My Annual Top 12 Shows of the Year:

1. Orange is the New Black (Netflix)-The seventh and final season of “Orange is the New Black” dealt with immigration courts and the continued indignities of the for-profit prison system with harrowing tragedy. At the same time, “Orange is the New Black” didn’t sacrifice realism to throw us a bone with a few well-earned happy endings, and half a dozen other resolutions that at least ended on a poetic note. Through thick and thin, the series has never failed to entertain or stay fresh which is an accomplishment few shows can claim over such a span.

Source: DenofGeek

 2. The Good Place (NBC)- By now, it seems pretty conclusive that we'll never actually see Eleanor and the gang suffering any actual torture (if for nothing else, because no comedy could possibly be mined out of it) but that doesn't mean that this isn't the most high stakes comedy on television. While it is also a TV show that thrives on burning through plot at nearly unsustainable speeds, "The Good Place" found a nice resting perch from which to ease off the gas pedal with a reboot that saw Team Cockroach running their own simulation. The show continued to build the outer fringes of its word giving more fodder for break out characters (Gen, Vicky, Sean, Derek) to fill out the landscape.

3. BoJack Horseman (Netflix)-The tonal marriage of heart-slowing depression and hilarity was on full display in a season opener that saw BoJack going through the motions of rehab over and over while his peers were able to make sudden improvements. BoJack’s universe is when where achievements aren’t easily earned but slowly accrue over time. Despite the show’s rigid progressivism (which the show runners have shouted out quite a bit off-camera), there’s never a lack of empathy for characters like BoJack who have hurt others in their wake. The half-season concluded with one of their great experimental riffs with a “His Girl Friday” send-up that completely omitted the series’ five main characters. The cliffhanger ending properly raised the stakes over how much of his dark past BoJack is going to relive.

Source: Slashfilm

4. Miracle Workers (TBS)-A whimsical take on the classic world-wide doomsday scenario based on the supremely clever book by ex-SNL scribe Simon Rich. Steve Buscemi plays a God who's an idiot among idiots and his angels live in a bureaucratic jungle reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's Brazil. That the stakes are high yet mundane-seeming from above is a great comedic template but the show builds on a winning premise with smart dialogue and a great confluence of idiosyncratic personalities. Additionally, this is one of the few times where I can say I’ve read the book and this is indeed a smart adaptation.

Source: Variety

5. Lodge 49 (AMC)- Although this show won't be winning praise from the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, there's a great portrait of a city in economic depression and how it limits the imaginations of everyone it affects. Almost everyone, that is. Enter Sean Dudley (Wyatt Russell): An ex-surfer with an inspiringly open heart who recently lost his dad to a shark accident and has nothing to his name except a membership to a lodge whose members are just as aimless as he is. To say the show meanders would be an understatement: The narrative never really has a definite ending point. Characters simply just try to get through their lives without going under. Some chase lofty dreams (David Pasquesi), some are consigned to know their days are behind them (Linda Edmond) , and others (Wyatt's sister played by Sonya Cassidy) are still trying to figure out what the future holds while fending off a string of hellish bosses. The second season asserts itself a little more with converging thread lines and introductions of Paul Giamatti as a blowhard author and Olivia Sandoval as a cooky CEO who desperately needs to adult.

6. A.P. Bio (NBC)-“AP Bio” started out as a fun outliar of a show that pushed the scenario of a reluctant  teacher who inadvertently bonds with his students to extremes. Jack (Glenn Howerton channels about 80% of Dennis from “Always Sunny” here) actively avoids wanting to even teach his students anything and involves them in incriminating activity. But rather than double down on the “Bad Teacher” scenario, this show has created a genuine sense of pathos in the development of Jack and his relationship with his students while still maintaining the veneer his vindictive persona. This show also has a cast of supporting characters that gets better with every moment of the spotlight they’re given from the multi-racial Greek chorus of teachers (Mary Sohn, Lyric Lewis, Jean Villepique) to the class of misfit students. Thank god for Season 3.

Source: WhatCulture.com

7. Arrested Development (Netflix)-Although the show's final half-season slipped under the radar (except for bad press by Jeffrey Tambour), it doesn't diminish the accomplishment of a series finale that tied up so many disparate threads with the idiosyncratic brick jokes and panache that only "Arrested Development" can. The introduction of Kyle Mooney as a dim-witted bastard child of Tobias seemed like an addition that could shake up a very delicate comic infrastructure but towards the end of the season, the makeshift family of Tobias, DeBrie (whose return along with Isla Fisher’s Rebel Alley are often the seson’s two best things), and Murphy Brown felt like a perfect next step in the show’s evolution.

8. The Boys (Amazon Prime)-With the saturation of the superhero genre there’s already an abundance of TV shows, movies and comic strips that claim enough self-awareness of the genre coupled with the ability to skewer its main traits (see “Guardians of the Galaxy”) but a lot of those efforts try to have their cake and eat it too with humorous tones. “The Boys” manages to divorce itself from what it’s parodying will still maintaining the fun and energy of a proper action film. More than that, “The Boys” has a lot more to say about our society than the genre itself: Whether hero (and, by proxy, celebrity) worship has a function in our society (and its need for role models) or if it makes it easier for our values to be subject to abuse.

9. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (FX)-The show’s seasons range in quality from only a standard level of awesome to off the charts awe-inspiring. The last couple seasons were a little bit of a dip. The characters grew up in terms of facing their demons (for Charlie, the waitress; for Mac, his sexual confusion, for Dennis, giving fatherhood a brief try) so yay! But the new versions of the gang members didn’t necessarily translate into laughs. Season 14 ranged from experimental (the sublime noir send-up “The Janitor Mops Twice”), casually meta (“The Gang Gets Romantic”), skewed takes on social issues (“Thunder Gun 4” and “A Woman’s Right to Chop”), and gleeful callbacks (“Dee Day”) while continuing to rarely drag and have its leads stay hilariously in character.

Source: Cinemablend

10. Dead To Me (Netflix)-A serialized mystery focusing on the connection between a widow (Christina Applegate) trying to make sense of her late husband's death and a awkwardly cheery stranger (Linda Cardellini) who enters her orbit under pretty shady circumstances. Cardinelli's character is so desperate to connect, she's possibly the clingiest character on TV and it's hard to take your eyes off her. But there’s a secret. And another one and a couple more after that. To call this a sunny noir is to short change a story told with a style that defies convention. A second season is on the way and there are few shows where I’m excited to see just how far bad the characters will break.

Source: Reality Blurted

11. Holey Moley (ABC)- 99 times out of 100 I consider the artistry superior in scripted programming than any sort of staged reality, but "Holey Moley" proves the exception to the rule. The mini-golf game show (yes you read that correctly) applies just the right tweaks to every one's favorite backyard game and turns it into an extravaganza akin to ABC's Wild World of Sports. With its three-point twelve-player format, talking head intros, and solid editing, the show introduces us to rootable characters and ups the stakes nicely over the course of an hour. The star of the show though is comedy vet Rob Riggle as a host who adds a surreal level of meta-humor as a play-by-play commentator taking in and spitting out all the absurdity with a straight face.

12. Ramy (Hulu)-Whereas most shows about introspective single men in comedy are about getting laid and occasionally more, Ramy is about an devout Muslim in New Jersey trying to veer away from the secular temptations of sex for a greater religious high. That’s definitely in the category of “something different” worth seeking out when we talk about diversity. Although comedian Ramy Yousef shouldn’t be expected to shoulder the entirety of modern Islam on his shoulders, his show gives us an interesting glimpse.

My list of Honorable Mentions was covered last week: American Horror Story 1984 (FX), Bless the Harts (Fox), Black Mirror (Netflix), Derry Girls (BBC Channel 4/Netflix), Disenchantment (Netflix), Good Omens (Amazon Prime), The Orville (Fox), The Other Two (Comedy Central), Russian Doll (Netflix), What We Do in the Shadows (FX)


Everything I watched last year:
Abby’s (NBC), Adam Ruins Everything (TruTV), Almost Family (ABC), Archer (FX), Baroness von Sketch Show (IFC), Big Mouth (Netflix), Card Sharks (ABC), Castle Rock (Hulu), Carmen Sandiego (Netflix), Carnival Row (Amazon)* Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (CBSAA), Corporate (Comedy Central), Crashing (HBO)*, Chernobyl (AMC)*, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (CW), Dollface (Hulu), Documentary Now (IFC), Final Space (TBS/Netflix)*, Fresh off the Boat (ABC), Futureman (Hulu), God Friended Me (CBS), Good Girls (NBC), Grand Hotel (ABC), Hot Date (Pop TV), I-Land (Netflix), I Think You Should Leave (Netflix), 9-1-1 (NBC), Perfect Harmony (NBC), Politician (Netflix), Sex Education (Netflix), Schitt’s Creek (PopTV), Shrill (Hulu), Society (Netflix), Superstore (NBC), Sunnyside (NBC), Those Who Can’t (TruTV), Thirteen Reasons Why (Netflix), Undone (Amazon Prime), Umbrella Academy (Netflix), Will and Grace (NBC), Yellowstone (Paramount Network)

* = one episode

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Season 2: A very belated review

As someone who has historically not been an enthusiastic novel reader, Douglas Adams stands as one of the few people to open me up to the delights of the form. Whether it’s the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series or Dirk Gently, his delightful absurdity is sprinkled nearly everywhere in the book whether it’s the larger plot points (the answer to life, the universe and everything being 42, an alien race torturing people through bad poetry readings) or clever dialogue (“flying is throwing yourself at the ground and missing”).

The idea of “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” (I’ll have to add an IIRC caveat, I’m too lazy to look this up) is that the protagonist is a thoroughly amoral and lazy detective who calls himself a “holistic detective” so that he can bill anything he does to the case. Since everything’s related to everything, there’s no telling that anything he does isn’t related to the case.

He manages to capture the whimsical absurdity of Douglas Adams’ book series. The TV series takes on a more mystical approach while keeping the absurdity confined largely to the character of Dirk character himself (Samuel Barnett). Gently is a classic cuckoolander with recently-fired bellhop named Todd (Elijah Wood, hitting the same beats of schlubby directionless as “Wilfred”) as the straight man keeping him in check. Both series have been populated with a wide array of characters with the most Dirk-like being a female holistic assassin named Bart (Fiona Dourif) who takes casual violence to such extremes that the gore is placated by (what TV Tropes refers to) as crossing the line twice. Others like black wing officer Hugo Friedkin (Dustin Milligan of “Schitt’s Creek”) have the lone character trait of being a little dense. Mildly humorous but mostly blah. At least there’s a variety of tonal flavors in this awkward-yet-charming character stew.

The key emotional relationship is between Todd and his sister Amanda (Hannah Marks) and while two young adult siblings bonded by their shared directionless (“Casual” and more recently “Lodge 49” have done it well), the two have an affable chemistry. It also helps that the relationship is complicated by random chronic illness and Amanda having superpowers making her more than just another audience surrogate.

Both seasons of the show are serialized and zany but don’t necessarily match the profound zaninesss, say, of the source material. The second season, which I saw recently, revolves around a traumatized child in rural Montana (as ideal for a fish-out-of-water vibe as any Western state) with telekinetic powers who creates an entire imaginary world that has been operating on its own for thirty years.

The mystery unravels gently enough for the slower viewers (AKA me) not to get lost in all the technobabble. As such, there’s some catharsis when the loose strings get tied together at the end, but it’s mostly about watching zany characters navigate tight situations in a way that’s a bit more fun than the average serialized crime story.   

The second season’s chief villain, Suzie Borden (a nod to Lizzie, perhaps?), is a bored housewife with a rebellious teenage son, who gets a little taste of supernatural power and goes to town. She’s curiously sympathetic at first: One can easily see her as the mildly put-upon housewive trope getting her revenge against society for putting her into a box and stripping her (and perhaps all domesticated women) from their dreams. However, our audience sympathies cleverly switch when we learn that while Suzie sees herself as Carrie (a movie I recently reviewed), her peers see her as more in line with a plastic from Mean Girls.

Like many ensemble series, the level of interest in what’s on screen changes with whether we’re following a good character and a good storyline. Suzie’s one of the bigger draws here.

The series’ first season was such a freaky lightning in a pan that it’s pretty impressive for lightning to strike twice as it did here.

If I picked the Emmys 2018 to 2019 (Drama)

Drama Shows (in order):
1. Daredevil
2. Maniac
3. Lodge 49
4. Sneaky Pete
5. Orange is the New Black
6. Dead to Me
7. Ozark

Actor:
Charlie Cox, Daredevil*
Giovanni Ribisi, Sneaky Pete
Jonah Hill, Maniac
John Krasinski, Jack Ryan

In truth, I wasn't that impressed by anyone in this category except for my across-the-board admiration at the "Daredevil" cast and that extends to Cox who doesn't come off as an action star but channels the ferocity needed for the emotional climaxes when he faces King Pin. Though not a humongous fan of "Jack Ryan", I think Krasinski's doing great work and part of the reason to tune in to the show is that it's interesting to watch Krasinski do that same screen persona . Jason Bateman was considered but he deserves more credit for creating and directing the show than he does for doing an extremely slight variation of Michael Bluth.

Actress:
Emma Stone, Maniac
Laura Linney, Ozark
Sonya Cassidy, Lodge 49
Christina Applegate, Dead to Me
Linda Cardinelli, Dead to Me*

Linda Cardenelli's Judy is so needy and desperate to connect, she's possibly the clingiest character on TV and it's hard to take your eyes off her.

Supporting Actor:
Wilson Bethel, Daredevil
Brian Cox, Succssion
Kieran Culkin, Succession
Nick Sandow, Orange is the New Black*
Brandon Flynn, 13 Reasons Why
Vincent D'Onofrio, Daredevil

I'm gonna go with Nick Sandow here because it's not easy to love Caputo on paper and yet you end up with such admiration for the guy because he's credibly the very definition of a dynamic character. Justin Foley's arc (coming back from heroin addiction, facing his actions as a bystander to rape, abusive parents, etc) is definitely a demanding role for a teen (or 25, whatever) actor and Flynn's a close second. I didn't even know D'Onofrio could get that big, what a physical transformation!

Supporting Actress:
Julie Garner, Ozark
Sally Field, Maniac
Deborah Ann Woll, Daredevil
Danielle Brooks, Orange is the New Black*
Libe Bearer, Sneaky Pete
Kelly Reilly, Yellowstone

Woll and Garner have been great among multiple seasons, but Brooks had the best character arc and proved once and for all this past season that Taystee is the show's lead character. Libe Bearer plays 16-year-old Carla who has a guarded skepticism well beyond her years. She's on a show with Margo Martindale and supplanted her. I was tempted to put Parker Posey from "Lost in Space" but it was a competitive category.

Guest Actor:
Matt Peters, Orange is the New Black
Michael Lee Kimmel, Lodge 49
Ethan Embry, Sneaky Pete*
Jacob Pitts, Sneaky Pete
Michael Mosley, Ozark
Trevor Long, Ozark

I couldn't even think of that many guys here and certainly not a lot of names. On Ozark, Michael Mosley was the pastor who went psycho on and Trevor Long is Ruth's absuvie dad. Michael Lee Kimmel was the good-looking Asian guy who kept trouncing Ernie in the sales department on Lodge 49, Matt Peters is the iconic source of comic relief on OitNB known as Luscheck, and Jacob Pitts is Marin's oily ex-husband Lance. Ethan Embry, the category winner, is the original Pete Murphy. 

Guest Actress:
Allison Wright, Sneaky Pete
Jordana Spiro, Ozark*
McKenzie Phillips, Orange is the New Black
Henny Russell, Orange is the New Black
Emily Tarver, Orange is the New Black
Jocelyn Towne, Lodge 49

Spiro plays a fiesty bar owner who starts to get entangled between multiple forces wanting different things from her in the same way that all characters in hyper-tense dramas do these days. She makes a romantic spark that's mostly off-limits between Jason Bateman and herself halway believable and her few scenes tell a story of a woman trapped by circumstances I wanted to know more of. Emily Tarver (Artesian McCulloch) is such a tragic character I want to jump into the TV to give a hug to (and that's saying something since the prisoners are so much more in need of help) but her biggest arc is Season 7. Russell and Phillips played the two feuding sisters in OitNB. Jocelyn Towne is the executive in the empty office who looks like Angela Kinsey that had a May-September romance with Dud.

Best Dialogue:
Dead to Me*
Maniac
Orange is the New Black
Lodge 49
Succession

Writing for characters with more inner monologue than outer monologue is the kind of challenge that Lodge 49 and Maniac (with Jonah Hill and Justin Thoreaux's characters face primarily) face the most. Orange is the New Black has to cover a lot of different dialects and subsets of people and Succession is pretty much all dialogue and no plot. Dead to Me has a lot of misdirects layered in the dialogue to keep the mystery secure and there's a lot of nuance in the way Jen and Judy express themselves

Best Dramatic Art Direction:
Umbrella Academy
Maniac*
Daredevil
Supergirl
Lodge 49

Umbrella Academy gets the most points for effort but it's a bit too much of a sensory overload pastiche to feel organic. In contrast, Maniac doesn't go overboard in its sleek and overly sterlized futuristic world but conveys the visuals well. Daredevil is probably at its best in Season 1 establishing the claustrophobic spaces of its universe and, I give Lodge 49 points for the unenviable task of trying to portray a general spirit of abandonment.


Best Dramatic Cinematography:
Yellowstone
Lodge 49
Ozark*
Jack Ryan

Yellowstone is scenery porn but Ozark feels like the camera and its subjects are a labor of love.