to return. However, the cast is as good and funny as they ever were, the sharpness of the relationships between these characters is as endearing as talking with an old friend, and the politics couldn't be more cutting or appropriate. The real gem, now as before, is Megan Mullally's Karen—how this actress manages to combine alcoholic one-percenter vapidness with smoking cougar sexiness and genuine vulnerability is nothing short of genius. I may not have ordered this one, but I'm glad it was delivered all the same.
It's as predictable as a romance novel and cornier than Autumn in Iowa, but boy, does this cast deliver the goods. Freddie Highmore portrays Dr. Sean Murphy, an autistic savant surgeon who is given a shot as a resident at a San Jose, CA, hospital. West Wing veteran Richard Schiff (Toby Ziegler) anchors the cast as the hospital president, and the supporting cast reacts well to Dr. Murphy's cringe-worthy lack of social and interpersonal skills. It's an old-fashioned medical drama in the mold of St. Elsewhere and ER that I hope becomes more complex as it develops.
High-concept pitch: Star Trek meets Family Guy. Uhh, thanks, but I'll pass. At least, that was my first reaction. But creator and star Seth Macfarlane's series is actually a straight-up solid sci-fi action series with just the right amount of irreverent humor thrown in. All the standard tropes are in place—stoic alien, rookie officer, understanding doctor, skilled crewmen, curious robot—but everything is bent in a crooked way where the familiar feels fresh. I watched the first season on multiple recommendations from friends, and I can't wait to see what happens next.
I was almost ready to give up on this series in spite of James Spader's flawless performance as genial/sinister good daddy/international criminal Raymond "Red" Reddington because they kept dragging out the mystery of his relationship to worst-FBI-agent-ever Liz Keen, but they essentially rebooted this season by disclosing the no-longer-surprising secret that Red is Liz's biological father but also making Liz a fugitive from the law, then having shot-in-the-head-but-not-dead fixer Mr. Kaplan (a woman) destroy Red's entire criminal empire, forcing him and Liz to rebuild his network from scratch. It seems that watching Red make do with nothing but his brain and his balls (Which is bigger? Who can tell?) is far more interesting than watching them catch the latest nefarious mastermind of the week.
Prequels almost never work (Star Wars 1-3, anyone? No?), but this Breaking Bad prequel focusing on shyster lawyer Saul Goodman (nee Jimmy McGill) is one of the most compelling and compulsively watchable shows on television. We simply took it for granted that Walter White was able to find an attorney with no moral compass to keep his meth empire one step ahead of the law. Watching how a two-bit con man with serious family issues, a massive inferiority complex, and a heart of gold transform into what we already know he will become is, in its own way, more interesting that White's descent into criminal hell. As Jimmy's story edges closer and closer to his first encounter with Mr. Heisenberg, our knowledge of the outcome only intensifies the anticipation.
Plot holes? What plot holes? Okay, obsessive Westeros watchers know how far it is from Dragonstone to The Wall, and we know how fast a dragon can fly, but does all of that really matter in the long run? We all would have preferred ten episodes to the seven we got (and there was more than enough story to fill it), but we should also consider that each episode is as epic in scope as most theatrically released movies, and if you weren't blown out of your seat when Drogon incinerated Jamie Lannister's troops, or when the Night King killed Viserion, or when Lady Olenna dropped the mike on Jamie's merciful death sentence, or especially when Arya gave Littlefinger what he so richly deserved, or when the incest scene we so desperately wanted/dreaded finally happened, well, I don't know what else this show could do to entertain you.
I wrote previously on this blog about how in many cases, no matter how badly we want a sequel, sometimes a perfect show or a great movie should just stand on its own. For example, we never got a Beetlejuice sequel, thank God. On the other hand, some of us were dumb enough to watch True Detective 2. ST2 avoided the sophomore slump in a big way by introducing new characters (Max, Billy, Bob), enhancing the roles of old characters (Will, Dustin, Hooper) and bringing an amazing new depth to characters we didn't know was there before (Steve, the world's best babysitter). Show creators Matt and Ross Duffer not only avoided the sophomore slump, they hit another home run that left us hungry for more Stranger Things to come.
This show alone is worth the cost of an Amazon Prime membership. The first eight-episode season (block off an entire day; you'll want to binge-watch the whole thing) follows Miriam (Midge) Maisel, a beautiful young Jewish wife and mother whose perfect Upper West Side life is blown to pieces when her husband Joel, an aspiring but uninspired stand-up comic, leaves Midge for his secretary. That happens in the first episode. Drunk, angry, and baffled at the turn her life has taken, Midge ends up on stage at the Gaslight Cafe, and she kills the audience with her honest and hilarious take on how the bottom has fallen out of her life's expectations. The rest of the season follows her journey to be taken seriously as a female comedian in the late 1950s. Loosely based on pioneer comics Joan Rivers and Phyllis Diller, this series is a star-making turn for Rachel Brosnahan, and unlike my trepidation about a second serving of Stranger Things, I can't wait to see where Midge goes from here.
I don't know why this series works or why it is so funny when I describe it as a series of adventures across multiple dimensions of reality taken by Rick, a nihilistic, sociopathic alcoholic super-genius, and his long-suffering sidekick and grandson, Morty, who is constantly in a state of near-panic at the circumstances his grandfather continues to put him into. From this point, it only gets more insane, and it would take me 27 more paragraphs to try to explain it. The true genius of the show is the interconnected world it has created episode by episode, more complex in three seasons than all nine original seasons of The X-Files. Each episode is filled with blood, gore, killings, illicit sex, and various other atrocities that are, in each and every case, laugh-out-loud funny in spite of our instinctive recoil at the situation. The only downside is how long we will have to wait for season four.
#1—The Good Place (NBC)
If you've not yet seen season one of The Good Place, but you're definitely planning to watch it, please stop reading this RIGHT NOW!
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| Holy forking shirt! |
Okay, I really don't want to spoil the surprise twist reveal at the end of season one that our four humans—an Arizona dirtbag (Eleanor, Kristen Bell), a human turtleneck (Chidi, William Jackson Harper), a narcissistic monster (Tahani, Jameela Jamil), and literally the dumbest person I've ever met (Jason, Manny Jacinto)—are not really in The Good Place...they're in The Bad Place, the target of what neighborhood architect Michael (Ted Danson) intended to be 1,000 years of psychological torture, aided unwittingly by the sweet-natured robot (not a robot) Janet (D'arcy Carden), the repository of all information in the universe in a smoking hot body.
But that's just all of the fun on the surface. What makes the show stand out above all others is how an immortal being dedicated to torturing human souls for all eternity (Michael) and a robot/lady/person/busty Alexa (not a robot, not a lady, not a person—Janet) interact with the four doomed humans who, despite living lives on earth that earned them eternal punishment, are dedicated to learning ethical principles and living better lives in the afterworld. I just rewatched season one after watching season two thus far about a dozen times, and it's amazing how perfectly plotted and connected the plots and the characters are. Series creator Michael Schur deserves The Good Place for what he's given us so far.
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