TV Obituaries, Vol. 1: January 2013

Pardon me if this sounds grim, but probably the best innovation of the contemporary television drama is that you're allowed to kill off major characters.

It's easy to take for granted in this post-Buffy, post-24 TV era of Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire and the like (hell, the new Fox show The Following was damn near marketed with the premise "Expect shocking deaths!" to victorious ratings), but this was a big, big innovation that really gave serialized drama the freedom to be bold and surprising and have real stakes in a way they just plain weren't allowed to for the first, oh, four decades of the medium's lifespan. Today a character death is simply one of the thousand tricks in the dramatic TV toolbox, not only accepted but a popular enough trope that fans can get restless and complain if a life-or-death-stakes serialized drama goes too long without one.

Thus my latest monthly feature, TV Obituaries. It's exactly what it sounds like: At the end of each month, I'll highlight prominent TV characters to kick the bucket since the last column. Obviously, even a TV nerd as pathetic as me doesn't watch everything, so I'm sure to miss major deaths here and there, but I'll aim for completion at least within the realm of shows I watch (and if people wish to let me know in comments who I've missed, I'll strongly consider adding them). Now let's get started with January 2013.

Spoilers follow for Fringe, Justified and Last Resort.

Spartacus Power Rankings, Vol. 1

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 1 - "Enemies of Rome"

(As a means to share my thoughts on each installment of Spartacus: War of the Damned without having to write full reviews, I've decided to do weekly Spartacus Power Rankings, wherein I outline who blew it, who kicked ass, and whose cock rages on. Spoilers abound, of course.)

Spartacus Returns Big, Bold & Bloody, With a Great New Villain

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 1 - "Enemies of Rome"

If there's one thing I feel a great certainty about, it's that Spartacus – now in its final season, subtitled War of the Damned – is the most underrated show on television.

I could go on and on about how this fucking mind-blowingly kick-ass show has continually refined and bettered itself since its January 2010 debut, making the vast swaths of TV critics who wrote it off after its very first, table-setting episode look increasingly stupid. I could go on and on about its surprising thematic depth in its exploration of freedom and choice and power, or about the fascinating moral questions it raises on a regular basis, or the way it marries an epic scope to intimate concerns in a way that should make damn near all other sweeping genre sagas envious, or its rich, multi-dimensional character development, or about how it can deliver a moment to make you bolt upright and go "HOLY SHIT!" like few other films or TV shows I've damn near ever seen.

I could also appeal to TV fans' love of Joss Whedon and point out that Spartacus boss Steven S. DeKnight honed his writing, producing and directing in various combinations on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Dollhouse over nine years (including writing Buffy's "Seeing Red," by far the most controversial hour of the Buffyverse), and it shows. Spartacus is unmistakably familiar in its season-spanning story arcs, building long-term villains to eventually be satisfyingly defeated, always maintaining tension and conflict among the heroes' makeshift family and never shying away from killing off a character (at a rate that would make famously kill-happy Whedon tremble in fear, I might add).

I could even take the basest road and go on and on about the pure, unadulterated visceral pleasure of its ultraviolence and ultragore and ultranudity, though, recalling much of the criticism I've read of the comparatively gentle, PG-rated Game of Thrones, the milquetoast fucking buzzkill whining about this aspect of Spartacus would probably make me wish I could hit undo and make critics unaware of its existence again.

But for the purposes of not making this introduction to my review of Spartacus' final season premiere, "Enemies of Rome," into a 5,000-word dissertation, I'll whittle the show's greatness down to one core guiding principle: It's the pacing, stupid.

Put simply, this sucker moves. I mean, it really, really moves. It had to hone itself in the first half of its first season, but what emerged was a show as lean, fat-free, and ready for action as its well-oiled cast. There isn't a speck of filler on it. The status quo changes so quickly, storylines are squared away (generally with massive bloodshed) hours before they can even begin to grow stale, climactic arc-ending episodes that any other serialized drama would have saved for their finale are tossed casually into the middle of seasons. This is aggressive, thrilling storytelling.

Let me put it this way: If Game of Thrones was run by Steven DeKnight and his Spartacus writers, everything from the pilot to Blackwater Bay all would have gone down in one season. If The Vampire Diaries was run by DeKnight and company, Klaus would have been dead a year and a half ago. If The Walking Dead was run by DeKnight and company, the season 2 farm arc would have spanned about ten minutes.

I cannot overstate how incredible it is to me that "Enemies of Rome" is only the 30th episode of Spartacus (and, were it not for the prequel, would only be its 24th episode!). Going by the usual standards that govern TV pacing, it feels like 150-200 episodes worth of incident has gone down. This show has established new status quos, burned them to the ground while slaughtering half the cast, rebuilt with brand new settings and status quos, and it's done so again and again. It's fucking dizzying, and breaks all the rules of television in the most spectacular way.

And then, about six months ago, Steven DeKnight made the most ballsy and badass creative decision yet: That War of the Damned, the show's third main season following Blood and Sand, Vengeance, and the prequel miniseries Gods of the Arena, would wrap up the story and conclude the series. I'd be lying if I said the decision didn't upset me, but doesn't burning bright, hot, and quickly reflect the spirit of the Third Serville War itself? Spartacus is the highest-rated show on Starz by orders of magnitude, and DeKnight could have kept this cash cow going ad infinitum, but he's a man with a fucking vision, and that's so rare and so awesome on television.

And that brings us to "Enemies of Rome."

A Plea to TV & Movie Writers: Stop Having Your Heroes Successfully Guess Passwords

On last night's episode of NBC's new soap Deception, protagonist Joanna – a detective going undercover as an assistant for the wealthy Bowers family to find out if one of them is guilty of murder – had a late night conversation with family patriarch Robert Bowers, whose computer she needs to get into. In this conversation, Robert sadly mused that when his rich prick oldest son Edward was a little boy he used to call him "Eddie Spaghetti." Joanna casually asked Robert how old Edward was when he called him that and Robert told her he was four.

Then Robert left the office and Joanna hopped on his computer and got access to his incredibly important secret files and showed off how smart she is by correctly guessing on her very first try Robert's password: Spaghetti4.

Yes, she's so smart she knew it wasn't "Eddiespaghetti4" or "Eddie_spaghetti4," but just "Spaghetti4." She's so fucking smart she even knew the "S" was supposed to be capitalized, and that there weren't any underscores or punctuation. That it wasn't "SPAGhetti__four," or "spaghetti4_!", or, being a computer containing life-shattering corporate secrets worth billions of dollars and possible murder convictions, you know, like, "kKg89H1_rb8," or something like that.

THIS IS SO FUCKING STUPID, TV AND MOVIE WRITERS. STOP DOING THIS.

Up to this point in my life, I have yet to ever see a single scene in a film or TV show where a character successfully guessed another character's computer password based on shallow details of their life or, worse, stuff in the same room as the computer (see the insanely fucking stupid password-guessing scene in Sherlock season 2 episode 2, "The Hounds of Baskerville," for a truly godawful example of the latter) that wasn't suspension-of-belief-shatteringly fucking moronic. Every single scene of this type sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks, fucking sucks out fucking loud.

Even if you ignored stuff like numbers and underscores and punctuation and alternating capitalization, these scenes would still be fucking stupid. How many people's passwords are really just the names of the most obvious things in their lives? I know mine aren't! Based on TV and movies, the passwords I use for like, posting on internet forums about TV shows – much less my bank account – are a million times more secure than the passwords guarding massive conspiracies, life-or-death stuff, even nuclear secrets.

So, here's my plea to all screenwriters: If you're writing a scene involving your heroes trying to get into someone's computer and not knowing the password, try having them find it written down somewhere, or bribe/coax/torture the information out of someone, or give the damn thing to a hacker, or see the computer's owner type it in, or dust for fucking fingerprints or just not be able to get into the computer at all or anything else other than guessing the password, and if you can't, then please delete your shitty screenplay and burn the manuscript.

(Note: The one exception to everything I've written above is in comedies when people get into their coworker's computer by correctly guessing that the password is "password," which is admittedly pretty funny. But it's been done in multiple shows, so don't do that either.)

The Big Bang Theory Spews Mean-Spirited Bile, Calls It Comedy

Season 6 Episode 13 - "The Bakersfield Expedition"

I don't want to spend too much time on this, because every second spent even thinking, much less writing about The Big Bang Theory is toxic to my soul, but its latest episode, "The Bakersfield Expedition," actually does merit a little discussion. Not over its comedic value – this is The Big Bang Theory, so it is of course 22 minutes of hacky generic lame-brained sitcom idiocy that shouldn't be funny to anyone with a drool-free chin – but over a question regarding the show's very soul:

Does The Big Bang Theory hate Leonard, Sheldon, Raj, Howard and their lifestyle?

It's an honest inquiry. While the show and the roaring studio audience were obviously mocking them for it, the characters did actually have a couple minutes of fun at the start of their journey making Star Trek poses on the side of the road, but that led to Leonard's car being stolen and after that the episode was an incredibly grim slog of the guys being insulted, dismissed, and humiliated for being nerds. There wasn't anything that even suggested warmth or compassion towards these people. It was just a grotesque spectacle of mockery scored to a cacophony of hateful laughter.

I think the iconic moment of this episode – in a way, a moment that sums of the spirit of the entire series – is when the guys, already beaten down, exhausted and depressed from their march down the highway, have their misery compounded by a jock motorist hurling a slushie onto Sheldon with a bullying cry of "NERDS!" It read to me as a very depressing moment of salt being rubbed into fresh wounds, but the studio audience disagreed, instead exploding with joyous laughter. The message is, "This is what you deserve, nerds."

Of course The Big Bang Theory isn't the only sitcom out there to lampoon nerds – Ben Wyatt's Game of Thrones and Star Trek fandom has been a subject of humor over on Parks and Recreation, ditto for Liz Lemon and Star Wars on 30 Rock, and like half of Community is sendups of geek culture via Abed Nadir. But the difference is really one of tone and presentation. Those shows make fun, sure, but there has never, to my knowledge, been an underlying implication that these people would be more complete, happy, self-actualized individuals if they abandoned their passions and conformed. The Big Bang Theory on the other hand absolutely seems to imply that we're looking at stunted, loathsome creatures worthy of scorn.

Now, you might point to the not-inaccurate fact that the episode seemed to end with a moment of impending victory for the guys as they were about to walk in on Penny and the girls (who spent the episode exploring the world of comic books, getting gawked at by the poorly-groomed comic store patrons who had of course never seen women before) discussing Thor and finally getting to enjoy their nerdery.

But if that deserves to be pointed out it also deserves to be pointed out that the episode cut off before we actually saw the guys inside their apartment enjoying even a moment of onscreen triumph or happiness. It's almost like Chuck Lorre and the Big Bang Theory team perceive the show's audience as being repulsed by the idea of seeing anything simultaneously nerdy and joyful. The show is exclusively interested in nerd misery.

In the end, I guess it doesn't matter, because The Big Bang Theory sucks and isn't funny one way or another. But "The Bakersfield Expedition" definitely suggested a hateful show with a fundamentally pessimistic worldview, which in a way makes it the perfect successor to the previous highest-rated sitcom on television, the equally mean-spirited Two and a Half Men.

Parenthood Sets the Bar Early for Great TV in 2013

Season 4 Episode 13 - "Small Victories"


Now that's what I'm talking about. This is the Parenthood I put at #4 on my top shows of 2012, the Parenthood that making-you-cry-with-television warlock Jason Katims has somehow stuffed full of pure Friday Night Lights-era magic, the Parenthood that leaves all other pure human dramas on TV (and yes, that includes your precious Mad Men, internet) bowing at the feet of its effortless superiority.

Yeah, I thought "Small Victories" was a damn good episode.

Bunheads Returns Still Light, Frothy and Enjoyable

Season 1 Episode 11 - "You Wanna See Something?"

Funny thing about this TV game is that someone creating one show you love often has little bearing on how you feel about their next show(s). The iconic example at the moment would probably be Aaron Sorkin's twin marks of shame, Studio 60 and The Newsroom (and now there are even some weak-kneed types retroactively pretending The West Wing and Sports Night weren't great, which is obviously dumb and wrong), but the list goes on and on. I don't like Armando Iannucci's Veep nearly as much as The Thick of It; Shawn Ryan's Last Resort is but a shadow of The Chicago Code, much less Terriers; plenty of Wire fanatics couldn't care less about Treme; and Mitch Hurwitz's quasi-remake of Arrested Development, my favorite work of fiction ever crafted by the hands of man, was the instantly forgettable Running Wilde.

So it's nice to know in these uncertain times that there are TV writers you can count on: Your Joss Whedons for genre serials, your Jason Katims for warmhearted family dramas, and your Amy Sherman-Palladinos for light dramedies about motormouthed, pop culture-referencing young women in charming small town settings. In its first three seasons Gilmore Girls was one of the most special shows on television, and Sherman-Palladino's new show Bunheads has picked up that baton admirably, merely swapping out inns and academia for ballet and more ballet. It could never be as good as Gilmore Girls without Lauren Graham or Stars Hollow, but it's a damn fine little program. After The Legend of Korra, it's my second-favorite show to both start in and make it alive out of 2012.

Like many season premieres (ok, this is technically season 1 episode 11, though with five months since the last episode and a substantial time jump in-Buniverse, it's a de facto season premiere), "You Wanna See Something?" is largely dedicated to undoing the seemingly show-shattering events of last season's finale. In this case that involved getting Las Vegas-showgirl-turned-small town-youth-dancing-instructor Michelle Simms back to said small town of Paradise after she was exiled for accidentally macing her students, and yes, like many season premiere retcon jobs, it played out with a slight sense of stale inevitability.

But I thought it was fitting and in-character that Michelle wasn't returned to Paradise through any realization of her own but by another character, in this case Fanny, reaching out to her. Really, after macing a dozen children, that's the only way it could be, and it felt at least 80% earned. Michelle's final moment with Sasha was also quite nice, and I enjoyed the way it sliced through the bullshity scene with Sasha's generic bad boy romantic interest. (Sorry, generic bad boy: I watched Jess Mariano, I knew Jess Mariano, Jess Mariano was a fictitious friend of mine. Generic bad boy, you're no Jess Mariano.)

The real magic in this episode lay not with Michelle but with the titular bunheads, something it shares with the show's second-best episode so far, "Movie Truck" (an episode which, I might add, was one of the very last cut from the rough draft of my best episodes of 2012, though I think that's made up for by the pilot almost cracking the top ten). Ginny and Melanie already feel like much more integrated parts of the ensemble than they ever did last year, and Boo's unwitting starring turn as the "it's time to dance!" girl was one of the infinitesimally few fictitious viral videos I've seen that had even a passing resemblance to a video that might actually go viral.

I also rather enjoyed the way "You Wanna See Something?" functioned as the mirror image of the series' pilot, which was all about Michelle in its first act and didn't bring in the rest of the main cast until deep into the episode, by featuring everyone except Michelle until thirteen minutes in. It was a clever way to subtly but strongly announce that the show, which began as the story of a single person, is now about Paradise itself, a town which now feels empty absent Michelle. It widened the show's thematic scope through just a slight change of narrative emphasis.

The ratings aren't especially great on Bunheads, making it a very real chopping block risk on not-shy-to-axe-underperformers ABC Family. But I know I for one enjoy the adventures of these teenage ballerinas more than a grown man who doesn't give a shit about ballet probably should, and I'll be bummed if the next seven episodes wind up the show's swan song. Bunheads is "chill the fuck out" TV done right.

A Brief Tribute to Megan Ganz

On Wednesday night, news hit that my favorite currently employed TV comedy writer, Megan Ganz, is departing Community for the infinitely greener ratings pastures of Modern Family.
Now, following the losses of Dan Harmon, Chris McKenna, Joe Russo, Anthony Russo, Neil Goldman, Garrett Donovan, and most recently Chevy Chase, this definitely feels like yet another death knell for the already-bleeding series. And yes, like many Communists, my initial reaction was one of "NOOO!!" But honestly, there's no lack of doom and gloom out there, so I'd rather take the opposite approach and whip up a quick tribute to Megan's work on four of the finest sitcom episodes of the last decade.
Her first script, season 2 episode 8, "Cooperative Calligraphy," is a concept episode of both the simplest and arguably most horrifying kind for a TV writer (much less a brand new one): The bottle episode. The group is stuck in the study room looking for Annie's pen, and from that point forward the episode is driven by twenty minutes of nonstop dialogue, maybe the series' purest writer's showcase to date (save Harmon's script for the pilot having to set up all the characters).
And it's a masterpiece. For real. There's so much energy and emotion to it, it's so thunderously paced and exciting with so little outward action, it's so funny, and it does such an amazingly good job of balancing big jokes and moments and reveals for every one of the Greendale Seven. The reveal and explanation of Abed's menstrual calendar is as good of an uproarious "Oh shit!" moment as I've seen a sitcom pull off in years. Everything about the episode is fantastic, and it's all there on the page.
Abed: "Ok, if I could just take this time to share a few words of sarcasm with whoever it is that took this pen. I want to say thank you for doing this to me. For a while I thought I'd have to suffer through a puppy parade, but I much prefer being entombed alive in a mausoleum of feelings I can neither understand nor reciprocate. So whoever you are, can I get you anything? Ice cream? Best friend medal? Anything? Mm-mm? Ok, sarcasm over. You're last up, Shirley. Dump your comedically huge bag and end this."
Megan's next two episodes, season 2 episode 16, "Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking," and season 3 episode 8, "Documentary Filmmaking: Redux," are notable not only for being among the best TV episodes of 2011 but also because they're two episodes that aired only seven months apart with what outwardly seems like the same gimmick, yet they feel so different.
The former, via Abed's painfully sharp skewering of the "explaining things to the camera" crutch, is mostly a sendup of The Office and Parks and Rec and, ironically, Modern Family (and is also, between Firefly and Reading Rainbow, an incredible episode for Troy, and Britta and Jeff's "dumb gay dad" exchange is an all-timer). Meanwhile, the escalating derangement of the Dean's film project in the latter makes it a clear Hearts of Darkness parody, with The Office barely coming to mind at all. This is smart, controlled, hyper-specific pop culture riffing of a caliber other series with their throwaway references just can't even dream of.
Both episodes are also alike in the way that they root all their goofiness and pop culture in meatier character deconstruction than any non-Community sitcom out there has any real interest in. "Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking" is the best episode of the "Evil Pierce" saga after "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons," and actually surpasses that episode in the way it examines the why of Pierce's newfound evilness via his increasing isolation from the study group. And "Redux" is just a delicious examination of Dean Pelton's ambitions.
And finally, Megan's fourth and most recent episode, the Law & Order parody "Basic Lupine Urology" (which I recently put at #17 on my best TV episodes of 2012 list), is, along with the Glee parody "Regional Holiday Music," one of Community's two episodes that are just start-to-finish full-bore parodies of other TV shows, and it's terrific fun. In fact, I think it probably qualifies as my favorite Law & Order episode of all time.
Every second is flawless spoofing, from the initial discovery of the "crime" scene to the early onscreen planting of the real culprit to the good cop/bad cop routine to Leslie Hendrix as the medical examiner to a gratuitous chase scene to the lawyer's closing arguments to the final surprising "tragic" note the episode ends on. It's the shallowest of Megan's four episodes, but it's 22 minutes packed to the brim with pop culture perfection.
And in a way those four episodes show an arc of mastery of every facet of what Community is: Ganz started with a totally character and dialogue-centric episode that's as light on pop culture as post-season 1 Community gets. Then she moved on to two episodes that balance a roughly even mix of pop culture riffing and character analysis of Pierce and the Dean. Then finally she capped off her initial run with a colorful, straight-up, just-for-fun TV parody. And all four are perfect 'A' episodes. It's one of the highest quality averages for any TV writer I can think of in any genre, drama, sitcom, cartoon, whatever.
Now, I'm gonna level here: I have no intention of watching Modern Family, Ganz or no. It's awesome that she got a job on the second highest-rated comedy on television, but it's just not my thing. But thankfully, all of Community season 4 is already in the can and Megan worked on it start to finish (she wrote the season finale, in fact). I may be in a state of perpetual dread about what the show's post-Harmon year(s?) will look like, but I'm also really excited to see the final act of Ganz's Greendale career. Bring on October 19th February 7th!

Retro Review: Community, Season 2 Episode 12 - "Asian Population Studies"

(I'm still a little burned out from writing my top fifty list, so instead of a new TV episode review I'm gonna chill out and post a review I wrote a while back for the Community message board on The A.V. Club, where I post under the screenname Eolith. The review includes "Stray Observations" and "Commentary Commentary" categories that aren't part of my regular routine but I did to fit into the board's review style guide, so don't be alarmed. We'll return to our regularly scheduled weekly episode reviews and Wednesday essays/lists next week.)

"Asian Population Studies," the kickoff of the gang's fourth semester at Greendale, is never mentioned alongside "A Fistful of Paintballs"/"For a Few Paintballs More" or "Curriculum Unavailable" when discussing Community's spiritual sequel episodes, but maybe it should be. The episode too directly echoes the previous January midseason premiere "Investigative Journalism" to be entirely an accident, both centering around the study group debating the merits of adding an eighth soul to their merry band as they return from winter break. But rather than a celebrity guest spot, the two men applying for group membership this time around are established characters within the show's universe: Jeff's offputtingly perfect pottery rival Rich and former Spanish teacher Ben Chang.

Best TV Episodes, December 2012

(I'm still a little burned out from writing my top fifty list, so I'm gonna keep this month's best episodes feature short and sweet. Look for me to return to my usual excessive verbiage in a month's time.)

10. Fringe, Season 5 Episode 9 – "Black Blotter"

Just a few hours shy of its likely grim and apocalyptic endgame, Fringe reminded us of its sense of humor in a winking episode fueled largely by Walter Bishop tripping on acid and building to a climactic Monty Python-esque animation sequence.

9. Arrow, Season 1 Episode 9 – "Year's End"

With the introduction of what seems to be its debut season's "big bad," Arrow took shape and found narrative focus in its last installment of 2012.

8. Last Resort, Season 1 Episode 9 – "Cinderella Liberty"

After slipping a bit episode by episode following an impressive pilot, Shawn Ryan's (soon-to-be-finished) naval thriller finally got the blood pumping in this tense, climactic hour, revolving around a hostage crisis at sea.

7. Parenthood, Season 4 Episode 10 – "Trouble in Candyland"

While this episode's focus on a more straightforward "antagonist" (Pamela Adlon's Marlyse, trying to shut down the Braverman brothers' recording studio) was a slightly odd change of pace for Parenthood, it came to a heartwarming conclusion that earned a huge smile. The episode also provided another strong, angsty showcase for Matt Lauria.

6. Boardwalk Empire, Season 3 Episode 12 – "Margate Sands"

A flawed finale in certain ways, but one thing's for sure: Richard Harrow rescuing Tommy was fuckin' fantastic.

5. American Dad!, Season 8 Episode 6 – "Adventures in Hayleysitting"

The sequence of graphic ultraviolence ending this episode was one of the darkest, funniest things I saw in any sitcom – animated or no – all year long. One of the best Steve and Hayley stories of the entire series.

4. The Vampire Diaries, Season 4 Episode 9 – "O Come, All Ye Faithful"

Capping off a half-season that occasionally felt stagnant, the final ten minutes of The Vampire Diaries' midseason finale assertively, violently reminded us that Klaus is not a Spike-esque lovable antihero or a grumpy harmless cartoon villain, but a full-fledged murderous bad guy, and thank god. Outside of the third season finale it's the show's best 2012 episode.

3. Homeland, Season 2 Episode 12 – "The Choice"

Was Homeland's second season finale dumb? Yes. Was it entertaining? Hell yes.

2. Fringe, Season 5 Episode 10 – "Anomaly XB-6783746"

Fringe did an awesome job raising the stakes in its final episode of 2012 and the fourth-to-last episode of the series, moving the greater plot forward and making damn sure that we sufficiently hate ultimate villain Captain Windmark going into the final stretch.

1. Bob's Burgers, Season 3 Episode 7 – "Tina-Rannosaurus Wrecks"

Tina very slowly crashing Bob's car is one of the most staggeringly fucking funny things I've seen on television in I can't even tell you how long. The rest of the episode ruled too, but seriously, that car crash is easily one of the greatest television scenes of 2012. (Also, I assume the #1 slot on these monthly best episodes lists is going to be dominated by dramas – especially as we enter this uncertain, Dan Harmonless fourth season of Community – so I'm going to leap on every opportunity to put a sitcom in the top slot.)

Top Fifty TV Episodes of 2012

Unlike my top fifty shows, which I found a very fun list to compile, picking my fifty favorite episodes of the year was agony. There were countless great hours and half-hours of television to choose from, and while I eventually whittled things down to about fifty (give or take a few pairings of back-to-back Mad Men and Game of Thrones and Legend of Korra episodes I lumped into single slots because I'm weak and cowardly), there were no less than twenty episodes of 2012 TV I adored and deleting from my rough draft list felt like chipping away pieces of my soul.
Also, I myself was surprised by what shows did and didn't find their way onto my final list. While all of my top ten shows are represented by at least one installment, a full seven of my #30-11 shows failed to make the cut (and, for the record, exactly one show of my #50-31 has an episode listed). All the same, both my fifty shows list and fifty episodes list are totally genuine and from the heart, so I guess it just goes to show that we're all bundles of contradictions. Or at least I am, anyway.

Final quick disclaimer: The bottom thirty or so of this list is all pretty arbitrary and could be mixed up in more or less any order and I'd still be ok with it, so don't take it too serious. Also, just for fun, I've placed asterisks next to episodes that are season finales (there are no series finales on the list, though there are three series premieres). Here goes:

Top Ten TV Shows of 2012

We come to it at last. The great top ten of our time. You could probably switch my #10 pick with The L.A. Complex or American Dad! and I'd be ok with it, but I feel very comfortable with the placement and ranking of my top nine, the nine shows you could whittle all of television down to and it'd still be my favorite medium. Best of all, though three are ending (one in January) and one lost its original showrunner, all ten of these shows are continuing in 2013. Enough foreplay, let's get down:

10. Justified (FX)

There's been grousing on these here internets about Justified's third season not quite measuring up to its phenomenal second, and I can agree with that. (I didn't see Justified season 2 until it hit DVD, but when it did I wound up shotgunning the entire season in two sittings; five episodes the first night, eight the next.) Though actor Neal McDonough did the best he could, season 3 antagonist Robert Quarles just wasn't up to snuff with season 2's legendary Mags Bennett.

But when it comes to the day-to-day of pulpy crime fiction, no show does it better. Seriously – it can tell a fine serialized story, but when it goes straight cop procedural, Justified leaves the entire rest of that genre choking on the exhaust of its superiority (with the only two other examples on this list being Awake at #25 and Longmire at #46, and TV's million other cop procedurals being way down below my top fifty).

Part of this is due to Timothy Olyphant's charisma, even more due to the show's redneck noir Harlan County settings, but the biggest contributor has to be its lineup of lovable white-trash villainy: Ever-scheming Dickie Bennett, poor dumb Dewey Crowe, and especially Walton Goggins' sometimes-villain/sometimes-ultra-dark-antihero Boyd Crowder, one of the most unstoppably watchable characters on all television. I wouldn't say he overshadows Olyphant to the same extent Ian McShane did on Deadwood, but three seasons in there remains a giddy, tingling thrill to every scene he's a part of.

Top Fifty TV Shows of 2012: #30 - 11

Ok, we've gotten through #50-31, which only contained about seven or eight shows I can really say I like, and, to be perfectly honest, I only did as a way to organize my thoughts and to passive-aggressively antagonize people whose favorite show didn't make the cut. But now the wheat has been separated from the chaff, and my #30-11 contains a full twenty shows I like, and even a few I consider personal favorites. Let's go:   

30. The Daily Show (Comedy Central)

By percentage, I've seen far less of what The Daily Show aired in 2012 than anything else in my top forty. But the closer we got to November 6th and the more inescapable electoral politics became, the more I found myself tuning in to Jon Stewart for a little nightly mental and emotional salving. I admit I tend to forget The Daily Show when there's no major news story and the guest isn't a sitting or ex-president, but during election season, it's the best. (You can also consider this an honorary slot for The Colbert Report and The Rachel Maddow Show, the only other non-DNC, non-election night political programs I watched more than ten minutes of in 2012.)

29. Gravity Falls (Disney)

Basically a mix of The X-Files, The Simpsons, and whatever kids-go-on-adventures cartoon you care to name, Disney's new Gravity Falls is a colorful, creative blend of sci-fi/fantasy/horror anthology and animated sitcom. The show's writing staff includes veterans of Community, Adventure Time, and Veronica Mars, the jokes hit fast, and the worldbuilding has been superb for just twelve episodes. The season also got better as it went along, with my four favorite episodes – involving cloning mishaps, time travel shenanigans, video game characters coming to life, and a freaky, Miyazaki-esque Halloween monster – all falling in the second half of the show's run. If this quality incline continues, I could see Gravity Falls shooting way up on my 2013 list.

28. Sherlock (PBS)

Sherlock's three-episode 2012 run presents a bit of a puzzle: How do I rank a show when I found a third of it exceptional, a third of it good, and a third of it bordering on horrible? Because make no mistake, the second episode of Sherlock's second season, "The Hounds of Baskerville," sucked. From atrocious CGI to its nonsense final reveals, it sucked. On the other hand, the third, Holmes vs. Moriarty-centric episode, "The Reichenbach Fall," was quite enjoyable, and the season premiere, "A Scandal in Belgravia," was a dizzying spectacle of twists and turns, reveals I found fiendishly clever, a final moment that ranks among the best TV scenes of the year, and a wonderful use of Irene Adler. In the end, I have to dock Sherlock for "Hounds" – it is a third of the season – but if it had another episode on par with "Scandal" instead, it'd be in my top ten.

Top Fifty TV Shows of 2012: #50 - 31

Television in 2012 was a tumultuous yet just as often joyous medium, with – no, I'm totally kidding! You guys are smart. You don't need a bloated, self-important preamble taking up space. The one note I'll make is that there are a handful of shows I'm a fan of but aren't on this list because I haven't gotten a chance to see any of their 2012 runs yet (probably most notably The Borgias and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia). But other than that, my list is my list, love it or hate it. On to the fun:
50. The Newsroom (HBO)

Hands down the iconic hate-watching experience of 2012, The Newsroom continued the quest Aaron Sorkin began in Studio 60 to try to make me question all the love I ever had for Sports Night and The West Wing. Watching and jeering at his unceasing-for-over-a-decade-now hate campaign against the internet's very existence ("I have a blog?!") was, without fail, great fun every week, and I can't wait for the show to come back to shrilly preach and lecture at us again next summer.

49. Once Upon a Time (ABC)

Honestly, Once Upon a Time isn't very good, and I quit watching it halfway through the first season, started back up at the season finale, then quit again four episodes into season 2. But, that said, I do respect it for keeping serialized fantasy alive on network television, and to pretty damn good ratings at that. Better fantasy shows may exist down the line because this harmless but ultimately disposable fairy tale saga paved the road for them to travel.

48. Go On (NBC)

From the very first time I saw Friends until "The Last One" aired in May 2004, Chandler was always my favorite Friend and about 60-70% of the reason I watched the show, period. So it's a bit of a shame Matthew Perry has spent his post-Friends career bouncing around various shows unworthy of his talents. Nevertheless, this grief counseling semi-ensemble comedy gives him a chance to flex his sarcasm and averages about one or two laughs per episode, which ain't superb, but does – spoiler alert – make it the only new fall 2012 sitcom on this list.

It's Best of 2012 Week on Tim's TV Talk

Hey everyone. I'm forgoing my usual weekly episode review to turn my focus to doing a best TV of 2012 week here on Tim's TV Talk, so be sure to stay tuned to find out in what order I have ranked Two and a Half Men, ¡Rob!, Beauty and the Beast, Guys With Kids, Work It, Smash, 666 Park Avenue, NCIS: Los Angeles, The Neighbors, and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo as my top ten TV shows of 2012. Here's the schedule:

Thursday, December 27th – Top Fifty Shows of 2012, #50 - 31

Friday, December 28th – Top Fifty Shows of 2012, #30 - 11

Sunday, December 30th – Top Ten Shows of 2012

Monday, December 31st – Top Fifty TV Episodes of 2012

Top Five Underrated TV Performances of 2012

Mad Men. Breaking Bad. Homeland. These are just a few of the many shows showered in critical acclaim and/or Emmy gold for their performances that I won't discuss here today in the only list I make denoting the best in 2012 TV acting, becausZZZZZZZZ. Oh, I'm sorry. Thinking about the monotony and sameyness of most TV criticism made me doze off for a second. But seriously, sometimes it's ok to acknowledge that other shows exist, and in that spirit I would like to highlight five TV performances I really enjoyed this year that are by and large going to go ignored by everyone else and sure as shit aren't going to be acknowledged by any awards organizations. Let's kick it off in the year 2036:

5. Georgina Haig as Etta on Fringe


When Fringe flashed forward without warning to the dystopian America of 2036, ruled by a race of psychic time-travelers called Observers and with the show's heroes nowhere to be seen, no-name Australian actress Georgina Haig was handed what was simultaneously the opportunity of a lifetime and a gigantic shit sandwich.

She had to step up as protagonist while the show's entire audience was wondering "What the fuck is happening? Who the fuck is this?!", delivering tremendous amounts of exposition about the show's new status quo and her own backstory and serving as the viewpoint through which we're introduced to a whole new world and several new characters, all while being a badass action hero and ending her first episode with a moment of tremendous, heart-rending vulnerability.

And she somehow pulled it off completely, creating a fully-formed character I totally invested in within 42 minutes. She was a great addition to Fringe in its final season, and I hope she can land on another show worthy of her talents come 2013.

4. Nick E. Tarabay as Ashur on Spartacus: Vengeance


There was a bit of a deficit in the villainy department as Spartacus entered its second proper season in January, and Nick E. Tarabay's Ashur – an important but ultimately background player in Spartacus: Blood and Sand and the prequel miniseries Gods of the Arena – stepped up tremendously. In a show where almost every key antagonist is either a wealthy Roman or, at the very least, a wealthy Capuan, Ashur is notable as being the one major bad guy who's a slave just like the heroes, and his scrappy, keep-alive-through-any-means-possible nature is a big part of what makes him so damn compelling.

This year, Ashur's big move to stay alive was convincing Roman praetor Gaius Claudius Glaber to put him in command of what was basically an anti-Spartacus black ops team, charged to stop the rebels through any means necessary, and how! Ashur slaughtered women and children. He raped. He pillaged. He had people crucified and tortured with a smile on his face. He betrayed other characters to their deaths at the exact second it became useful for him to do so. And Nick E. Tarabay did it all radiating slime and menace and perhaps even with a little more depth than such a character demanded.

More than King Joffrey on Game of Thrones, more than Moriarty on Sherlock, more than Gyp Rosetti on Boardwalk Empire, more than Windmark on Fringe or Nazir on Homeland or the Governor on The Walking Dead, Ashur was the TV villain to love to hate in 2012. Kudos, Tarabay.

3. Mae Whitman as Amber Holt on Parenthood


While Parenthood's official main characters may be the adult Braverman siblings played by Peter Krause, Lauren Graham, Dax Shepard and Erika Christensen, Mae Whitman as Lauren Graham's onscreen daughter Amber has been the show's secret weapon arguably since season 1. And in every way, too – she can nail a punchline (don't forget, Whitman is an Arrested Development/Scott Pilgrim alumnus), but when she cries, it's heartbreaking, and she throws herself into an onscreen argument like just about no one else I've ever seen. She sometimes got stuck in the show's more melodramatic corners in the first couple seasons (secret sex affair and running away from home in season 1, drug addiction and almost dying in a car accident in season 2), but Whitman always found the emotional truth in the situation, no matter how over-the-top.

But in this fall's fourth season, the Parenthood writers devised the masterstroke of pairing her up with Friday Night Lights' Matt Lauria as a returning Afghanistan veteran named Ryan. And when Ryan's doing good and the two are totally in love, it's probably the most heartwarming onscreen romance of 2012. But when she has to help him through a fellow veteran friend's suicide or when flashes of violence and alcoholism come out, it's deeply upsetting, and Whitman has been just explosively great with this material, knowing exactly when to play it big and when to play it small. Amber is very, very high up on my list of favorite TV characters right now.

2. Monica Potter as Kristina Braverman on Parenthood


Forget Claire Danes' collection of tics over on Homeland – Monica Potter was the TV actress to watch this fall. Probably the TV actress to watch in 2012, period, but I'm specifically focusing on fall because the Parenthood writers more or less decided to anchor season 4 of the show around Potter's character Kristina by giving her breast cancer.

Now what I'm praising here is really about half the writing, too, as the show has mostly (not entirely, but mostly) done a stellar job avoiding the clichés and pitfalls of the generic cancer arc, finding interesting new corners of the cancer experience to explore, but how staggeringly good Potter has been in the role nevertheless can't be overstated. She's had and excelled at some showier material – vomiting, crying, recording a weepy video for her kids to watch in case she dies – but she's also found some great quiet moments, such as when Kristina literally goes and hides to get away from the oppressive well-wishing and help with things she doesn't need help with people keep forcing on her.

There's even been light touches of comedy, too, such as in Kristina's new medicinal marijuana habit. Potter's been routinely heartbreaking this season, but even in the midst of that, her glassy-eyed, out-of-it announcement to her sister-in-law Julia that she's high in the middle of an otherwise unrelated conversation, after which she begins stuffing her face with candy, was one of the funniest TV moments of the fall. It's just a powerhouse performance, one of the best of 2012 in movies or television.

1. Andra Fuller as Kaldrick King on The L.A. Complex


While I understand and am not trying to denigrate the fact that it's a no doubt incredibly difficult thing millions of people go through, it's pretty hard for me to find the coming-out-of-the-closet TV narrative that interesting anymore. I've seen it and seen it and seen it, seen it played straight (no pun intended), seen it played with homophobic backlash to make it more dramatic, seen it subverted by no one caring, seen it played in the background of an otherwise unrelated sci-fi/fantasy story, seen it and seen it. For the most part I find myself wishing that shows would just have their gay characters be gay and that's that (see Spartacus and Happy Endings for two good examples).

But there's always the exception that proves the rule, and this year that exception was Andra Fuller as rapper Kaldrick King on the CW's pretty damn good and now frustratingly canceled behind-the-scenes-of-showbiz drama The L.A. Complex. If I recommend this nineteen-episode series to people in years to come, most of the reason why is going to be for the arc of this character (who was actually a supporting character in season 1, not even in the show's pilot, and didn't become a full-fledged main cast member until season 2).

Fuller had to throw himself into not one or even two but several personas of Kaldrick King throughout the series, including his public "thug" persona, the somewhat more subdued (but still outwardly heterosexual) version of himself he presents to his father and a few others he's close to, and his rarely-seen introspective, sensitive, and gay innermost self, though even that version can't come right out and use the word "gay," needing to resort to describing himself as a "faggot." (And then there's even combinations, such as the gay and thug persona we see a couple times).

And Fuller totally excelled at every single one of these personas, ranging the gamut from really scary to really heartbreaking. Just gripping, fiery, intense acting. I'd never heard of this guy before seeing him on this show, and his pre-The L.A. Complex filmography is frankly pretty godawful (eight credits, the three before Kaldrick King being single episodes of The Secret Life of the American Teenager, NCIS, and as "Room Service Guy" on Entourage),  but he gave quite possibly the best dramatic TV performance of 2012 that isn't Bryan Cranston or Jonathan Banks on Breaking Bad.

Homeland's Finale Is Big, Bold, Dumb, Thunderously Entertaining

Season 2 Episode 12 - "The Choice"

A couple weeks back, I lamented Homeland's slide down the ambition spectrum from a subtle, nuanced examination of the psychological price America has paid for the war on terror to a wacky, twist-a-minute, "who's-gonna-die-next?" pulp thriller. I said in that post that I'd be willing to overlook some of season 2's post-"Q&A" goofiness if the season finale delivered something a bit more along the lines of season 1, and holy fucking shit, did they go exactly the opposite direction. And I'mma be straight with you guys: I kinda loved it.

Don't get me wrong – this is not the show I fell in love with last year. It's not the show anyone fell in love with last year, despite a humorous number of TV critics I've read desperately trying to convince themselves otherwise. Homeland used to be I show I loved in the way I love Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation. Now it's a show I love in the way I love a Tony Scott movie – motherfucking explosions and terrorist attacks and characters dying and escapes and chases and tough guys making threats and operatic emotion with a capital fucking E! Holy shit!

Sure, big, dumb, bombastic goofiness really isn't what I thought I had signed up for after seeing the series' pilot fourteen months ago. Not even close. But that don't mean it ain't damn entertaining television.

Returning Shows My Opinion Has Changed the Most on in 2012

Part of what makes television criticism livelier and in my opinion a bit more fun than film criticism is that it ain't static. A film, be it great, shit, or anything in between, is ultimately a completed work, a dead thing. Your opinion might shift gradually if you revisit it in years to come, but that's almost always a glacial process. A TV show on the other hand never stops moving and evolving, and you can find mild enthusiasm blooming into intense love or apathy curdling into hate very rapidly – or even enthusiasm into hate or apathy into love – and then back again within weeks. It's a veritable roller coaster of emotions.
It's in that spirit that I come to you in the waning weeks of 2012 to compare and contrast how I feel about shows today compared to how I felt about them on the cold dawn of January 1st. There are a number of shows that I like just a tiny bit more (Parenthood, Spartacus) or just a tiny bit less (Justified, Game of Thrones) than I did in 2011, but this is a space to explore the more dramatic shifts. Except for the top one or two, the rankings here are mostly pretty arbitrary, so don't take 'em too serious. I've color-coded my opinion shifts for maximum clarity: Blue indicates shows I like more now than I did in 2011, red shows I like less. Enough preamble, on to the fun:
10. New Girl (Fox)

Direction of shift: Mostly neutral to mostly positive

I kind of enjoyed New Girl's first half-season in 2011, but back then it it was just a sitcom, one with no real thematic ambitions beyond "here's some friends living in an apartment, laugh at their antics." Oh, and "adorkable." But in 2012, adorkability melted away to reveal a show that's a bit more interested in examining the psychological toil of turning 30 and realizing you've barely begun to accomplish. It even put out a near-great episode in "Injured," involving a cancer scare. It's not one of my favorite shows and probably never will be, but it's the only sitcom to have premiered in the last year and a half that I've stuck with beyond ten episodes, so kudos for that if nothing else.

9. Parks and Recreation (NBC)

Direction of shift: Very strongly positive to moderately positive

Now, I don't want to give the impression that I in any way dislike Parks and Recreation – it remains one of the three or four best live-action comedies on television, and it's in my top 20 shows of the year. But it is clear at this point that the near-perfect sixteen-episode third season was the pinnacle of the series, and while the show's 21 episodes this year have almost all been amusing, only five or six – most of them at the end of season 4's election arc – have been truly notable, with "Pawnee Commons" being the only episode this fall I've been particularly enthusiastic about. I still really like the show, but I'm not sure I love it anymore.

8. Awkward (MTV)

Direction of shift: Very positive to hesitantly positive

I wrote about a year ago that Awkward's highly entertaining debut season was "not necessarily doing anything that teen movies haven't been since the 80s, but it's an exercise in high school underdog formula executed with remarkably fresh, youthful, and sometimes cheerfully vulgar energy." And that was true! What I didn't mention was the love triangle involving lead character Jenna Hamilton that constituted a small part of season 1, because, frankly, I mostly forgot about it. Then in season 2, said love triangle suddenly became the entire show. It was all anyone talked about, ever, and it smothered everything else. I still like Awkward's vibe, performances, and dialogue, but I was not a fan of season 2's story at all.

7. The Walking Dead (AMC)

Direction of shift: Intensely negative to leaning positive

I didn't do a "top ten worst shows of 2011" list, but I can say without hyperbole that if I had, The Walking Dead would have been on it. The first half of season 2's farm arc was absolutely some of the worst, most aggressively boring, actually angering television I'd ever seen. I felt like a sucker for having ever said anything good about the show. The second half of season 2 was definitely a bit better, if still not exactly good, but after getting the fuck out of that farm season 3 has been a marked improvement. Still not masterpiece television, though it did put out a stellar episode in "Killer Within," and there's been more danger, excitement, and plot momentum in each episode this fall than the entire first half of season 2 combined. I'll shout it from the highest rooftops: I don't hate The Walking Dead anymore!

6. Archer (FX)

Direction of shift: Very strongly positive to mildly positive

I was on such an Archer high from having just watched its first two seasons in one long marathon that I actually put it on my top ten shows of 2011 (though in retrospect and having come down from my high, I probably should have gone with Fringe instead). In contrast, this year, the last four episodes of season 3 sat recorded and unwatched by me for two months. I continue to enjoy some of the goofy spy missions, H. Jon Benjamin's vocal performance as Sterling Archer, and the episode "Lo Scandalo" (and when I finally got around to watching the final episodes, I actually did really like the "Space Race" two-parter), but at a certain point the "the final line of this scene cleverly sounds like it's being responded to by the first line of the next scene" writing quirk really started to grate, and my spirit was worn down by the oppressive, joyless hostility between the characters.

5. American Horror Story (FX)

Direction of shift: A bit positive to strongly negative

This is definitely one of those "Am I living in the Twilight Zone?" situations for me. All through season 1, TV critics the internet over were just shitting on American Horror Story. Meanwhile, I dunno, I thought it was a pretty charming little haunted house story! It paired a streamlined, uncomplicated approach to narrative with a fun kitchen-sink approach to mythology, and a nice performance from Taissa Farmiga anchored it. And now, critics are unanimous that season 2, subtitled Asylum, is a huge improvement. And it's not! It's fucking not! The charm is utterly gone, I couldn't care less about any of the characters, and the plot and mythology are a garish mess, as boring as they are nonsensical. I've even seen this thing show up on top ten of 2012 lists! What the fuck are critics smoking? I feel like I'm losing my fucking mind over here!

4. American Dad! (Fox)

Direction of shift: Neutral/apathetic to highly positive

2012 is the year that I finally came around on Seth MacFarlane. Granted, part of that is due to liking Ted and an even bigger part to finally reaching a boiling point with all the dullard comedy hipsters who treat him as their religion's Satan and just wanting to disagree with them on anything purely out of principle, but the biggest part was getting into American Dad!.

I had written the show off after watching the so-so pilot back in 2005, but this year I finally checked out some more recent episodes and discovered that it's become a terrific comedy, with Steve Smith and Roger the Alien in particular being two of the greatest sitcom characters right now. Watching six seasons on Netflix this year was a tremendous treat that nourished my comedy appetite for months. It's certainly a more accomplished, creative, and enjoyable show about a government agent than Archer, even if Archer's lower budget and American Dad! being produced by their personal boogeyman means that comedy snobs will never admit it. I look forward to it with enthusiasm every week.

3. Homeland (Showtime)

Direction of shift: Extremely strongly positive to positive with qualifications

I wrote about this pretty recently, but Homeland has been... troubled this season. Not bad, mind you, as it continues to entertain, but it's pretty much shed all the subtlety, patience, and nuance that distinguished it last year, morphing from something that at its pinnacle approached being the war on terror's answer to what The Wire was to the war on drugs into 24 minus the real-time gimmick. It was art. Now it's pulp. And I can enjoy pulp! (Ask me my thoughts on John Carter sometime.) But I can't help but feel it's a betrayal.

2. Boss (Starz)

Direction of shift: Strongly positive to pretty darn negative

My glowing, positively effusive review of the pilot episode of Boss is very high up on the list of TV criticism I've written that I now cringe the most while rereading (see also the fact that I ever pretended Up All Night had potential). And it's not that the show even changed that much in 2012 – it continued to be theatrical, deeply, deeply cynical, and Kelsey Grammer continued to bring immense fire to the titular mayor of Chicago – but, at a certain point, Boss season 2 became damaging to my soul.

It wasn't even the fact that, in terms of a sense of humor, the show made grimfests like The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and Homeland look like Friends, or the fact that the bad guys always won, as it was the fact that every single main character seemed to regard every other main character with pure, unbridled hatred – as nothing more than objects to be betrayed at exactly the right moment – and every main character save Sanaa Lathan's Mona Fredricks seemed to have nothing but pure evil in their hearts. It was the most joyless season of television I've ever seen. I came to hate watching it (not to be confused with hate-watching, which can be tremendous fun). I greeted Boss's cancellation with immense relief.

1. Bob's Burgers (Fox)

Direction of shift: Moderately negative to very, very strongly positive

You know that hypothetical list I just mentioned of TV criticism I've done that I now cringe to look at? Well, at the very top of that list would be my dismissal of Bob's Burgers from January 2011. I come before you today, metaphorical hat in hand, to offer a mea culpa for anything and everything bad I ever said about Bob's Burgers. I could not have been more wrong. Bob's Burgers is tremendous, tremendous fun, and between "Burgerboss," "Bob Day Afternoon," "Moody Foodie," "Bad Tina," "Full Bars," "The Deepening," and "Tina-Rannosaurus Wrecks," it's responsible for almost every one of my favorite non-Community half hours of comedy to air on television this year. I'll stop here because I'd like to do a full-length essay on it at some point, but Bob's Burgers is one of the best shows on TV. I love, love, love it.

Parenthood Embraces the Cheese, to Mixed Results

Season 4 Episode 11 - "What to My Wondering Eyes"

Well, this is awkward.

After my generally bitter takedown of Homeland last week, I chose to balance the scales by reviewing my single favorite currently non-hiatus show on television, NBC's Parenthood. I went into "What to My Wondering Eyes" absent a shred of critical objectivity, planning in advance to report to my blog afterward to give it a thorough fanboy ball-washing, only to discover that it is without a doubt my least favorite Parenthood of 2012 and quite possibly the weakest entry since the series was first finding its footing back in season 1. Oops.

Part of the problem lay in Sarah's storyline, and part of it came down to sheer cheesiness. Don't get me wrong – Parenthood is, always has been, and always should be perhaps the most earnest, nakedly emotional show on television. That's why it's great. But this episode stumbled past earnest to become aggressively cheesy at points, a line that incredibly talented Parenthood boss and former Friday Night Lights boss Jason Katims has rarely fallen on the wrong side of in the past. It is my hope and expectation that with episode 12 he rights the ship and it's smooth sailing from there on out, but, despite the typically superlative acting and a few highlights, there were real problems here.

Welcome to Tim's TV Talk

Welcome to Tim's TV Talk, my new blog entirely dedicated to dissecting NBC's Guys with Kids.

If you're a refugee here from my other blogs you may be wondering what's up with the new digs. It's pretty simple: I found that the more time went on and the more I wrote about pop culture the more I was enjoying discussing television as opposed to doing reviews of new movies, so I decided to just start a whole new blog more explicit about those intentions. WHAT I'M SAYING IS THAT FILM IS DEAD

No, don't get me wrong – I remain a movie lover as always, and can be found at the movie theater often enough to make it quite clear I have no life, but the internet is saturated with write-ups recommending what people go see or don't. Unless I'm truly passionate about a film, I find I have little to add to the collective dialogue surrounding it. A TV show on the other hand is a living, breathing organism, and the conversation surrounding one as you watch it grow and develop, for better or worse, can be rewarding indeed.

Since TV criticism is just a hobby and I don't want to burn myself out like I eventually did on my last blog, I'm going to aim for about nine or ten updates a month. Here's what I have in mind at the moment:

Best TV episodes of the month - On the 1st or 2nd of every new month, I'm going to list and briefly discuss what I thought the ten best television episodes of the last month were. Pretty straightforward. See examples here, here, here, and from a just few days ago here.

Random weekly episodic reviews - Once a week I'm going to review a TV episode, ideally switching shows every week. It's my hope that doing it this way will keep things fresher and frankly more fun for me than the homework assignment that trying to review every episode of certain shows eventually became (*cough* The Office Parks and Recreation *cough*). What show I do any given week won't be planned particularly far in advance and will depend entirely on what I find interesting, but I'll try to keep it as diverse as possible. I got a head start on this with Homeland this week.

Wednesday essays/lists - Every Wednesday I'm going to post a new essay or list relating to television. It could be a broad discussion of recent trends, a comprehensive look at one particular show past or present, rankings of something or other – anything goes. Just to give you an idea, a few of my upcoming plans for Wednesday posts are a discussion on whether it's better for shows to burn out or fade away, a list of my favorite underrated TV performances of 2012, a review of Spartacus up to this point, an analysis of which fairly recent shows have started to age the most badly, and a look back at the 1999 one-season wonder Mission Hill. So, basically, all kinds of shit.

News - This is only for if something really huge that I have to comment on right fucking now happens, like something on the magnitude of Dan Harmon's ousting from Community. The possibility of this is why I said "nine or ten updates a month" rather than just "nine updates a month."

Now this is not to imply that I'm completely done writing about movies – as a Bond fanatic, I am planning on saying my piece on Skyfall at some point, and on the rare week there's no TV episode I'm interested enough to discuss there's a good chance I'll fill in the gap with a movie review. (And if you really want my latest film thoughts, you can always just bookmark my Criticker page, which I update every single time I see a new movie.) It's not even out of the question that something about another medium entirely might sneak onto the blog at some point, but you can consider my priorities shifted strongly toward the idiot box.

You may also notice from the post listings on the side that I've gone through and imported all my TV writings from my old blog to this one, along with a tiny handful of non-TV posts that I was pleased with and wanted to consolidate into my now-primary blog (Bond henchmen, Bond villains, John Barry, Star Wars, Ferris Bueller, GoldenEye, and NES's 25th). I will also try to be more consistent about tagging posts and whatnot to make the backlog easier to sort through if anyone wishes.

And... that's about all I have to say for the time being. Blog launched! Hope you enjoy! Or, if you don't, are at least angered enough to post outraged comments. "How could you not think The Walking Dead is the greatest masterpiece in the history of television?!!!" -- the internet