Honorable Mention: Good Wife (Season 5)
Runner-up: Justified (Season 5)
10. Parks and Rec (Season 6)
9. Silicon Valley (Season 1)
8. Veep (Season 3)
7. Sherlock (Series 3)
6. Game of Thrones (Season 4)
5. Community (Season 5)
4. Fargo (Season 1)
3. Mad Men (Season 7 1st half)
2. Rick and Morty (Season 1)
1. True Detective (Season 1)
This was the funniest season of Mad Men so far. Elisabeth Moss deserves supporting Emmy's in both categories.
11 comments:
I'm nearly caught up with the HBO shows I've been wanting to see for years (Veep is really blowing my mind), so I'll chime in with my own next week. But...man, I do not get the ecstatic love for True Detective. It was tremendously engaging, and eps 4-6 were near great, but...Peter Griffin's assessment of The Godfather ("it insists upon itself") comes to mind.
Then again, once you put a fart of a season like Parks & Rec S6 on any list...lost me forever :-)
But Mad Men is, of course, The Greatest. I cannot possibly put into words the surge of feeling that comes with the conclusion of any single episode (the Don and Sally episode?! GTFO it's so good), let alone the halftime finale.
BTW I had a dream we were all in a class together. It was pretty cool.
I need an equation for my TV rankings. I think it is something like y=5^(10/x), where x is the ranking number. There is definitely some parabola action going on, especially with the Top 5 majorly breaking away from the pack.
I can't imagine P&R will be there come December. In fact, I'm quite sure Orange is the New Black, will knock it out this weekend. I would still take it over something funnier, but less well-built, like The Mindy Project. I'd like to see where they go with that show, but they're trying to have it both ways re: character relationships.
ps
I know where you're coming from about "insisting on itself" but that ending was gutsy and bold and *subversive* in our Cormac McCarthy day and age. Instead of the macho nihilism I expected, I thought they stuck the landing with grace and dignity. Nothing but love from me and great expectations for the next round.
It's actually not entirely TD's ending I have a problem with, just thought the whole emotional/thematic arc could have been handled more gracefully. I'm fine with where they ended up, just not as much with the how they ended up there.
And I should have mentioned, I actually have pretty high hopes for P&R S7. THAT was a pretty bold freaking ending. But yeah, this year anyway, Mindy was better. More actively frustrating, but - perhaps as a result - more invigorating as well.
I like your ranking equation.
I 100% believe that Fargo and True Detective were best served by watching them in the moment, and then waiting a week for the next installment. I know it sounds like a cop-out, but I've rarely had so much excitement and anticipation for what comes next. Closest analogue was Blazer playoff runs when we were in junior high. I unreservedly loved both, but can understand if they don't hold up under the more sober scrutiny of a marathon session. It sort of kills the tension and rushes the mystery though, and that is a shame.
ps
So it turns out I've lost my stomach for OITNB. 2/3rds of an episode in, and I just can't do it. Literally gave me a nightmare.
Review with Andy Daly has been my favorite new thing recently. He's a brilliant Comedy Bang Bang guest/character actor, and he was under-served in Eastbound and Down, so it is great to see his talents given room to stretch.
I wouldn't say I exactly marathoned TD; took about two weeks, which of course isn't the same as two months, but I sort of purposefully let it draw out a bit. I really am of two minds about the extent to which the anticipation of waiting is a valid aspect to fully appreciating any given show. On one hand, it is fundamentally built into the way the art is distributed, and especially with the rise of Netflix's original content, Louie doing a one-off 90-minute episode, Sherlock always doing 90-minute eps, Mad Men (and others I'm sure) airing two-part premieres, and the long-standing one-hour specials of half-hour shows, I hesitate in being too quick to dismiss the week-to-week (or even month-to-month and year-to-year) wait, as it is more and more a legitimate storytelling choice. Besides, I just flat-out prefer giving the episodes time to breathe. On the other, you know, I loved Lost so much more in seasons 3-5, when I started watching it live, week-to-week, but I also, looking back, recognize that that format made me forgive so many of the flaws of S6, which in retrospect just didn't hang together even without the finale. And as we both know from binging Veronica Mars S1, even a suspense-oriented show can hang together just fine when you're setting the schedule.
I did, however, bail on Fargo after one episode. No idea if it improves under any sort of schedule.
I'm not done with Orange is the New Black S2 yet, but barring something explosively remarkable in the last four episodes, I actually think it's kind of a step down from S1, which I didn't even like that much. So I feel pretty good about the below list:
10. The Mindy Project S2 (what does this show even want to be?)
9. Orange is the New Black S2
8. True Detective S1 (those middle three eps WERE pretty spectacular)
7. Trophy Wife S1 (RIP)
6. Brooklyn Nine-Nine S1 (the first half of this season would rank MUCH higher, but the introduction of the Jake/Amy maybe-romance was such a drag on a tremendous joke machine)
5. Glee S5 (when it's really on, and really cooking, as it was for the first five eps upon returning this year, there are few things better)
4. Veep S3*
3. New Girl S3 (still flat-out the funniest show on television, besides continuing to explore some emotional waters of adulthood that really resonate)
2. Girls S3*
1. Mad Men S7.1 (NATCH)
*I came up with this theory when Lost S3 ended that the best shows are the ones that seem to totally and dramatically abandon some central tenant on which you were CERTAIN the entire show hinged. In the case of that show, we find out that they do get off the island. The Office S3 ended with Jim asking Pam on a date (not that that ended up being a GREAT show, but I still think it held its own pretty strongly through S5; ditto Parks & Rec, S3 of which ended with Leslie looking towards City Council). Mad Men S3 ended with the gang abandoning the Sterling Cooper offices and starting a new agency, as Don and Betty plan for a divorce they've managed to stave off for at least a year. And so on. Obviously not EVERY great show goes this route (The Sopranos saved its own grand move for the end of S4), but it is an interesting trend.
Similarly, I admire the hell out of the corner in which Girls and Veep have painted themselves by the end of their most recent seasons. I think Veep struggled a bit this year with trying to keep everyone in the cast a part of the show, even though the central conceit from day one has been about a group of people who despise one another but are forced to work together out of circumstance and shared ambition, but it was the rare comedy to genuinely keep me guessing on a plot level, which in turn emboldened the rather spectacular character work that continued to set it apart.
Oh man, I'm sorry to hear that about Fargo. I think I probably overlooked many a flaw because I was hooked from the beginning and eager to see it again each week. There is a really dumb Oliver Platt subplot, and some terrible roles for Key & Peele, but other than that I was on-board. Oh, and surprisingly Odenkirk wasn't great. Layed it on real thick like he was on a different show.
Then again, I don't have the same love for the source material most people do. Blasphemous, I know.
I will say this for Mindy: best new character on TV is Dr. Danny Castellano. It seemed like they fumbled the romance real hard, but maybe it was just unorthodox enough to keep things interesting go forward, we'll see.
I am straight-up shocked to see GIRLS up at 2. Maybe I'm misremembering, have you always been a big fan, or has it gotten substantially better? Lena Dunham, Lea Michele, and Zooey Deschanel are the three TV leading ladies I just can't get with, they crazy-rub-me the wrong way like I'm a guiro.*
*That weird Mexican fish-looking instrument your music teacher had that the kids all fought over. Had to look it up. It is exactly how I feel.
For parity, here are the leading men who are instantly vetoed for me: Jeremy Piven and Mark Wahlberg jump to mind.
Season 3 of Portlandia is the best yet, at least #10 for me.
I only started watching Girls a few weeks ago at all (finally got that sweet sweet HBO Go password), but became a fan pretty instantly.
I will say this for Dunham and Michele (Deschanel is awesome all over) - while I find them almost uncommonly unbearable in real life (Dunham's WTF interview was...painful), their shows somehow perfectly channel those personas into something empathetic and fascinating. When people talk about the way TV and movies can make you sympathize with the most despicable people, they're often using that as a means of justifying finding guys like Walter White and Tony Soprano "cool" in spite of their more outrageous sins. But more and more, what I love about this stuff, television in particular, is the way empathy gets extended, through exposure, to people we otherwise dislike for far more petty reasons than their transgressions. It's one thing to care about Tony, who overtly and forcefully struggles with his own nature, creating a safe space for us to do likewise. But what about Glee's Rachel Berry, who isn't killing anyone, but who nonetheless has something destructive inside of her yet rarely gives her personality and actions a second thought? Is she beyond compassion because of her obliviousness? Why? Could that possibly make her more dynamic and fascinating?
Dunham and Michele's characters in particular might not dwell in sins as operatic as those on Breaking Bad or The Sopranos or certainly True Detective, but their narcissism, delusions, and jealousies are far more reflective of more familiar emotional struggles. Their personalities are less immediately sympathetic, but they are frighteningly honest, and Girls in particular is astonishing in how it really, truly, deeply recognizes - not in the joking way of The Mindy Project - how totally unbearable someone like Dunham can be, but, through watching her struggles week-to-week, how that doesn't (or at least shouldn't) excuse us from caring for her.
Roger Ebert once said that movies are empathy machines, that they teach us to be more tolerant and understanding of a tremendous range of people, and I have uniformly found that to be true. More and more, I respond to anything that presents a fully-formed person, regardless of whether the show "supports" or "is criticizing" them or whatever bullshit people were writing about Girls during season one. It does not matter. I'd much rather just see them, totally, for what they are, and come to have varied and conflicting responses to their thoughts and behavior. Just as I do with anyone I meet in real life.
Oh, and I, too, don't rate the movie Fargo as high as many others.
But Mark Wahlberg is the best. Pain & Gain for life!
That was capital E Eloquent Scott. I absolutely love the sentiment and wish I felt the same way. Your distinction between big-time sociopaths and everyday narcissists is well-taken, too.
I have never heard the Empathy Machine idea, and I like it, and have had my hand stamped at the Greta-Gerwig-my-life-is-a-mess-mobile enough times to qualify as a curious, empathetic person, but extended this far (multiple TV seasons), with no forward motion towards humanity, just depresses the hell out of me. At least Walt and Tony were circling the drain.
I'm really glad both shows are on, because they've widened what TV can be, but neither will get another half-hour of life out of me. Glee was far too careless and GIRLS too uninteresting AND implausible at the same time. Their leading ladies were just symptomatic of much larger problems.
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