Ahh yes here's the thing where I talk about what I watched on TV this year. After COVID-related production delays gave last year the thinnest list of quality TV since I started doing this exercise, the medium roared back with the best year of TV since 2015 or so. I legitimately wrestled between seven different shows for the top spot, and the eventual champion feels like a winner whose success won't soon be recreated. In sum, a few all-timers finished off their runs, a bunch of new shows popped up to take their place, and the usual slate of miniseries were as strong as ever. Hooray for you and me, the ever-blessed viewers.
As I decided a few years back, I'm no longer doing a top 25 and am only ranking the best of the best. So apologies to Ramy, What We Do in the Shadows, White Lotus, Severance, The Old Man, Slow Horses, and a bunch of other perfectly good shows that fell just shy of my semi-arbitrary demarcation of greatness.
#13 - Only Murders in the Building (Hulu)
While not as tight or effective as it's initial season, Only Murders' sophomore campaign was nonetheless a success. This is partly because it's fundamentally a hangout show, and it was still very good at being just that. But even more crucial is that its light satirical touch lends itself to an honest self-awareness of the limitations of trying to string along its peculiar concept for multiple seasons. This ongoing meta-commentary helped it to avoid the most predictable pitfalls, and led to a juicy cliff-hanger that was equal parts fun and necessary for the show's continuation.
#12 - The Rehearsal (HBO)
#11 - The Righteous Gemstones (HBO)
Putting these together because they share the same strengths and weaknesses. On one hand, every little detail is perfect, from the lightly-repressed beefcake Jesus troupe in Gemstones to the placement of literally every morsel of Nathan Fielder's bizarre simulacra. On the other hand, do all these pieces add up to anything larger? For Gemstones the answer is "occasionally": The confluence of storylines pays off in the mid-season episode "As to How They Might Destroy Him" far more meaningfully than the muddled conclusion of the Zion's Landing arc. For The Rehearsal it's necessarily a bit more of a mystery. Part of this is because the basis of the show is what appears to be Fielder's earnest confusion over what it means to be human. But it's also that, despite the artifice, the show is literally engaging with real life. The text of the show even spells this out: Nathan uses the entirety of his HBO budget to impose his will and account for everything, but it still spills over into the real connection with one of the child actors detailed in the finale. The end result is that Fielder is perhaps even more confused about life, which perhaps is the point? What I can say is that these shows practically force you to engage with them at a deeper level than you might expect and that alone is commendable.
#10 - We Own This City (HBO)
If nothing else, the opening seconds of David Simon's latest miniseries demonstrates that he knows what the viewer came here for: Jon Bernthal's ludicrously good (?) Dundalk accent. And sure, there's a lot else Simon doesn't know, but he'll always know how to build his specific storytelling construct for maximal affect. Hence the inclusion on this list of this tale of real-life police corruption/belligerence and the structures that enable it. This evident contradiction between Simon's intention and his output has grown to the point where I'd like to wipe his brain and force him to watch the entirety of his oeuvre, just to see if a naïve David Simon comes to a different conclusion about what is to be done (it would at least give us a salient data point for or against "death of the author," semi-literally). I tend to hope that such an exercise would help him to see the light—like his other works, We Own This City doesn't explain the ultimate "why" but ironically it does explain the "why" of why the actually existing David Simon doesn't quite get it. From the lack of insight into what drives the nameless horde of protestors to the room full of self-interested decision makers that inherently prevent progress, a deep appraisal of the show will get the honest viewer most of the way there. Or you could just take the word of Simon's own character, the reform-minded DOJ attorney who concludes her futile efforts with the following thought:
“Look around. Look at it. We’ve built this machine where half the damn country, the part with money and power, chew up the other half that didn’t have anything to begin with. Watch it work. This is what we want. Then the Freddy Grays, the Eric Garners, the Michael Browns, are what we get. Every page of whatever court order we write, it won’t fix it.”
#9 - The Bear (FX on Hulu)
Whiplash but funnier and more explicitly about trauma, for better or worse. And there's some cool needle drops, including the penultimate episode which consists mostly of "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" playing in the background of utter chaos, as it should. It's one of the most Chicago-y things on TV since...the last series Jeremy Allen White starred in. And there was even a mini-discourse about a white t-shirt. Pretty good.
#8 - Barry (HBO)
Three seasons in, the thematic heft of Barry remains pretty light. Can a person who does bad things be good? What does true redemption mean? Can you make honest art in Hollywood? These dilemmas have been wrestled with elsewhere, both more adroitly and more thoroughly.* To which I say to myself: Who cares? Bill Hader and friends are having a lot of fun making something equal parts sleek and unique. Sometimes a show is just really good TV and that's enough.
*ie. Whether Barry is "redeemable" says less about him or his situation or even redemption in general than it does about our society's fundamental lack of honesty about the subject, and the show doesn't appear to be interested in exploring that last part at all.
#7 - Andor (Disney+)
Where Barry succeeds almost entirely because of its flashiest parts, Andor makes its mark with nearly unparalleled economy in storytelling. Sure, the series' singular thematic focus on the building of revolutionary consciousness is cool, but it's also fairly rote in the moment (while still being fun to think about afterwards). But I don't care about that because a) like I said, it's incredibly cool to have something this explicit in its aims, and b) the story is crafted in such a precise and unsparing manner that I would still love it even if it were about nothing.
#6 - Reservation Dogs (FX on Hulu)
Still one of the biggest delights on television. No other show manages to balance irony and earnest sentimentality as believably as this one. The central conflict of the second season necessitated divergent storylines, which would send many a lesser show into a spiral of diminishing returns. But as I remarked last year this show thrives on its Leftovers-type structure of semi-isolated storytelling, so the (temporary) fracturing of the titular friend group actually served to benefit the series as a whole.
#5 - Pachinko (Apple TV+)
Pachinko made easy work out of adapting what I am told is a hard-to-adapt book. In the process, it manages a near-perfect demonstration of how to tell a story across multiple timelines, ranging from occupied Korea to pre-Lost Decade Japan. The interplay of the different time periods highlights the parallels between inter-generational struggles without giving any of them the short shrift. And all of this is tied together through food, which grounds the show in a way few others manage. Finally, having a perfect theme song will always bump a show up a spot or two.
#4 - My Brilliant Friend: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (HBO)
If I'm being picky, the third season of My Brilliant Friend suffered ever so slightly because of the necessities of its narrative. Lenu and Lila's lives have diverged to the point where they are rarely together, and thus their peculiar dynamic that drives the show is mostly limited to timely phone calls and awkward dinner parties. But even if they're not physically present in each other's lives, it's made repeatedly clear that the specter of The Other still drives their every thought and action. In a way, this is actually more interesting, if not always quite as tangible. Regardless, the show's meticulous power of observation channeled through Lenu's (mostly) reliable narration is enrapturing no matter what story is being told.
#3 - Better Call Saul (AMC)
There's a million things to say about Better Call Saul, all positive, but what really sticks with me is its unparalleled competence. Possibly no other series could [mild spoiler] wrap up the stories of two of its most famous characters with four episodes to go and send us to black-and-white Nebraska for a conclusion that spends a lot of time at the mall. And have it be thrilling! The reason this works is our faith that the Gould/Gilligan brain trust will make it worth our while, which has been earned by more than a decade of patient and meticulous depiction of people's inner lives and thoughts and the logical actions that result. Not only does this approach lend itself to a more honest and organic brand of storytelling, but it also comes with a built-in advantage: You'll always get to watch exceptional characters do exceptionally competent things...at least until the corrosive nature of those things brings about their downfall. Terrific series which I will miss.
#2 - The Dropout (Hulu)
I didn't really think the creator of New Girl would be up for tackling the story of everyone's favorite criminal Elizabeth Holmes. I was very, very wrong. The weird tonal mish-mash of quirky earnestness and slacker apathy bordering on nihilism was always the sticking point in what was an otherwise enjoyable sitcom. But here that approach is perfect because that's exactly what the story of Elizabeth Holmes is! What makes the show equal parts thrilling and sobering is that very specific energy of trying hard without having anything of substance to offer, which is the very lifeforce of Holmes, the miniseries itself, and even modern capitalism as a whole. This ethos of sorts even spills over into the ending, which I was prepared to hate. But rather than forcing an overwrought reckoning or a "moral of the story," The Dropout just ends with a hysterical Amanda Seyfried screaming at nothing in particular. Feels about right.
#1 - Atlanta (FX)
I loved the previous seasons of Atlanta, but the final two seasons that aired this year cemented it as something else entirely. Donald Glover and friends take the promise of the half-comedy, half-drama, half-serialized, half-naked commentary, half-horror, half-transcendent format we first saw in Louie and injects it with an honesty and clarity that Louis CK could never muster, for all the obvious reasons. The result is self-assured in a way that nothing else ever has been or possibly ever will be. Great shows have great stories that lead to perfect moments of resonance. This show created wholly unique spaces that subverted expectations constantly, in every direction, thus rendering the need for "moments" or perhaps even "resonance" irrelevant. In this way we are all Earn, staring at that picture at the end of season three, aware of the richness of meaning in every thing, every dream, every moment, but doomed by our fundamental nature to never quite grasp it. Probably the apotheosis of modern TV or maybe just TV period.
