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Hooray, thank you, Looten! I very much look forward to seeing everyone’s lists. Just a small note that WandaVision still hasn’t aired yet 
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Dec 21, 2020 14:24
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 06:51 |
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spoiler for my list but anyone who doesn’t have Saul as their 1 is completely loving wrong
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Dec 29, 2020 09:36
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Putting Extracurricular in my top 10 so at least one of esp’s shows will be in someone else’s list (just kidding I’m putting it there because it deserves it)
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Dec 31, 2020 07:50
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It came out today, right? So I would assume it would be eligible for this poll.
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Dec 31, 2020 18:44
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Looks like it's time for this lazy idiot to finally post his list!!!!!!! As usual, I post a big list because there were just too many good shows to not at least mention. I mean, I'm listing 50 shows here and The Boys isn't even here! And The Boys ruled this year! anyway feel free to scroll down to the bottom if you just care about the top 10 50. Teenage Bounty Hunters 49. Grand Army 48. A.P. Bio 47. The Flight Attendant 46. The Baby-Sitters Club 45. The Great 44. Ramy 43. The Plot Against America 42. Steven Universe Future 41. Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet 40. Fargo 39. Brooklyn Nine-Nine 38. The Good Place 37. The Eric Andre Show 36. High Maintenance 35. Corporate 34. Upload 33. High Fidelity 32. The Mandalorian 31. Rick and Morty 30. Betty 29. Everything’s Gonna Be Okay 28. Little America 27. Dave 26. BoJack Horseman Now we move on to the ones where I write a sentence or two! 25. Search Party - Another great season that brought courtroom drama into its list of crime pastiches. The lawyer was so fuckin funny 24. Schitt’s Creek - Wonderful send-off to a lovely show I'm very glad I finished. 23. The Midnight Gospel - Great mix of spirituality, psychedelia, and thoughtfulness, with incredible visuals and one of the most emotional final episodes of the year. 22. The Queen’s Gambit - Some pacing issues but when it was firing on all cylinders it was an almost hypnotic experience. Anya Taylor-Joy has the best face. 21. Joe Pera Talks With You - The kindest and most gentle show on TV, many of the season's best episodes aired this year, including a trip to the grocery store, a fashion show, and tips on packing a school lunch! 20. Lovecraft Country - A heavily flawed but undeniably effective show. Its strongest scenes and moments were almost the best of any show this year, but the overall storyline and other issues brought it down a ton. 19. Adventure Time: Distant Lands - Two specials that reminded me of everything I love about the world of Ooo. Funny, visually sumptuous, and heartfelt in equal measure. 18. Harley Quinn - We got most of the first season in 2020, which was strong enough, but 2 was such a fantastic improvement, legitimately hilarious with a perfectly-handled romance. 17. Kidding - The gently caress didn't more people watch this show????? An improvement on an already incredible first season but, just......none of y'all fucks watched it. smh 16. What We Do in the Shadows - Although it started dragging a bit towards the end this season was still funny as poo poo with a great Guillermo arc and perhaps the funniest single TV character this year - Jackie Daytona Human Bartender for life!!! 15. Doom Patrol - I was so happy and surprised when even after running out of Grant Morrison bits to adapt this series managed to be as funny, weird, and powerful as ever. Just such a shame COVID meant we didn't get a finale. 14. Never Have I Ever - Easily the best Mindy Kaling project and one of the best coming-of-age shows I've ever seen. Such an unexpected delight, and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan was a phenomenal lead. 13. Infinity Train - We got two seasons of Cartoon Network's best original series since Adventure Time this year, and they were both incredible, exploring identity struggles and cult brainwashing in a way that expanded the core concept while dealing with heavier themes but never forgetting to be funny and endearing. Looks like we may not get any more of this show, which is a huge shame. 12. Brockmire - This show was always solidly great when it was about alcoholism and baseball but the fourth and final season kicked it up a notch by setting it in a more dystopian near future and having Brockmire be perhaps the one person that could heal a fractured nation through baseball. Got weirder, smarter, more political, and in the end way better. What a loving great show, drat! 11. Better Things - Usually I rewatch some seasons that aired earlier in the year before I make my list but I didn't have time this year and this not being in my top 10 is the greatest casualty of that. I definitely remember this being as solidly amazing as ever, with loving incredible performances and writing and directing, but a lot more specifics than usual escape me. ok, now THE ACTUAL LIST: 10. Mrs. America A television show about attempting to ratify an amendment that was bombastic, fun, smart, witty, filled with what esperterra likes to call "fabulous cunts", and deeply infuriating. Wonderfully structured, with the individual character-focused episodes ensuring so many incredible actresses got to shine while also exploring the issues from many different angles. Drew a line from Schlafly and her gang to the current American political landscape so perfectly that it infuriates me just thinking about it!!! 09. Extracurricular The first Korean-language show I've ever seen, I got into this because esp and whowhatwhere wouldn't shut up about it, and I am very glad about it!!!! Completely intense so much of the time, with great twists and exceptional characterisation - everyone's individual motives are completely sympathetic and understandable. Fantastic action, with the penultimate episode's climax being one of the best scenes of the year easily. Really hoping this one gets a season 2. STAN GYURI IMMEDIATELY 08. Babylin Berlin Watched all of this German drama last year, and while the first batch of episodes (in either one or two seasons, depending on the territory) were already fantastic the 2020 season blew them out of the water. An incredible noir thriller with art deco and political intrigue to begin with, it expanded to provide more expressionism and mystery, while dealing with the stock market crash and bringing fascism's rising tide more to the forefront, plus keeping the killer pacing and magnetically intriguing characters. 07. The Last Dance I'm really not a sports guy in the slightest, but Michael Jordan was someone I knew a lot about during my childhood (my dad worked in Chicago during the 97-98 season), and this was such a brilliant in-depth documentary on the people who built an incredible dynasty and the unbelievable talent at the centre of it. Very well-structured and entertaining (Jordan reacting to other people's comments was so funny) while laying out the talents and strengths of so many people (and the villainy of Jerry Krause). Only real issue was not enough on modern classic Space Jam. 06. Ted Lasso Wait is there actually another show about sports on this list what the gently caress. Easily Apple's best original show to date, Bill Lawrence's best work since the first couple seasons of Scrubs, and the show that finally allowed me to "get" Jason Suedeikis. I don't want to be too cliched here but it is insane just how much I needed a show this kind this year, it is so naturally lovely and sweet in a way that might actually top Parks and Rec, the previous champion of the nice sitcom. The arcs are genuinely dramatically solid too, and seeing Sudeikis win people over never got old. And Juno Temple! drat! 05. Normal People One of the best and most intimate romance stories on television in a very, very long time. The two central performances are extremely brave and raw and nuanced, and the writing is simply exceptional, immersive and heartbreaking in a variety of ways. Incredible work from the directors and cinematographers, bringing the beauty and longing of both the original novel and the adapted scripts to the screen. It feels weird to be like "and also the sex scenes were good!!!!" but the sex scenes were honestly some of the best I've ever seen, explicit while still being beautiful and not tawdry. Give that intimacy coordinator an award. 04. Dispatches From Elsewhere I'm honestly a little surprised this ended up so high - it's definitely the show that moved around the most while I was making this list. In the end, though, I do truly believe it deserves to be this high - it's messy as hell, but extremely ambitious, with a fun try tone and an utterly fantastic central cast, especially previous unknown Eve Lindley as Simone. It's hard not to talk about this show without mentioning the controversial finale, which breaks from the mystery/drama format in a big way, but it paid off so well for me, revealing just how personal and heartfelt a project it really was. No word yet on a continuation of this universe, but I would really welcome it. 03. How To With John Wilson I've never loved describing things as "human" - like, duh, art is created by and intended to be consumed by humans! - but this amazing docu-comedy absolutely ranks among the most wonderfully human things I've ever seen. Wilson's treasure trove of footage, mostly from the streets of NYC, reveals such a broad spectrum of human nature, and while you can see the influence of executive producer Nathan Fielder this show has so much more empathy than his previous work ever did, even for the most bizarre people John meets along the way (I would never dare to spoil the episode on 'coverings' for you, but....holy poo poo dude, my mouth was AGAPE). One of the most unexpected and deserved successes of 2020. 02. I May Destroy You I have no idea how Michaela Coel went from a show like "lol what is sex i don't know how a condom works!!!!" to this, but it's an absolute masterpiece. Primarily about sexual assault and trauma in many different forms, all of which are handled so powerfully, it also expands in several different directions, with intelligent, layered thoughts on social media, influencer culture, callouts, toxic masculinity, and generally being a young adult in our era. Yet it's not just all brave bleakness, these characters are very lived-in and real, leading to a low-key hilarity at appropriate times. There's a drat good reason this is the most-acclaimed show of 2020 on Metacritic by a long way - it's near-perfect, and one everyone needs to sit down and watch. 01. Better Call Saul This show has made my list every year since it started, and it's also improved insanely every year, but it wasn't until this season - maybe the best individual season in the Breaking Bad franchise to date - that it topped my list. And honestly, it wasn't even CLOSE. This came in at number one with a bullet as soon as the finale was over and it was never in danger of being removed. While this show has always been great, there's always been a little friction between the (consistently incredible) lawyering side and the (sometimes iffy) typical prequel-y cartel stuff. This season obliterated these issues, both by giving us the best cartel stuff yet and intertwining the two halves of the show in a wonderfully natural way. It's impossible to emphasise how much Lalo - introduced last season but truly coming into his own in this one - has brought to the cartel storyline, his charm and physicality making it feel exciting and alive in a way it never did. Jimmy is officially Saul, and his struggles with fully embracing his new identity lead to his most fascinating scenes - and Odenkirk's best work - to date, including an "I am the one who knocks" moment that is even saddier and funnier than the original, and a desert odyssey that equals Three Days Out. But I mean, the Kim stuff, the Kim stuff!!!!!!! gently caress!!!!!!!!!!!! Already my favourite character in this franchise, the writers took Kim to new levels, with her making shocking and unexpected decisions that nonetheless feel like they follow on completely naturally from what we've seen from her arc throughout the show, while the incredible, incomparable Rhea Seehorn (STILL not Emmy-nominated what the gently caress) makes giving the best performance on TV look loving easy. And most exciting of all, these actions took what seemed like a slightly predetermined end and blew it wide open, meaning I truly have no idea what's in store for anyone in the upcoming final season. And god, I didn't even get to the continuing gorgeous cinematography - still the best-looking show there is - or the perfectly-paced and edited action sequences. covid can you please gently caress OFF so they can start production on my favourite show currently airing and we can see how this amazing story ends!!!!! aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!! wow if you read all that thank you, I love you and I love TV
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Jan 9, 2021 14:28
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That’s a real cool list. I enjoyed P-Valley a bunch - it was only a few places out of my top 50.
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Jan 10, 2021 09:41
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Insecure didn’t make my list this year but gotta admit I was fuckin impressed that they did a whole Issa/Lawrence episode that not only wasn’t annoying and tiresome but was actually a season highlight
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Jan 10, 2021 17:35
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Just wanna say how much I love all these lists! I love all the votes for Dispatches From Elsewhere, I love that we got someone hyping up We Are Who We Are (it didn’t always work for me but it definitely deserves recognition), I love that Sen is still out here repping awesome gay-rear end cartoons like ever. TVIV ur all great
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Jan 11, 2021 01:31
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Hilda s2 is great
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Jan 15, 2021 17:17
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Are you ok
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Jan 15, 2021 18:19
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10pm Eastern is two hours from now
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Jan 22, 2021 01:59
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Hooray Normal People!! Dark was good this year but definitely a step down from the first two seasons imo. Still mostly concluded everything well.
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Jan 22, 2021 04:18
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I love that Taskmaster made it in. Perfect lockdown binge.
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Jan 22, 2021 04:37
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I wasn’t into how She-Ra ended really (for the same reason I didn’t like Kylo’s face turn in Rise of Skywalker) but I’m a straight white dude so I definitely wasn’t who it was made for
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Jan 22, 2021 04:47
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Such a good show!
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Jan 22, 2021 04:57
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Congrats TVIV for not putting Agents of SHIELD in the top 10
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Jan 22, 2021 05:18
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Oops I meant to write “wry” there gently caress yes Dispatches!!!!
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Jan 22, 2021 05:21
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tfw an Apple show beats out anything on Netflix or HBO (and arguably deserved to)
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Jan 22, 2021 05:26
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Honestly thought it would be higher! Really good stuff. Everyone I’ve recommended it to has loved it e: Lasso not Gambit
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Jan 22, 2021 05:29
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Girls get it done!!!
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Jan 22, 2021 05:32
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I really have no idea what 2 could be but I’m excited
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Jan 22, 2021 05:40
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oh yeah Mando of course! it was good congrats to the deserved 1! this is I think the first time my personal favourite show of the year has also won the TVIV poll. does this make me a god in human form? will lightning shoot from my fingertips now?
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Jan 22, 2021 05:43
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Better Call Saul @ the competition:
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Jan 22, 2021 05:50
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 06:51 |
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Question: is refusing to watch Saul because “I’m done with that universe” a good enough reason to remove a TV forum mod asking for a friend
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Jan 23, 2021 00:13
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