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Post by otherscott on Jan 8, 2024 7:23:35 GMT -8
Not sure how many posts this will take, but I want to talk a little more about each of these shows.
Honourable Mentions - Barry (HBO), Reservation Dogs (FX on Hulu/ Disney Plus)
Two well beloved shows ended this year, and Noho Hank takes the (coveted) spot of my avatar to remember a dearly departed show from the past year.
I have always been a little bit cooler on these shows than their biggest supporters, for somewhat different reasons. For Reservation Dogs, it's a beautiful little portrait of what life is like for a specific group of people on a reservation, and does raise some awareness about Indigenous issues, but to me it's not even trying to be one of the best shows on TV or of all time, the problems are small, the situations aren't all that complex, it's a nice comfortable slice of life shows similar to all the other slice of life shows we get. The fact it is about a group of people who have been marginalized certainly gives it some extra meaning, but I'm not sure what I'm missing to make this show an all time pantheoner. It does what it is aiming for very well, but it really isn't all that ambitious in the grand scheme of things.
For Barry, aside from the previously mentioned NoHo Hank, I've never found it all that funny, and to me the show lost something when it revealed it never intended to make Barry a redeemable human. It does some really good stuff with Sally, and there's a stretch in the first 2/3rds of season 2 that I absolutely adore how it mixes the weird and wild and dark tones, but it always lacked a center to me because "bad person does bad things but sometimes feels bad about them" is something that a lot of other shows have done, and a bit more effectively. Season 4 was about in line with the rest of the show. This season is the best the show uses Fuchs, who is probably my MVP of the entire season, especially in the back half. The Barry and Sally stuff doesn't really work though, so while the show is doing well on the Hank and Fuchs side it has a bit of a central hole to it.
10. Silo (Apple TV +) Silo might be the show I have the least to say about in my top 10. Partially that is because it aired at the beginning of the year so my memories of exactly how I felt about it are beginning to fade, but also it is boilerplate good scifi. It has a solid central character, has a really good pilot episode that doesn't involve that central character really at all, has an intriguing mystery at the center, and does a very good job executing its twists and turns. It's not that easy to adapt sci-fi novels, and certainly not that easy to make book characters work on screen as people for us to be interested in, so I give Silo props for good execution.
9. Mrs Davis (Peacock/ Crave) This show is just so original and ambitious I feel like I had to include it. It aims for big themes while trying to be a comedy sometimes, but also off-the-wall insane at other times. That is very tough to do, and the show doesn't always hit what it's aiming for just because it is aiming so high, but it was impressive to see it try. I didn't know what this show was about going in, but I certainly didn't have "magician-hating nun trying to fight a ubiquitous AI created for the purpose of selling chicken wings" on the list.
I personally hope that Damon Lindelof does go back to more pure showrunning though. This particular show was run by Tara Hernandez, and while I'm sure Lindelof was heavily involved and takes writing credits on a couple of the scripts, I am wondering if he's moved more to a mentorship/ production role at this stage, which makes me sad if we never see a pure Lindelof original composition again. (I do realize that Lindelof cannot take sole credit for anything he's worked on, but he's adapted a particular tone in his shows over the years that has been getting stronger with time).
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Post by otherscott on Jan 9, 2024 8:02:08 GMT -8
8. Beef (Netflix)
I really disliked the first episode of Beef, I think a show that didn't have such a strong word of mouth I might have stopped right there. I didn't have much of appetite for watching 8 episodes of self-destructive people act like turnips to each other to help further their own self destruction. Almost immediately though, the show started to grind off the really jagged edges and started to separate the protagonists from one another and focus more on their own lives and their own situations, and the way they torture themselves. I think by about the 6th or 7th episode of this 8 episode series, the show was fully rolling into a level of insightfulness about the human psyche that might be unmatched by anything else on this list. The finale was weird, almost too weird, but nonetheless was sweet and cathartic in a way that fit the series.
Right now the creator wants more seasons of the show, and I'm curious how those will go if they do happen. This season as it was very much already had a distinct arc, and does not need more to complete it. That being said, if there's an idea on how to expand and deepen the world and the characters with the same level of insight that this first season had, I'm not going to tell anyone that I don't want it.
7. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Paramount Plus/ Crave)
This show as well as a show that is coming up a little later on my list are really evidence that old style TV storytelling still has legs. This is maybe the only show I watched this year that could easily accommodate at least 3-5 more episodes, as there are still crew members that are slightly underserved, despite the fact that according to all evidence from bigger Trekkies than myself that this show does the most character work for the whole crew of any Star Trek series since TNG at least. I really admire the way that the show is able to produce old style episodic Star Trek plots but use a lot of storytelling lessons from the TV Golden Age that have really enhanced TV in general over these last 20 years.
Obviously with anything episodic like this show is, there is a degree of unevenness to the show. And unlike the first season which had a very particular drive to it that was centered around Captain Pike, this season was much more episodic. I think that can be to the shows benefit, that the individual stories are not distracted by overarching plot lines, but it's a tough balance to strike with properly giving the viewers closure over major events happening in these episodes. That being said, if more of Star Trek was like this show, and had that same character basis that this show has, I would be a much bigger Trekkie.
6. For All Mankind (Apple TV+)
If you think that after ranking the somewhat maligned Season 3 in my top 3 last year that I was going to drop For All Mankind all the way out of my top 10, think again! I am still very much one of the biggest supporters of this show and I think they have another excellent season on their hands (this ranking is specifically for the 8 episodes that aired in 2023, that being said I probably will not consider the last two for 2024 so those episodes go into the ether of never being ranked.)
Last season I was impressed by the cinematic nature of the season, the ability they had to make practically every episode an event. It felt like appointment TV every week to see what momentous thing would happen next, even if the character work was starting to wane from the show's strongest points of Seasons 1 and 2. This season was certainly toned back in that regard, the season moved slower and more focused on a single asteroid extraction, but I think the show was able to replace that feeling with some really good geopolitical work. That's something the show has always done well, but they let it take center stage this season and it worked very much to the show's benefit.
That being said, the show has clearly lost its fastball on the character work. It has to lean so heavily on Margo in particular at this point where it once was an ensemble. That is fine for me, Margo has had a great season and has generally always been reliable for the show, but it's getting thin. It hasn't created a truly great character since Season 1 (unless you count Aleida but her foundations were certainly there in the first season). This almost certainly has to be Ed's last season, and while they may be able to stretch Margo into next season as well it can't be as a central character. Aleida is solid, but not solid enough to take the whole show on her shoulders. The show needs to develop some characters and quick, or this will likely be its last season in my top 10, which is a shame because the show was so good at character work early on, and everything else about the show is still very solid.
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Post by Jeremy on Jan 9, 2024 16:46:09 GMT -8
I'm halfway through this season of For All Mankind, but... it's really not doing it for me. The character arcs have grown so exhausted, and the excuses to keep the focus on as many main figures from earlier seasons as they can have become so utterly ludicrous, that it undercuts the show's more serious themes (including the geopolitical material, which I haven't found particularly arresting lately). The constant time-jumps have robbed so many potentially resonant moments of immediacy, and the multiple forgettable characters introduced in recent seasons have not helped.
It's too bad, because this was a very good and sometimes great show in its first two seasons, and now it's quickly skidding off the rails. In some ways, it's a worthy successor to Ron Moore's previous work in Battlestar Galactica - all too well, as that show also lost its way in later seasons.
Re. Star Trek character development, I haven't watched the second season of SNW, but I think the last season of Picard worked quite well on a character level. Though I don't know how well it would play to someone not super-familiar with TNG.
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Post by otherscott on Jan 10, 2024 8:03:41 GMT -8
I obviously disagree on a few of those points, particularly the time jumps which I think by and large work well for the show, or at least would work well for the show if they were adequately able to replace characters that depart due to the time jumps.
I also personally don't find the way that Ed, Margo and Dani are still relevant is particularly egregious, these are pioneers of the space program and just for legacy reasons are generally going to be involved as long as they want.
But yes, at heart the show's failure to make their next generation of characters as interesting as the first generation has hurt the show. I actually thought Danny was a better character than people gave him credit for, but the show badly misjudged the viewer's level of sympathy for him. Kelly just hasn't generated any interest on her own, and this season Miles has been very well acted but is not fully formed despite the shows efforts to dedicate some foundation work to him early in the season.
I think it's time for the show to take a risk in season 5 and clean the slate completely, new characters, new actors, new setting. You can throw some Aleida and Will Tyler cameos in for a little continuity. The show is well run, they know how to tell stories, the show continues to be visually impressive, I think they need some faith that they'll be able to start from scratch and build it well again from the bottom up.
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Post by Jeremy on Jan 10, 2024 15:44:38 GMT -8
I obviously disagree on a few of those points, particularly the time jumps which I think by and large work well for the show, or at least would work well for the show if they were adequately able to replace characters that depart due to the time jumps. Well yeah, if the show was better-equipped with generating new characters who could maintain investment, the time-jumps wouldn't be as much of a problem. As it is, the writers keep killing off or aging out the series' best characters and replacing them with forgettable new ones. I also don't know how much suspension of disbelief I can maintain in a show where an elderly man with obvious health issues is seen as well-equipped to go on a Mars mission, regardless of legacy status. (Although considering the state of our current world, an elderly man keeping his status solely due to legacy status may be one of the least unbelievable things on the show.)
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Post by otherscott on Jan 11, 2024 14:38:40 GMT -8
5. Happy Valley (Acorn TV)
One of the great imported shows that I know of came back for a third and final season after being off the air for nearly a decade. Unfortunately, that also means that I have been doing these top 10 lists for a decade as the first couple of versions featured Happy Valley in this very similar spot.
I thought this season was a worthy addition, with the son who was around 7 years old in the original seasons now a teenager, and the show continues to be an excellent reflection of persevering through trauma while now adding a new wrinkle on how to deal the balance between protecting teenagers from dangerous people vs understanding the agency they will take to live their own lives. I think it was another great season of a show that is as grounded and deals with real life issues as anything else on TV.
4. Poker Face (Peacock/ City TV +)
There's a large contingent of people that have issues with suspending disbelief with Poker Face. Which is a a little strange because those same people are also people who love sci-fi shows and maybe even think Blue Eye Samurai is one of their favourites. But things like an elderly disabled woman climbing up the side of a building vines using only her arms seems to be a bridge too far for people on this show, and I think the reason might be that they are miscategorizing it.
I consider Poker Face to be first and foremost a comedy. And I understand that might be a weird classification because it's imitating Columbo and at the time of Columbo this is just what dramas were. But I suppose my personal qualification for comedy or drama is what is the intent of the show? What are the emotions it tries to bring out in you? If the principal emotion that the show brings is to make you smile and/or laugh, then it is a comedy. And I think that's what Poker Face in the vast majority of episodes is doing. Which isn't to say exactly every episode is like that. Escape from S*** Mountain clearly has parts that are not very funny for instance. But then - look at that title. Look at the transition between Charlie yelling "I'm never leaving Magic Mountain!" to six months later being desperate to get away. The show is a comedy - and gags like a person constantly stumbling into murders or an elderly lady with super strength or using a sculpture to unlock Face ID would be perfectly acceptable in a sitcom, because it's supposed to be funny.
Which is all to say Poker Face is not the deepest show on the list, it is not the most believable, it doesn't even have all that great of character work by and large. But in terms of level of entertainment provided by a show this year, this one might have everything else beat. And that's what it's trying to do.
3. The Last of Us (HBO)
From the end of 2022 to about midway through 2023, HBO went on an unbelievable Sunday night run. Coming out of House of the Dragon, which was good but not groundbreaking but also just extremely popular, we had a masterpiece White Lotus season, followed by the greatest video game adaption of all time, followed by a season of TV that will go down as an all timer (we'll get there).
I think it's easy to not quite give The Last of Us credit as an adaptation because people believe the source material was so good. All you have to do is put it on screen in pretty much the same way it was in the game, right? But adaptions are just extremely hard, because the transfer between mediums will always lose some of the impact of the original. We found that with the Snyder Watchman movie for instance. It's hard not to just be a pale shadow of the original. You have to be able to replace that impact with something else.
And The Last of Us took advantage of something the video game does not have, and that's using its episodic nature to fill in backstory. That helped produce two of my favourite episodes of the year, "Long, Long Time" and one that I think was just as good but doesn't get remembered quite as much, "Endure and Survive." You can take that story from the game, you can put it on the screen, and to make sure you don't lose the impact, the show figured out how to use the tools it had available to it without losing the essence of the core.
Just a really impressive and beautiful show, and I can't wait for Season 2.
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Post by Jeremy on Jan 11, 2024 15:39:12 GMT -8
Is there really much confusion about Poker Face being a comedy? I know there are serious moments in it, but tone is pretty light, the gimmick is unrealistic, the lead actress is a regular comedy star, and the show has been classed as a Comedy in every awards ceremony, Emmys included. (Would be very cool if Lyonne wins the award on Sunday, but it's quite a packed category.)
In any case, glad you found a way to watch the show, it's pretty awesome.
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Post by otherscott on Jan 12, 2024 11:12:16 GMT -8
The first episode wasn't overly comedic compared to most of the show, and reading responses to "The Time of the Monkey" in particular and just general criticism about how people couldn't suspend disbelief about Charlie running into all these murders made me think there's a group of people taking the show too seriously. Like you never see people criticize the unreality of Pawney having a newscaster who only states very obvious things for instance, these types of things are accepted in sitcoms.
I ended up just digitally buying the season. Hopefully for season 2 I can find a way to not have to do that.
2. The Bear (FX on Hulu/ Disney +)
When I decided to leave the last post to only two shows, I kind of figured I'd have the most to say about them. But I actually don't have anything to say about The Bear that I didn't already say in the Whatcha Watchin thread. It's a really good show! "Fishes" and "Forks" is one of the best one-two punches of episodes ever! It does tension the best of any show since probably Breaking Bad, except the stakes are having a restaurant go bankrupt rather than life or death! (Though I think you could argue there is some life and death stakes here for Carmy somewhere).
A lot of TV shows are about characters who are abnormally excellent at something, whether it's fighting or lawyering or doctoring, but I think what makes The Bear special is it doesn't take that excellence for granted. Being excellent doesn't mean you will actually excel. And the stakes of failing at the one thing you do well, they're substantial. For Carmy and Sydney in particular, if you aren't a chef, what are you?
1. Succession (HBO)
Let's make this clear, I am not a Succession cheerleader. I liked Season 2 quite a bit, but I thought Season 1 was pretty heavily flawed and Season 3, while having a very good finale, spun its wheels so much and repeated the same character beats so many times it was closer to the bottom of my list of TV shows I watched in 2021 than it was to the top 10.
Sometimes though, you just need to know when to end things. And while I would argue this show reached that realization one season too late, there's something to be said for looking at what you have and saying "the best story we have left to tell is the story of how this ends" and just doing it. Because this was a show that was always built for the ending. The principal question of the show is "who is going to succeed Logan Roy" and that question can't be answered partially, that question can't be answered slowly, and that question probably can't satisfyingly be left ambiguous. You need to show the viewer the succession, and that's what this season was primarily about. And man, did this season ever nail it. Beat by beat, episode by episode, this season was a perfect encapsulation of the characters and the world this show had built.
If you set up your whole show for the final act, you better hit on it. And this show just didn't hit, it hit a grand slam.
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Post by otherscott on Jan 29, 2024 10:34:50 GMT -8
Reddit comes through again and does the aggregation that Metacritic used to: https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/1ady1uk/i_aggregated_150_best_tv_shows_of_2023_because/
Top 10 and total points: 1. Succession - 201 points 2. The Bear - 156.5 3. The Last of Us - 117 4. Beef - 78.5 5. Reservation Dogs - 71.5 6. Poker Face - 60 7. Jury Duty - 42 8. Barry - 41 9. The Fall of the House of Usher - 28 10. I'm A Virgo - 27.5
Notably, the top ranked show without a first place rating was Poker Face, so Jeremy stands alone there. The shows outside of the top 10 to get number 1 ratings were Happy Valley (2), The Other Two, Fargo, Lessons in Chemistry, The Diplomat (3), and Mrs Davis.
I've become very mainstream apparently, as my top 3 were the same and in the same order as the overall top 3.
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Post by ThirdMan on Jan 29, 2024 14:34:05 GMT -8
I've become very mainstream apparently, as my top 3 were the same and in the same order as the overall top 3. Well, mainstream as far as TV critics go, but The Last of Us is probably the only show on this Top 10 list that had relatively broad appeal with your average TV viewer (though I'm sure Beef got watched by a fair number of viewers, being on Netflix and all).
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Post by Jeremy on Jan 29, 2024 15:46:58 GMT -8
I don't know if any of these ten shows would qualify as mainstream hits - certainly not as how we used the term a few years ago - though it's increasingly tough to measure how many people are watching shows, especially on streaming. Jury Duty, for example, was fairly buzzed-about, and probably did well with casual TV fans due to streaming free on Amazon, but there's no easy way to gauge viewership. I find it fairly surprising that no one else had Poker Face as their #1 show, but then again I never quite cottoned on to Succession either.
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Post by ThirdMan on Jan 29, 2024 19:32:25 GMT -8
I'm not sure what my #1 for 2023 was, but Poker Face is definitely up there. Liked it a lot.
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Post by otherscott on Jan 30, 2024 12:09:24 GMT -8
Well yes, I didn't mean mainstream mainstream. I think the most "mainstream" show on that list might actually be Jury Duty. Beef was on Netflix but I don't believe it was a hit by Netflix standards, it was a bit weird.
Though the talk of mainstream reminds me of when my sister texted asking what the weirdest movie I've ever seen was, to which I think I replied Under the Skin. Her response was that I must not have seen Rocky Horror Picture Show then.
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