Best TV Ensembles of 2022

 I contributed a couple entries to this TV Fanatic crowd-sourced article about best ensembles on TV.

My top pick: Reboot (Hulu)

Reboot is about the coexistence of different generations of artists. In that vein, who could be better epitomize that clash than Paul Reiser and Rachel Bloom as an estranged father and daughter entrusted with co-running a sitcom?

Reiser is an old-school 90s sitcom star with a comic delivery that borrows a little from Borscht Belt comedy. Rachel Bloom made her way to TV fame as the star and co-creator of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend via YouTube stardom that turned musical theater conventions on their head.

The pair is complemented by a writing room that echoes Bloom’s Gen Z approach to artistic merit with Riser’s Borscht Belt big laughs approach, and the combination is hilarious.

Meanwhile on the show’s set, Keegan-Michael Key, Judy Greer, Johnny Knoxville (who thought of that casting choice?), and Calum Worthy play a quartet of has-been actors who form a found family with healthy doses of comedy and heart.

Other picks:
Ghosts (CBS): The eight actors who play the ghosts weren’t particularly hot on casting lists before this show. In an ideal world, they should be now. Each member of the octet provides such pitch-perfect character beats to create this great whirlwind of humor. It’s like your favorite comedic duo expanded by six with the rat-a-tat banter still operating like clockwork. Of course, credit goes to Sam (Rose McIver) and Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar) for bringing the heart and grounding the plots. (I also wrote about Ghosts here)

Star Trek Picard (Paramount Plus): Alison Pill, Michelle Hurd, and Santiago Cabrera bring a sense of visceral edge that I’ve never seen in Star Trek before. Pill’s displays an antsy-ness at being in space that seems pretty logical for most humans, but somehow Star Trek has never shown that side of the 24th century populance before. It makes sense: Star Trek: The Next Generation was designed to appeal to a broad audience in the 1980s so the actors weren’t aiming for high drama, but when the TNG cast is introduced they also are up to that higher bar.

Yellowjackets (Showtime): The show centers around a plane crash involving a teenage soccer in the 90s, and the way the survivors are traumatized all the way through their adulthoods. How fitting that the show cast three of the most promising ingenues of the 90s as the roles of the four main survivors: Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci and Juliette Lewis. All three have long been underrated actresses and deserve to be attached to one of the hit shows on television. But that’s half the battle: The show also succeeds in casting matching teenage versions of these characters with all their drama.

Winning Time (HBO)-When you have two Oscar winners in your cast (Adrien Brody and Sally Field) and neither of them are central characters, then you’ve got a pretty deep talent pool. This docudrama about the Lakers 1980 championship features John C. Reilly in one of the most complex roles of his storied career as larger-than-life team owner Jerry Buss. Quincy Isaiah shines here in his first screen credit playing Magic Johnson as a bright-eyed superstar that’s still in the incubation phase. His main rival for the starting position is Norm Nixon played with swagger by the real-life figure’s son, DeVaughn. Surrounding them are a murderer’s row of character actors in Jerry West, Hadley Robinson, Jason Segel (did not see that coming), Tracey Letts, and the aforementioned Brody alongside Field who makes a strong impression with little screen time.

Ramy (Hulu): Ramy Yousef just plays a less self-assured version of himself, but there’s so much idiosyncrasy in the characters around him that this show deserves a place. Watching this show and not knowing the names of all the actors is a good reminder of the scarcity of Middle-Eastern actors with name recognition. Ramy’s parents are played by Amr Waked (Syriana, Salmon Fishing in Yemen) and Hiam Abbass (The Visitor) who have both done enough good work to be names among more astute American audiences, but everyone on this show deserves a brighter future. It also helps that the show format gives characters like Dena (May Calamaway), Uncle Naseem (Laith Nakli), and Ahmed (Dave Marheje) an episode in the spotlight or two.

The White Lotus (HBO)-This one is going to pop up on a lot of my lists because you can't make a TV series that works on so many layers without doing so many things right. This show has Lost/Arrested Development levels of Easter Egg placement and you better believe that the actors are in on the intricacies of each character. The show's brightest star is Emmy-winner Jennifer Coolidge but deserves a lot of credit for finding a new tone of deadpan for Aubrey Plaza, and making spaces for the largely unknown-to-American-audiences Italian newbies.

Top Ten Character Arcs in TV in 2022

 

10 Best Character Arcs on TV in 2022

I contributed a number of entries to TV Fanatic where I am currently writing:

Tori Nichols (Peyton List) Cobra Kai, Netflix-Tori caught the audience’s attention the first day when she walks into Cobra Kai and challenges anyone in her way to a battle royale. In 2002, she became a capable anti-hero that provides a welcome counterpart to Samantha’s privilege. Although we expected to cheer an eventual Samantha win at the tournament this year, it felt unexpectedly right to see Tori triumph at the end of the day (Even if there was a technicality involved).

Gordon (Paul Reiser), Reboot (Hulu): The best thing about Gordon is that he isn’t that much different from where he was at the start of the season. He makes insensitive jokes and doesn’t appear to have changed his ideas of what’s funny or what isn’t. But, he has formed a genuine relationship with his daughter and a genuine appreciation of the people he works with. With that, every insensitive joke he makes has a little more good intent behind it.

Al (Adhir Kalyan), United States of Al (CBS)-South Asian characters on TV are typically either ambassadors of cool (the personas of Kumail Nanjiani or Utkarsh Ambudkar) or sheltered nerds. Adhir Kalyan first became known through the 2007 TV series Aliens in America as an exchange student who was doomed to high school nerdom the moment he entered the school in his traditional South Asian garment. Most of Kalyan’s roles have been like that, but Al is a wonderful exception as he has started to change and (more importantly) assimilate to the better opportunities of his culture. He even gets a make-out buddy (Jayma Mays) and squares things better with his non-traditional love interest (Azita Ghanizada).

If I were to round out the list to a clean top 10, I would say:
Craig (Craig Robinson), Killing It (Peacock:) Learning to stop chasing some bourgeoisie vision of success is empowering (If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be writing these words). And learning to appreciate a good person (Claudia O’Doherty) for her faults and strengths takes a lot of growth as well.

Eli “Hawk” Moskowitz: (Jacob Bertrand), Cobra Kai (Netflix): It’s not just Tori that was a tournament winner that no one predicted. It’s also an ending we didn’t know we wanted until it happened.

Emma (Cristin Milioti), The Resort (Peacock): A determinator of a character, nothing will stop Emma from finding out what happened to these two random strangers 15 years ago. But she learns about herself and her marriage in the process. Sort of like that hackneyed “the treasure was friendship all along” trope, but tonally the show managed to work out Emma’s arc.

John Hunchman (John Hodgeman), Dicktown (FX): The stunted Encyclopedia Brown John Hunchman finally earns an iota of self-respect when he solves a 20-year-old high school case. The second season of Dicktown was more serialized than the first and it worked y to John’s favor.

D’Arcy Bloom (Alice Wetterlund), Resident Alien (SyFy): The idea of watching a Winter Olympian try to retain her former glory is always an interesting arc. It’s also a great anti-ship: Her relationship with Elliott didn’t work because she’s not there yet, but her efforts towards intimacy count for their own sake. It’s also unclear if a Season 1 version of D’Arcy would have apologized to Kate.

Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), The White Lotus (HBO): A lot of fellow fans of this show saw Portia as suffering from some sort of character defect for rejecting the vanilla Albie in favor of the bad boy. But, come on, she needed to go over to the dark side a little before valuing him properly. And what a wild episode it was: Surely more than the ennui-laden zoomer wished for when she wanted to feel alive.

George Shultz (Sam Waterson), Dropout (Hulu): Having unfortunately lived in the US during the last six years, it’s easy to see how evil is perpetuated by powerful people not wanting to admit they’re wrong. I’m not familiar enough with the real-life story of Elizabeth Holmes to know what George Shultz actually did but the idea of him is nice and we need to know more. And he’s pretty damn effective in Sam Waterson’s hands

What I'm Watching December Edition: Derry Girls, Inside Job, Alaska Daily, Bumper Goes to Berlin, Shantaram

 

Inside Job (Netflix)-Created by one of the writers of Rick and Morty, this is an animated office comedy in a place akin to Section 31, where a group of rogue agents keeps the lid on all the conspiracies that control the universe. The cast of characters includes a half-marcho-general-half-dolphin and an anthropomorphized mushroom spore. The series centers around the main character, Regan (Lizzy Caplan), who has Asperger’s, so score one for representation, and her dad is a bitter mad scientist akin (a little gentler than Rick, though).

This season’s plots have been getting more efficient, and Regan gets a boyfriend, which shakes things up a little.

Derry Girls (BBC4 -à Netflix)-Slowly moving my way through the seven-episode arc of the show’s final season, I started this month with the episode where things changed majorly in a teeny melodrama way: [Cue the orchestral swelling] Two characters kiss! And since there’s only one guy in the group, you can only guess that one of them is James, and it’s neither his cousin, Michelle, nor the lesbian character, Claire, who does the mouth tango with him. Plus, Orla might be classified as mentally deficient, making seduction problematic. Uh oh! Considering none of this sexual tension was telegraphed in advance, I’m not loving this.

Almost reading my mind verbatim, Michelle comments that it would change the group dynamics a lot if they started dating, and it might not be a good plot direction. The two pause their romance, which is an excellent direction considering it’s refreshingly counter to every other teen show.

The next episode is one of the best this series has ever done. It takes place at a class reunion for the parents of Claire, Orla, and Erin, plus all the characters of that generation. Also, Erin’s grandpa is thrown in for good measure, and the mature adult's lot get into the same shenanigans they chide their children for being unable to avoid. The theme: Some things never change.

In the penultimate episode of the series, the Erin-James romantic tension is hand-waved, and the quintet goes on one of their trademark disaster episodes that exemplifies Murphy’s Law.

The show might not be the most adventurous, but it can change gears well.

Alaska Daily (ABC)-As a journalist for over a decade, it’s thrilling to see a show the heroic and exciting side of journalism. Hilary Swank stars as a tough-as-nails reporter who’s exiled to Alaska. There’s a lot of excellent scenery porn and a healthy dose of small-town charm here.

The show almost gets journalism right, but journalists aren’t cops, and there are clear lines over how much you can press a subject that the show could articulate better. But there is a truth that if you can get facts under most circumstances, they’re fair game. So suck it, naysayers! Also, FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests can be a bureaucratic nightmare.

To understand the show’s shortcomings is to also understand the constraints of network TV, where the cop/rogue doctor/hotshot lawyer is the most common archetype. Network TV viewers want a black-and-white rootable character.

Bumper Goes to Berlin (Peacock)-Of all the Pitch Perfect characters, I’d put Fat Amy and Chloe ahead of Bumper in terms of people I would have wanted to see in a spin-off. Would anyone really have Bumper as number one?

Still, the show kind of works. It’s silly and low-stakes enough that it’s popcorn watchable. Sarah Hyland (the vapid child on Modern Family) plays a plucky people-pleaser who balances out the cast well, and Flula Borg is a great comic talent. Part of me wonders if they set the whole thing in Germany because they wanted to build the project around Flula Borg.

The show captures the same themes that made the Pitch Perfect film a hit: Arrested development, a false sense of being elite, and people who take singing too seriously.

 

Shantaram (Apple TV)-This epic tells the story of an escaped Australian convict who gets caught up in the criminal underworld of Bombay. Only he can’t make a very good criminal because he seems too morally upright. In fact, he got in prison in the first place because he stopped mid-robbery to attempt triage on a cop trying to stop him.

Eventually, Lin (at least at the point where I am in this story) settles into an Indian village as a makeshift medic because the town needs him. He believes he has a moral debt because a fire happened on his watch, and he could not save a victim.

Lin’s story to find of finding redemption and do good in a lawless society echoes the narrative arcs of Buddha and Jesus. The symbolism is a bit more obvious when you consider that the title of the series takes its name from what the Hindu villagers give him: "Man of God's peace."

But if this is an elaborate religious allegory, it’s a very gritty and sexy one. Charlie Hunnam sports a man bun and a rugged build and always delivers smoldering looks to the camera. Similarly, there is a confident femme fatale (Antonio Desplat) and a prostitute (Elektra Kilbey) who ratchet up the heat. Although it was shot in Thailand during COVID, this is one of the most visually ambitious TV series I’ve ever seen in terms of exotic on-location shooting.

Inside Job (Netflix)-Created by one of the writers of Rick and Morty, this is an animated office comedy in a place akin to Section 31, where a group of rogue agents keeps the lid on all the conspiracies that control the universe. The cast of characters includes a half-marcho-general-half-dolphin and an anthropomorphized mushroom spore. The series centers around the main character, Regan (Lizzy Caplan), who has Asperger’s, so score one for representation, and her dad is a bitter mad scientist akin (a little gentler than Rick, though).

This season’s plots have been getting more efficient, and Regan gets a boyfriend, which shakes things up a little.

Why would we feel bad about Holland beating us at the World Cup?

 

Is there really anything to be upset about that the Netherlands beat the US in the second round of the World Cup by a 3–1 score?

First, off, let’s separate the winning-or-death mentality that dominates our sports landscape from reality: Soccer is a sport with a highly varied set of outcomes every time the whistle blows.

As all-time leading US World Cup scorer Landon Donovan put it when the United States got eliminated in the second round of the 2010 World Cup: “I’m proud of what we did here. Soccer’s a cruel sport.”

The U.S. finished ahead of a couple world powerhouses by making the second round and scored a goal against the Netherlands which isn’t easy to do. The squad was one of only five teams to have no losses through three world cup games. I know this glass-half-full approach doesn’t vibe with American sports fans but welcome to soccer. The upper echelons are already filled by established powers so your odds of making it late in the World Cup if you’re not Brazil, Argentina, Belgium, Germany, England, Spain, Portugal or Holland are never going to be that good.

If anything, it’s humbling and that’s what I love about Soccer. It’s the great equalizer among socio-economic powers: We are the most militarily powerful country in the world and we have been eliminated from the World Cup twice by a Sub-Saharan African country (Ghana in 2006 and 2010) that’s squarely in the third world. There’s nothing more humbling than losing to a country with a GDP per person (average yearly salary) of $2,445.30. And it’s hard to not appreciate such parity even when you’re on the losing end of it.

But even if we did win, so what? Unlike Ghana or the Netherlands, we don’t need World Cup victories to make us feel strong as a country and if we do, then we have some serious inferiority complex issues as the number one economy of the world and the harbinger of democracy for the last 100 years (yes, I know we’ve been slipping as leaders of the World since, ahem, 2016) BUT this American sports exceptionalism mentality has been going on long before that.

What’s more striking is that soccer isn’t even a sport we’re good at. If ticket sales for the Big 4 (Football, Baseball, Hockey, Basketball) are any indication, soccer is fifth in the batting order in a best-case scenario. So how arrogant do we have to expect to do well against other countries who prioritize this sport far higher? Why do we feel the need to win at everything?

I understand the idea of rooting for your country if it appears in a game, but I completely understand why Holland would be likely to beat us in most scenarios and I am nothing but happy for them.