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20) Mr Robot: A lot of the thrill elements I like from shows like The Americans, Breaking Bad and Continuum with the brain problems of Bojack and Better Call Saul. Pity about the ending and pity it restrained itself from really getting weird. But still a great show. It reminds me a bit of Dispatches From Elsewhere (a show that did not make my list) where a good fun show is basically ruined by an uninspired ending. I am happy that it managed to 1) reveal the initial twist relatively early 2) move on from that reveal and 3) not get trapped in a series of never-ending mystery boxes. The show was also somewhat derailed by real life events, one of the dangers of making a show set in what is ostensibly "now" and "here". 19) The Expanse: Best Space Opera since Babylon 5. Great story, great special effects, trained rat actors. A little more restrained than I normally like but still very good. The transition to Amazon wasn't totally clean and I felt the first Amazon season was a little boring and the second sort of went up its own butt. First three seasons are amazing and then it beings a slow decline. Still good all the way through, but I'd recommend against the temptation to binge the later seasons since your attention will likely drift and then you'll miss everything. You have to *watch* it, not *binge* it. 18) The Boys: The cast more than anything makes this show work. That and having the shockingly controversial and timely messages that 1) Nazis suck and 2) There is a club of powerful people and you ain’t in it. 17) Raised by Wolves: I like crazy shows that go off the rails and do weird poo poo. The others shows that just go bugfuck crazy on my list (Breaking Bad, 12 Monkeys, Continuum) basically managed to hold it together which Raised by Wolves does not. But it doesn’t need to. Let it explode in a thousand directions! 16) Mad Men: A great prestige show. Seasons 5 and 7 were amazing, season 6, ehhh, not so much (or was that 7.1, I can't quite remember but I'm sure people will know what I am talking about). I can understand the thematic importance of doldrums but it doesn’t make for fun TV. But the madness of collapse and recovery in season 7 and 15) Counterpart: The secret twist that it didn’t take place in Berlin like we thought but Wuhan was cool. JK Simmons is great, spy thrillers are fun, dimensional shenanigans/butterfly effect stuff is cool. Some people didn't like the second season as much because it transitioned away from being a more cerebral spy thriller to just a straight-up spy thriller but I thought it was earned. It is a bit like chess where a sort of inertia/fatalism takes place after a while because the board is set and there are really only so many good moves you can make at that point. I thought it followed its logic, earned its place and went for a satisfying resolution. 14) Cobra Kai: AND THEN IN 2021, COBRA KAI SEASON 3 CAME OUT. YOU KNOW WHAT? I DON’T CARE WHAT THE CRITICS SAY, I THOUGHT IT WAS PRETTY GOOD. NOT AS GOOD AS COBRA KAI SEASON 1 AND COBRA KAI SEASON 2, BUT HEY, WHAT SHOW IS? I put this show on as background noise while I worked. I’m sure I saw Karate Kid when I was a kid, but I don’t really remember it. I had a friend who would bring back bootleg Kung Fu action movies and Karate Kid isn’t going to stand out vs those. However, the show drew me in to the point where I had to stop watching it while I worked because it was too distracting. The actors have a natural charisma and it is just a fun crazy 80s story. 13) Search Party: I had to ninja edit this one in because I knew I was forgetting something! Take a bunch of the worst people you know and then watch them try to act in their own rational self-interest. Watching their narcissism and ego play out as their lives unravel is immensely satisfying. The cool gimmick of the show is that the characters remains the same and the plot advances but the genre changes each season. It can lead to weird tonal shifts but it keeps the show fresh and exciting. Plus, the stakes of different genres creates a nice escalation of tension. It's a younger Always Sunny played straight instead of for laughs (though there are plenty of laughs). 12) Devs: A nice show that makes you think. Personally, I think there are a lot of different ways the show could have gone to make an even better, different show but thinking along those lines is fun and what I like about TV. Sitting in bed before I go to sleep thinking about how Devs would be different if some elements had changed, which is fitting for the show. Even taken straight, it is a wonderful achievement. A good show about fatalism, life, the quest for meaning, techbro culture and what it means to be alive. 11) Continuum: Another great show that just gets more bonkers as it goes along. The show starts as a fairly bland procedural going after time traveling criminals which is fun in a "sci-fi schlock" kinda way. It feels a little propagandish (not uncommon in SciFi) because the "bad things" the "bad guys" are doing seem like they'd be the heroes on another show. Noble extremists. Then it gets really interesting when the protagonist starts to realize that the future she is from may, in fact, not be a good future at all and then taking steps to stop that. Friends become enemies and enemies become friends in unexpected and exciting ways while everything gets stranger and wilder and wilder and stranger is great. Plus it is fun to see Vancouver as Vancouver instead of Vancouver as New York or DC or Berlin or Space City 1, or whatever. 10) She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Just a fun gay romp, making the homosexual subtext of the original He-Man text. Swift-wind is the best, Catra is the best, Scorpia is the best. Just so much fun. I dare you to watch this show and not smile. 9) The Good Place: Look, I’m a sucker for moral philosophy. A comedy about moral philosophy? I’m in. Back-door Buddhist proselytizing to an American audience? I’m down. Beautiful, ugly cry ending? What more could you want? 8) 12 Monkeys: The first season was part of a fad at the time where networks would ask, “What if we took a 2 hour movie, made it with a much lower budget and stretched it over a 12 hour season?” The fad was mercifully short but 12 Monkeys was able to rise beyond its humble beginnings. After getting renewed for a second season, I imagine they had a meeting in the writers room where the lead calmly explained that for the next few days they were going to be taking a regime of psilocybin and Datura and diving into bathtubs full of cockroaches. It just got weird and loving wild. Like Breaking Bad, the show was at its best when it had written itself into a corner and rather than move on to the next mystery box or introduce something new, they looked at what had happened before and built a solution from that groundwork. This show didn’t go off the rails, it launched itself into space. A stellar show with a stellar cast and a stellar finish where everything feels earned. Will you join me in the red forest, free of the tyranny of causality? 7) Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Perfect musical TV. Every episode is over the top and it always gives me a good reason to laugh with great music in every season. Team Josh. 6) The Americans: Great spy drama. On a recent re-watch, I was shocked by how well they managed to make the neighbor dynamic work on the show without feeling completely ridiculous. Thrilling, funny, interesting period in history, just so much good stuff is crammed into this show. 5) Always Sunny: I have no idea how a show that has been on TV this long continues to be so loving funny. Each time there is a new season, I approach it with a lot of apprehension because, certainly, this is the time it is going to just suck. But, every time, it miraculously doesn’t. It doesn’t even feel stale, it is some weird wizardry I do not understand but the world is a better place for it. 4) Mandalorian: After disappointing prequels, bad sequels and some mediocre TV shows, this basically rescued Star Wars for me. Go back to basics and steal from spaghetti westerns and Japanese movies that steal from spaghetti westerns. 3) Better Call Saul: If Breaking Bad is a laser trying to push atoms together and create fusion, Better Call Saul is a turkey fryer explosion. It is on a more mundane scale where it is something that we can picture and experience but its destruction is a sight to behold. It polished off a lot of the rougher edges from Breaking Bad and is just an absolute blast to watch and rewatch. 2) Bojack Horseman: Like Bojack, I can be sad sometimes. I also have issues with substance use. Couple that hook with great writers, great animators and a great cast – what’s not to like? A lot self-indulgent but hey, isn’t that what TV is for? It’s not often that I see something on TV that is like, a picture of what goes on inside my head. Bojack did that all the time. 1) Breaking Bad: This show is so good, watching it makes me angry. It was also strangely personal, when it started I was a frustrated scientist in a very bad relationship. I did a bunch of things outside of my comfort zone and found a lot of success (and some tragedy) there. So, I was sold after the first season. Having to wait for each season was an agony. And each season they just turned up the heat more and more getting crazier and crazier until boom. It ended the way it always had to in one of the, if not the, greatest ending of all time. Just an outstanding achievement in television. Outstanding cast, Brian Cranston and Aaron Paul are stellar, but the side characters are also amazing. Bob Odenkirk, Betsy Brandt, Anna Gunn, Dean Norris, Jonathan Banks, etc. OnlyBans fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Nov 6, 2021 |
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Sep 27, 2021 07:34
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 02:21 |
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Don't overthink it, just make a list. Once you have that you'll quickly realize that you liked X better than Y and when you think about it A shouldn't be on the list at all because you *really* liked B and A is only good because when B was over you needed something else like that to watch. Then when you are done, you'll be like "Holy poo poo, I forgot about J! J was like the loving best show ever!"
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Oct 23, 2021 06:00
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