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Post by otherscott on Dec 3, 2019 7:39:48 GMT -8
That's likely, but blame Jeremy for Better Things not being higher because he had to go and set this whole thing off before I was ready. Number 19: American Vandal (Netflix)I don't think the second season of this show works as well as it could have, though the finale was terrific. But the first season was a perfect execution of everything the show was trying to do. It's very hard to pull off a good high school comedy that actually feels like it has roots in a real high school. Most shows either go too cutesy and make high school this lovely happy sanitized place ( High School Musical) or go too dark and worrying and really display a "kids are not alright" vibe ( Euphoria, the worst parts of The Leftovers). American Vandal to me captured high school better than any other show this decade. There's a lot of different types of kids with a lot of different interests and different stages of maturity, and the show does a very good job capturing most of those types. That's the least interesting thing the show does well, however. The analysis of the true crime genre is just perfect. It satirizes it while at the same time getting to the most troublesome part of the whole genre - digging up things that are better left alone for the purposes of entertainment. Serial set off a massive trend, but there were significant downsides to it, and this show explores all that, all in the guise of a show about graffiti genitalia. I really loved this show and its one of the main reasons the peak TV/ streaming boom is not all that bad a thing - to give little shows like this life that really don't fit anywhere else on television.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 3, 2019 8:39:37 GMT -8
Hey, you're the one who decided to ride my coattails. As usual. American Vandal was my favorite show on TV in its first season, but weirdly enough, it's probably not one of my Top 20 for the decade. Partly because of the less-great second season, and partly because the show hasn't left a ton of impact or influence in the short time since its premiere. Meanwhile, my own 19th-best show of the decade is now up! Sorry for the delay - next one's comin' faster.
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Post by otherscott on Dec 3, 2019 8:57:14 GMT -8
Yeah, I think part of it is that I have a lot more time for high peak, short run shows than you do. For instance, Justified just missed my list, but if I was disqualifying miniseries or shows with only one great season it probably would have made it.
Though it should be noted that I think Justified itself only has one great season. I was never as big on Season 4 or Season 6 than the biggest proponents of the show.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 3, 2019 15:43:13 GMT -8
I should add that, although you shouldn't expect to see one-season shows on my list, I've got no qualms about including shows that aired two seasons this decade. There were quite a few solid ones in that category. (American Vandal was one that almost made the cut.)
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Post by otherscott on Dec 4, 2019 7:14:17 GMT -8
Number 18: The Haunting of Hill House (Netflix)
I have three one season shows on my list, and this is the first of them. I am probably one of the only people to have this on a best of the decade list, but it really was a terrific and thematically well done show. There's so much here about childhood traumas and how that affects you into adulthood. The show is structured terrifically, allowing you to dig in on each of the individual family members and what makes them tick before the plot really takes off in episode 6. There's excellent stories about addiction, mental illness, and grief all tied in as well.
This is all put together in a haunted house story, with some very memorable scares and imagery that I don't think I'll ever forget.
I'm actually a little surprised this show didn't get more recognition at the time, as horror is more and more becoming an accepted critical endeavour in movies. This shows what the long form horror genre is capable of at its best, and it shows the advantages of the 10 hour story that creators are really starting to find as a sweet spot in recent years. I hope further Haunting stories can operate on the same level, but sometimes it is hard to catch lightning in the bottle more than once.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 4, 2019 9:35:21 GMT -8
For some reason, I'm flashing back to 2009 and the folks who argued that Sons of Anarchy deserved to get Best of the Decade consideration. Here's my 18th-best show of the decade. Apologies for posting at lunchtime.
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Post by otherscott on Dec 4, 2019 9:50:55 GMT -8
Well, it's different in that The Haunting of Hill House is a completely self contained story with no continuation planned. That argument is probably better used for a show that's coming a little later in my list. Secondly, there's always going to be a lot of unfortunate timing in terms of best of the decade lists. How do you rank shows that don't air their entirety in a single decade? It's like trying to rank a movie based on the first 30 minutes. I think it's unfair to leave shows out just because they got caught by a middle of a decade change, so I just try to rank the best things I've seen that decade. If the first two seasons of Sons of Anarchy were some of the best television from that decade (and they were very good seasons) then I would put it in my list. I don't think you can leave it off with the disclaimer "future seasons might really bring this down" because, to me, that's unfair. You rank what you see
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 4, 2019 10:12:37 GMT -8
Okay, maybe Sons isn't the best example, since it aired two seasons in the decade, and I've got a few two-season shows in the list ahead. I guess I take more issue with one-season shows (and particularly one-season shows that only debuted in the last year or two, since they have the advantage of feeling new and fresh) since consistency and long-term sustaining of quality is a factor worth considering. (That's not to say I'm entirely averse to having one-season shows included - Freaks and Geeks would certainly rank high on my Best of the 2000s, and it aired only two-thirds of a season in that decade - it's just that they've got a greater hill to climb.)
It's just one of many factors I consider w/r/t TV as opposed to film. But it's not meant as a knock against the quality of newer shows themselves. (I loved the heck out of Russian Doll, but I cringe every time I see someone put it on their "best of the decade" list.)
Incidentally, I do think it's interesting that we both have horror shows in our #18 slot. Especially since that genre is so undernourished.
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Post by otherscott on Dec 4, 2019 12:32:35 GMT -8
It's true one season shows in the last couple of years have the advantage of feeling new or fresh. But I think if we are properly representing the last couple of years of the decade, we have to acknowledge that short run shows have taken over the mantle of the most popular TV format. Just look at this year's Emmys for the competitiveness of the drama series category vs the competitiveness of the miniseries category - miniseries for the most part have just been better recently.
In fact, by lowering the value of miniseries due to them being short run and thus harder to sustain there's almost a bit of anti-recency bias in my list (and I'm sure it will be even stronger in yours.) There are only 2 shows in my top 10 and 5 overall that aired a season this year. Compared to the high point of those quantities on my list (I think that would be 2014) those are pretty small numbers.
I think there is a ton of potential in the horror genre on TV that really just hasn't been explored. Hopefully we'll see more of it the 2020s.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 4, 2019 16:34:26 GMT -8
Like I said, I'm not including (intended) one-season miniseries on my list, be they from the beginning of the decade or the end. (In fact, I'd argue there were plenty of acclaimed miniseries all throughout the decade; they're just more prominent in recent years because long-form TV hasn't been as great.) They should be judged separately from shows that are meant to be ongoing, since the latter group inarguably has a higher threshold to clear.
My issue is more that recent shows in general can't be judged by a lot of the factors that older shows are (sustaining of quality, cultural impact). That gives them an inherent advantage in terms of quality that older/longer shows don't have. That difference should be acknowledged, particularly due to the long list of shows that fell off a bridge after one season.
(Fun Fact: When I met Sepinwall during his TV: The Book tour, he mentioned that he decided to add UnReal to the book just before it went to press in the spring of 2016 (the show had only aired its first season at the time). But by the time the book was published, UnReal had aired its second season, and Sepinwall... was regretful of his decision.)
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Post by otherscott on Dec 5, 2019 7:22:46 GMT -8
I don't think we are going to agree on this, so I will leave it there. If we wanted to make a list that properly took into account the proper historical context of recent shows, we'd have to make our list in 2024. As that's just not how it works, like you I'm just doing my best to try to encapsulate the best TV of the decade. This is how I chose to go about it.
Which brings me to my next completely non-controversial choice:
Number 17: Chernobyl (HBO/ Sky UK)
I think one of my main regrets of something I never got around to watching this decade was The Pacific. There's a lot of great potential in exploring historical events in a fictionalized setting through miniseries. Movies trying to fully capture historical events always feel too long or too clipped, and obviously there isn't seasons worth of content to explore. More and more, networks are finding the value here and finding creative ways to portray it (as will be demonstrated by a show that is not a miniseries coming up in a couple of spots).
Chernobyl to me was the best historical recreation I watched on TV this decade, and was second only to Dunkirk if we are throwing movies into the mix as well. There is certainly some bias here for me being an engineer and having spent a few months actually working in the nuclear industry on a placement, and the technical stuff interested me immensely, but there's some great human stories here. It would be easy to spend the whole time bagging on the Soviet system that caused an event like this to happen, and the show does that a little, but mostly the show focuses on the heroics of what happened after the event that prevented further disaster. There are real human stories here, from Valery Legasov fighting the bureaucracy to get the resources he needed to fix the problem and make sure nothing happens further, to all the miners and officials who risked their health to prevent a continent wide catastrophe. There's also the hold-your-breath nature of the original catastrophe, and the tragedy of the deaths of the workers and firefighters who were there that night. It's almost a perfect story told with a flair and depth it didn't even need to be able to work.
Highly recommended to anyone who hasn't had the chance to watch it yet.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 5, 2019 8:15:51 GMT -8
It's fine, Scott. We each play by our own rules. And I'm sure your #17 pick might seem controversial, but hey, so's mine! (If only because of how low it is.)
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Post by otherscott on Dec 5, 2019 8:40:31 GMT -8
I think the only thing controversial about your views on The Americans is your strangely cold stance on the show's final season. Otherwise I think we feel fairly similarly about it -and probably fairly in line with most critics. It will be quite a bit higher up in my list, but only because the final season made up a lot of ground for me.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 6, 2019 6:41:08 GMT -8
Here's my 16th-best show of the decade. See, I can do newer stuff, too. Schedule might be getting wonkier for the rest of the month, but I'll try sticking to a weekday posting schedule.
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Post by otherscott on Dec 6, 2019 8:46:48 GMT -8
I did not make any efforts to really distribute this top 20 list evenly, so that is why you are seeing mostly new shows early in the list. That's going to continue for a little while longer and then they'll mostly go away.
Number 16: One Day At a Time (Netflix)
The multi-cam sitcom overall has taken a big hit in the last decade, maybe going back even further. Gone are the days of Cheers being the model that all comedies built around, instead taking The Office as the prime model for all sitcoms to structure around.
It's refreshing then to see a throwback show like One Day At a Time prove that the medium still has quality in it, even if it never gained the popularity it deserved. This was never a flashy show, but it had more heart and more sincerity then almost anything else on TV. The show was refreshingly positive in an era where more and more TV shows turned to main characters that were mostly negative and significantly flawed. That doesn't mean the characters on One Day At a Time were any less complex, but its a good reminder that you can maintain character depth with characters who are just generally good people, and I'd be happy to have over at my house for dinner.
The show never really took off and was a casualty of Netflix's recent axe spree and is going to be revived on a channel I understand is called Pop (or something) - an interesting reversal of streaming networks saving televised shows that was prominent through most of the latter half of the decade. Let's hope the show continues to be sweet, and funny, and just comfort television that's needed sometimes to lift spirits.
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