2018 Year End Report: TV Shows

As time goes on, I seem to be watching more and more TV – but less on broadcast TV, and more on streaming and On Demand. While I don’t review TV on this website, I do like to keep track of what is the best of what I watch – and once a year, do a recap.

 

Shows I Really Should Have Watched: I should have watched Castle Rock – it is extremely my thing – but I never quite got to it. I would have watched Homecoming – but I don’t have Amazon Prime, so it didn’t happen.

 

Show I’m Still Watching: Escape from Danmorra – I got started late, and am quite liking it, but I cannot place it above without having seen the whole thing.

 

Shows I Gave Up On This Year: The Deuce just kind of fell by the wayside this year – I mean to catch up, but let’s be honest, I may not. Legion is a show I liked quite a bit in season 1 – but honestly, I couldn’t get the energy up to try and keep up in Season 2. Luke Cage is a show I started watching, but we gave up on pretty quickly as we realized just how stretched out the show had become. 13 Reasons Why was effective in Season 1, but Season 2 felt so unnecessary, so I just never started (especially when I learned they spent a lot of time insulting 2001: A Space Odyssey). The Walking Dead has become so dull and predictable I have been trying to stop for a while, and finally did. Westworld just strikes me as the type of show that is all about its structure, and if they just told the story, it would be wholly uninteresting, so I just stopped. Young Sheldon was fine, but I got behind, and never felt the need to catch up.

 

Shows I watched, but aren’t really great: The Big Bang Theory (Season 11b), is comfort food – completely undemanding, but is still fun – I understand why it isn’t great, and I understand I don’t care. Daredevil (Season 3) was the best of the recent Netflix Marvel shows – but was still 5 hours of story stretched over 13 hours. House of Cards (Season 6) is something I finished just because I felt I had to – but sheesh, was it awful this year. Jessica Jones (Season 2) delivered the best season of any of the Marvel Netflix shows in Season 1 – which kept me going through a not great second season, which was carried almost wholly on Krysten Ritter and Janet McTeer. Madam Secretary (Season 4b) is a nice balm for the current political climate, which is why I keep coming back each week. Modern Family (Season 9b) is a show I half watch as I wait for Black-ish to start – it’s still able to get a chuckle once in a while, but nothing more. Murphy Brown (Season 11) was a return of an old favorite from my childhood – I know it isn’t great, and yet I’ll never miss an episode. Orange is the New Black. Roseanne (Season 1) is a show I watched most of – and then she went on her racist tirade, and I couldn’t finish even if I had wanted to – it’s too bad Roseanne had to be cancelled (and it did have to be cancelled), because at its best, the show worked. The Simpsons (Season 29b) is a show I still watch whenever I come across it on TV – which is less and less, but it’s still fun.

 

Runners-Up: Big Mouth (Season 2) is a show that I’m not sure improved in season 2, as much as it settled into its groove – although the Shame Wizard was a brilliant touch. Black-ish (Season 4b) is still better than most sitcoms – and one of its all-time great episodes in R.E.S.P.E.C.T. about double standards, but has grown more uneven, and the four-episode divorce arc didn’t really work, because it was too rushed, and should alter the show in ways I don’t think it will (and to be honest, I’ve sort of lost track of it since the start of the new season). Bob’s Burgers (Season 8b) is better than all but one network sitcom – but they do all tend to blend together at some point. Collateral (Season 1) had a great Carey Mulligan performance, and was a quick and easy four-hour show – but if it wanted to be great, it should have been longer, and delved deeper into almost everything. Counterpart (Season 1) was an interesting mixture of spy and sci fi, with a great performance by J.K. Simmons – perhaps too complicated for its own good, but still very entertaining. The End of the Fucking World (Season 1) had moments as good as anything on TV this year, but sagged mightily in the middle – I’m not sure it ever improved on its first episode. Seven Seconds (Season 1) got increasingly implausible as it went along, but by then, I was hooked – and the performances were all top notch. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Season 4a) is still quite fun – and took on #MeToo in a clever way, but the show does feel like it’s on its last legs. The X-Files (Season 11) had some great episodes this season, and some completely forgettable ones – but in the era of fake news, this conspiracy theory isn’t as fun anymore – and it came to its natural end.

 

Best 13 Shows I Watched in 2018

 

13. Glow (Season 2)

Season 2 of Glow improved on what was already a very good show – mainly by giving the show a chance to become more an ensemble comedy. This doesn’t mean that the central trio of Alison Brie, Betty Gilpin and Marc Maron aren’t still the heart of the show – or are not great this year – but I just like getting to know all of the other characters. This season concentrated on the trying to expand the show – and find a market – and what happens when you know you’re being cancelled. It also deepened and complicated the relationships between the characters – and got really fun when the show embraced the full on cheesiness of the show within the show. It also found a smart way to address sexual harassment in a pre-#MeToo era – and who gets blamed for it, even by other women. Just one note to the showrunners next year though – half hour episodes are right for this – as the season progressed, the episodes got more and more bloated, without adding much.

Best Episode – 6 – Work the Leg – It seems like most people either liked Episode 4 or Episode 8 the best, but I loved this one, mainly because of the way it deepened the two central relationships – between Ruth and Sam, who bond at a Film Festival screening of one of Sam’s old movies, and between Ruth and Debbie, where everything ends of a traumatic note in the ring. This is what Glow does best – and is my favorite of series so far.

 

12. Dear White People (Season 2)

The first season of Dear White People was already an improvement over Justin Simien’s very good debut film – and season 2 ups the ante even more. The show continues to be a fine ensemble piece, looking at many areas of black life on a mostly white campus – adding in secret societies and the media personalities into the mix. It also continues to build on the disturbing elements of season 2. The performances – especially by Logan Browning (who didn’t match the great Tessa Thompson in season 1 – but did in season 2) – are great. This continues to be a show that is able to make you laugh, and disturb you all at the same time.

Best Episode: 8 – Volume 2, Chapter VIII – A classic bottle episode in which Browning’s Samantha and John Patrick Amedori’s Gabe have it out over a long conversation, that lays bare all the themes of the show, but still in a dramatically satisfying way. This is also the best directed episode of season 2 – as Simien himself finds a way to make the one location visually interesting. One of the best half hours on TV this year.

 

11. American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace (Season 1)

No, The Assassination of Gianni Versace was nowhere near as good as the O.J. Simpson season – and nowhere near the cultural phenomenon that it was either. Yet, to say the season was bad would be wildly inaccurate. The season, which focused on Andrew Cunanan – played in one of the great performances of the year by Darren Criss – in the lead up and aftermath of his killing of the famed fashion designer. The show was really about gay identity – and the danger of being in the closet. The structure of the series – starting with the killing, and then working backwards – paid dividends not immediately apparent when the season started, allowing us to get inside the heads of Cunanan’s other victims after we know their fate. Admittedly, I thought much of the stuff with the Versace family itself was underwhelming - but I think the rest worked wonderfully, and slowed built throughout the season.

Best Episode: Episode 9 – Alone. Because I thought the season was a slow build, it makes sense that the season finale – as everything closes in on Andrew Cunanan was my favorite of the season – particularly because we really see how everything comes together, and the themes become crystal clear. Too many dismissed this series too early – but if you watched to the end, you were richly rewarded with this great hour of TV.

 

10. Killing Eve (Season 1)

The first season of Killing Eve is that weird kind of show that starts off really good, and just gets better and more unpredictable as it goes along. Sandra Oh does the best work of her career as an American living in England, working for the intelligence service, who becomes convinced a female assassin is working in Europe – but doesn’t know just how right she is, when Villanelle (Jodie Comer) sets her sites on her, and her team. The film is tense and exciting, darkly very funny, and is a great cat and mouse game between these two women. Creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s show feels at once classical, and completely new. One of the most promising new shows of the year – although I wonder if it can top itself in future seasons, or whether they should have just left it well enough alone.

Best Episode: 5 – I Have a Thing About Bathrooms – The whole series has been building to the moment late in this episode, when Eve and Villanelle finally come face-to-face. Their meeting, when Villanelle shows up at Eve’s place, and the latter serves her Shepard’s pie while wearing a soaking wet evening dress is the high point in the series. The whole series doesn’t have a lot of waste in it, and really, you could pick any episode you want – but this one was the one that did it for me.

 

9. The Handmaid’s Tale (Season 2)

I do understand many people’s frustrations with season two of The Handmaid’s Tale. The showrunners made the daring decision to make the show without giving the audience any sort of catharsis at all. The violence can be overwhelming and the whole atmosphere can be oppressive. The season was repetitive to be sure – hell, June escaped THREE damn times, and never got away. And the decision to add three additional episodes to last year’s 10 was unnecessary. And the final decision June made was initially off-putting to me as well. And yet, the more I sit with the season, the more I like it. I like that the showrunners make us all sit in the oppression of the society, that they refuse to make June into a YA dystopian hero, that the season gives us no relief. I wouldn’t want it to continue forever this way – there is no way in hell we need 10 seasons of this like the showrunners say – but for one season, it worked brilliantly.

Best Episode: Episode 9 – Smart Power. I liked seeing Canada – and how the larger, outside world, reacts to Gilead in this episode. I especially liked the different view this episode provided of Yvonne Strahovski’s Serena. I don’t think the series made her sympathetic as some say – she is still very much a villain (remember, she had her husband rape June in the next episode) – but it made her a more three-dimensional and understandable one. A great episode in a strange season of TV – that I admire more that I don’t have to continue watching it.

 

8. The Good Place (Season 2b/3a)

As season three continues, I cannot help but wonder if this show has already seen its best days. It is a show that has burned through premises so brilliantly, and yet so quickly that this was always a danger. While Season 3 has still been wonderful – still the best show on network television easily – I also cannot help but wonder if it’s this show is closer to the end than to the beginning. Still, the performances are great, the show is hilarious and intelligent – mixing high and low humor brilliantly, and endlessly inventive. When this show ends, we’ll wonder how they were able to pull it off. At this point, I’m still just happy to go along for the ride.

Best Episode – 9 – Janet(s) – I stand by my assessment that Season 2 is better than Season 3 (so far) – but the best episode that aired this year was clearly the last one – with the always brilliant D’Arcy Carden outdoing herself by playing multiple version of Janet, and playing the other characters as Janet, and even other characters pretending to be other characters as Janet. If nothing else, it proved Carden could do anything.

 

7. American Vandal (Season 2)

I don’t think season 2 quite lived up to the absolutely brilliance of Season 1 – the mystery of the Turd Burglar wasn’t quite as catchy as Who Drew the Dicks? – but I still think that this show is probably the best depiction of today’s teenagers and their culture that we’ve seen so far. This time, our intrepid documentarians head to a new school, to figure out how poisoned the lemonade – causing the “Brownout” – and other poop related crimes. The main suspect isn’t as lovably stupid as Jimmy Tatro in season one – but he was a different kind of misfit, who works his way under your skin just the same. And its depiction of high school sports – and being black in an almost all white space – was great. They announced that this was the last season – and I think that’s the right call here. Better to go out on top – with two brilliant seasons – that keep trying to do the same thing over and over again.

Best Episode #3 – Leaving a Mark – This was a remarkably consistent season of television – I think you could argue almost any episode, especially the first, which was both hilarious, and recreated a false confession interview brilliantly. But the third episode, which really introduced us to Demarcus, the high school basketball star, was a brilliant episode in its examination of high school sports and race.

 

6. Barry (Season 1)

Probably the best debut show this year, the show proved Bill Hader’s talent both in front of, and behind the camera. His story, of a hit man who starts to get tired of his job, and decides to start taking acting lessons is both hilarious and brutally violent, the one half never sacrificing the other. Hader is a deadpan delight in the lead role, and Henry Winkler is terrific as the blowhard acting coach. I do think this is the type of show that would be perfect as a one season wonder – it feels kind of self-contained and complete as is, and you wonder if there is anywhere for it to go, other than just repeat itself in season 2. But for now, it is at least one brilliant season of television.

Best Episode – 7 – Loud, Fast and Keep Going. This was easily the darkest episode of the series – the point where if you had any delusions about its title character, you lost them during the meeting with his best friend, when he does the only logical thing he could do – at least in his world – and it’s still absolutely damning.

 

5. Sharp Objects (Season 1)

Easily the best mini-series (sorry, “limited series”) of the year, Sharp Objects showed of the range of many the talented people who made it happen. Director Jean-Marc Vallee moved from the candy coated mystery of last year’s Big Little Lies, into something much deeper and darker – a Southern Gothic horror story, and his direction is the best of his career. Gillian Flynn and the writers were able to take Flynn’s novel, and turn it into something even darker and more disturbing than it was on the page, and really dig into the mysteries, and the psychology of the characters. And the performances were tough to top – with Amy Adams doing some of the best work of her great career, Patricia Clarkson being completely disturbing all while being nice, and Eliza Scanlen delivering a star making performance. On the surface, this could have shallow – but it really does cut deep.

Best Episode #5 – Closer – Any of the middle episode – 4, 5 or 6 – could easily have been my choice, but I loved this one because it showed how insular this small town is, and how willing they are to bury the darkness around them, as they still gather for their silly festival despite all that has happened. But what really puts it over the top is Clarkson’s devastating line reading telling her daughter that she never loved her – perhaps the most haunting line reading of the year, in any medium.

 

4. Atlanta (Season 2)

I watched both seasons of Atlanta back to back this fall – and was amazed by how much of an improvement season 2 – aka Robbin’ Season – was to Season 1 – especially since the first season was already brilliant. Donald Glover’s show got deeper, more disturbing, more dramatic – and also funnier. There were a lot of standalone episodes here – focusing on a single recurring character (more often than not, it wasn’t creator Donald Glover’s Earn). The season started off brilliantly with the episode with Kat Williams – but then got even better. The barber episode was just pure comedy gold, and it was followed up by the most disturbing – yet still funny, and already infamous, Teddy Perkins episode. Glover and company upped their game on every level in Season 2 – making this the best (live action) half hour show on television.

Best Episode # 6 – Teddy Perkins – You could argue that Teddy Perkins was the best episode of television this year, and I’m not sure I would disagree. The show was disturbing, hilarious and a completely mindfuck – about celebrity culture, and so much more. Glover’s performance as the title character is so unexpected, but also among the best things he has ever done. The episode uses horror movie language, but for a different purpose. Just a brilliant half hour of TV.

 

3. Bojack Houseman (Season 5)

Bojack Horseman continues to be the best show in Netflix’s history – and it continues to be at once one of the very funniest shows on television, and one of the devastating in terms of its character development. As a character, Bojack is beyond flawed – he has done so many unforgivable things over the course of the show, but you still root for him somewhat, perhaps because of that well of self-loathing and regret. In this season, the show is a devastating and hilarious critique of “prestige” television, and also further developed the character’s relationships, and offered perhaps a glimmer of hope. In many ways, Bojack is Don Draper – a character you keep thinking will get better, but is never quite able to do it. And the show around him is at least as good as Mad Men was at its peak. What’s amazing is five seasons in, the quality of the show hasn’t faltered in the least.

Best Episode: #6 – Free Churro – This was a great season, and in most years, you could pick any number of episodes as the best. Here though, the choice was clear – the 6^th episode is perhaps the best single episode in the show’s history, as Bojack delivers an episode long eulogy for his mother, who he had a complicated relationship with to say the least. It was devastating and raw and emotional – and yet the kicker of the episode was hilarious at the same time. You could argue this was the TV episode of the year, and I wouldn’t argue.

 

2. Better Call Saul (Season 4)

I’m not sure of two things about Better Call Saul and its fourth season – the first being I’m not sure it was its best season, because Season 3 was so great, and while the decision to kill off Chuck was the right one, the show is missing something without him, and I’m not quite sure the show has surpassed Breaking Bad in terms of overall quality. What I do know is that out of the whole series, I do think Jimmy’s slow decline into Saul Goodman is the most tragic and heartbreaking of anything that has happened. In Season 4, he spends the year without his law license, which makes him sink back into the old “Slippin’ Jimmy” days – pulling off scams and schemes on the street brilliantly. Bob Odenkirk continues to show he is one of the best actors on television, and how Rhea Seehorn isn’t winning every award there is for her portrayal of Kim Wexler – his partner in more ways than one, I don’t understand. If I have a complaint, it’s that the part of the show more closely related to Breaking Bad – all the stuff with Gus, Mike and the cartels, isn’t as interesting as this one man’s slow decline. His tragedy is greater than Walter White’s, because Walter was always an asshole, but Jimmy had a shot – and he threw it away.

Best Episode - #10 – Winner – This was the episode of the season for many reasons. For one, even if I sometimes grow (a little) frustrated with the drug side of the show, in this episode at least, it paid off brilliantly – as this is the episode when Mike completely seals his fate, by committing the first murder for Gus that he really didn’t have to – he’s cast his lot, and he’s done. It was worth the rest of the drug season for that moment. But it’s really the kicker final scene in the episode that makes it stand out – when Jimmy as well, has completely sealed his own fate. When he says Saul Goodman at the end of the episode, I cried – in part because he’s gone now, and in part because the show had the good sense to focus on Seehorn’s Kim in that moment, as she realizes the same thing we do in the audience. This could have been the series finale, and it would have been perfect. Perhaps what they end with as the finale (which has to be coming right?) will be even better, but I kind of dread it – I don’t want to completely lose Jimmy McGill, but I think he’s gone now.

 

1. The American (Season 6)

The Americans brought to a close a brilliant six season run this year – and they did it with one of their very best seasons, which was good because I think season 5 was probably the weakest. Here, everything starts to close in one the Jennings, as their side is losing the Cold War, and the FBI knows some of their associates, etc. They are screwed, and don’t quite know it. This season showed them scramble more than we’re used to, showed poor Matthew Rhys at his saddest, and Keri Russell at her most determined. This show has always been about their marriage, and how strained it has become over the years (I can detail that far better than any of the actual spy stuff that went on in the show). It all culminated with one of the best series finales a major show like this has ever had. You ask me for the best shows of the 2010s – I think this may well be it.

Best Episode: 10: START – It’s rare that the series finale of a show is also one of its great episodes – it’s hard to close out years of storylines and characters in a satisfying way. Here, they pulled it off. Yes, part of it is the brilliant garage faceoff between the Jennings’ and their friend/neighbor/nemesis Stan (the great Noah Emmerich, who never got the love he deserved for this show), but it’s also about the final scenes themselves – how the Jennings escape punishment, but will suffer perhaps even more for it. The devastating moment when they realize Paige has abandoned them, and how they end up back in the Soviet Union – now with no one but themselves, which is an ironic fate for them. A truly great series finale – that didn’t pack the action punch you may have expected, but came up with something far more rewarding,