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Sorry for making you scroll all that way on the last page if you didn't push the button to get here!
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Dec 10, 2021 02:54
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That makes my list look piddly lmao
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Dec 10, 2021 03:36
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drat good list.
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Dec 10, 2021 17:04
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Hot. Completely wrong. But hot.
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Dec 10, 2021 17:18
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Jerusalem, did you watch Ted Lasso? Succession season finale airs in two days and then I’ll be ready to lock down my list and make my post. Feelin good about it, although some of the shows that just missed out are like aaaaajdhsjgjshfj
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Dec 10, 2021 21:13
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Escobarbarian posted:Jerusalem, did you watch Ted Lasso? I haven't, though I have heard it is good. Just didn't have the time to catch up on that. Succession is another one that has gone completely under my radar until hearing a bit about it recently.
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Dec 10, 2021 21:43
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Jerusalem posted:
Just started this today and it looks awesome.
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Dec 10, 2021 22:51
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Hell yeah, I was introduced to it by my parents and I figured it would be something I could watch and it would be okay and then I'd move on. I ended up just being entranced by the entire thing, such a beautiful and heartwarming show. I hope more people discover it, it's a hidden treasure all of its own.
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Dec 10, 2021 23:05
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I’ve finalised my list and then just writing the honourable mentions wore me out so this might take a while. Jerusalem, please send me your “write lots of words” skills! Also I will share that my list has 8 shows in common with Jerusalem’s, with a further two of his in my honourable mentions (would have been more, but it’s already like 7 shows and I don’t wait to go on too much *is most definitely going to go on too much*). also wow Jerusalem I think if you do another watch thread after Mad Men it should be The Leftovers because I can only imagine how much you’d love that show
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Dec 14, 2021 10:36
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It's been fun reading everybody's lists. There's a bunch of shows I considered including, as well as some stuff I'm being reminded to check out. Honorable Mentions: Fleabag A different, sexually liberated female-centric take on the sitcom, nice and short. Mr Inbetween Australian hitman action drama told in a thirty minute format. Nathan For You Frequently one of the funniest shows around. Hard to always tell where reality ends and scripted television begins. Taskmaster Gets (mostly) British comedians to do ridiculous tasks in a loose game show of sorts. Utopia Short British thriller. Has a look and feel unlike anything else. 20. High Maintenance Showcases the cross section of people in New York who buy marijuana. Filled with interesting characters. 19. The Americans One of the more consistent shows on cable from season to season, with a fun alternate Cold War history type feel. 18. Justified A modern western for people who don't necessarily like westerns. Olyphant has been fun to watch playing a TV cowboy since Deadwood. 17. Gomorrah Brutal depiction of mafia figures in Italy. Juxtaposition of high society and low class, of beautiful scenery and the gritty realism of the slums. 16. Hannibal The most artsy avant-garde show to appear on network television since the original run of Twin Peaks. 15. Gravity Falls An animated conspiracy mystery that the whole family can enjoy. 14. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel A fictionalized version of the rise of Joan Rivers. Quick witted, fast paced writing. 13. Rectify The definition of a slow burn character study. Does nearly everything right. 12. Twin Peaks: The Return Just as surreal as it was in the nineties, but wrapped up with a great ending. 11. The Leftovers Explores Western philosophy mixed with sci-fi in an interesting modern day way. Changes and builds from season to season. 10. Over the Garden Wall Stylish cartoon miniseries that anybody can have fun watching. Both dark and whimsical. 09. Childrens Hospital A bunch of comedic actors being silly all the time. 08. Veep Highest density of joke telling since the first few seasons of Arrested Development. Great insults, fun characters, continues nicely from The Thick of It. 07. Halt and Catch Fire Not just Mad Men but in the eighties. Tells the story of the rise of Silicon Valley in a fun and interesting way. Expands year after year. 06. The Deuce David Simon of The Wire fame tells of the rise of the porn industry from Times Square to Hollywood. 05. The Eric Andre Show One of the few shows that never fails to make me laugh. Pure stupid, chaotic fun. 04. Better Call Saul One of the only spin-off shows that can hold a candle to the original. In this case (Breaking Bad), that's quite a high bar. 03. BoJack Horseman Made me feel things that no animated show has. Deeper and more depressing than any other cartoon, with plenty of character based stories to tell. Keeps growing until it peaks at the finale. 02. Mad Men Some dismiss it as a period piece soap opera. If it is one, it's the best one around, one that values and respects both its characters and its audience. 01. Breaking Bad Gripping appointment television. Couldn't wait to watch the next one and to see how all ended. One of the best shows ever.
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Dec 16, 2021 03:00
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I really would have liked to have included The Deuce on my list, I think I unfairly graded it on a curve because while the final season was very, very good I couldn't help but feel a little let down after the absolutely fantastic season 2. The loss of the pimps was inevitable since that was part of the story they were telling about how they were being crowded out by the growing porn industry and commercialisation of sex work, but it meant losing some really memorable characters - particularly Gbenga Akinnagbe's Larry Brown, who was an absolute highlight of season 2.Escobarbarian posted:it should be The Leftovers because I can only imagine how much you’d love that show I heard people rave so much about that show that a couple of years or so back I settled down ready to enjoy a great show. I... uhh... I hated it. I forced myself through to the end of the first season and just couldn't take it anymore, I detested almost every character outside of Christopher Eccleston's anguished priest and found some of the storyline decisions utterly maddening. I know plenty of people loved it and I'm not saying they're wrong to, just that it was a show I really, really didn't like. 
Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 04:12
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What makes you feel that The Americans has an alternate history feel? It is historical fiction but thats not alternate history.
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Dec 16, 2021 06:41
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This is not easy. Is it fair to look more harshly at shows that ended bad over shows that started out bad ? Show 1 seasons: Decent > Good > Great > Mediocre > Terrible Show 2 seasons: Terrible > Mediocre > Decent > Good > Great Most people will hate show 1 while looking at show 2 at 'just needing to find its feet' before becoming the greatest thing ever.
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Dec 16, 2021 11:57
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Endings are more important than beginnings
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Dec 16, 2021 12:27
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Jerusalem posted:I heard people rave so much about that show that a couple of years or so back I settled down ready to enjoy a great show. I... uhh... I hated it. I forced myself through to the end of the first season and just couldn't take it anymore, I detested almost every character outside of Christopher Eccleston's anguished priest and found some of the storyline decisions utterly maddening. I know plenty of people loved it and I'm not saying they're wrong to, just that it was a show I really, really didn't like. Season 2 is a soft reboot, and the tone changes quite a bit. I skipped most of s1 and didn’t go back until it until after. When I did go back I found I really dig the second half of season 1, though, so I dunno. And I never really know what to say about “I didn’t like the characters” as a criticism
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Dec 16, 2021 12:29
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Rarity posted:Endings are more important than beginnings Yeah, this is really true. That's why Breaking Bad will always be revered while GoT will not. GoT had high points that were as good or even better than BB but the drop off completely killed it, to the point where it's become its own running joke. And yeah, Leftovers season 1 is noticeably more cynical and shallow than seasons 2 and 3.
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Dec 16, 2021 16:30
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I made this list during lunch at work (I will edit my mistakes as I find them). I hope I didn't miss a show I really loved and I wished I had more time to go into detail about each show. Honorable Mentions Since I don't believe that limited series (aka miniseries) should be counted I am listing them in my honorable mentions instead. Watchmen, Chernobyl, Haunting of Hill House (you can debate if that truly fits the definition), and We Are What We Are were all great. Top 20 20. Downton Abbey - I know it is just really a soap opera, but I still think those first 3 seasons were great and so was the last movie. 19. Better Things - The daughters on the show can be so annoying, but that is the point. A very original, real feeling show. 18. Girls - gently caress the haters, I really enjoyed this show until the end. 17. Boardwalk Empire - It is slightly uneven after season 2, but it peaks big time again in season 4. 16. Spartacus - This show was a blast to watch and I have to give them credit for coming up with a great prequel in hopes of giving Andy Whitfield time to recover. 15. Banshee - Another fun show to watch. It knew what it was and it did it well. 14. High Maintenance - I love the way it just gives you a slight peek into the life of others and moves on. 13. Terrace House - I watched more episodes of this than any other show in my life. It is the only reality show on my list which tells how much I enjoyed it. 12. Master Of None - Really only 2 seasons, but both of them were perfect 11. Patriot - The most criminally under watched show on my list. 10. What We Do In The Shadows - Originally I had no interest in this as a show, but I am so glad I gave it a chance. 9. Barry - At only 2 seasons I feel like I have this too high, but then I remember the Ronnie/Lily episode and I'm like 9th is just right. 8. The Expanse - There is much debate over the drop in quality story wise since season 3. That said I liked both season 4 and 5, and I realize I would take boring Expanse over most other shows. 7. Game of Thrones - The overall outcome of GoT works, the issue with the final season is it was rushed and it wasn't earned like it should have been That said I pretty much enjoyed every season up to that point and I looking at it as a whole, it belongs in my top 10. 6. Mr. Robot - I loved this show and the only reason it is not higher is I didn't like the finale. While not as bad as GoT, it felt like a cop out. 5. The Leftovers- I believe if this show had ran 5 seasons it would be my number 2 show if not 1, but I am glad HBO did at least give us 3 seasons. 4. The Crown - This is show is close to a perfect as any show on my list. Acting, sets, writing, pacing, directing, and so on. Perfection. 3. Breaking Bad - What a ride it was watching this weekly. Truly it was appointment TV at the time. 2. Halt & Catch Fire - I loved this show from the first episode despite the bumpy ride of season 1 (which to me was still a great season). That said from there every season just got better, and it had a near perfect finale. 1. Mad Men - My pick for the greatest show of all-time comes down to 3 shows; The Sopranos, The Wire, and Mad Men. I really miss this show and characters more than any other show over the last decade (just in case AMC has any ideas, please no reboot ever). My top 3 shows are all AMC shows. It is a shame how far AMC has fallen once it became the TWD channel.
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Dec 16, 2021 19:06
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20 gaki no tsukai new years eve specials - consistently very funny (aside from the year they put yamada in black face for the american police special) 19 danger 5 - big fan of italian spiderman so when this came out i was all over it. havent watched since it debuted but i remember loving it!!! 18 eric andre show - not much needs to be said. madcap perfection 17 hannibal - again not much needs to be said. beautiful show, cool people food set dressing, great performances. bryan fuller back at it again at krispy kreme 16 the righteous gemstones - only one season so far but very good, cant wait for more. danny mcbride but with a huge glorious supporting cast. i sing misbehavin' at least once a week 15 its always sunny in philadelphia - i havent watched since season 8, but this qualifies purely on the back of season 5 which is possibly the funniest season of anything ever 14 on cinema/decker - kind of have to include them both here despite the multimedia nature of the whole enterprise. decker in particular is an amazing situation where the real world got a whole lot stranger than fiction very quickly and the relationship between what the american right wing got up to and what tim was doing with the show got amazingly sticky 13 community - 4.5 out of 6 seasons are amazing comedy. movie............ 12 glow - great acting and writing, shame the final season got reneged on but netflix gonna netflix i guess 11 how to with john wilson - the right show at the right time, a perfect window into the insanity of the world around us that we brush off or ignore due to its otherwise mundane contexts. if any show on tv can get you to really observe the world and drink every detail in, its this one. 10 barry - not much to say, just an amazing show with a lot of stunning "actor acting well to play an actor acting badly on a stage" performances. very natural. 9 vice principals - another decade, another goggins starring vehicle (hes extended cast for gemstones). tightly written 2 season show that knew exactly when to get in and when to get out. for all the danny mcbride on this list youll notice theres no eastbound down, a show i love but the more nihilistic aspects wore on me a little bit. starting with vice principals he got his balance dialed in and if you only tried eastbound and wrote danny off for it, i highly recommend starting here. 8 better call saul - i am not caught up but what i saw was very good. glad bob is ok after that heart scare. 7 bojack horseman - "you know, sometimes i think i was born with a leak, and any goodness i started with just slowly spilled out of me and now its all gone. and ill never get it back in me. its too late. life is a series of closing doors, isn't it?" 6 breaking bad - the second most whipass rollercoaster style tv show ever made (the shield is never going to be dethroned), would be higher up for the initial thrill but it has very little replay value unfortunately (unlike the shield) 5 nathan for you - one of the most human shows ever made. the slow, natural pivot from helping businesses to helping people, the gradually expanding cast of weirdos, culminating in the series finale which also happens to be in my top 10 movies of the 2010s as well. im a ding dong daddy from dumas 4 ping pong the animation - anime, so weird anime haters beware. adaptation of a relatively obscure manga from the 90s. incredible show about the nature of competition, what it means to push yourself, what it means to really want something, whether we can depend on others or only ourselves, the idea of heroes as icons, as personal ideals, the merit of infinite struggle towards a reward you aren't guaranteed...the art style, the music, the voice acting. its perfect. i beg and plead, please watch this show. its on youtube officially subbed or dubbed. give it just 5 minutes of your time at least. i love masaaki yuasa. 3 mad men - i love this show, and theres also not a lot to say about it here. amazing production, writing, acting, directing, high quality across 7 seasons. everyone knows it. most people love it. one of my favourite finales of all time. i cry every time. 2 the leftovers - if it werent for twin peaks, this would be number 1 easily. i hated damon lindeloff before this show, everything he ever touched sucked poo poo and was made by a hack fraud that was flying by the seat of his diaper. but then a funny thing happened to the dude: he grew up, and stopped hanging out with the bad robot crew so much, and suddenly he could grasp things like character, plotting...even planning out ideas and endings in advance??? the leftovers is an achingly beautiful show that really lays so much raw humanity bare on the screen. international assassin is an all time great episode of television, full stop, across the entire history of the medium, but a very very special shoutout to season 3 episode 5 "its a matt, matt, matt world" which manages to hit a punchline on thousands of years of judeochristian theology and worship. "that's the guy i was telling you about" 1 twin peaks the return - im biased. i love lynch. hes the most singular american visual artist of the 20th and 21st centuries, in my opinion. as a reminder, this is a period where edward hopper painted nighthawks and michael bay filmed bad boys 2. twin peaks the return manaes to bridge the gap between the cozy twin peaks that everyone on tumblr loved to make gifs of, and twin peaks: fire walk with me which everyone loved to review bomb because it wasnt cozy like the tv show. he is in his full faculties, every aspect of his artistic inclinations is on display, he touches every theme, he pushes every boundary he is concerned with, he ties everything up in a neat bow, and then asks you to unwrap it using nothing but your big toes. much like the above, and as im sure everyone reading this already knows, episode 8 is another all time entry into the television canon. people are going to spend another 20 years trying to catch back up to lynch all over again, and all we can do is pray that hes around to outdo everyone swimming in his wake one last time. Paper Lion fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 20:42
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Big Bad Voodoo Lou's Top 20 TV Shows of the Decade (2011-2021): 20. Parks and Recreation (NBC; 7 seasons; 2009-2015). I used to love this show. It was hilarious, but also kind (most of the time, except for the characters’ horrible treatment of their harmless co-worker Jerry, which I always found off-putting). But I rank it at the bottom of the list because the first season was bad, and the second season didn’t get really good until two important characters were added at the very end. Also, it seems like such a time capsule of the Obama era now, with hard-working people in government like Leslie Knope going above and beyond for their unappreciative constituents, and also people like the rugged individualist Ron Swanson, on the surface her polar opposite, but ultimately an honorable man who could learn to be better and be persuaded to do the right thing and care about others. I don’t feel as confident in our government now, and I haven’t in a long time. This show may not have aged super-well, but I still think about all the times I laughed my rear end off, and the handful of times I teared up (the proposal and the series finale). 19. The Venture Bros. (Adult Swim; 7 seasons plus a few specials; 2003-2018). The only animated series on my list, it was almost entirely the work of two people, Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer, so there were delays of a year or more between seasons. We only got two longer specials, followed by seasons 5-7, in the past decade. Arguably, some of the finest moments of the show had already occurred, so they can’t count here, but there were still plenty of good gags, deep-cut nerd references, and complex additions to the show’s mythology in those last few years. This show could have run forever, and I would have been thrilled, but I think it ended on a good note, and I worry that any longer might have been bad for Mr. Publick and Mr. Hammer’s sanity and health. Still, Go Team Venture! 18. Warrior (Cinemax; 2 seasons; 2019-2020, but renewed to hopefully return). A show I discovered after it ended, it was a badass martial arts-Western-historical drama from Jonathan Tropper (creator of a show that will rank higher on this list) and Justin Lin (director of Fast and Furious 3-6 and 9), so you know it’s going to be fun. Based on a concept created by Bruce Lee himself, it is the story of Ah Sahm, a skilled fighter who travels from China to San Francisco in search of his sister and gets caught up in Tong warfare. Along the way, he becomes a protector of innocent people and a folk hero in the oppressed Chinese immigrant community. Andrew Koji is terrific as Ah Sahm, who occasionally cracks jokes, letting his stone-faced persona slip. The fight choreography was always excellent – some of the best I’ve ever seen on television. Despite the ongoing plotline, my two favorite episodes were both stand-alone stories: a Western homage in Season 1, and a martial arts tournament in Season 2. But I cannot in good conscience recommend you just watch those out of context, so give it a chance from the beginning. 17. Person of Interest (CBS; 5 seasons; 2011-2016). This looked like the kind of “dad show” I avoid – a CBS procedural about two guys who use a machine to find people in trouble or people about to cause trouble, and then swoop in to either rescue or stop them. The first season began kind of slow, but by the seventh episode, there was a twist that promised more interesting things to come, and it didn’t take too much longer for that promise to come true as enemies became allies, allies became enemies, and newer characters joined the mix. Even though the show kept the procedural aspect with a new number/person every week, it set up elaborate, ongoing story arcs, intense dramatic moments, huge action set-pieces, and became straight-up cyberpunk by the end. I like to think some fuddy-duddy CBS executives were pissed that their “dad show” evolved into something deeper and darker, but it was always fun. If you can get through the first handful of episodes, you’ll encounter major payoffs by staying patient. Also, creator Jonathan Nolan (brother of Christopher) would go on to create Westworld with his wife Lisa Joy, and he’d revisit some themes about all-powerful artificial intelligences and free will on the later show. 16. iZombie (The CW; 5 seasons; 2015-2019). Extremely loosely based on a comic book co-created by my favorite artist, Michael Allred, the iZombie show jettisoned almost everything about the comic and improved the concept in every possible way. Rose McIver pulled off a memorable performance as Liv Moore, a woman who was bitten and turned into a zombie at a doomed boat party. In this show, zombies have pale skin and white hair, but they can retain their mental functions as long as they consume one human brain per week. To keep from going feral, Liv (a medical school dropout) gets a job as an assistant medical examiner to have easy access to brains, then discovers they temporarily give her flashes of the recently deceased people’s memories and aspects of their personalities. She uses this newfound ability to help a detective solve their murders, so it’s a case-of-the-week (or “brain-of-the-week”) procedural. However, the show also establishes some pretty complex, intertwining plots for every season. The brain-eating may not work for squeamish viewers, but it is the central conceit of the plot, and the show is all about plot rather than shock value gore. iZombie was a CW show, so everyone in the cast is ridiculously hot, and every character has multiple opportunities to be the best character. 15. Atlanta (FX; 2 seasons so far; 2016-present). This brilliant show, co-created by actor-writer-comedian-singer-rapper-musician Donald Glover, is so exciting because you never know what it’s going to be from one episode to the next. It can be a dark, stark slice of urban life, an absurdist comedy, an exploration of race and racism, or a brutal, horrific nightmare. With director Hiro Murai around to set a strong visual element, Atlanta packs one of the best casts on television: Glover as hapless, passive underachiever Earn, Brian Tyree Henry as his cousin, up-and-coming rapper Paper Boi, Zazie Beetz as Earn’s love interest Van, and LaKeith Stanfield – maybe one of the best actors working today – as spaced-out, sagelike Darius. Atlanta has been on hiatus for what seems like forever, but Season 3 should be out in 2022, and they are already hard at work on Season 4. Whatever comes next, it will be worth watching, because there won’t be anything else like it, before or after. 14. Daredevil (Netflix; 3 seasons; 2016-2018). This show is close to my heart because Daredevil is my favorite Marvel superhero, and I earned tenure because of a law review article I wrote about Daredevil in 2019 (download it for free at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3389544)… so I can say without exaggeration that a superhero literally saved my career. But also, the show was terrific, with excellent casting and outstanding fight choreography. Each season had one memorable fight sequence that probably blew a chunk of the budget, but you could always see where all that money and expertise went. Just think of “hallway fight,” “stairwell fight,” or “hospital fight,” and it may come rushing back to you. The show borrowed liberally from Frank Miller’s legendary noir-tinged comics, while remixing key moments and going its own way with a lot of them. Sometimes this worked (Punisher), and other times, not so much (Bullseye). My biggest complaint about Daredevil and the other Marvel shows on Netflix were that the seasons were too long, leading to a lot of slow pacing and filler. I think it would have ended with an even better reputation if seasons were eight episodes long, or even ten, rather than 13. But I remain hopeful and optimistic that we haven’t seen the last of these characters, or the perfectly cast actors who played them, in other live-action Marvel projects. And Daredevil has been the most consistently written Marvel comic for the past 20 years, with so many more classic stories by the best writers in comics to adapt. 13. The Americans (FX; 6 seasons; 2013-2018). A show that shifted between slow, methodical pacing and breakneck, stressful intensity (often in the same episode), The Americans may be the least-flashy show on this list, but it was always a master class in acting. Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell played two Soviet spies, living deep undercover as an all-American family in the Washington, D.C., suburbs in the 1980s, raising unwitting kids while committing acts of espionage (and occasionally straight-up murdering people), all under the nose of their next-door neighbor and “friend,” an FBI agent played by Noah Emmerich. Like I said, intense. There are a lot of dangerous missions (aided by fascinating analog technology and fabulous wigs), close calls, horrible betrayals, and the highest of stakes. A final standoff in a parking garage in the series finale featured some of the best performances I’ve ever seen, and it led to a heartbreaking conclusion. But no spoilers from me! You probably didn’t watch this show (not nearly enough people did), so what are you waiting for? 12. Black Monday (Showtime; 3 seasons; 2019-2021). Another ‘80s period piece, this one is a comedy – ostensibly a sitcom – about Wall Street iconoclasts who engineered the biggest stock market crash in history. But as silly as it often was, it was also a smart and clever show, with intricate plotting, full of twists and turns and plenty of brutal betrayals. The ‘80s references were a treat to pick out, and the snappy wordplay was unparalleled. Plus, you had a terrific cast anchored by Don Cheadle, with some of the funniest people around: Regina Hall, Andrew Rannells, Paul Scheer, Casey Wilson, June Diane Raphael, and Ken Marino playing TWO of the slimiest characters ever. Black Monday could surprise me by returning for another season, but if not, it ended on a perfect note. Unfortunately, because it was broadcast on Showtime, I suspect that kept a lot of people who would have loved it from discovering it. 11. The Leftovers (HBO; 3 seasons; 2014-2017). This was certainly a polarizing show, especially since Season 1 is full of unpleasant subject matter and is difficult to get through. But there are plenty of great moments along the way, and then the series was retooled for a very different second season that led to even more unforgettable television. The general concept of the show is that 2% of the world’s population instantly, randomly disappeared during a moment that would be referred to as the “Sudden Departure,” and the survivors were forced to deal with grief and loss, along with reexamining everything they thought they knew about religion, science, life, and death. Some of The Leftovers is brutally sad, but I think there is a lot of hope there too. Justin Theroux, Christopher Eccleston, and especially Carrie Coon and Regina King are incredible in this, and there are a few dreamlike episodes that come later that will fill you with awe for their audacity and ambition. 10. Hannibal (NBC; 3 seasons; 2013-2015). People (including me) always say that it’s a wonder this show existed at all, much less on NBC for three seasons. Bryan Fuller’s artsy take on Thomas Harris’ novels redefines the relationship between sophisticated, multitalented psychiatrist/surgeon/gourmet chef/snappy dresser/cannibal serial killer Hannibal Lecter and sensitive, vulnerable FBI profiler Will Graham. Each man is fascinated by the other, and they have a bizarre mentor/mentee relationship where they constantly hunt and hurt each other, while being the only people who could possibly understand each other. Every aspect of the show is gorgeous, from sets to costumes to elaborate feasts designed by food stylist Janice Poon. Even the murder scenes staged by Lecter and competing serial killers (there sure are a lot of them in this beautiful nightmare reality) are elaborate tableaux that fascinate as much as they repulse. This show is definitely not for the squeamish, but it is so much better than it had any right to be. Mads Mikkelsen’s performance as Lecter makes Anthony Hopkins’ award-winning portrayal from earlier movies seem like hammy community theater by comparison; when Eddie Izzard appears in the show as a killer who is far more vile and depraved than the refined Lecter, he is doing a straight-up Hopkins impression. 9. Justified (FX; 6 seasons; 2010-2015). Another crime show, and another show that could be hilariously funny. It achieved greatness on the strength of the two leads in the roles of their lifetimes, Timothy Olyphant as trigger-happy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens and Walton Goggins as backwoods crime lord Boyd Crowder, two men who grew up in abusive, poverty-stricken homes in the hollers of Harlan, Kentucky, dug coal together, and then went in very different directions in their lives. Raylan and Boyd spend almost the entire series as “frenemies” – they hate each other and wouldn’t mind killing each other, but often find themselves in uneasy alliances against common threats and more dangerous foes. Raylan isn’t as upstanding as he appears and Boyd is much smarter than he appears, but both men are formidable adversaries and incredible fun to watch. Based on source material by the late, great novelist Elmore Leonard (who also wrote Get Shorty, Out of Sight, and Rum Punch, which Quentin Tarantino adapted into Jackie Brown), Justified always had clever, snappy tough-guy dialogue, memorable performances from the “big bads” of each season, and a real sense of place that made it feel different from every other show on television. You’ll never leave Harlan alive, but you’ll want to watch these guys try. 8. The Good Place (NBC; 4 seasons; 2016-2020). I think this Michael Schur sitcom will age better than Parks and Recreation, due to balancing jokes with philosophical exploration of what it means to be a good person and lead a good life. Four deeply flawed people die and find themselves in “The Good Place,” an afterlife that is not what it appears to be, and this kicks off an epic saga with some major plot twists, status quo shakeups, extremely high stakes, ongoing mysteries, noble sacrifices, and more aspects that you would expect from big-deal prestige dramas, not scrappy, hilarious, underdog network sitcoms. It’s a funny show, and a feel-good show with heart, but it’s also a seminar in philosophy and ethics with a strong point of view. You will be a better person if you watch it, and not just because it’s a good TV show that I’m recommending. 7. Childrens Hospital (Adult Swim; 7 seasons; 2010-2016). This parody of medical dramas like E.R. and Grey’s Anatomy started out as eight-minute “webisodes” that aired during the writers’ strike of 2008, then launched as 15-minute episodes on Adult Swim that got more ambitious and high-concept as the show continued, against all odds. It features so many beloved names in comedy, very few of whom would be considered “stars” or household names, but they were all amazing here, usually playing it completely straight, which made it even funnier. Lake Bell, Erinn Hayes, Ken Marino again, Rob Huebel, Megan Mullally, Henry Winkler, Rob Corddry, and Malin Akerman played the core cast, but some of the recurring characters, like Nick Offerman’s Detective Chance Briggs and co-creator David Wain’s Rabbi Jewy McJewJew, filled me with delight whenever they showed back up. And later on, we’d find out that the ”Childrens Hospital” we were watching this whole time was a show within a show, and we’d spend time with the actors playing the characters on that show, which somehow had been running for decades. It all makes sense. Kind of. Or maybe not. But it was brilliant, inspired, chaotic comedy that included everything from direct parodies to slapstick to wordplay to callbacks to gimmick episodes to changes to the entire status quo of the show. Oh yeah, and it was all set in a hospital in Brazil. Which was where they were the entire time. 6. Breaking Bad (AMC; 5 seasons; 2008-2013). I don’t think any shows have built tension better than Breaking Bad. I’m talking edge-of-your-seat, pit-in-your-stomach, heart racing, teeth chattering tension. It makes you feel real fear for the characters, all various shades of bad people who bring their worst problems upon themselves. It’s a show about one brilliant man’s hubris, and how he poisoned his own life and the lives of everyone he interacted with. It’s a pulpy, violent, brutal show about criminals – some of the worst people you’ve ever seen – and a sad tale about how the American health care system fails people. If we had Medicare For All, this public school teacher who developed cancer could have gotten the care he needed without embarking on a life of crime that would cause untold suffering for thousands of people, and so much death and destruction. But a show about a man getting health care would not have provided the gripping drama we got. The only reason I didn’t rank this show higher was because only seasons 4 and 5 aired during this decade. But then we got a prequel/spinoff that surpassed it in some ways, so stay tuned for that! 5. Twin Peaks: The Return (Showtime; 1 season; 2017). I was too young to watch the two seasons of Twin Peaks when they first aired from 1990 to 1991, and I would definitely have been too young to fully understand or appreciate them. But when I finally binge-watched the show in 2009, it quickly became one of my all-time favorites, and it made me a huge fan of the works of co-creator and visionary filmmaker/visual artist/musician/avuncular weirdo David Lynch. Still, it always saddened me that Twin Peaks ended on a maddening cliffhanger. When it returned for a new season of 18 episodes on Showtime in 2017, each one directed by Lynch himself, it felt like a dream come true – a chance to revisit the town, see some old friends, and get some closure. Well, as you might expect from Lynch, the dream was often more like a nightmare. It was often darker, drearier, and more dreamlike than the earlier episodes. Some things never made sense. Others contradicted things we thought we knew or dashed our hopes for happy endings. As nice as it was to reconnect with some beloved characters, the actors were so much older, so frail and infirm. Some died before this season went into production, and a few passed during production or shortly after it aired. The methodical pacing made me think a lot about the passage of time, and how time ravages us all, one way or another. But even when Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost gave us a bit of comic relief or a few happy moments, I found that a lot of the show still frustrated me, and it didn’t give me the ending I hoped for so badly. In the end, I should have known better. Lynch’s works often belie explanation, and he never gives audiences easy answers, catharsis, or finality. Why did I rank this show so high on my list, even when it ultimately left me disappointed? Because it was a gift, because it was the uncompromised vision of an auteur, and because I don’t need to love everything to realize what a drat fine work of art it was. And maybe we’ll see Lynch and his characters and the town of Twin Peaks again… just hopefully not in 25 more years. 4. Halt and Catch Fire (AMC; 4 seasons; 2014-2017). Some people might have read a blurb about this show and thought it sounded boring. Some might have dismissed it as “Mad Men, but in the home computer industry in Texas in the early ‘80s.” Many probably never heard of it at all. But give it a chance, and I promise you’ll be impressed. You will never believe how much you’ll care about five people working in the home computer industry in Texas in the early ‘80s, or how much you’ll both love and hate them at various times, and how deeply you’ll care about all of them relatively early on. I’ve already written about shows that are “master classes in acting,” and here’s another one. None of the leads are household names, but that’s a shame, if not a crime. You should get to know Lee Pace, Scoot [not a typo] McNairy, Mackenzie Davis, Kerry Bishe, and Toby Huss, because they deserved to become big stars after this show, which should have made more of a cultural impact. It’s not too late for any of that to happen. Just like Mad Men showed this advertising agency as a microcosm of the vast societal changes of the 1960s, Halt and Catch Fire shows how much these five characters in their 1980s setting pioneered the technological advances that made our world the way we know it today, allowing you all to be reading my list right now. Watch it. I promise you’ll bawl your eyes out at least once. And they introduce a character in the final season who I really wanted to get a spinoff – let’s see if the dozens of fellow Halt and Catch Fire fans can guess who that was. 3. Banshee (Cinemax; 4 seasons; 2013-2016). Really? He liked it that much? Yes, I did. This little-seen Cinemax series by Jonathan Tropper (who would later co-create Warrior) is on HBO Max now, so you have no excuse. The show is pure id – pulpy action drenched in sex and violence, with plenty of nudity and blood. A criminal tracking down a woman from his past finds himself in a small Pennsylvania town and finds himself thrust into the position of impersonating the new sheriff, who conveniently, nobody had met or even seen yet. He gets together with his old crew, pulls some jobs, makes a few friends and a lot of new enemies, and realizes that outrunning his past is impossible. We meet an incredible villain in the form of the local crime boss, a former Amish man who was cast out of the pacifist community and now rules the town with an iron fist (and a really scary henchman), keeping everyone in fear… except the new impostor sheriff. Like Justified, Banshee is a saga of small-town badassery that often feels like a modern-day Western, but while Justified has it beaten for cleverness and wit, Banshee wins with brutal fight choreography, hot women, and dangerous people doing very bad things to each other. The show is so audacious in what it gets away with, it almost becomes transgressive, and I love and respect it for that. 2. Better Call Saul (AMC; 5 seasons with one coming next year; 2015-2022). With one season remaining to wrap everything up, I can say with certainty that this prequel/spinoff surpassed its original source material, Breaking Bad – at least for me. Both shows were about the criminal rises and downfalls of flawed but good men, full of potential for greatness in their fields. Walter White could have been a successful chemist, but he could never get along with others. Jimmy McGill did become a successful attorney, but he had the heart of a con artist, and he had a better time doing things the wrong way -- taking shortcuts, skirting the law. He identified more with his criminal clients than the polished, pompous lawyers who stood in his way and set him up to fail when he was trying so hard to be good, until he realized he didn’t have to do things their way. Sadly, we still don’t know how Jimmy’s hubris and bad choices as Saul Goodman are going to affect his (and our) beloved Kim Wexler, the best woman on television, played by one of the best actresses on television, Rhea Seehorn. Oh yeah, Mike from Breaking Bad is in this too, and we see the origin story of how both men got involved with the cartel. This show has some of the most gut-churning, intense drama since Breaking Bad aired, but it can also be one of the funniest shows on TV. That balance is necessary to break all the tension, and there is a lot of tension. 1. Mad Men (AMC; 7 seasons; 2007-2015). Maybe this is recency bias, because I never watched this series as it aired, but binged the entire thing with my wife earlier this year. I was skeptical, fully expecting to hate it, but it surpassed all the hype. For me, it completely lived up to its reputation as the pinnacle of prestige TV, alongside The Wire (my favorite show of the previous decade). Only seasons 5-7 aired during this decade, but those were still three impeccable seasons of television. Sometimes Mad Men was inscrutable, sometimes it was frustrating, sometimes it was funnier than most actual comedies, but it always delivered the best writing and acting on television, to say nothing of incredible sets, costumes, and general production design, as you can imagine for a show that spanned the tumultuous era of 1960 to 1970s. Jon Hamm’s mysterious, suave, and deeply flawed Don Draper is an unforgettable character, but the entire ensemble was important, with Elisabeth Moss’s Peggy Olsen as the closest we ever had to an audience point of view character (and poor Ted Chaough emerging as my favorite character). I never expected I would “mark out” at so many legendary moments during what I expected would be an understated drama, or laugh so much, or be shocked, or saddened, or pissed. This show had everything. It was a carousel through one of the most important, turbulent decades in history, and it could only ever have been crafted with this much care, attention, wit, and art during these past two decades. Plus, Mad Men brought us Vincent Kartheiser’s perfectly emphasized reply while his life was falling apart and someone asked how he was doing: “NOT GREAT, BOB!” Big Bad Voodoo Lou fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Dec 23, 2021 |
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Dec 23, 2021 04:22
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Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:7. Childrens Hospital (Adult Swim; 7 seasons; 2010-2016). This parody of medical dramas like E.R. and Grey’s Anatomy started out as eight-minute “webisodes” that aired during the writers’ strike of 2008, then launched as 15-minute episodes on Adult Swim that got more ambitious and high-concept as the show continued, against all odds. It features so many beloved names in comedy, very few of whom would be considered “stars” or household names, but they were all amazing here, usually playing it completely straight, which made it even funnier. Lake Bell, Erinn Hayes, Ken Marino again, Rob Huebel, Megan Mullally, Henry Winkler, Rob Corddry, and Malin Akerman played the core cast, but some of the recurring characters, like Nick Offerman’s Detective Chance Briggs and co-creator David Wain’s Rabbi Jew McJewJew, filled me with delight whenever they showed back up. And later on, we’d find out that the ”Childrens Hospital” we were watching this whole time was a show within a show, and we’d spend time with the actors playing the characters on that show, which somehow had been running for decades. It all makes sense. Kind of. Or maybe not. But it was brilliant, inspired, chaotic comedy that included everything from direct parodies to slapstick to wordplay to callbacks to gimmick episodes to changes to the entire status quo of the show. Oh yeah, and it was all set in a hospital in Brazil. Which was where they were the entire time. Oh man, I have honestly, legitimately never heard of this show and it sounds fantastic, especially if David Wain is involved. Thanks for making me aware of it  Also, great list!
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Dec 23, 2021 04:47
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Jerusalem posted:Oh man, I have honestly, legitimately never heard of this show and it sounds fantastic, especially if David Wain is involved. Thanks for making me aware of it Thank you very much! I believe you can watch the entire series on Hulu, unless that changed recently. And the episodes are SHORT! EDIT: Your list was great too, and very sharp-looking, between the graphics and PARAGRAPH BREAKS! Big Bad Voodoo Lou fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Dec 23, 2021 |
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Dec 23, 2021 04:53
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Jerusalem posted:Oh man, I have honestly, legitimately never heard of this show and it sounds fantastic, especially if David Wain is involved. Thanks for making me aware of it You're in for a treat! Great lists so far, a lot of quality shows to add to my watch list and always nice to read writeups on some of the shows dear to my heart. Have a lot to get done rest of this month but hope to contribute if I can.
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Dec 23, 2021 10:59
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Childrens Hospital is great, and also set in Brazil
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Dec 23, 2021 11:15
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It makes me happy to see Halt and Catch Fire on so many of these lists. I watched that show after seeing it mentioned and raved about in this thread. Thank you goons.
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Dec 23, 2021 14:58
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Children's Hospital is so good for many reasons, but Henry Winkler alone is worth it. I mean, it sure made me a fan, now I'm a Winkler addict, looking for Henry Winkler in anything I can find!
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Dec 24, 2021 00:27
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Heavy Metal posted:Children's Hospital is so good for many reasons, but Henry Winkler alone is worth it. I mean, it sure made me a fan, now I'm a Winkler addict, looking for Henry Winkler in anything I can find! AYYYYYYYYYYY!
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Dec 24, 2021 03:28
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I'm doing my list and it's making me want to go back and rewatch a whole load of TV shows I really don't have time for 
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Dec 28, 2021 15:39
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Hahaha I’ve had the exact same issue
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Dec 28, 2021 15:51
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Hi I spent way too much time on this 20. BROOKLYN NINE-NINE (FOX/NBC) “There’s nothing more intoxicating than the clear absence of a penis.” It’s my firm belief that the peak shelf-life of a sitcom is three seasons, maybe four tops. Once you stretch beyond those limits you will have run through all the most suitable plots, fulfilled the requisite relationship drama and mined the flaws of your characters for laughs. This is why it’s very rare for me to stick with long running sitcoms for more than a few years yet with Brooklyn Nine-Nine I followed the show from start to finish. I’m not going to pretend the show didn’t lose that early lustre over time but the thing is once it dead what still remained was a collection of likeable characters with electric comic chemistry. The precinct of the 99 was a place where no one needed to be an rear end in a top hat for cheap laughs, everyone cared about each other and we cared about them. Sitting down to catchup with Jake, Amy and the gang felt like catching up with family. And in a world where the role of policing in society has come under increasing scrutiny the show managed to acknowledge the flaws in its concept, particularly in a final season filmed under incredibly difficult circumstances that still threaded the needle in giving these characters the send-off they deserved. Real cops are nothing like those you’ll see on Brooklyn Nine-Nine but I think we can all agree that they should be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlBYdiXdUa8 ========  19. SQUID GAME (Netflix) “Red light! Green light!” It was one quiet Friday a couple of months ago when it happened. I was working but it was a WFH day and I didn’t have much to do so I decided to stick on the first episode of that weird Korean show everyone was talking about, just to check it out before I got on with the rest of my plans for the day. Eight hours later I was yelling at Gi-Hun to get on that drat plane having lost an entire day to Squid Game. I’ve always been a big fan of death game media like Battle Royale, the Hunger Games and the Danganronpa series so it’s not really a surprise that I’d be into this story of the exploited poor throwing themselves into their own deaths for the entertainment of a vapid ruling elite. No, the surprise is that everyone else liked it too, quickly turning it into Netflix’s most watched show ever. Perhaps they were drawn to the relentless pace and ever-tightening tension, perhaps it was the shocking twists and heartbreaking betrayals (justice for Ali), perhaps it was because it reflected our own anger at late-stage capitalism’s destruction of the younger generations, perhaps it because everyone was just really hot. The important thing is that it was adored and whether we get the rumoured second season or not I already feel satisfied with what has dropped as a complete story. I’m never looking at marbles the same way again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrchfeybHmw ========  18. A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS (Netflix) “That’s not how the story goes.” It is my unfortunate displeasure to inform you that the online content distribution platform hereafter referred to as Netflix has produced a woefully dismal adaptation of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, adaption here defined as a redefined piece of work to transfer a story to a new medium. Over three seasons this show tells the miserable tale of the Baudelaire children as they are chased by the menacing and pungent Count Olaf in desire for their extensively outsized fortune. Over the course of their adventures our plucky orphans are repeatedly let down by a string of dismal guest stars including Nathan Fillion, Alfre Woodard, Tony Hale and Max Greenfield, all of whom are of no help whatsoever. While you may think that there may still be moments of joy to be uncovered in these environs you would be strictly mistaken. May it behoove you to find a more appropriate use of your time such as watching paint dry or kicking an empty can across a very long and desolate road. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs96Ksod88M ========  17. GLOW (Netflix) “What I’m interested in are real parts.” In the graveyard of television shows that were unjustly killed before their time few have a headstone bigger than GLOW. After three well received seasons were ended on a major cliffhanger the show began filming for a fourth season that was likely to be the last. That was in February 2020. A month later a pandemic happened. The world shutdown for a few weeks which turned into a few months which turned into a giant shitshow. As Netflix began to roll back into production the complications of filming GLOW in a COVID-safe manner were too high and with a likely three year gap between seasons Netflix judged viewer interest would have evaporated and called it a day. Made up of a heady formula of 80s kitsch, pro wrestling and female empowerment GLOW was a combination of three of my very favourite things. Nominally about the struggles of starting up a small women’s wrestling company in California the show used this setting to showcase the desire of women to tell their own stories in a decade where their voices were still highly marginalised. Whether it was Ruth’s desire to land a serious acting role or Debbie’s push to recognised behind the camera as well as in front or Cherry’s refusal to play up to the angry black woman stereotype these were women that refused to be placed in the boxes that society wanted them to be. The show also unabashedly embraced the campness of its own premise with a number of queer characters and storylines that led to some of the show’s most powerful moments. GLOW being cut unfairly short means we will never see Bash confront his own bisexuality, never see Carmen live up to her family’s wrestling legacy and never see Ruth become the success she was always going to be. If GLOW had nailed the landing it would likely be much higher up this list. Netflix made sure it never got that chance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUwOeHyE5CM ========  16. JESSICA JONES (Netflix) “You take your godamned pain and you live with it” Before I start writing this entry I feel bound to confess that I found season 2 of Jessica Jones to be a tedious affair and I didn’t even bother with season 3. So if two thirds of this show isn’t even worth your time then why does it deserve a place on this list? Because season 1 is just so damned special, that’s why. If this list was ranking the best individual seasons of television then Jessica Jones S1 would be top of my list with a bullet and it wouldn’t even be a competition. The first season of Jessica Jones is a triumph, an uncomfortable horror story that makes for troubling but absolutely essential viewing. When the first season dropped I was so hyped I took the day off work and binged the entire thing in one back-to-back session. Thirteen hours later when I came out the side I went straight to the store to buy cigarettes and ice cream and spent the rest of the day staring at the wall. It is impossible to watch the story of Jess, who has been raped in body and mind, stand up to her abuser Kilgrave, a man with the power to make anybody do anything he says. And the full terror of this ability is not something the show flinches away from displaying. Kilgrave is played by a masterful turn from David Tennant who brings the Tenth Doctor’s erratic energy and eternal arrogance to a role that acknowledges those traits with the menace they deserve. Meanwhile the eponymous hero is portrayed by Krysten Ritter in one of those mythologised perfect marriages of actor and character. Cynical, self-sabotaging, chaotic and traumatised in equal measure, Ritter doesn’t shy away from how messy being a survivor can be. The pain stays with you long after the marks are gone. As a victim of sexual violence myself I have never seen my trauma so expertly expressed on screen and as I wrote at the time in TV IV’s end year poll, I feel like this show was made for me. So even after losing a whole lot of places for what followed Jessica Jones still manages a respectable finish in my list. Plus the meltdown when it reached #2 in the SA poll had me in loving hysterics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hWZcvjsA40 ========  15. GAME OF THRONES (HBO) “When you play the Game of Thrones you win or you die” Look I’m just going to say it, ok? I quite liked the final season. Like yes it definitely had some problems but there was also a lot about it I enjoyed. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s dial things back to the end of the 00s when I first started seeing some buzz for a new HBO pilot based on a fantasy book series with an absolute banger of a cast that included Sean Bean, Lena Headey, Harry Lloyd and Peter Dinklage. Right off the bat I was all in. I tracked down the first book in A Song of Ice and Fire and proceeded to tear through the series. By the time the first episode of the show dropped I had already read all of the released books and was beyond excited to see the story hit the screen. And when the series finally arrived I was more than satisfied. It’s easy to forget now considering the direction of the later seasons but for the first four years of GoT it was undeniably masterful television. There were shockingly brutal deaths that left you reeling for days, there were battles that pushed the scope of what can be achieved on television further than ever before and more important than anything else, there were scenes of high calibre actors displaying the best work of their profession. For that was GoT’s true strength: it knew how to take two great actors, put them in a room together and let them act. So for four years GoT was the best thing on television. A cultural phenomenon. Appointment viewing. The highest form of melodrama. Then the books ran out. We all know what happened next. The show wobbled as Benioff and Weiss struggled to find a resolution to a story that not even the creator knew. There were still brief flashes of brilliance such as the attack on Hardhome or the destruction of Baelor’s Sept but the show that everyone had loved was vanishing before our eyes. And so we come to the final season, a clearly rushed endeavour designed to end the story as quickly as possible. Even so, I still quite like it. But then my main investments were Arya and Theon, both of whom had their stories wrap up in beautiful fashion. If you were there for Jon or Tyrion or Jaime or god help you Dany then I can definitely understand your dislike for how the show ended. As it is GoT will go down as one of the most important TV shows in history but with just a few changes it could have gone down as one of the best. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f68ZSBLPMCk ========  14. BLACK MIRROR (Channel 4/Netflix) In the 1930s people got their horror in the form of classic monster tales. In the 80s the slasher genre was king. By the time we got to the 00s horror was just straight up torture porn but audiences are even numb to that these days. Enter Black Mirror, a horror anthology series for a modern age. The Twilight Zone if the zone was what took place beyond our screens. Black Mirror was the love child of Charlie Brooker, a writer and broadcaster with a small cult following most known for his columns in the Guardian and his barely viewed TV critiques on BBC4. With Black Mirror Brooker found his spotlight, a stage with which to display the themes that had permeated his work such as humanity’s growing disconnection in a technological world and the repackaging of our culture into a state suitable for consumption by late-stage capitalism. What would you do if you could block someone from your life as easily as your social media? How would you act if your every waking moment effected your Uber rating? At what point does retributive justice become inhumane torture? Black Mirror asked these questions and so many more by examining the way people relate to technology and how it can bring out the very best and worst in our nature in a manner verging on the prophetic. The very first episode of the show centred on the story of a Prime Minister being blackmailed into loving a pig on live television. Absolutely ludicrous, of course. That is until four years later when the Daily Mail published an account of David Cameron inserting his penis into a dead pig during his Eton days. But that was just the start. Over the course of its run Black Mirror also predicted Google Glass, freemium gaming, digital resurrection, Vtubers, NFTs, #FreeBritney and the Donald Trump movement. It’s the nature of an anthology show that there will be as many hits as there are misses. It’s also the nature of an anthology show that the hits and misses will be different for every viewer but here are the stories that stand out to me. A man looking for one piece of authenticity in a world where every aspect of his life is controlled. A woman waking up in a zombie apocalypse that she seems fated to repeat day after day. A teenager struggling to get out of being blackmailed for a secret far darker than the one you imagine. Two women forging an impossible connection across decades. The hits are the stories you walk away with and they stay with you long after the misses have faded from memory. It’s been two and half years since Black Mirror last gave us content and the world is ripe for a season 6. But then again as we all sit at home, isolated from our loved ones by a global pandemic while billionaires go into space and Mark Zuckerberg brings us screaming into the Metaverse, perhaps we don’t need it. Perhaps we’re already living it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY5It0jnD6M ========  13. WANDAVISION (Disney+) “What is grief if not love persevering?” When WandaVision dropped on Disney+ back in February this year it arrived with an impossible level of weight and expectation. Not only was this show an entry in the media juggernaut that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, not only would it have to tie in to a dozen other Marvel features, not only was it the MCU’s first step in a new distribution strategy that meshed television with film, not only was it the first release for the highly anticipated Phase 4, not only would it have to establish a new direction for the franchise in a post-Thanos world, not only would it be the first release to sate a rabid fanbase in 18 months, not only all of that but also it needed to be completed at the height of a global pandemic. Such a burden would have crushed even many good shows. That WandaVision managed to thread so many needles and come out the other side as a critical darling and commercial success is a testament to the creative capacities of Marvel Studios and the singular vision of the show’s creator Jac Schaeffer. You see the show could have taken the easy way out and told a formulaic superhero story with another disposable villain while the cast got in their contractually obliged quota of quips and Kevin Feige went home to count up another big batch of money. But WandaVision wasn’t interested in doing things the easy way. Instead this highly conceptual show paid homage to a number of sitcoms past including The Dick Van Dyke Show, Malcolm in the Middle and Modern Family in a setting that allowed Elisabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany to show off their finest comedy chops. And this too would have been enough for the show to do but still Schaeffer wasn’t satisfied, layering on top a puzzle box that kept us all guessing thanks to a weekly release schedule that reminded us that just because we can binge watch a show that doesn’t mean we should. Week after week WandaVision kept us guessing as we tried to unwrap its many mysteries. How did Wanda manage to create a sitcom world? Why was Vision alive again? Was that really Monica Rambeau and how did she get to the 1970s? Who the hell was the beekeeper? Who’s responsible for all this is why is it definitely Mephisto? Wait why is Fox’s Quicksilver suddenly in the MCU what the gently caress? Ok that last one was just a boner joke but still, WandaVision set up a number of mysteries and tied them all together with aplomb while also giving Wanda Maximoff the space and story she deserved and also reintroducing beloved side characters like Darcy and Jimmy Woo and also building up multiple future properties and also expanding the world and also giving Elisabeth Olsen enough material to take a real crack at winning an Emmy and also presenting one hell of a bop in Agatha All Along. When you look at everything it had contend with and everything it managed to achieve you have to recognise the existence of this show as the exceptional achievement that it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8u8md-NiHM ========  12. THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT (Netflix) “It’s chess. We’re all primadonnas.” Last year my friend’s fiancée was bitten by a venomous snake. This was in fact the second time he’d been bitten by a venomous snake that year. Now, his job was to work with venomous snakes so this wasn’t exactly too unusual but the difference this second time was that we were living in a world with COVID-19. With my friend unable to spend any time in the hospital with her partner I spent a couple of days at her house to keep her company and prevent her from going too insane. It was under these extreme circumstances that we sat down and watched the entirety of The Queen’s Gambit in one sitting. It was a very welcome respite. Detailing the attempts of a female child prodigy to make it in the surprisingly ruthless world of competitive chess in the 1960s, The Queen’s Gambit manages to achieve an impossible feat. It makes chess look cool. And none are cooler than Beth Harmon, an ice queen at the chess board and wrecking ball away from it. Anchored by a spectacular performance from Anya Taylor-Joy, Beth is a mess of contradictions defined by her traumas seeking salvation in the one thing in life she truly understands even while her addictions and insecurities threaten to cut off her burgeoning career before she can achieve the success that she deserves. Every step of her journey from the basement of her boarding school all the way to the Grand Championships in Moscow is threatened by her own self-destruction. But while Beth may not be able to be relied on to be sober there is one thing you can guarantee, she will look absolutely stunning either way. Impossibly stylish with a line in the best of 60s vintage and an iconic haircut Beth serves up fit after fit over the course of her journey. The Wednesday Addams dress. The Mad Men dress. The White Queen coat. I could spend the rest of my years before the grave trying to pull off Beth’s look and I wouldn’t even come close. She was, is and will forever be the moment. A feminist role model, a total genius, a hot mess, Beth Harmon is all these things and more. But there’s one thing she is above all others. Beth Harmon is a loving rock star. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H-3KHOALP4 Rarity fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Jan 5, 2022 |
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 11. HAWKEYE (Disney+) “Fighting aliens with a stick and a string” As the child of an avid comics fan I’ve been raised on the Marvel universe from birth. Thanks to some Silver Age trade collections my very first memories of reading are about the X-Men and the Avengers and all their various superhero friends. This soon transitioned into reading through the entirety of my dad’s collection numbering in the thousands of comics. Out of all those stories and all those characters Hawkeye has always been one of my favourites and considering that a reassessment of one Remy Le Beau’s sexual practices is long overdue he may in fact now be my favourite character. I was beyond excited when he was originally announced for the Avengers movie only to be let down by a movie that sidelined him. And that’s continued to be Clint’s fate in the MCU, despite some decent scenes in Age of Ultron the franchise has never really given the world a chance to see him the way I see him. I’ve spent the last decade with one of my most beloved characters being the butt of countless pop culture jokes. When the Hawkeye series was announced I expected that this would be the chance for things to change. Here’s the thing about Clint Barton. He takes on some of the biggest super powered threats in the cosmos armed with nothing more than a bow and arrow and yes, that’s dumb. But think about it this way. He takes on some of the biggest super powered threats in the cosmos armed with nothing more than a bow and arrow. He’s doesn’t have a highly weaponised suit of armour. He’s not got super soldier serum running through his veins. He doesn’t have a magic hammer or turn into a big green rage monster. He’s a normal regular guy who stands shoulder to shoulder with giants because he works his rear end off every single day to be their equal. He’s an inspiration to everyone who’s never been called special. And Hawkeye finally made that clear. With a story that focused on a street-level threat and the space to show how Clint relates to his own deeds he is finally presented as the hero he’s supposed to be. If that was all Hawkeye achieved then it would still be my favourite of the MCU shows. Instead that barely scratches the surface for there is another key player in this series and that is Kate Bishop, a character who takes all the qualities I lo ove in Clint and adds a scrappy underdog mentality, eternal optimism, a strong sense of justice and a whole lot of gumption. Hailee Steinfeld is a revelation as the successor to the Hawkeye name, portraying her journey from adorkable college girl to legitimate superhero with so much warmth and heart, immediately installing Kate right in the top tier of MCU characters. We are also blessed with the return of Yelena Belova from Black Widow, here to process her grief over her sister’s death while taking in some of the New York sights. Yelena’s return instantly kicks the show into a new gear. Florence Pugh is having so much fun with the role and her chemistry with Hailee Steinfeld is unbelievable. Kate and Yelena’s scenes together steal the show as they prove to be the ultimate chaotic combo (and totes gay, shut up Marvel). I love Kate. I love Yelena. I love Kate and Yelena and I am obsessed with when we will see them next. And that’s why I rate Hawkeye so highly. Not just because it did my fave justice but because it gave me two huge new faves that I will follow for years to come. And in all this I’ve not even mentioned the introduction of Echo, Tony Dalton’s wonderful turn as himbo Jack Duquense, the much anticipated integration of Vincent D’Onoforio’s Kingpin with the mainline MCU, the confirmation of Laura Barton as Clint’s Mockingbird or the fact that the finale completely nailed the landing. It’s good, folks. It’s real good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeoEv03xWlE Also at this point I need to give a shout out to Dickinson which I started watching because I needed more Hailee Steinfeld in my life. It’s absolutely fantastic and would definitely make my list if I had the time to fit it all in before the deadline. ========  10. THE GENIUS (tvN) “Oh baby, oh baby, then it fell apart, it fell apart” Of all the entries on my list The Genius is definitely the one that’s the most out there. For starters it’s a South Korean reality show starring a range of celebrities from comedians to record producers and news reporters to Starcraft players. Furthermore it takes those celebrities and makes them face off in a series of challenges that require theoretical game logic, social adaptation and mechanic manipulation to determine who is the Genius in what is essentially a less deadly version of Squid Game. It’s the kind of show that doesn’t exist in the West, it’s the kind of show that couldn’t exist in the West. Our television lacks the subtlety to trust the viewer to follow along or the faith to let the show stand on the strength of the games without providing emotionally manipulative backstories. The games are where the Genius really shines presenting its puzzles in a manner that allows the viewer to work through the solution along with the contestants. A deft editorial hand will often withhold key information from the viewer to maximise reveals for the most dramatic effect, often accompanied with the thudding bass of Moby’s seminal track “Extreme Ways”. Few moments in television get the heart racing as fast as those bass lines pumping while a secret alliance shows their hand. There’s one other area in which The Genius is vastly different to Western reality shows and that’s the camaraderie between the contestants. Korean culture ensures that everyone treats each other with respect and the competition rarely devolves beyond playful. It’s just fun to spend time with these people. Despite this attitude towards the game the show still does an impressive job of pulling out long-term storylines. Whether it was Jinho’s unparalleled tricks in season 1, Sangmin’s quest for revenge in season 2, the Dongmination of season 3 or Kyunghoon’s redemption in season 4 each season had its own story to tell. Stories that emerged naturally through the course of the game without any instruction or interpretation by producers. No, we don’t make reality TV like this but we really should try. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12TwC3cZzQo ========  9. MY LITTLE PONY: FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC (Discovery Family) “They are my best friends, and they are without a doubt the most important ponies I know” Look, it’s 2021. Can we all be mature about this? Yes? Good. As many posters on this forum will be aware I’m trans. And I wasn’t one of those kids who knew they were trans from the time they were 5. I didn’t figure that poo poo out until I was at university. All of that is to say that my childhood years were filled doing things that would typically be gendered male. I played football and climbed trees, I had my Nintendo and my Legos, my TV shows were Captain Scarlet and Knightmare. I didn’t know I had other options available to me and so like many other trans women I missed out on the formative experiences that would be considered more feminine. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic gave me a chance to reclaim some of that space. Is it really a kid’s show? Yes. Was brony culture obnoxious? Yes. Were there a large subset of straight white male fans who couldn’t handle that a show didn’t exist to tend to their exact whims? Oh god yes. But I didn’t care about that. I was happy to just disengage from the fanbase and enjoy this charming cartoon about a bunch of friends where the highest stakes were normally on the level of whether a birthday party would go ahead as planned. And charming this cartoon sure was with a core cast of loveable characters with such varied personalities that any kid would find someone to relate to. In truth, I see bits of myself in all the ponies at various times. Mostly it’s Pinkie Pie’s exuberance and Rarity’s flair for the dramatic (and yes, that is where my username’s from) but I can be insecure like Fluttershy or socially awkward like Twilight Sparkle, stubborn like Applejack or thoughtless like Rainbow Dash. And yes, these ponies are very flawed because FiM doesn’t shy away from the fact that people make mistakes. It just knows that it’s how we recover from them that counts. That’s all the show ever had to be. A show for children with a good message at its core elevated by treating children as mature enough to understand modern comedy conventions. And for me, watching it allowed me to connect with a childhood I never had a chance to experience. I’m never going to get to know what it was like to be a young girl but at least for a short time this week while watching this show it was able to give me the illusion that I did. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzsxfO7dBlA ========  8. AEW DYNAMITE (TNT) “Light the fuse, bring the boom” I’ve always been the type of person who’d avoid giving votes to wrestling shows in these TV IV polls. I consider my love for wrestling to be a completely independent to my interest in television. Two completely distinct mediums. However when I think back over the last ten years of TV it would be remiss of me to ignore a show that I have looked forward to week after week for the last two years and which in all that time has not disappointed me once. AEW Dynamite has week after week delivered two hours of thrilling action with a set of dynamic characters while telling long-term stories with shocking twists and regular moments of cathartic pay-off. Wrestling be damned, that’s something that many normal TV shows struggle to achieve. Yes, this is a show about men and women squaring off in the ring in a fake fight with all the gimmickry and theatrics that implies. If you can’t get excited about someone flipping through the air or falling through a table that’s on fire then AEW isn’t for you. But if you the idea of fake fighting isn’t actively repellent to you then watching this show will reward you with a slate of rich, three-dimensional characters. Characters like Adam Page, a young up-and-comer who allowed his friendships with the best wrestlers in the world to eat away at his insecurities until he was a mess of millenial anxiety. Characters like Eddie Kingston, a veteran who was grinding in obscurity for twenty years now finally faced with his big opportunity but worried his body may now be broken to make it count. Characters like Cody Rhodes, a man so devoted to being the hero of his own story that he doesn’t realise his hollow words about hard work and the American Way have turned him into the villain. This is the beauty of AEW. Characters aren’t just arbitrarily forced into boxes that say good and bad, able to be switched at a whim depending on the needs of the next card. Instead characters are fully realised humans, their falls from grace are clearly motivated and their redemptive arcs are duly earned. Their moments of triumph are all the sweeter because we have watched them struggle following a path of evolution that made sense every step of the way. Nowhere is this more apparent than Adam Page’s path to the AEW title, a masterpiece of storytelling across three years with numerous chapters that make up one clear and consistent tale. It’s a feat unheard of in wrestling and a story that deserves to stand as equal to any television show. Plus there were guys doing flips through the air and going through tables that were on fire and what could be more rad than that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_x3TNEN51s ========  7. SEX HOUSE (Youtube) “Cloudy drink kills frog” Hang on, maybe this is the entry that’s the most out there. Sex House was a nine episode miniseries produced by the Onion and released on Youtube that acted as a parody of 00s reality TV, specifically of the MTV trash variety such as A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, Flavor of Love and the grand queen of the genre Jersey Shore. Sex House was the story of six sexy singletons ready to get sexed up except they weren’t all sexy, they weren’t all single and they definitely weren’t all ready to get sexed up. Sure, the likes of gym bro Jay, dumb blonde Tara and alt-girl Alex were typical fare for a show of this kind but there was also shy girl Erin, the middle-aged and married Frank and Derek, who was in the uncomfortable position of being the only gay person on a straight dating show. Such a cast promised a unique set of dynamics to poke fun at tacky reality TV culture. And that’s fine enough for a chuckle or too but it’s not enough to be hailed as one of the greatest TV shows of the decade. So why exactly do I rate Sex House as the 6th best TV show of the last ten years? Because Sex House got loving weird. Yes, what started out as a simplistic skewering of reality trash quickly veered off the rails into becoming something very different entirely. The producers haven’t left them any food, there’s no way to get rid of the garbage and you do not want to ask about the white mould in the bedroom. And that’s just the beginning. Over the course of our time in the house there was a kidnapping, a frog infestation, an accidental murder, a mass attempted drug rape and a man assaulting his own gonads with a hammer. Characters that were presented as broad stock archetypes turned out to have incredible levels of depth, reminding us that the people we see on reality TV have been edited and directed into shallow representations of their real selves. Following Sex House week on week was an absolute trip. You would tune in with no idea where they were going to take the show next and each time they went further than you could have possibly imagined. Sex House satirised not just the way that we create media but also the way that we consume media and in so many ways it was ahead of its time. Not only did it predict the rise of Love Island, Too Hot to Handle and the rest of its ilk but it also set new ground in the world of comedy. It was the precursor to a new wave of surrealism that was featured in the likes of Nathan For You and Review, not to mention being on the front edge of streaming as digital distribution. With a full runtime clocking in at just over an hour if you’ve never seen this insane dive into madness you owe it to yourself to discover one of the unsung gems of modern television. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0App7QizQCU ========  6. ORPHAN BLACK (Space) “There’s more than biology between us” “Hey yo, you gotta watch this show but we’re not going to tell you anything about it going in”. That was the initial pitch given to me by the TV IV goons to get me into Orphan Black. Not long later I was looking at Sarah Manning as she watched herself commit suicide by jumping in front of a train. As opening plot hooks go it’s an absolute belter. From there the show quickly pulls you in to a world of an underground transhuman movement, a fundamentalist religious cult, an outlaw military division and conspiracy on conspiracy on conspiracy. This a world where allegiances are ever-shifting and trust is a hard commodity to find. In such a world the only bonds that can be trusted are family and nothing is stronger than sisterhood. Despite having little in common the women are the core of this story are connected by far more than blood. There’s Sarah, the runaway orphan from England who doesn’t know how to stay out of trouble. There’s Cosima, the biology post-grad who’s more interested in science than people. There’s Alison, the suburban housewife who needs every aspect of her life to be just so. There’s Helena, A LITERAL SERIAL KILLER. And there’s Rachel, a cut-throat corporate bitch in a power suit. And Tatiana Maslany shines as all of them. Oh, yeah. I guess I forgot to mention that bit, huh? Yes the main hook of Orphan Black is that this is a story on human cloning meaning TatMas has to play every leading role. She plays clones, she plays clones playing clones, she plays clones playing clones playing clones and she nails every single one. It’s rare to see an outstanding acting performance in a show, here Tati-chan delivers over a dozen of them in a series of work that rightfully saw her rewarded with an Emmy. She’s also backed up a fabulous supporting cast including Jordan Gavaris and Maria Doyle Kennedy who bring real heart to their roles as Sarah’s adopted family. (We just keep coming back to that word, don’t we?) Interest in Orphan Black had waned by the time the show wrapped its fifth and final season. Many viewers had been tuned out as the weight of secrets and betrayals and threatened to collapse with the addition of yet another shadowy organisation and I think that’s a drat shame because while the show threatened to lose its way at the midpoint the final season did a drat fine job of bringing everything together in a manner that made every twist feel relevant. More importantly the show remembered what it had always been about at its core, reuniting the sestrahood and showing that as humans we are stronger together than we are apart. As fans of Lost, BSG and GoT will tell you it is very difficult for a genre show to deliver a satisfying conclusion. Orphan Black pulled it off. If you’re one of those who dropped out midway through feeling like the show had lost of track of where it was going then you owe it to yourself to come back and finish the ride. After all, now you know where it leads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsTc_o5ixU8 ========  5. AMERICAN VANDAL (Netflix) “If enough people see you a certain way do you start to believe they’re right?” American Vandal was a mockumentary aimed at big mid-10s trend of true crime documentaries such as the podcast Serial or Netflix’s own Making A Murderer. It’s almost funny how our interest in such things has waned in recent years, perhaps because there’s enough true crime in the news these days, but when American Vandal first dropped the interest in the genre was its height and the show took great delight in skewering its conventions. Most true crime stories are about murders, robberies, kidnappings, the worst of human nature. American Vandal takes those concepts and transposes them to a midtown high school where the worst things you can do are draw 27 dicks on 27 cars or cause an entire cafeteria to poop their pants, the latter of which is presented in hideous reconstruction. The show takes great pleasure in using these stylings to explore key tangents like how many y’s in a heyy means you want the D or which students have the most bangable mums and mines these situations for maximum comedic effect. But American Vandal is more than just this. American Vandal is a murder mystery presenting a classic whodunnit scenario and a twisting series of clues, misdirections and red herrings along the way to its denouement. For all the inherent silliness of its premise the show still treats its mysteries as worthy of solving. Suspects are presented, examined and discarded as new evidence comes to light revealing new potential scenarios and one key piece of information can change everything. The paintcan at the party. The destruction of Coach Rafferty’s office. The fourth poop crime. American Vandal knows how drop bombs and when an episode ends you’ll be desperate to keep going to learn what happens next. At the end of the first season there is one moment in particular where if you’ve been paying attention the entire case will be blown wide open. The clues have always been there, you just need to know where to look. As a mystery story this show presents everything with the most satisfying of conclusions. But American Vandal is more than just this too. American Vandal is an insightful examination of growing up, a dissertation on the pressures of working who you are when the world has already told you who you’re going to be. The star athlete, the dumb burnout, the weird outsider, we all get placed into these roles which we are expected to play even though there is always so much more to all of us. The star that’s loved by all feels completely alone. The burnout slinging fries instead of going to school still has aspirations. The outsider who intentionally keeps everyone at bay just wants to connect. But when the world has already set out your path is there any way for you to escape this fate? At its heart this is the question that American Vandal examines as it questions the role of educators in our development, the consequences of bullying and the impact of feeling lost. American Vandal is a mockumentary. It’s also so much more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6nopK7tZAk ========  4. SENSE8 (Netflix) “The violence I realised was unforgivable was the violence we do to ourselves” Ever since bursting into the mainstream with the release of the Matrix in 1999 the Wachowski sisters have been telling stories that examine the forces that drive human connection and the boundaries where human perception and reality intersect, all viewed through the kind of queer lens you’d expect from Hollywood’s most well known trans creators. In Sense8 they have produced their magnum opus, the clearest distillation of the ideas that permeate their work. It should come as no surprise then that its reception was somewhat divided but for those that connect with their work they will find in Sense8 a show that is hauntingly beautiful and deeply personal. Featuring the kind of high concept you would expect from the Wachowskis, Sense8 is the story of eight individuals from across the world separated by culture and distance but intimately connected by their senses, memories and emotions. Despite facing different struggles they are able to draw on each other’s strengths to survive. There is a deep government conspiracy tying this all together, of course, as is only proper for this type of genre show but this is secondary to the importance of living their own lives. And it turns out whether a beat cop in Chicago or a safecracker in Berlin, an actor in Mexico City or a bus driver in Nairobi, a DJ in London or a hacker in San Francisco, a business executive in Seoul or a pharmacist in Mumbai, our experiences are far more similar than we would ever admit. It’s in the feeling of singing your favourite song, the taste of your most beloved meal, the sweat of the dancefloor and the heat of sexual pleasure. This is where the true beauty in Sense8 can be found. In the scenes where the barriers between the cast fall down and the sheer joy of sharing these moments can be felt in a series of artistic sequences that wonderfully shot by the show’s fantastic cinematographic team. The show is also unapologetically queer, presenting a world where love should be available for all and even sexual labels have room for interpretation. Sense8 is by no means a show that will resonate with everyone, as reflected by its unjust cancellation at the end of the second season. Fortunately Netflix saw enough sense (heh) to order one last special to wrap things up, producing the kind of perfect happy ending that most shows would struggle to earn but which for Sense8 was only right for it was always about love. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fElAFzOQHv8 ========  3. THE GOOD PLACE (NBC) “Take it sleazy” As sitcom pitches go ‘a woman accidentally gets sent to Heaven and has to avoid going to Hell, also there’s lots of philosophy lessons’ doesn’t exactly sound like a laugh riot. And with such a concept The Good Place was initially quite a tough sell. However halfway through its first season the show proved that it was willing to race through its plot like Lewis Hamilton and they straight up just blew it all to hell (and I do mean literal Hell) in the season finale. By this point The Good Place had already started to build up its fanbase and by the end of its run it was regarded as one of the biggest critical darlings of the 21st century. I think that’s because while it portrayed such a conceptual setting While it was first advertised around its main leads Kristen Bell and Ted Danson, like any Michael Schur product the show quickly transitioned to being about found family. As found families go four dead people, one eternal being and one not a girl might not be the kind you’d expect but their trials and struggles soon formed unbreakable bonds and despite putting them in the most unbelievable situations the show always stayed grounded in character. We could always rely on Chidi’s inability to make a decision or Tahani’s extensive collection of celebrity friends to raise a laugh. And then there’s a fantastic array of guest stars including Marc Evan Jackson, Adam Scott, Maya Rudolph and Maribeth Monroe all delivering memorable performances. But for all that The Good Place was billed as a regular sitcom it was so much more than that. Over the course of four seasons the show put together a puzzle box that would put Lost to shame, setting up mysteries and paying them off time after time. Whenever you thought you had the show pegged it would decide to dump its entire setup and start over as something else entirely. In a genre where sticking to the formula is all we know it dared to rip up the script over and over again, in the process building a unique mythos that was so fun to explore. And it would be remiss not to mention the show’s finale which acted as a fitting tribute to the characters we had grown and who had grown to love each other, making sure that each one got the exact ending that they deserved. This was a show full of heart, full of life lessons and fully reminding us that every now and again we all need to take it sleazy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut0ai4s4mjU ========  2. MR. ROBOT (USA) “I wanted to save the world” In truth there was very little separating my top two shows. Both are incredibly well crafted pieces that are well written, feature the best actors in the business and have a penchant for straight up loving with your head. However after much deliberation I found I resonated more with Mr. Robot and its themes of disconnection from society, disaffection with modern day capitalism and nihilism at the prospects of our future. I guess I’m just cynical like that. But it’s hard not to be when you follow the journey of vigilante hacker Elliott Alderson as he is exposed to the dregs of humanity in his quest to take down Amazon. Oops, I mean E Corp. Or as the show always refers to it, Evil Corp. See, here’s the thing about Mr. Robot. Everything we see and everything we hear is filtered through Elliott’s interpretation of events and Elliott isn’t exactly entirely with it. With an acknowledged history of hallucinations and psychosis we can never be sure that the reality we witness is legitimate, a set up that the show immediately plays into as it creates a potential Fight Club with Elliott’s mysterious ally, the titular Mr. Robot. While many shows would get cute around this central question to hide a big twist, Mr. Robot places this questionable reality at the forefront of the viewers’ minds. As events unfurl it becomes clear that this may just be the start of Elliott’s delusions. Even our most basic preconceptions must be reassessed, nothing can be taken for granted. However there’s more to Mr. Robot than just the headfuck. It’s also a spectacular thriller with numerous tension-filled scenes. With show creator Sam Esmail holding the majority of writer and director credits every episode displays a unique visual style that exemplifies the off-kilter lens through which we view the world. Rami Malek delivers a portrayal of Elliott that finds the ties between his psychoses and his humanity in a performance that won him an Emmy and catapulted him to mainstream Hollywood success. Carly Chaiken is also a standout as the bruised and defensive Darlene, Elliott’s closest ally. There’s also a raft of supporting performances from stalwarts like Christian Slater, Bobby Cannavale and BD Wong. With its critique of corporate greed and anarchic sensibilities Mr. Robot acts as a scathing indictment of late-stage capitalism and rising fascism that would turn out to be all too prescient. No television show over the last ten years has better captured the world we live in or the dark path we risk going down and that is why for me Mr. Robot is the best show of the decade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A3dSZtkv3s ========  1. DICKINSON (Apple+) I've just finished watching this show and it will require much processing. I don't yet have the words to accurately sum up my feelings, I will save those for the 2021 thread once I've had more time. Suffice to say this is the most profoundly personal show I've ever seen. Never before have I felt a show speak so directly to my experience. I'm going to be thinking about this show for years, if not the rest of my life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCSrWUMzur4 Rarity fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Jan 5, 2022 |
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Dec 30, 2021 19:21
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gently caress yes! Awesome list, Rarity I’m really running out of time and struggling with inspiration to write so my last entries may end up really truncated. But I’m very glad at least one other person will have You’re the Worst on their list
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Dec 30, 2021 19:37
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Escobarbarian posted:I’m very glad at least one other person will have You’re the Worst on their list I had a couple of late ideas that would have pushed it off the list but I didn't want to write another entry 
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Dec 30, 2021 19:39
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Oh shi. I completely forgot You're the Worst! But I don't know if it still fit into my top 20. I already left out bunch of other shows. 
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Dec 30, 2021 20:00
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Great list, Rarity.... man that first season of Jessica Jones was so loving great. Like you, I struggled through season 2 and ended up not bothering with season 3, but season 1's quality absolutely cannot be denied. Also, Sex House was great and also lead into the beautiful Lake Dredge Appraisal series which has an utterly incredible final episode.
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Dec 30, 2021 23:06
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Jerusalem posted:but season 1's quality absolutely cannot be denied. weeeelllllllll………
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Dec 30, 2021 23:11
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Escobarbarian posted:gently caress yes! Awesome list, Rarity Don't stress, I'll inevitably push the deadline
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Dec 30, 2021 23:23
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Escobarbarian posted:weeeelllllllll……… This better be a David Tennant impersonation, or else I'll.... have to accept that we have different subjective opinions 
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Dec 30, 2021 23:32
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Jerusalem posted:Great list, Rarity.... man that first season of Jessica Jones was so loving great. Like you, I struggled through season 2 and ended up not bothering with season 3, but season 1's quality absolutely cannot be denied. I avoided including shows that had one or more seasons I liked or loved, but went downhill later. That eliminated True Detective, Fargo, and Jessica Jones for me.
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Dec 30, 2021 23:39
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Man, yeah True Detective Season 1 was so loving good, 2 was utterly bizarre (and NOT good!) and 3 ended up being solid but by that point the momentum/magic was gone.
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Dec 30, 2021 23:45
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Jerusalem posted:Man, yeah True Detective Season 1 was so loving good, 2 was utterly bizarre (and NOT good!) and 3 ended up being solid but by that point the momentum/magic was gone. I think I liked Season 2 better than most people just because neo-noir is my favorite genre, but it had a decent cast and still wasted so much potential. If it had been a 1950s period piece, I think that would have improved it in every possible way, in most people's estimation -- especially with the closeted veteran motorcycle cop, whose plot ultimately went nowhere. It would have resonated more if he was a World War II veteran. Season 1 is still one of the best seasons of TV I've ever seen, period.
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Dec 30, 2021 23:50
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