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Post by otherscott on Dec 8, 2020 8:33:23 GMT -8
It's time.
Any predictions for the show that is going to come out on top overall for the year?
I think the best shots go to Better Call Saul, The Great, and The Queen's Gambit. But considering I predicted Bojack to finish fairly high in the best of the decade rankings, take my predictions with a grain of salt.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 8, 2020 11:13:09 GMT -8
I would be pretty surprised if Better Call Saul doesn't end up as the critics' overall #1. The Queen's Gambit will end up pretty high as well. I don't think The Great will even come close. Heck, it's not even the year's most critically beloved Hulu show.
HBO will have at least one show in the Top 3, probably I May Destroy You.
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Post by otherscott on Dec 8, 2020 11:38:03 GMT -8
Yeah I wanted to make my predictions before looking at the Metacritic scoring, and you're right I am going to be way off on The Great. It seemed that kind of agreeable thing everyone likes but no one felt as passionately about it as I thought, which is fair, I don't think it's quite going to make my top 10 either.
I May Destroy You isn't going to make my top 10 list either, but it's probably the most fascinatingly ambitious show of the year, so I definitely understand that one. I thought it would be a little more divisive than it actually seems to be.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 8, 2020 12:12:58 GMT -8
The Great generated no buzz at all this year. Hulu released all the episodes over a single weekend, and everyone had forgotten about it within three days. Heck, it barely got any Emmy nominations, despite premiering in Emmy season.
(Which is all obviously a shame, since it's awesome.)
I absolutely get why I May Destroy You was so popular with critics, although I have not watched it yet. Still gotta work up the motivation when it comes to HBO shows.
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Post by otherscott on Dec 16, 2020 12:28:30 GMT -8
I had so much fun with a countdown for my top 20 shows of the decade last year, I think I might do it again. Same drill, one show a day for the next 10 days leading up to a certain denominational holiday. I'll throw 3 or 4 honourable mentions out at the end. Shows I would have liked to get to but didn't for various reasons would be The Boys, The Queen's Gambit, Better Things, and What We Do In the Shadows.
Number 10: Insecure (HBO)
I caught up on all 4 seasons of Insecure this year, and it's generally what I'd consider a very solid, nothing to complain about but nothing super special show. That being said, this season was its best so far, as it ignored most of the less interesting romance plotlines and explored mainly the dissolution of a friendship in a way that was nuanced, interesting, made you sad for both parties but also made you feel like neither of them took a lot of blame for it. Sometimes peoples interests and feelings for one another can just decay over time. We see this explored a lot in romances, almost too much, but I thought tackling a generic friendship in this manner was something I hadn't seen before and made me applaud and appreciate the show a little more than I had in seasons 1-3.
The show itself takes a very balanced view on race, which is a nice contrast to some of the very angry shows that have popped up in the last couple of years. Obviously anything making my top 10 for the year is recommended, and that's even more true this year where I had more time and access to more shows, to the point that the bottom of my top 20 is more in line with what the bottom of my top 10s used to be in terms of quality, but I do want to put a special recommendation on this show because it's much more under the radar than I feel it should be.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 16, 2020 12:52:30 GMT -8
Still haven't watched Insecure, but it does feel like one of those shows that lost some of its critical following over the years. Seems like a common issue in the still-rather-peaky TV era. (And for those wondering, I will not be doing separate articles for each of my "Best of the Year" picks this year. Pulling that stunt once a decade is enough for me.)
By-the-by, I May Destroy You has pulled way ahead in the Metacritic rankings. Fully one-third of available critics are hailing it as the best show of the year. For comparison with other #1 picks:
1. I May Destroy You (19 votes) 2. Better Call Saul (6 votes) 3. The Queen's Gambit (4 votes) 4. Normal People (3 votes) 5. Ted Lasso/Better Things (2 votes each)
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Post by otherscott on Dec 16, 2020 13:34:33 GMT -8
I really did not see that coming. It was buzzed about, but no more than a lot of other shows throughout the year. I guess it's just a very "2020" show.
Also, I fully acknowledge writing full articles for each show like you did last year is very different than my two paragraph blurbs. I don't think I have a full article's worth of stuff to say about any show this year. (Maybe my number 1 show.)
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 16, 2020 14:11:16 GMT -8
I know, that was just me snarking.
I think Better Call Saul, though widely respected, does in part feel like a prestige show of the 2000s - hourlong drama starring a white male antihero. (Heck, it's even set in the 2000s.) I May Destroy You is a half-hour dramedy with a lot of up-to-the-minute commentary on race and sex, and critics, in recent years, have put a lot of emphasis on topicality. (I don't mean that as a diminishing factor; it's also a very good show in its own right.)
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Post by otherscott on Dec 17, 2020 6:46:18 GMT -8
Number 9: The Plot Against America (HBO)
No, the list is not just going to be all HBO shows this year. In fact there's only one more "true" HBO show left.
There's a number of shows in the next few spots on my list where one half of the season is terrific and one half is merely just good. The Plot Against America has a lot of value in cataloging the potential way democracy can fall, and how even America can plunge into a more extreme autocratic state. Obviously, Simon made this show because he saw echoes of the source material in real life, but it's so much smarter than just identifying "here's all the ways Charles Lindburgh as president is like Trump" because on the surface they are nothing alike other than both promoting far right policies. But there's a lot here about misinformation, and mob mentalities, and people who are part of the oppressed group holding up the regime regardless because it promotes personal growth.
The najor clever and insightful thing the show, particularly in its first half, focuses on is how autocratic governments can be built on something that seems so helpful and beneficial for the country. In the show, it's the war, and how it's not America's war. It's a completely defensible position to have given what they knew at the time, and people not wanting their young men to die like what had happened 30 years earlier would be a great driving force for a government with underlying issues to take hold. It presented the fall of the country in such a way that if I was only slightly misinformed, or saw antisemitism as not as large of an issue as it truly was, I could see myself supporting the fall that happened here.
Communities as a collective have an innate ability to do a great deal of harm, if that harm becomes the popular and accepted thing. And no democracy is going to protect from that - this is the lesson of The Plot Against America and really the lesson of so many democratic yet still autocratic governments throughout recent history.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 17, 2020 8:59:21 GMT -8
As I mentioned earlier, I think there will be very little overlap between our "Best of" lists this year. Partly due to the sheer level of TV produced even during a year when Hollywood was limited, but also due to some cases of differing tastes.
I could not get into The Plot Against America at all. Part of the reason is that the very unsubtle Trumpian metaphors (though they may not be the focus of the show) came off as heavy-handed and distracting - plus it was all the critics talked about in their reviews. After four years of constant Nazi analogies from the media and showbiz alike, trivializing the actual events that occurred in Europe back in the 1940s, I had simply had enough, and could not watch a full alternate-history series based on that underlying analogy.
The other reason is that (and this is obviously a personal issue that has been bugging me for years) is that David Simon, like much of Hollywood, has a really superficial understanding of Jews in America, and there was more than one instance when I was laughing at the series' inaccuracies (which admittedly a lot of folks probably wouldn't catch). This is not a specific problem with TPAA, but it distracts me every time I notice it in TV or film.
In other words, I could see it wasn't a bad show, but the only way I can get into The Plot Against America is by putting myself in such a mindset where I block out my knowledge of religion and modern politics. That's a bit too high a bar to clear.
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Post by otherscott on Dec 17, 2020 11:33:56 GMT -8
I hadn't heard about any Jewish inaccuracies, so I will take your word on it. I think Simon probably should have had some more Jewish influence on this work if he was going to structure it around that community if that's the case.
I fundamentally disagree that this show trivialized the events of the 1940s in Europe at all. The show was based on a book that was written far before Trump was even an idea. Did Simon dust the piece of IP off to use it in a timely fashion? Sure. Do people need to wrap their head around the fact that modern day Republicans and Trump are in no way on a similar level to 1930s Europe? Absolutely.
But what I see this show being about is the threat of autocracy and how it manifests itself, and that has been repeated throughout history. I don't think anything here has to tie to Trump, because it's been the same story told in a slightly different every time an autocracy takes hold, whether it be how the Nazis gripped Germany, or the Bolsheviks took Russia, or how socialism corrupted Venezuela. And people do think the US is completely immune to it, and I will say that the US constitution does a stand up job in trying to prevent the fall of democracy, almost to a fault. But all it takes is for popular favour to swing towards supporting anti-democratic methods, and it can be done. I don't see the show as about Trump, even if that's what Simon intended, because the book was never about Trump. There's patterns of Trump there because Trump absolutely has autocratic tendencies. But these same patterns pop up all over the world, and are still popping up particularly in Eastern Europe at the moment. And I think it does a great disservice (and I 100% blame critics for doing this) to reduce this story to be about Trump - it's an extremely America-centric view of this story.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 17, 2020 15:39:28 GMT -8
I wasn't saying the show trivialized 1940s Europe; I was saying that Nazi comparisons have become a go-to in recent years among Hollywood types. Yes, obviously the book was written years before Trump, but everything about this adaptation (which Simon first began discussing in early 2017) is obviously meant to be viewed from a 2020 perspective, and was marketed by the network and hailed by critics as such. Maybe ten years down the line, I can watch it from a more detached perspective, but these last few years have delivered more than their fill of "relevant" TV.
Does this mean it's a bad show on its own merits? Of course not. But like most of David Simon's work, it's all about the message, and I've definitely seen the message pushed on TV more than enough lately.
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Post by otherscott on Dec 18, 2020 10:56:09 GMT -8
Number 8: Ted Lasso (Apple TV....plus)
So I think I stated before on this forum that despite being a big sports fan, I really don't like sports shows and movies. The best part of sports is the fact that they are unscripted, so to go ahead and script them removes pretty much everything I like about them in the first place.
And really, Ted Lasso doesn't change that. Anything involving the actual games that were played are my least favourite part of the show by far. The last episode is not undone by the fact it centers around a big game, but it does lessen the episode considerably over what it could have been.
But make no mistake, this is the best "feel good" comedy I've seen since Parks and Rec ended. It's funny, it has a heart to it, and it manages to make pretty much every character memorable and have something special about them. In some ways, this is a superhero show, but despite that it's always clear what drives each of these main people, and finds the goodness inside each of them. That's pretty refreshing when a lot of TV is about dealing with trauma in this day and age. Extremely watchable, addictive, funny show.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 18, 2020 11:46:07 GMT -8
Ted Lasso is a delightful show, and one of the most charming comedies to debut in recent years. It's rare to find a show that has so many different characters who are worth caring about and rooting for, even when they have conflicting goals and philosophies. But this series just radiates positivity in a way that doesn't feel forced.
Incidentally, if you swap out the "comedy" part of your analysis, it's very close to my views on Friday Night Lights. The sports aspect of FNL was always the least interesting part of it, but it managed to weave the games into the larger scripts excellently. (And even "script" is best used in the loose sense, as a lot of the series' dialogue was improvised by the actors.)
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Dec 18, 2020 16:28:49 GMT -8
Does this mean it's a bad show on its own merits? Of course not. But like most of David Simon's work, it's all about the message, and I've definitely seen the message pushed on TV more than enough lately. All of Simon's shows minus Treme, that is.
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