Here is my annual television wrap-up. I don’t make a Top Ten list, I just look back and some of the things I wrote since the last time I did one of these (December 9 of last year). Looking back, I feel that these compilations are among the best posts I offer each year. I have no idea what that means. (See if you can find this year’s Karen Sisco Award winner in what follows.)
Portlandia. “It was kinda cute, and I don’t usually do cute, but it was cute with barbs. The barbs aren’t really gentle, either. But they are aimed at the same people who make the jokes, so there is a nice insularity to it all. Fred Armisen and [Carrie] Brownstein know the world of the show quite well, and they allow us to see that they are a part of the culture they are poking. So there is no mean-spiritedness at all. As others have pointed out, the show makes fun of the exact audience they can expect to be watching: smart, self-conscious folks who watch IFC.”
An Idiot Abroad. “Pilkington doesn’t seem like an idiot at all in this show. He most definitely seems like a fish out of water, and he has a willingness to blurt out whatever is in his head. But as often as not, I found myself empathizing with him, because I knew I’d be the same.”
Caprica. “If I were to write an essay on this, I might focus on the scene when the Cylons martyr themselves by leaping en masse on the bomb-carrying bad guy. It redefines heroism, which I always assume suggests a conscious act … ok, oftentimes our most heroic moments come when we act before we think, but the Cylons were just following orders. But we know that Cylons are more than just machines, and while it’s hard to say whether these early models are self-aware enough to recognize the concept of sacrifice, nonetheless that self-awareness is down the road, and it makes their heroic act here poignant. Of course, it’s mostly tossed off as the end of an exciting action sequence, but like I said above, I often found the idea of Caprica better than its execution.”
The Chicago Code. “[Shawn] Ryan does a good job of making a network show work, and if The Chicago Code isn’t groundbreaking like The Shield, well, not many shows are. What’s nice is that The Chicago Code is a relatively straightforward cop show, but it doesn’t feel like Ryan is just settling for slightly better than average. He wants to give us an excellent straightforward cop show, and he has earned our trust.” [Note: the show was cancelled, and I skipped the final few episodes.]
Episodes. “The best thing about Episodes was Matt LeBlanc playing ‘Matt LeBlanc,’ a self-centered asshole with an enormous cock. The rest was sporadically funny, and that’s about it. It passed the time OK, and if you didn’t watch it (I don’t know anyone but me who did), you didn’t miss anything. … I want to emphasize that this isn’t just a case of me not ‘getting’ comedy. The show isn’t funny enough, and the more serious moments involve characters we don’t care about enough.”
Big Love. “My favorite parts of the show throughout its run came when the focus was on the sister wives. They were interesting and complex characters, capable of change (even Nikki, one of the most petty characters in TV history, completely nailed by Chloë Sevigny, who ruled pretty much every scene she was in, made baby steps at the end). … Ultimately, I found Big Love to be a sporadically good series, and I did stick with it to the end, which says something.”
Shameless. “The one person who lifts Shameless above the almost-great is Emmy Rossum. … It is impossible to exaggerate how strong she is as Fiona, the oldest child of the Gallagher family whose job is to serve as mother, father, and sister to her clan of siblings. Despite being heartbreakingly beautiful, she pulls off the tough veneer of Fiona without showing how much work she must have put into it. She’s great in the funny moments, she’s even greater in the dramatic moments, and she rarely overplays her hand, which is appropriate, since Fiona tends to keep things close to her vest. And it wouldn’t be a Showtime series without sex, so it must be said, Rossum takes on her sex scenes with aplomb … she is as hot as she is beautiful. When all else fails, the camera can just focus on her enormous doe eyes.”
Lights Out. “Reg E. Cathey and Eamonn Walker took care of the acting flash department, and the show was better for it. But, just as Mark Wahlberg’s excellent performance in The Fighter was lost amidst the accolades for his co-stars, so, too, Stacy Keach and especially the show’s star, Holt McCallany, showed how far you could go with a more understated style. McCallany was the revelation of the series.”
Mildred Pierce. “[T]he only way I could tolerate the character of Veda was by treating the show as a comedy, and I’m pretty sure that’s not what was intended. … [I]f Haynes wanted us to see Veda as a manifestation of fears rather than as a real person, he needed to do something to make that more clear. Of course Veda is a manifestation of Mildred’s fears, but she is represented literally … we don’t get to the end and find out that Veda was just a figment of Mildred’s imagination. Veda was a corporeal being interacting with other recognizable humans, and she was unrecognizable as a human.”
Justified. “There is so much great acting on this show that it’s unfair to single anyone out. But [Timothy] Olyphant and Walton Goggins are deserving of Emmy nominations. Over even those two, though, is Margo Martindale as Mags, who absolutely must get a supporting actress nomination. She was marvelous in every scene she was in, deftly playing her complex character so that you believed both the ruthless crime boss and the maternal stand-in mom. … The final scene between Raylan and Mags is one of the finest scenes I’ve come across. Both actors knock it out of the park. It was a suitable ending to Season Two, and it’s a sign of how good Justified has become that the excellence of that scene wasn’t out of place in a show where we have come to expect the best.” [Note: Martindale did indeed win an Emmy.]
The Killing. “A series that began with great promise, an atmospheric setting, and some fine acting ended up being a shaggy-dog story with an atmospheric setting and some fine acting. Fuck it … Robin can watch Season Two by herself, if she’s so inclined.”
Game of Thrones. “Game of Thrones creates a brand new world, and if I hedged my bets because fantasy isn’t for me, I was proven wrong. In fact, the fantastic element is precisely what allows for a world different from our own, recognizably human but always with the potential for things outside of our real-world experiences. The closest HBO show to Game of Thrones, I think, is Rome. In that series, humans acted in ways that seemed very odd to us, because it took place so long ago, attitudes were different, beliefs were different … in other words, the world of Rome was as fantastic to a modern audience as is the world of Game of Thrones.”
United States of Tara. “Tara was never a great show, and it was often annoying. But even more often, it was a very good show. This, perhaps, is a boilerplate for describing the work of Diablo Cody: not great, often annoying, but also very good.”
Treme. “Some suggest the music we hear isn’t always of the highest quality. But that barely matters, because in most cases, we experience the music being played for an audience, on the streets of New Orleans or in its clubs, and the connection between performer and audience is electric. I can remember once, 40 years ago, when some friends and I ended up in a pizza parlor where an electric guitarist and bassist were playing music as we ate and drank. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the what-the-hell aspect of hearing this in a place where pizza is the point, but the audience (maybe two dozen of us) and the guitarist were locked into each other. For that one night, he was the greatest guitarist in the world. Treme is full of such moments, and the quality of the actual music matters far less than the quality of the crowds.”
True Blood. “Season 4 was overflowing, and not really in a good way. It started with fairies, but outside of giving half an explanation for Sookie’s powers, the entire fairy subplot kinda disappeared. Not to worry, though, because there were lots more werewolves and shapeshifters, along with wiccans and old-school witches, possessed babies, mediums, and brujo magic. I’m sure I’ve left something out. There was too much going on, which means that many of the individual scenes offered over-the-top entertainment, but I gave up trying to make sense of any of it long before the season ended.”
Curb Your Enthusiasm. “Mostly, I’m fascinated by the question of why, when I don’t have the patience to stick with even the best sitcoms, when I don’t seem to understand modern film comedy, why do I still love Curb Your Enthusiasm? As far as I am concerned, they are nowhere near the legendary shark, and if Larry David wants to do it, I most definitely will be there for another season. Meanwhile, give Leon his own show!”
Boardwalk Empire. “Gretchen Mol has had so many rumors follow her career that there is an extra touch of creepiness when she talks about kissing her baby son’s winky when she changed his diapers.” [Note: later we found out just how creepy it was.]
Terra Nova. “[A]bout 20 minutes into the 2-hour pilot, my wife asked how I would make it through 120 minutes when I was already making fun of it after 20. There’s a pretty simple equation here: dinos good, family bad. The dinosaur effects are fine, and there are some Dinos Attack! scenes that are pretty exciting. But this being Steven Spielberg, it’s really about Family, and this family is about as interesting as the Robinsons of Lost in Space.”
The Hour. “It has an interesting cast (Dominic West, ex-McNulty from The Wire, Oona Chaplin, and, in the lead female role, Romola Garai, who is exquisitely real looking). It’s not as good as Mad Men, to which it was compared (foolishly, I think), but it’s close enough to count, and yes, it’s coming back for a second season. Look for it when it hits your favorite streaming site … six episodes, come on, you can knock that off in an evening.”
The Walking Dead. “I won’t be surprised if The Walking Dead never rises above its limitations. But there is nothing wrong with a show that knows what it wants to do, and does it. The Walking Dead is the Joan Jett of television, which makes the B+ I gave Season One ironically appropriate (Christgau gave Jett’s albums five straight B+ grades, saying ‘not since her start-up has she made something special of her populist instincts. It's almost as if that's the idea.’).”
Sons of Anarchy. “Ultimately, very little mattered. Most of the same characters will be back next season. The deck chairs have been rearranged, but nothing more. On one level, the entire season was well done … up until the last episode, I felt this season ranked with Season Two as the best so far. The finale, on its own terms, was tense, with the usual great acting. But what the finale represents in terms of a loss of nerve, a capitulation to the central flaws of series television, is very disappointing.”
Downton Abbey. “I was a lot like the middle-class lawyer, Matthew Crawley, who at first dismissed the attentions paid to him by the servants after he became the heir presumptive to the estate (as if I knew what an heir presumptive was … thank you, Wikipedia). It rankled that everyone seemed to know and accept their place, and that the one character who was most ambitious (a footman) was also the most devious and unlikable character. But eventually I felt like I’d learned something about the British class society of the time, and had been entertained in the process.”
Homeland. “It is not easy to use bipolar disorder as a dramatic device without turning your series into a freak show, nor is it easy to take a part with plenty of scenery chewing and award-bait dramatic sequences and turn it into something recognizably human. Danes pulled it off … she was astounding on a regular basis in Homeland.”
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