(click here for past editions)
1. The Great (Hulu) -Fans of the 2018 film “The Favourite” will appreciate the way writer Tony McNamara portrays idle pleasures and high drama as two sides of the same coin—ultimately a game that the nobility must play to curry favor with those more powerful than them. As in “The Favourite” the hierarchy leads upward to a monarch (Nicholas Hoult) with absolute power. That’s where the show presents a stark contrast between the villain and heroine (Elle Fanning) Catherine the Great who history tells us will come to modernize Russia with her rule. The question is when and finding the answer has been quite a ride so far.
2. Dead to Me (Netflix)-Newly widowed Jen Hardy (Christina Applegate) attends a grief group where she makes the acquaintance of a strangely eager Judy (Linda Cardinelli). Judy chips away at Jen’s veneer until she forms a makeshift friendship. Or at least that’s how it seems. Within the first few episodes of the inaugural season of “Dead To Me”, it’s revealed that Judy isn’t a fellow griever but someone involved in the death of Judy’s husband and that her guilt is driving her to make it up in some karmic fashion. It’s a premise Hitchcock or Fincher would have killed for, playing out in a slow burning series. The second season expands the scale of twists--the introduction of an identical twin to the deceased is deliciously soapish (a cheap excuse to keep James Marsden employed)--but more importantly, it heightens the emotional stakes.
3. Brockmire (IFC) -A lot of TV in the #metoo era is about men getting consumed by dark pasts and no one seemed more hopeless than the superhumanly aloof baseball broadcaster Jim Brockmire in the first season, but his redemptive arc that gelled in the final season makes such a light out of the tunnel not only seem possible but easy-peasy. That’s really an “It’s a Wonderful Life” scale miracle worth celebrating. In the final season, the show leapt over a decade into the future in the midst of a technocratic dystopia. Our loose-lipped hero is charged not just with personal rehabilitation but saving baseball as we know it. Pretty ambitious for a show that, remember, originated out of a “Funny or Die” sketch.
4. Ramy (Hulu)- The titular Ramy (Ramy
Yousef) is a Muslim-American who walks the walk, but with his backwards cap and
scruffy beard, he might be too far out of place on a season of Jersey Shore. Or
at least, that’s the Ramy at the start of season 1. In the show’s second
season, Ramy seeks a spiritual mentor (Mahershala Ali) in Sheik Malik and the
show’s central relationship maintains an air of enigma. Malik projects nothing
but warmth but never gives Ramy easy answers. Whereas most shows about single
guys are about wanting to get laid, this is a show about a guy who wants to veer
away from sexual temptation to attain spiritual enlightenment. How refreshing
is that? The show also has a penchant for experimentation along the lines of “Louie”
or “Master of None” (though way better) as it shifts the spotlight around.
5. What We Do in the Shadows (FX) - One of my serendipitous discoveries last year, this adaptation of New Zealand legends Jermaine Clement and Taiki Wahiti shows no signs of losing its edge. With Laszlo assuming the alternate persona of Jackie Daytona just to escape a fight, Colin Robinson becoming omnipotent through an office promotion, and Nadja gaslighting an octogenarian just to get back a necklace, this is one of the most consistently brilliantly plotted out TV shows on a per episode basis. As a quartet of vampires who have lived hundreds of years longer than the average human, they’ve largely been set in their ways like your creaky grandmother who can’t understand e-mail. Which is why the contrasts with Colin Robinson holding an office job work so well on a humor level or why Guillermo’s character development works so well in pathos.
6. The Boys (Amazon) –“The Boys” reached a new level of gripping as the evil guys became eviler, the good guys got their shit together, and everyone in the middle was forced to make a choice. Not only is this show not some hyper-merchandised part of the MCU, it’s technically not a super hero show. In this universe, super heroes are really a façade controlled by an evil company (although an evil façade is probably an accurate description of Marvel Studios, I’m guessing) in which children buy and inject a chemical. The show is allegorical to all a plethora of wrongs stemming from celebrity culture. In the second season, however, the show took on a darker tone which came with its own set of ups and downs but it was never easy to peel your eyes away. “The Boys” also deserves credit in its second season for pushing Hughie to the side and becoming a true ensemble show.
7. Upload (Amazon)-Greg Daniels’ meditation on a class-based afterlife in which only those who pay can get their minds transferred to a lakeside resort after their body gives up on them, is sure to be classified as a comedy based on the pedigree of the creator (Daniels is most famous for “The Office”). But this is inaccurate. I rarely laughed and there’s nothing wrong with that. “Upload” is a thoughtful sci-fi piece that poses harder questions in a light-hearted way about our ideal reality and class. The show also has parallel mystery and romance story lines that pace along well under the main arc.
8. The Circle (Netflix)-Before the virus caused such massive shifts to our world, the American version of this show was already among the buzziest on television. The central gimmick-- isolated strangers tasked with growing bonds over social media and sussing out each other’s authenticity — surreptitiously became one of the most prescient mirrors of our era is we were forced to quarantine in pretty much the same way. But while the contestants were quarantined, that didn’t get them down. They danced for no one but themselves (in one of the most bizarre and best sequences of the show), kept themselves happy and busy, made incredible friendships, and occasionally fell for one another. Through four different countries, the show endured as a fascinating social experiment, because it reflected how online spaces allow us the freedom to present ourselves in a society with challenges therein.
9. AP
Bio (Peacock)-From outré comedy writer Mike Patrick O’Brien
(responsible for some of SNL’s weirder sketches of the decade), “A.P. Bio” was
miraculously rescued from cancellation-land in its third season by NBC’s spin-off
paywall network. The show’s anti-hero, Jack Griffin, started out as a take on
the bad teacher trope, ratcheted up to absurdium: He wasn’t just apathetic
about not teaching biology, he actively avoided it to the point of logistical
inefficiency. After a few episodes the show found a strange groove and morphed
into an anti-sitcom sitcom in which Jack does indeed bond with his students
(partially through guilt) while retaining his bitter apathetic ways. The ending
of the second season promised an escalation as Helen DeMarco (Paula Pell) was
enrolled in Jack’s class which meant an end to his charade. Unfortunately, the
show reneged on this direction in the first episode which meant more
predictable shenanigans. Fortunately, the show’s shenanigans are still sublime
with one of the best ensembles on TV.
10. Fargo (FX)-Told in exquisite visual detail, this crime saga of two competing factions -- the Italians and African-American mob families in the 1950s— is one of the best educations for how and why mobs are formed that this reviewer has seen (and, mind you, this is a pretty saturated genre). “Fargo” postulates that mobs are disenfranchised groups shut out of the mainstream economy who must combine a hierarchy with muscle to claim their space among rival disenfranchised herds. The more you know, kids! In its fourth season, the series is an anthology that’s spiritually tied to the Coens 1996 film and nothing is more Coenesque than rich, eccentric characters. On both sides of the Fatta/Cannon feud, there was an ample amount of iconic larger-than-life figures (congrats Chris Rock on finding a role) and eccentric scatterbrains to make Joel and Ethan would be proud.
11. Star Trek: Lower Decks (CBS All-Access)-Until this year, Star Trek had aired a combined 732 episodes and (as far as I know) only two have ever focused exclusively on the lower ranks of the ship. While TNG’s “Lower Decks” and Voyager’s “The Good Shephard” were a start, there are still so many holes in Star Trek's supposed post-capitalist society: Wouldn’t there be any slackers or rebels? Fortunately, Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) has traits of both. This is a show that is deeply in tune with the subject that it’s parodying. If you’ve ever wanted the “Next Generation” characters to loosen up beyond a boring jazz trombone open mic or a poker game that no one mysteriously goes all in on (both tropes that “Lower Decks” lampshades with glee), this is the show for you.
12. Bless the Harts (Fox)- The endearing portrait of small-town Carolina life is rarely condescending and when it is, it comes from the perspective of a native daughter (“Up All Night” show runner Emily Spivey) poking fun at her own friends. Each of the four main characters is extremely endearing and there’s been a lot of world building towards some of the lesser characters (including the high-pitched Randy and the cheery news lady whose mouth is glued into a smile ala the Jack Nicholson Batman film). The show centers around a lower class North Carolina family and a waitress with modest aspirations to rise above her station; her sly mother (whose primary motivations in life are besting her rival Crystal Lynn, feeling young enough that she can flirt with construction workers, and pulling off semi-fraudulent schemes), her boyfriend (a trucker persona who’s openly a teddy bear underneath), and her dead-panning daughter.
Ten Runners-Up (very close call):
Cobra Kai (YouTube/Netflix), Middleditch and Schwartz (Netflix), Miracle Workers: Dark Ages (TBS), Never Have I Ever (Netflix), Nora from Queens (Comedy Central), Solar Opposites (Hulu), Space Force (Netflix), Teenage Bounty Hunters (Netflix), Unorthodox (Netflix), We Are the Champions (Netflix)
Everything else I watched:
American Dad (TBS)*, Archer (FX), Animaniacs (Hulu), Black Monday (Showtime), BoJack Horseman (Netflix), Broke (CBS), Carnival Row (Amazon), Comedy IQ (BYU TV), Connected (Netflix)*. Crossing Swords (Hulu), Everything’s Gonna be OK (Freeform), Explained (Netflix), Five Apartments (Peacock), Fresh off the Boat (ABC), Duncanville (Fox)*, Good Girls (NBC), Good Place (NBC), Joe Pera Talks to You (Adult Swim), Holey Moley (ABC), Hollywood (Netflix), Hoops (Netflix), Intelligence (Peacock), Kidding (Showtime), Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO), Loafy (Comedy Central), Medical Police (Netflix), New Pope (HBO)*, Ozark (Netflix)*, Pen15 (Hulu), Politician (Netflix), Queen’s Gambit (Netflix), Quiz (AMC) , Saved by the Bell (Peacock), Sex Education (Netflix), Schooled (ABC), Schitt’s Creek (Pop TV), Simpsons (Fox)*, Solar Opposites (Hulu), Some Good News (Youtube), Space Force (Netflix), Stumptown (ABC), Studio C (BYU TV), Tales from the Loop (Amazon), A Teacher (FX), Tiger King* (Netflix), Transplant (NBC), Twilight Zone (CBS All Access), Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix), Umbrella Academy (Netflix), Unorthodox (Netfflix), Upload (Amazon), Utopia (Amazon), Waco (Netflix), Where’s Waldo (Peacock), White Lines (Netflix), Zoey’s Infinite Playlist (NBC)
*=Very limited capacity
No comments:
Post a Comment