Best of 2009: TV

2009 was a great year for TV, with some long running shows having their best season yet, and a lot of great shows staying strong. It’s a wealth of riches on the list here, let’s check it out…

10. True Blood
Best Episode: ‘Timebomb’

The show improved on its first season by refining its campy appeal and upping the stakes. The season peaked early, at the end of the Fellowship of the Sun arc, and kind of petered out at the end, but the peak was great. I think there’s still room for some more real emotion in the show, but they know that it’s supposed to be fun and the show is able to poke enough fun at itself to make it work. I wish Alan Ball was doing something better than this, but if it’s a show like this or another ponderous film like “Towelhead,” let’s stick with this.

9. Bored to Death
Best Episode: ‘The Case of the Beautiful Blackmailer’

This show was ostensibly a comedy and was never particularly funny, nor was it dramatic, but it was charming throughout. I loved the New York locations, and the three leads were all a lot of fun to watch. The show struck a tricky balance, and as it went on, it just got better and better. I love the quirky world they’ve built, and hopefully it’ll continue to grow in interesting directions in season two.

8. Parks and Recreation
Best Episode: ‘Greg Pikitis’

I’m one of the few people who actually really liked the show in its first season, so I was even more excited when it took a major quality leap in year two. The show has one of the deepest comedy casts of any series, and the characters are developed in ways that make sense, and over the course of the series so far, they’ve developed the kind of depth and emotional engagement that make for a long running sitcom. There’s been some very sweet moments, like the relationship between Dave and Leslie, or April’s fliration with Andy, but throughout it all, they keep things funny and snappy. It’s the best comedy on TV right now, and a few more seasons at this level could make it one of the best sitcoms all time.

7. Big Love
Best Episode: ‘On Trial’

I liked the first two season of Big Love, but the show made a quantum leap in quality in the third season. The big emotional hook for me was Nikki’s work at the D.A’s office, and the way that her flirtation with her boss opened up a window to a new world for her. But pretty much every element of the season worked, and it had a hyped up, every episode’s a season finale level of intensity that made the whole season riveting to watch. It’s always nice to see a show realize its full potential, and that’s what Big Love did this year.

6. Battlestar Galactica
Best Episode: ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’

The controversial final season of Battlestar worked for me on most levels, but had some key missteps that stopped it from hitting the series’ highest heights. The much beloved military coup arc did nothing for me, and the resolution to the final five storyline was extremely convoluted and didn’t really hold together in terms of making sense. But, I love a lot of the ideas throughout, and thought the final episode was haunting and epic. Visually, the show was on its game, and certain moments, like the appearance of the final five on the flight deck, were haunting and burned in my memory. Like the show as a whole, it had moments of brilliance mixed with ideas that didn’t quite come together. Still, to see such an ambitious and mostly successful work reach a satisfying conclusion was merit enough.

5. Doctor Who
Best Episode: ‘The End of Time: Part II’

I was holding off on writing the list until the last of Tennant era Who had aired. Technically, End of Time II aired in 2010, but I’m grouping it with ’09 for list making purposes. This year’s Who started off with a dud, but the last three episodes were all fantastic. The intense ‘Water of Mars’ ominously set the stage for an epic finale that didn’t quite come together on a plot level, but was so satisfying emotionally, I’ve got to include it here. I felt emotionally fulfilled at the end, but like the Doctor said, I didn’t want him to go. I wasn’t sure what the specials could add to the epic finale of ‘The Stolen Earth,’ what they gave us was a Doctor coming to terms with his own mortality, an extended meditation on the inevitability of death, and a call to do the most we can with the time we have.

4. Torchwood
Best Episode: ‘Children of Earth, Day Five’

More than any other show this year, Torchwood made a massive jump in quality. The first two series were very hit and miss, but this intense, character focused miniseries was intense brilliance from start to finish. The characters were all the same, the scenarios were the same, but the focus was so much tighter, and over the course of the series’ five episodes, it crescendoed to higher and higher intensity, culminating in a final episode that featured devastating scenes of the UK giving in to alien demands and Jack sacrificing his ties to humanity to save them. It’s a series that forced the characters to make tough choices and never backed down from putting the audience through the ringer. Not since Buffy season one to Buffy season two have I seen a series make such a giant quality leap between seasons.

3. Friday Night Lights
Best Episode: ‘Tomorrow Blues’

Speaking of shows that made a giant leap, after the disastrous second season, Friday Night Lights bounced back with a fantastic third season and is now working on an even stronger fourth year. It’s very rare that a show can as successfully reinvent themselves as FNL has, but the East Dillon setting has reinvigorated the series and changed its narrative. I’m always frustrated by shows like Alias and Battlestar Galactica that hinted at big change then retreated from it. By shifting its basic status quo, FNL has become a much more exciting show, and this most recent year may top even its brilliant first season. Seamlessly introduced new characters and consistent brilliance from Chandler and Britton keep this one of the best hours on TV, and that’s not even bringing it the series’ unparalleled cinematography.

2. Mad Men
Best Episode: ‘Seven Twenty Three’

In its third season, Mad Men continued to be the most challenging and artistically ambitious series currently on the air, and perhaps ever. The complexity of the stories increased, and the end of the season opened up some amazing new directions for future plotlines. I don’t think this year quite matched the second season, but the consistency of its ambition only adds to its reputation. The fact that nine year old Sally Draper is more complex and well developed than the vast majority of adult lead characters is a testmanet to the show’s greatness.

1. Lost
Best Episode: The Incident

Lost’s great problem since the start has been its inconsistency, so it was surprising and exciting to see it finally produce a season that was just outright great from start to finish. The series attempted an ambitious time travel storyline and nailed it throughout, giving us great timeloop moments, like Locke coming across himself in the past, but the primary joy was seeing our lead characters in the 70s, and getting an insight into what the Dharma Initiative was like back then. Those episodes were just so much fun and built such a great world, I would have loved to stay there for much longer. And, one scene in the season finale totally changed the game looking forward, opening up a myriad of interesting new storytelling possibilities. It was all anchored by great character work on Locke, Ben, and in particular the series’ heart, Sawyer and Juliet. If the last season is as good as this one, it’ll go down as one of the all time great series.

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.

True Blood: "The First Taste" (1x02)

True Blood’s second episode does a successful job of expanding the universe a bit, and clarifying some of the elements that remained rather ambiguous after the first. The second episode is typically the toughest for a series, after pouring all kinds of time and money into the first episode, the second one comes along and you’ll frequently see shows stumble as they figure out what to do. With both Six Feet Under and The Sopranos, the second episode is arguably the weakest of the entire series. Here, I get the sense that Ball knew the show would be picked up for the whole thirteen when he made the pilot, so there’s not that lurch of trying to get a bunch of ongoing plots into motion after a semi-standalone first episode. This is an unabashedly serial show, jumping from cliffhanger to cliffhanger, and the best elements of this episode all flow directly out of the first.

The best scene in the episode, on all levels was undeniably Sookie feeding on Bill while out in the swamp. I love the way the swamp feels so artificial, the moody lighting and carefully placed trees give it a very theatrical feel, like the characters have wandered onto a stage and are now playing out a drama in the most consciously stylish way possible. I enjoy works that embrace the stylistic potential of departing from a strictly “realistic” space. I’m sure people will be complaining about the fake looking sets, but that swamp environment felt so much more distinct and dreamlike than a real swamp would.

The Sookie/Bill relationship is interesting because it feels quite consciously drawn from the archetypal beautiful girl and brooding vampire archetype, we’ve seen this before, we know that the story will inexorably push them together, the characters can sense this magnetic pull, but remain unaware of its exact nature. Either way, Anna Paquin as Sookie remains the sun shining at the heart of the galaxy that is this show, eclipsing everyone else on screen with her great performance. She’s a really likable presence, and her sunshine persona contrasts with his darkness.

There’s a major contrast between the very physical relationships that the other characters have and the more chaste flirtation that Bill and Sookie share. The juxtaposition of Jason having sex in an extremely graphic scene with Sookie and Bill just holding hands in the swamp works well to demonstrate which one is about real affection. That’s not to say there’s no physical connection between Sookie and Bill, the blood drinking scene would say otherwise.

So, after two episodes, I’m definitely on board. I don’t know that it’ll ever become as great show as Six Feet Under, but there’s a lot of intriguing stuff here, Anna Paquin is fantastic and the tone and atmosphere really work. It’s trashy TV for smart people.

True Blood: "Strange Love" (1x01)

The last ten minutes of Alan Ball television were quite possibly the single greatest ten minutes of any TV show ever. Hyperbole you say? Perhaps, but this is the last episode of Six Feet Under we’re talking about, a show that went out on the absolute top of its game. Sure, I love the ambiguity of The Sopranos or Evangelion endings, but there’s also something very satisfying about the ultimate definitive series ending.

Anyway, it’s probably good that buzz has been mixed on True Blood. I went into the pilot with lower expectations than I have for something like Dollhouse, just wanting to be entertained, and in that respect, the pilot did a great job. There’s parts of the show that don’t really click, namely a lot of the supporting cast, but Anna Paquin is great, and her energy should be enough to carry the show until the rest of the cast gets a bit more interesting.

Paquin’s Sookie seems like a variation on her Rogue from the X-Men movies. In both cases, we’ve got a young woman with some kind of weird power that prevents her from connecting with other people. It’s not made explicit, but presumably the reason she has “no sex life to speak of” is her psychic abilities, which combined with a delicate sensibility means she’s probably put off by the raw lust of someone like Sam. Seeing inside peoples’ minds means she’s distinctly aware of the difference between true love and animal lust.

Mind reading has myriad narrative possibilities. The dichotomy between peoples’ serene surfaces and their churning inner selves is always interesting, and can be emotionally devastating, as in Buffy’s brilliant “Earshot.” But, this episode doesn’t go too far with the psychic stuff. The most striking use of her powers is the brilliant moment where she walks over to Bill in the middle of a crowded bar, everyone thinking at her until he grabs her hand and everything but him disappears from her mind.

The psychic powers seem kind of randomly placed. Typically, genre shows like this have one conceit that we accept, in this case the presence of vampires. No one is going to call the producers on the presence of Bill, but if a mummy were suddenly to walk along, it would seem weird. The psychic powers are on the borderline of being that mummy, no one else seems to have special powers in the world, and there’s no real explanation for their presence.

I’ve been watching Fassbinder’s TV epic Berlin Alexanderplatz, a work that’s deliberately stylized and removed from the norms of human behavior. If you look at the narrative on a literal level, it’s rather nonsensical, so I’ve taken to looking at it on a more metaphorical level. The narrative incongruities are justified if you view them as metaphor, as a means to tell a better story.

The psychic stuff here could be read in a similar way. Maybe she has psychic powers, or maybe she’s just imagining what these people are saying, the thoughts that are supposedly theirs in actuality a reflection of what she sees in them. She could be creating a mythology out of her everyday life, applying grand stories to the little everyday occurrences in the bar as a way of getting through the day. Surely, an alcoholic hoping to have just one drink is more interesting than a random guy just having an uneventful beer.

Is there narrative support for this theory? Not necessarily, I’m assuming we’ll see that her psychic talents are real in an upcoming episode, and they’ll play an important role in the narrative. But, in this episode, they function as a kind of Greek chorus, a subtle thematic background element that makes the everyday scenes in the diner more interesting, and serves as a metaphoric reinforcement of the society that will try to keep her and Bill apart. The voices in her head could actually be other people, or they could be the societally ingrained values that would keep her from getting together with someone like Bill.

As I said before, their meeting in the bar was the undeniable high point of the episode, a moment where all the disparate elements of the show worked together to create something uniquely powerful. Bill isn’t as compelling as Spike or Angel yet, but I’m assuming we’ll see more of his history as the show goes on. Here, he functions as the forbidden darkness that Sookie is drawn to. This is made literal in the dream sequence, where she goes out and gets bitten. The darkness attracts her, but it’s also dangerous, as we see in the final moments of the show when she gets brutally assaulted.

The weakness of the pilot is the stuff that doesn’t involve Paquin. Six Feet Under had one of the best casts on television, but the major supporting players here feel decidedly generic. Other than Sookie’s grandmother, nobody really jumps out. Tara and Lafayette are played way over the top, while Sam and Jason feel like refugees from a CW series. It was good to see Frank Sobotka back on TV, but his Southern accent didn’t really do it for me. And, William Sanderson is always a welcome presence, but didn’t really jump out here.

The core of the series is the Sookie/Bill relationship, but to make it really work, they’ll need to do a better job of fleshing out the supporting cast, making them emotionally relatable and engaging on their own terms. Will that happen? Hopefully, but I definitely liked the episode, and will be back for more.

And, let me just add that the opening credits sequence was absolutely phenomenal. HBO shows never disappoint when it comes to the main titles, and this is one of the best, a delirious flurry of the sacred and profane. From a purely aesthetic point of view, it was easily the highlight of the hour.