Best of 2008: TV

This year in TV continued the Golden Age of television, as some of my all time favorite series had career best seasons. Doctor Who, Mad Men and Battlestar all offered their best years yet, and beneath them was a fairly deep bench of really solid, but unexceptional series that all fall somewhere in between great and just ok, depending on the episode. The class of 2008 doesn’t look to have any all time classics, but there’s a lot of potential there.

10. Life on Mars
Best Episode: ‘The Man Who Sold the World’

There’s a bunch of shows on this list that are very much “TV good.” The best of Golden Age TV has been the kind of stuff that is said to ‘transcend’ television. How many times have we heard The Sopranos is more like a movie than a TV show? Life on Mars is very much the sort of thing that feels like a TV show, it looks good, but it’s not particularly artistic, and the characters generally follow that TV protocol of the illusion of change, stuff happens, but it doesn’t seem to add up to change that much. Still, if TV good was good enough for everyone watching TV before 1995, it can be good enough for me from time to time. The acting on this show is fantastic, and it’s still fun to watch Sam Tyler adrift in the alien world of the 1970s. It’s a show that has incredibly promising moments, these trippy interludes that are great fun and hint at a much larger world underneath the procedural storytelling that the show is structured around. What side of things will they emphasize next year? Who knows, but I am eager to see the show come back.

9. True Blood
Best Episode: ‘I Don’t Want to Know’

Speaking of TV good, True Blood barely even reaches that level, it’s more at TV so bad it’s good a lot of the time. I wanted more from Alan Ball’s followup to Six Feet Under, one of the greatest TV shows of all time, but this is still an entertaining show, one that had some really good moments and some really weak ones over the course of its first season. The central problem is that most of the characters were pretty bland, only Anna Paquin’s Sookie and Bill really popped out of the core cast. But, as the series went on, some of the supporting cast, particularly Lafayette, started to stand out, and during the Amy/Eddie arc, there’s plenty of great moments. However, the show stumbled in its final episode, with an absolutely arbitrary murderer revelation, and a barely there cliffhanger that didn’t really pay off anything the season had been to date. I still think the premise is strong, and the show was usually entertaining, but I doubt that it’ll ever be truly great. But, it’s still quite entertaining.

8. Swingtown
Best Episode: ‘Cabin Fever’

This is a classic example of a really strong “TV good” show. Nobody’s confusing the series for art, but it hits the emotional beats that you really want from an ongoing serial narrative. The characters are well realized, and I found myself drawn into their emotional dramas even as I was aware of the emotional manipulation the series was creating. Sure, there were way too many episodes that involved someone having a party and all the characters going, but there was some great subtle change in the characters over the course of the season. Watching the show brought back memories of Buffy or Six Feet Under, and the joy you get from just investing in characters’ lives. It never hit the heights of those two series, but it was a really solid season, and I’m sorry that the show won’t be back for a second round.

7. 30 Rock
Best Episode: ‘Cooter’

The show has been a bit less consistent this season than in past years. The onslaught of guest stars got old, but an episode like “Reunion” reminded me just how good the show could be. That was the year’s best comedy episode, with the hilarious Braverman impression, and the show’s over the top flaunting of its snobbishness and disdain for the ‘common man.’ The abbreviated second half of season two had some classics as well, particularly last season’s hilarious, and emotionally true, finale, “Cooter.” It’s the closest thing we’ve got an Arrested Development successor on TV today.

6. Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles
Best Episode: ‘The Tower is Tall, But the Fall is Short’

This is a show that I almost gave on a couple of times. I stopped watching during the first season, then caught up on DVD. As year two progressed, I almost dropped it again. The episodes didn’t have that much continuity, it was a b-movie of the week type thing, but starting in mid season two, things started to knit together better, the characters became more defined, and the universe of the series kept expanding to more interesting directions. It’s a really strange show because there’s no clear focus, it’s got so many different plotlines going on and they all involve strange philosophical questions about predestination and the nature of humanity. I love the addition of Jessie, who’s managed to make the initially boring Riley into an interesting character. There’s just a lot of interesting stuff going on, and you never know what you’re going to get from week to week. The lack of cohesion is still a problem to some degree, but the show has made a vast improvement, which will hopefully continue when it’s paired with Dollhouse next year.


5. The Daily Show/Colbert Report

Normally I keep these sort of lists confined to traditional scripted series, but this year, I’ve got to give props to two of the funniest, most insightful political commentaries on TV. I don’t know if I can add anything to the myriad praise both series have already received, but it’s still amazing how these shows can be simultaneously funny, and cutting in their assessment of a political world gone mad. The Daily Show still struggles to find new correspondents who are as good as Colbert or Rob Corddry were a few years ago, but Stewart is as sharp as ever. And, it’s amazing that the seemingly one joke schtick of The Colbert Report could grow into an entire skewed universe that can be goofier than The Daily Show ever is, and occasionally surprise you with an absolutely brutal condemnation of the policies of those in power. And, if the past few weeks of political scandals tell you anything, it’s that the shows will have no shortage of material, even after Obama takes office.

4. Battlestar Galactica
Best Episode: ‘The Hub’

After an underwhelming back half of season three, BSG soared forth with its best set of episodes yet. It feels like forever since the show was on, but as I recall, each episode of the fourth season was really strong, nicely building on the tension inherent in the third season’s closing revelation of the final four, the show was more complex and emotionally engaging than ever. And, thankfully, we’ve only got a month left until the show finally returns for its final bow.

3. The Wire
Best Episode: ‘Late Editions’

It wasn’t the show’s finest season, mainly due to the not quite fully formed newspaper storyline. However, I think the show deserves a bit more year end love than it’s been getting because there was no show that had me more hooked on a week to week basis than this final run of The Wire. So much is written about the show’s sociological content and intellectual merit, but beyond all that, this is one addictive piece of fiction. “Got that WMD” indeed, I would stay up until 3 or 4 AM every Sunday night, waiting for the new episode to show up On Demand. The season did a great job of resolving the series’ ongoing character arcs, particularly the beautiful Bubbles ascent out of the basement, juxtaposed against the kids’ fall. It was a fitting final run for one of the greatest TV series of all time.

2. Mad Men
Best Episode: ‘Jet Set’

Mad Men had one of the strongest first seasons of any show in history, but Matt Weiner and co. still managed to top it with an introspective, often surreal and always compelling second outing. Don Draper is one of the most fascinating characters in TV history, made all the more so by the blank slate he projects to the world almost all the time, broken only occasionally by strange events, such as his encounter with a group of European vagabonds in the season’s best episode, “Jet Set.” This show is picking up the mantle of 60s European art cinema, deepening our understanding of the series’ universe with each episode. This series is the heir to The Sopranos, and like that legendary series, it’s the important commentary on contemporary American society in any medium.

1. Doctor Who
Best Episode: ‘Forest of the Dead’

I love all kinds of shows and movies, I can appreciate the artsy personal ennui of Mad Men or the gritty realism of The Wire, but there’s still part of me that responds more than anything to the sort of crazy sci-fi epic that Doctor Who at its best is. This season was by far my favorite of the series, there’s no outright clunkers, a swath of solid mid-level episodes, and a disproportionate amount of all time classics. The Russell Davies scripted three part closing arc is more epic than the show has been to date, from the fanboy joy of seeing characters from all three series brought together to the utter tragedy of Donna’s fate. Nothing else on TV emotionally engages me like this series, it may be galaxy spanning alien wars, but the show manages to puncture right to the heart of the emotional issues we all deal with. “Forest of the Dead,” the season’s high point, spun through a multitude of different realities, and managed to make one off characters extremely memorable. No series stuck in my head like this one did, when The Wire ended, it was all resolved, this one’s stuck in my head and had me eagerly awaiting the series’ real continuation when Moffat comes on board in 2010.

TV Roundup

I’m watching a whole bunch of shows this season, and while nothing’s totally wowing me, there’s a bunch of good stuff out there. Most of my favorite shows air on a more haphazard schedule, Mad Men just ended, Battlestar won’t resume until January and Doctor Who is just throwing out episodes whenever they feel like it. In bad news, Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse will now be airing on Fridays, which is pretty much acknowledging it’ll never be a big hit. I hope that the awful timeslot means Fox will give the show a longer leash, we shall see. Anyway, here’s the shows I’m watching now.

Life on Mars

Right now, I’m really liking the show. The premise seems better to a limited series, as with the original, or even better, a film, and after the weak second episode, I wasn’t sure if it was going to work on a week to week basis. But, since then, we’ve got a couple of really strong episodes, and an alright one last night. For me, the show’s greatest strength is the sense of place it conveys. I don’t know if it’s an accurate depiction of the 70s, but even if it’s just a depiction of the mythic 70s created in our culture, I like spending time there. I think it’d be annoying to run into a lot of the hippie mystic characters from the time in real life, but I love watching them on film. Our world may be in a paradigm shift now, but for the last eight years, things have been pretty dire, and it’s nice to look at a time when people were interested in expanding their consciousness and changing the world.

The show’s strength is the trippy interludes that happen every so often, like when Sam got dosed with LSD. Those are really interesting visually and tie in with his existential dilemma about why he’s in the 1973 and what it means for his existence. In general, Sam is a really likable, fun lead to watch. He, along with Michael Imperioli always keep things interesting, even when the show falls into rote police procedural territory. My major concern looking ahead is that the show becomes a 70s issue of the week police procedural, and after a certain point, the trippy material will slip away. After Sam runs into everyone he new from the 2000s in the 70s, what’s left for the show to do beyond just tell stories about him in the 70s? I still don’t see the show lasting more than a season or two without radically shifting its premise at some point. Still, I really like what I see, and the presence of three Wire actors in last night’s episode helped keep things rolling along.

My greatest concern beyond the simple in sustainability of the premise is the fact that each episode seems to end with Gene siding with Sam on whatever argument they had, and doing the right thing instead of the morally corrupt thing. The problem with that is if you do it every week, shouldn’t Gene just evolve morally at some point? It seems like we’re heading towards that TV problem where every initially edgy characters gets worn down into an ally, and is given something in their past that explains why they do evil things. It can be a lot more interesting to just let your characters do bad things, and explore them from there than to try to make everyone live by 2008 morality in a world that doesn’t necessarily hew to that morality. The show needs to go edgier, and go stranger, but I don’t know that a first year show having some ratings issue is going to get the latitude to do what they really need to do.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

This is a show I had essentially no expectations for. I didn’t see the theatrical movie because reviews were so dire, but I figured I’d check out the first TV episodes. It’s strange that a Star Wars TV show has gotten so little heat as this has. I guess it’s because it’s targeted at kids, but I don’t see anyone talking about this. I suppose that’s the consequence of the prequels, in the mid 90s, any piece of Star Wars material was cherished, now with so much more out there, it’s just not that special any more. But, perhaps it’s best that this show comes in with lower expectations. I don’t think it’s a great show, but it’s pretty entertaining, and occasionally touches those emotions that the classic trilogy hit so well.

The major flaw for me is the animation. It all looks like a video game cut scene, I don’t know why they chose the wooden puppet look for the characters. The stuff without people is really pretty, but the people look awful. And, there’s a lot of the same issues as the prequels have, the inexplicably retarded battle droids, and lack of really well defined characters. Anakin here is used as kind of a blank slate hero, lacking the moral ambiguity that the character should have.

But, there’s also some good stuff. I like the way they depict the clones, people who are all similar, and struggle to find ways to define themselves. They exist for a mission, but still hope to carve out an individual identity. The space battles are pretty great, and the liberal swipes from the original trilogy make for some nice action sequences. The best episode for me was the one in which Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padme sneak aboard the Malevolence to destroy it from the inside. That had the fun adventure feel of the OT that the prequels rarely captured. I don’t love the show, but it’s got its moments. I just wish that I was more excited about a weekly Star Wars TV show.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Continuing a theme, I really like some things about this show, while others frustrate me. I was getting close to losing interest when they dropped the fantastic episode about John going to therapy, all the while being observed by Cameron and Sarah. That episode conveyed the difficulty he has trying to express himself and grow up while dealing with both the pressure of his future destiny, and the constant watching eyes of his mother.

But, amidst interesting character stuff, there’s a lot of random b-movie action that doesn’t really go anywhere. It’s a show focused on narrative, not characters, and that means that things can get a bit samey. How many episodes have centered around our characters hunting down some random Eastern European guy? Monday’s episode did surprise me with Cameron’s brutality, when she killed the three guys who had robbed them.

There’s always some interesting stuff in each episode to keep me going, but the show isn’t making it to great. It’s like Buffy pre “Surprise,” I watch it, I like it, but it doesn’t really capture my imagination. The tough thing with watching any series as it goes is you don’t have the benefit of a pre-existing critical response. I stuck with Buffy and Babylon 5 because I knew they would get better, who knows what will happen with this show? It could become a classic this season or it could just keep going along as it is. Right now, I’m liking it enough to keep watching, the quality fluctuates, but for every weak episode, there’s a solid one.

The Office

I’ve written about my mixed feelings on the US Office before. I do really like the show, but I was so emotionally invested in the original, I’ve never been able to really get into the Pam/Jim stuff in the same way. My least favorite aspect of this show is definitely Pam and Jim, I find them both unlikable, precisely because they’re so engineered to be likable. In yesterday’s episode, Jim is called smug and arrogant, but rather than engage with this criticism, it’s revealed as a lie. I think it would have been a lot more interesting to deal with the idea that Jim hating his job is reflected in how he does it, and play with his flaws. But, they choose not to engage with it, and instead we get the annoying cutesy Bluetooth stuff.

The supporting characters have always interested me more. I really like what they did with Ryan. The Holly arc was solid, but I’m getting tired of the Andy/Dwight/Angela triangle happenings. I still enjoy the show, but I don’t think anything this season has been as focused as the post-strike episodes last year.

Canceling a Show

I’m often baffled when a network will invest all the money to develop and advertise a new series, then cancel it after one episode. If you thought it was going to be that bad, why make it in the first place, and if you really believe in it, why would weak episode one numbers make you cancel the whole thing? If you’ve got more episodes made, at least give them a chance. After all, Seinfeld started out as a very low rated series, in today’s world, it would probably have been cancelled.

Ironically, as a viewer, I fall victim to that same one episode snap judgment I’m criticizing. I’ve been kind of backed up with TV to watch lately. At the start of the Fall season, I was planning, or at least thinking about, watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Fringe, Sons of Anarchy, The Office, 30 Rock, Pushing Daisies, True Blood and Mad Men, along with catching on Pushing Daisies season one on DVD, and going through Berlin Alexanderplatz and the rest of Swingtown, Generation Kill and In Treatment I never watched over the summer. So, it’s just way too much stuff to watch in any kind of timely fashion, and with so many series, priorities become clear. I very rarely actively drop a show, Lost is probably the only show I’ve consciously said I’m not watching this any more too.

More frequently when I “cancel” a show, it happens due to a subconscious revelation of my lack of interest in the show. I’ll get a backlog of unwatched episodes, to the point that catching up would require a major time investment, and as the episodes stack up, I’ll eventually decide it’s not worth the time needed to catch up. That’s part of why I don’t like shows that launch with two hour premieres. The reason I gave up on 24 with season six was simply that I started four hours behind, and after a lackluster first couple of hours, I sat on the next couple of episodes, until there were nine aired, and I had no hope of catching up.

If I really like a show, I’ll invariably watch it right after it airs. True Blood, Mad Men or 30 Rock are all a must watch the night of. With The Wire, I would stay up until 3 or 4 AM to see the show when it first was added to the On Demand menu Sunday night. That level of interest is the greatest testament to the show’s quality, that absolute need to see the next episode.

But, what happens on the other end of the spectrum? I’ve got three episodes of Sons of Anarchy unwatched on the DVR. I liked the first episode, and was planning to watch more, but I never felt compelled to continue. There was always something a little better out there, and pretty soon it’ll reach the point where it takes a huge commitment to catch up. I watched the first episode of Fringe and thought, that’s ok, I’ll give it a couple more episodes. But, there’s always a cost to watching a show. The hour spent watching Fringe means I’m not able to catch up on a better show. It was a different landscape before TV on DVD, now Fringe not only has to compete against its timeslot, and other shows on TV today, it’s got to compete against every TV show ever made. Sure, Fringe may be ok, but is it going to top Berlin Alexanderplatz? I doubt it. It’s just not good enough to be worth my time, hence one episode was enough.

Right now, Sarah Connor is on the edge for me. I watched the first four episodes when they aired last year, and then “cancelled” the show due to lack of interest. I heard good things and caught up on season one in a couple of days on DVD. I’ve been watching season two as it goes, and realizing that the show has diminishing returns. It’s just not that good, and at one point do I cut it off? I’ve got one unwatched episode now, and rather than watch it, I’ve watched episodes of Berlin Alexanderplatz two nights in a row. Will I watch that episode? At this point, I feel like I’m invested in Sarah Connor enough to keep going, but it doesn’t captivate me in the way that the best TV should. It’s in that nebulous gray zone right now where a really bad episode could kill the show forever, or a really good one could put it back to a must watch.

Ultimately, I think it’s good that we live in a world with so many viewing options. For a while there, I felt like I was nearing the end of series to watch, but there’s a lot of great new stuff airing, and still a lot in the past that I want to go through. I’m still planning on watching the rest of Farscape at some point, but that’s another show that swerved in and out of must watch status, ranging from episodes that made me watch the next one immediately to episodes that put me off the show for a couple of weeks. But, Fringe is gone forever, and Sarah Connor could soon follow it off into the darkness of cancellation. Maybe they’ll get better, I would have probably stopped watching The X-Files, Babylon 5 and Buffy after their first season if I didn’t know they’d get better, but in today’s world, most shows don’t get the luxury of time to grow. It’s make or break immediately.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - 'Pilot' (1x01)

With the prospect of up to a year without new shows, I figured it’d be worth checking out Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I really enjoyed Terminator 2, but I wouldn’t say I’m a huge fan of the film series. However, good TV sci-fi is hard to come by, so I gave it a look. The first episode is consistently entertaining, even as it raises the question of how this is going to support a season’s worth of episodes, let alone a whole series.

The thing that made the show work for me was the relationships between the three central characters. From the beginning, there was an intensity to the emotions that just wasn’t there in the lackluster Terminator 3. What made Terminator 2 so fantastic was the creation of a family amidst the action. The ending works because we care about Arnold as a character, not because of the action stuff.

This show bumps the characters up a few years, so instead of getting a father figure, John is getting a girlfriend figure. After years on the run, we’ve got to assume he hasn’t had much in the way of attention from the ladies, there’s only one woman in his life, his mother. The thing that made the episode work was the bizarre love triangle at the center of things. Sarah is so fiercely protective of John, you get the sense she was only with the guy at the beginning to give John some kind of a father figure. It’s John who has qualms about walking away, not her. She has centered her whole life around him, and it’s hard for her to face the fact that he doesn’t need her to protect him anymore, he’s got Cameron.

It produces a weird dynamic between her and John, they’re very close, and it seems almost too much so at times. I think that’s something interesting to play with, the notion that Sarah’s so obsessed with John’s destiny, her feelings are going to an inappropriate place. And, at the same time, will John fall in love with the robot Cameron? What role does Sarah play in his life now, she’s been bumped out as both source of love and protector? It’s an appropriate metaphor for what it is to have a child grow up.

Unlike a lot of reviewers, Lena Headey as Sarah really owns the show for me. Summer Glau is good at what she does, but she’s right to remain as a supporting character. She doesn’t take control of the show the way Katee Sackhoff did on Bionic Woman, I think Sarah’s strength and slightly unhinged quality are what drives the show. That said, I would like to see her pushed to a crazier place, as she was in Terminator 2. It looks like there will only be three main characters on the show, and the tension between them is what’s going to fuel events. Really, it’s a clash between Sarah and Cameron, with John just sort of standing there in the middle.

So, I’ll give the show a few more episodes. It’s not great, but the production values were pretty solid, and there’s a lot of potential there. The central question is whether they’ll let the premise evolve beyond just running from terminators. There’s a lot of interesting stuff within the mythology, but it’ll take a while to see what the show can do with it. But, I’ll give it another look tomorrow, and ultimately, that’s a pilot’s biggest goal, to get you to the next episode. Perhaps the saddest thing about the show is thinking how perfect a partner it would have been for Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. Damn the strike and its continued existence!