Best TV Episodes, December 2013

(I'm pretty burned out from the collective 14,557 words I wrote for my end-of-2013 lists over the last couple weeks, so I'm gonna keep this month's Best TV Episodes feature short and sweet. I know I said the same thing almost verbatim a year ago, but this time I really mean it! I just need a break from typing, you guys.)

10. Supernatural, Season 9 Episode 9 - "Holy Terror"

I've learned from perusing forums and Tumblr that a lot of Supernatural fans were less than thrilled with the Ezekiel-related shock twist at the end of this midseason finale. But what can I say? I dig it. I love when a show pulls the rug out from under me.

9. Arrow, Season 2 Episode 9 - "Three Ghosts"

Great, emotional, action-packed midseason finale with an awesome final reveal. Seeing Oliver Queen put on the proper Green Arrow mask for the first time gave goosebumps even to me, someone who never gave first fuck about the Green Arrow before watching this show.

8. Bob's Burgers, Season 4 Episode 7 - "Bob and Deliver"

Stories that put Tina and Bob Belcher together almost always delight, as do stories set at Wagstaff School, so making Bob the substitute teacher for Tina's cooking class was unsurprisingly funny and charming.

7. Scandal, Season 3 Episode 10 - "A Door Marked Exit"

This episode is almost entirely ranked this high for Papa Pope's "You are a boy!" monologue to Fitz. The rest of the episode was pretty good; not mind-blowing. But that monologue is some of my favorite TV dialogue of 2013.

6. American Dad, Season 9 Episode 8 - "Minstrel Krampus"

American Dad culled together lesser-known Christmas mythology, imagery and themes from Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, and some good old climactic ultraviolence for what is probably my favorite explicitly Christmas-themed TV episode of 2013.

5. Awkward, Season 3 Episode 20 - "Who I Want to Be"

As a kinda-sorta series finale (Awkward is coming back next year, but showrunner Lauren Iungerich and her very idiosyncratic voice are out, sinking my enthusiasm for the show by about 95%), "Who I Want to Be" put a satisfying emotional button on three years of this warm, witty high school sitcom.

4. Homeland, Season 3 Episode 12 - "The Star"

I actually felt things – emotions, and all that! – during "The Star," which basically by default makes it the best hour of Homeland's third season. I also appreciate that it followed the season's story through to its only logical conclusion and didn't punk out like the show has in the past.

3. The Walking Dead, Season 4 Episode 8 - "Too Far Gone"

Oh, ok, so here's the awesome zombie spectacle the rest of America apparently sees in The Walking Dead every week as to make it TV's highest-rated scripted show, in the form of the big Team Rick vs. Governor battle we never got at the end of season 3. Now if I could only see The Walking Dead deliver such visceral thrills more than once a year. Baby steps!

2. Arrow, Season 2 Episode 8 - "The Scientist"

I put maybe sixty seconds of thought in my entire life towards the existence of superhero the Flash before watching "The Scientist," so it's a big compliment that I came out the other end a big and instant fan of Barry Allen, hopeful to see him more in Arrow in 2014 and already ready for next fall's Flash spinoff. Great, fun character.

1. American Dad, Season 9 Episode 6 - "Independent Movie"

I'll quote myself from my American Dad writeup a few days ago: "For the record, American Dad and Bob's Burgers were neck and neck in these rankings – the latter even a touch ahead – until Dad's December 1st episode "Independent Movie," a sendup of indie coming-of-age flicks and the Fox Searchlight formula that calls to mind Galaxy Quest and "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" in how note-perfect a spoof it is." Yep. That's pretty much it!

Top Fifty TV Shows of 2013: #30 - 11

Alright, so things got a little hairy in the lower echelons of the #50-31 rankings last week. At points I actually felt more like I was writing a "worst of" list than a "best of." But you've reached the light at the end of the tunnel: While I may not consider the twenty shows below to have been among the ten best this year and I have my gripes about each, I can say with confidence that I like every single one of them. Let's get it started in here:

30. The Borgias (Showtime)

Best 2013 Episode: Season 3 Episode 10 - "The Prince" | New to List

Mix one part watered-down Game of Thrones with two-to-three parts The Tudors and you'll end up with Showtime's antihero Pope drama The Borgias, a show never exceptional but almost always pretty good. If you're looking for sex and violence and religion and scheming and sumptuous cinematography and set design and even a couple big battle sequences, it comes recommended, though with the caveat that it got canceled at the end of season 3 with no real, conclusive ending. The show has some problems, including the fact that it never convinced me our ruling-class heroes were the underdogs in any conflict it put them in, but I still wish I could see the fourth season that's never going to happen.

29. Awkward (MTV)

Best 2013 Episode: Season 3 Episode 20 - "Who I Want to Be" | Down 3 from 2012

Lauren Iungerich's droll, witty, energetic high school sitcom Awkward is unfortunately going to be entering its fourth season in 2014 absent one key ingredient: Lauren Iungerich. I'm unclear whether she quit or was pushed out, but one way or another Awkward is going to be missing its voice next year, which makes me fear we're in for a Community season 4 / Gilmore Girls season 7 scenario. But Lauren at least went out strong. Awkward season 3 remains far too obsessed with love triangles (my biggest problem with the show last year too), but takes its protagonist Jenna Hamilton through a dynamic emotional journey and wrapped up its season/year with one of the strongest, most moving episodes of the series.

28. The Office (NBC)

Best 2013 Episode: Season 9 Episode 23 - "Finale" | Up 8 from 2012

Like The Walking Dead and The Newsroom, The Office is this high on my list (and up from last year!) on the strength of exactly one episode: Its series finale. I don't think I'm being out-there or controversial when I say this show suffered massively from the loss of Steve Carell, but it remains an eternal fact of my own TV history that The Office was, for about a year or so, more or less my favorite show on television. Those emotional bonds can be fractured but are hard to shake entirely, and as such the emotion of "Finale" was felt deeply. Even Carell's return, while nice, ends up being largely incidental to the impact of the show's quiet and heartfelt final moments. There were literally dozens of Office episodes I found pretty damn bad by the end of its run, but it'll always be a show I remember fondly.

27. New Girl (Fox)

Best 2013 Episode: Season 3 Episode 8 - "Menus" | Down 4 from 2012

Weird fact: I consider New Girl's 2013 run to be superior to its 2012, yet somehow it's lower on my list this year. What's that about? Ranking pedantry aside, what I wrote last year still applies; New Girl was then and remains now "currently the best 'roommates in an apartment in the city' Friends-styled sitcom on the air." Hell, by an even bigger margin now that Happy Endings is dead. This year the show leaned heavily on the Ross/Rachel will-they-won't-they dynamic of Jess and Nick (and, as the above image indicates, answered it: they will), which isn't generally something I watch TV shows for or care about but in this case was mostly charming. Damon Wayans Jr. rejoining season 3 in a semi-regular capacity as Coach – last seen in the pilot! – has also been a boon to the show.

26. Homeland (Showtime)
Best 2013 Episode: Season 3 Episode 12 - "The Star" | Down 13 from 2012

A couple years ago, I reviewed the pilot of Homeland, calling it "the thinking man's 24." Roughly a year after that, I said that the show had lost what made it smart and different and essentially become "24 2." Now I'll offer a second amendment: Homeland is the pretentious man's 24; a twisty terrorism thriller that's mostly about cliffhangers and finding out who's gonna die next, only wearing a "moral examination of the war on terror" suit that, if you look closely, is cheap and ratty and barely holds together. Also, this season's Dana/Leo subplot is one of the shittiest things I saw on TV all year. All that said, the season finale "The Star" is a very good episode of television, one which thankfully has the balls to follow the show's story through to its only logical conclusion. If not for that episode Homeland would probably be ten ranks lower on this list.

Best TV Episodes, November 2013

I'm gonna level with y'all straight up: Since I started doing these monthly Best TV Episodes lists, there has never been a single month I've had a harder time whittling down to just ten. As I type this, I'm staring at a list of over twenty episodes that aired last month and struggling to cut a single one. So I'm going to break protocol and do some (alphabetical, unranked) runners-up. I might also keep my episode blurbs a little on the short side, because I'm working on some other posts for December. I hope you'll forgive me my trespasses.

Runners-up:

• Almost Human, Season 1 Episode 3 - "Are You Receiving?"

Almost Human gets a thumbs up from me so far. I enjoy its Fringe-meets-Blade Runner-meets-Robocop vibe. This hostage thriller episode added Die Hard onto the list of influences, so no wonder I dig it.

• Arrow, Season 2 Episode 7 - "State v. Queen"

Seth Gabel returns as Count Vertigo, the most enjoyably over-the-top, Dark Knight Joker-esque villain in Arrow's rogues gallery. The episode's courtroom scenes weren't exactly the best, but I still enjoyed it on the strength of Vertigo and the final plot twist, which has far-reaching ramifications for the series.

• Awkward, Season 3 Episode 17 - "The Campaign Fail"

Protagonist Jenna Hamilton's face-heel turn provided MTV's high school sitcom with one of its stronger story arcs since season 1, but this episode, with her returning to good and seeking forgiveness from the friends and family she's wronged, is stronger still.

• New Girl, Season 3 Episode 8 - "Menus"

Not gonna lie; this episode is here almost exclusively for Nick's line "What's up, Jason Street?" to wheelchair Winston. That's literally all it takes to get me to love your show: Throw in a Friday Night Lights reference, win my undying allegiance.

• Revolution, Season 2 Episode 9 - "Everyone Says I Love You"

With the possible exception of The Newsroom, Revolution is easily 2013's most improved show. I'm actually enjoying it now, which is just crazy. This episode was pretty freakin' crazy too. Hopefully Revolution's upswing continues into 2014.

10. The Legend of Korra, Season 2 Episodes 13 & 14 - "Darkness Falls" & "Light in the Dark" (two-parter)

Much like season 1's closing moments, Korra season 2's climactic battle is way too reliant on magical deus ex machina to get the heroes out of the impossible corner the show has written them into. Let me put it this way: I was 100% digging the finale when it was doing its riff on Godzilla. When it turned into Pacific Rim, however, it got kind of absurd. Nevertheless, gripes aside, the action kicked ass and the animation was immensely beautiful. Still-human Unalaq in full Dark Avatar regalia was terrifying.

9. Supernatural, Season 9 Episode 7 - "Bad Boys"

This episode was just a great, nostalgic Supernatural throwback to the days of seasons 1 and 2. No demons, no angels, no heaven, no hell, not a single regular or recurring character save Sam and Dean; just a straight-up ghost story, salting and burning bones and all. It was like the Supernatural equivalent of going back and playing some NES. The good old days, baby.

8. Boardwalk Empire, Season 4 Episode 12 - "Farewell Daddy Blues"

Ok, I'm gonna potentially make a few enemies here: Outside of episodes 5 and 8, which I included in last month's roundup, I'm not sure I really loved this season of Boardwalk Empire. I still liked it, but didn't love it the way I did the last two years. It's still a beautiful and sometimes exciting show, but its rhythms have become immensely familiar. It's just not a show that truly challenges itself on fundamental levels. Ergo, I liked but didn't love its fourth season finale. It did include an amazing, brutal fight scene with Eli Thompson, but the episode's major character death felt sudden and unearned.

7. Scandal, Season 3 Episode 7 - "Everything's Coming Up Mellie"

This episode was just completely and utterly bug-nuts crazy from start to finish, which is the pitch Scandal operates best at. The flashbacks with First Lady Mellie Grant were crazy and went to a shockingly dark place. The present-day Quinn story went to a crazy, dark and blood-soaked place, too. The revelation about the Vice President's husband's sexuality was just the goofily wacky cherry on top. Shonda Rhimes deserves adulation for the way she keeps this show's pacing cranked to a perpetual 11.

6. Homeland, Season 3 Episode 9 - "One Last Time"

Oh hey Homeland! Pretty surprising to see you on this list - I thought you didn't come 'round these parts anymore! What "One Last Time" pulled off in its Brody story that the rest of Homeland season 3 has failed at is delivering a story with clean, coherent and immediate stakes. Even the Dana Brody scene in this episode was narratively relevant and emotionally affecting. That right there may be the single most shocking twist Homeland season 3 has pulled off to date.

5. Bob's Burgers, Season 4 Episode 5 - "Turkey in a Can"

After some episodes earlier this season with almost preposterously high, life-or-death stakes – namely "A River Runs Through Bob" and "Seaplane!" – for its Thanksgiving episode Bob's Burgers reclaimed greatness by returning the Belchers home and setting nearly every minute of the episode there. The concept here wasn't bottle episode, though, but "murder" mystery as Bob tries to track down who in the house ruined his Thanksgiving turkey. Both the jokes and the genre trappings worked completely. Great, fun episode.

4. The Legend of Korra, Season 2 Episode 10 - "A New Spiritual Age"

Korra and Jinora's journey into the Spirit World makes for one of the best episodes of Korra's second season, fully shedding all the techno/steampunk trappings that exist in Republic City and returning to true straight-up fantasy storytelling. The Avatar: The Last Airbender cameos were impossible not to delight at, and the spirits themselves ranged the gamut from adorable to majestic to terrifying. Awesome "Oh shit what happens next!"-inducing cliffhanger, too.

3. Parenthood, Season 5 Episode 9 - "Election Day"

I'm on record as being not exactly in love with Parenthood season 5's mayoral election subplot, but a huge part of that had to do with terror that the story was going to go in a direction it really shouldn't and Parenthood was suddenly going to become The West Wing-lite. Now that I know that wasn't their plan, I dislike it a lot less in retrospect, and its climactic episode "Election Day" was actually quite good. Even aside from Kristina, the Crosby and Max stories were both very funny, and Julia and Joel's story was quite harrowing in a "Mom and dad are fighting!" kind of way. Parenthood is ramping up to a strong finish for 2013.

2. Arrow, Season 2 Episode 5 - "League of Assassins"

Not merely continuing but intensifying and upping the stakes following the revelation of the Canary's identity in the previous episode, "League of Assassins" shows Arrow as the polished, height-of-its-powers badass weekly superhero flick it is. The clock tower action scene was just so cinematic and exciting, and even beyond the wicked fight choreography it was all rooted in character dynamics and high emotional stakes. That's exactly what genre TV at its best is all about and should aspire to. This episode also showed off what a strong character Quentin Lance has become. Once practically the Sheriff Lamb of Arrow, I now ache for his pain as much as anyone else on the show.

1. The Legend of Korra, Season 2 Episode 12 - "Harmonic Convergence"

Despite their identical #1 rankings on my Best TV Episodes lists, no, I do not think "Harmonic Convergence" is anywhere near as good as last month's "Beginnings," an installment that is honestly in contention as one of my favorite hours of TV ever. But that doesn't mean "Harmonic Convergence" didn't kick a lot of ass. The massive, epic plane action sequence as Team Avatar attempts to invade Unalaq's base and reach the southern spirit portal was one of those scenes that truly shows off the potential of animation (plus imagination, of course), and how as a medium it can do on television things that just can't be done in live action sans hundreds of millions of dollars. The episode's ending also deserves credit as arguably 2013's greatest "HOLY FUCKING SHIT I NEED THE NEXT EPISODE NOWWW!!!"-inducing TV cliffhanger.

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 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.

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.

Homeland Goes Full Retard

Season 2 Episode 10 - "Broken Hearts"


Starting eleven and up through two years ago, there was a show called 24, and, despite its occasionally icky neoconservative overtones, I enjoyed it. Watched all eight seasons of it. I watched for Kiefer Sutherland's explosive performance as counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer, for its clever real-time gimmick, and I watched for its sheer, unadulterated cartoonishness.

Because of its violent, "mature" trappings, it wasn't called out on this as often as it probably should have been – even winning the best drama Emmy one surreal year – but it existed in a comic book universe where the leaders of various terrorist outfits almost always eventually got in on the action and mixed it up with Jack Bauer hand-to-hand like video game bosses, the depiction of technology and hacking frequently dipped into light science fiction, and the stakes were always comically high, with multiple presidents getting offed and bioweapons being released and, at one point, Los Angeles getting nuked. Mind you, I say this not out of scorn, but out of admiration for an unpretentious show that knew exactly what it was and didn't front. 24 was a Saturday morning cartoon for grown ups and totally comfortable being just that.

Then, one year ago, former 24 writers and producers Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon created a new show about counterterrorism, one that promised to be the Manchurian Candidate/The Conversation answer to 24's Saturday morning cartoon. It was a patient, subtle show, light on action, heavy on observation and detective work, with infinitely more modest (and thus arguably more believable and frightening) stakes. It took its time and played it cool, with arguably the most heart-pounding scene of the entire first season, in the episode "The Weekend," being a simple conversation wherein the show's protagonist frankly confronted a possible terrorist with her suspicions.

It was called Homeland, and it was a great season of television. I even recall a review or two saying it was doing for the war on terror what The Wire did for the war on drugs.

And now, after the utterly preposterous tenth episode of season 2, it's official: Nope. If The Wire had been written in this spirit, season 3 would have ended with McNulty and company racing to catch Stringer Bell before he launched his nefarious plan to hook all of Baltimore on dope by lacing it into the water supply, which he's gained access to by kidnapping the governor of Maryland's daughter. R.I.P subtle Homeland of season 1. Date of death, December 2nd, 2012. All hail 24 2.

Top Ten TV Shows of 2011

No need for essay-length preamble, you know the drill. Also, standard "I haven't seen everything" disclaimer applies (perhaps most notably I haven't yet seen the acclaimed second season of Justified), so if your favorite show is missing there's no need to stress; it might just be on my to-see list and wasn't excluded deliberately.

Unless of course your favorite show is The Walking Dead, in which case I excluded it extremely deliberately. Sorry. Starting with our runners-up:

Noble Runners-Up (in alphabetical order)


30 Rock (NBC) – Between the freewheeling absurdity of "Operation Righteous Cowboy Lightning," the satirical edge of "TGS Hates Women," and the show's slightly masturbatory but still hugely entertaining love letter to itself in its hour-long hundredth episode, "100," the fifth season of 30 Rock ended strong last spring, keeping its reputation as one of TV's funniest and most irreverent sitcoms rightly intact.

Awkward (MTV) – Likely the year's biggest surprise for me and the tiny handful of others way outside MTV's target demo who caught it, Awkward emerged from nowhere to instantly become one of the best high school sitcoms ever. It's 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 lead Ashley Rickards feels like a star on the rise.

The Chicago Code (Fox) – The most tragically canceled one-and-done season of television to air in 2011 came from the very same executive producer behind 2010's tragic one-and-done Terriers, Shawn Ryan, a man on a simultaneously hot and cold streak of artistic success and commercial failure. Nevertheless, these thirteen episodes did a fine job telling a thrilling, complex, and more or less complete story about the intersection between police and politics, with Delroy Lindo giving one of TV's meatiest, most entertaining performances of the year as corrupt Alderman Ronin Gibbons.

Fringe (Fox) – Network TV's best sci-fi show remains network TV's best sci-fi show, and not by a little. Despite the fourth season's controversial new direction (though few will deny the greatness of "And Those We've Left Behind," one of the best episodes of the series), Fringe's 2011 run continued to command cultish love even as it alienated mass audiences with its hard sci-fi, alternate timelines, parallel universes, and animated episode, all while Anna Torv kept delivering not one but several of television's quietly great performances as the many versions of FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham.

Louie (FX) – Comedian Louis C.K.'s loosely-connected series of short films masquerading as a TV series continued to demand respect with its remarkable confidence, command of tone, and week-to-week unpredictability in its second season. Once a comedy, Louie now blurs genre lines unlike anything else on TV, having one episode build in its entirety to a massive fart while other episodes included straight-faced, relatively unsmiling depictions of Louie traveling to Afghanistan to entertain the troops and trying to talk a failed comedian friend out of suicide. 

The Vampire Diaries (The CW) – TV's best supernatural soap (fuck off, True Blood!) kept its foot on the gas and blew through 2011 without letting up on its alarming pace of jaw-dropping plot twists, agonizing cliffhangers, cool violence, nasty villains, and major character deaths for a second. Marrying the outer trappings of a teen drama to the internal combustion engine of a relentless thriller, The Vampire Diaries kicks ass.

Top Ten TV Shows of 2011

Homeland, Season 1 Episode 6 – "The Good Soldier"

Review of Homeland's sixth episode, "The Good Soldier," behind the cut. No lie.

Homeland, Season 1 Episode 5 – "Blind Spot"

Observe closely as I interrogate Homeland's fifth episode, "Blind Spot," behind the cut.

Best TV Episodes, October 2011

I've decided to kick off a new feature wherein, on the first day of each month, I go through and rank and give some brief (spoiler-free) thoughts on my ten favorite television episodes that aired over the last month, plus pick a few runners-up. I can't watch everything, so I make no claim of this being any kind of definitive guide, but I thought it would be a fun way to organize my thoughts and share them at the same time, and maybe even talk a little about some shows I otherwise don't much.

Keep in mind that there's no "only one episode per show" rule in effect, so it's entirely possible that a few shows may dominate the top ten any given month. I may be a liberal, but the Tea Party should approve of this feature: there is no sharing the wealth here.

Runners-Up:

17. The Vampire Diaries, Season 3 Episode 5 – "The Reckoning" 16. Parks and Recreation, Season 4 Episode 5 – "Meet 'N' Greet" 15. Revenge, Season 1 Episode 5 – "Guilt" 14. Boardwalk Empire, Season 2 Episode 2 – "Ourselves Alone" 13. Homeland, Season 1 Episode 4 – "Semper I" 12. Parenthood, Season 3 Episode 4 – "Clear Skies From Here on Out" 11. Community, Season 3 Episode 5 – "Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps"

Top Ten:

10. Homeland, Season 1 Episode 5 – "Blind Spot"

Last Sunday's Homeland did a great job further cementing the show as, as I labeled it in my pilot review, the thinking man's 24. It excels at depicting espionage, intelligence gathering, interrogation, and other anti-terrorism activities in a way that adheres a million times more closely to reality, and continues to move the plot quickly yet patiently forward. I plan a full review of this episode in a day or two, so I'll leave it at that.

9. Breaking Bad, Season 4 Episode 12 – "End Times"

I mentioned in my Breaking Bad season four review that I found this episode arguably the weakest of the final act of the season, with a closing scene that seemed to take a certain character from smart to psychic. But, just as your favorite food slightly misprepared is still probably preferable to most anything else, problematic Breaking Bad is still Breaking Bad.

8. Parks and Recreation, Season 4 Episode 3 – "Born & Raised"

Joan Callamezzo is one of Parks and Recreation's great secret weapons, always hilarious but never overused and made stale (her talk show also anchored one of the funniest scenes of one of the funniest episodes of the series, "Media Blitz"), and she makes her season four debut to huge laughs and a really well-structured, interconnected plot. An all-around great episode for Leslie's character development and Ben being hilarious, because Adam Scott is always hilarious.

7. Parenthood, Season 3 Episode 5 – "Nora"

Parenthood is one of the most difficult shows on TV to define my enjoyment of, because the show is, at its heart, about decently well-off people having mostly small-scale, quickly resolved first world problems that have no impact whatsoever on the world at large. But showrunner Jason Katims (also behind Friday Night Lights) has a deft, borderline-magic touch for making these people so likable and their issues so compelling regardless that I end pretty much every episode with a goofy grin on my face. "Nora" was simply the goofy grinniest of October.

6. Boss, Season 1 Episode 1 – "Listen"

The second-best pilot of the fall and one of the best of the year, Boss, the story of a fictitious Chicago mayor and the machinations surrounding the office, is dense, brainy, literate television, hugely stylish and theatrical but with a thick undercurrent of realpolitik running through it. At showing the corrupting power of politics it excels far beyond the recent George Clooney film The Ides of March, and Kelsey Grammer is so ferocious as the titular boss that he damn near scrubbed the residual nightmares of his recent sitcom Hank from my mind.

5. Boardwalk Empire, Season 2 Episode 5 – "Gimcrack and Bunkum"

Long-simmering tensions between two characters come to a perfect boil, series dark horse Richard Harrow gets an awesome, actor-friendly showcase, and there's not one but two scenes of gruesome, beyond-the-pale violence. Hands down the best episode of the season, and one of the best of the series since the pilot; a sweaty, heart-pounding episode of a show that can occasionally feel cold and detached.

4. Homeland, Season 1 Episode 3 – "Clean Skin"

Effectively the third act and climax of the first act of Homeland's debut season, "Clean Skin" may be in certain ways the least cerebral Homeland yet, but it's also the most tense and thrilling, with one particularly shocking moment that will make almost anyone watching jump. It's the episode of Homeland where it's most evident the show is run by two of the same guys as 24, but without ever giving into that show's baser instincts.

3. Homeland, Season 1 Episode 1 – "Pilot"

Homeland's pilot, for my money, jumps ahead of the (both now deceased, the former more tragically than the latter) The Chicago Code and Lights Out and stands behind only Game of Thrones as having the best pilot of the year. While it does a great job laying the show's groundwork as a terrorism thriller, its true accomplishment is building its two key figures, Claire Danes' Carrie Mathison and Damian Lewis's Nicholas Brody, into startlingly rich, compelling, three-dimensional characters within the space of one hour. Watching Danes in this episode was the first time I was riveted watching an actor in a new series this fall.

2. Breaking Bad, Season 4 Episode 13 – "Face Off"

As perfect a fourth season finale as I think any of us could have hoped for a few months back, "Face Off" is explosively tense, violent, satisfying, and just plain climactic television, bringing tons of plot threads to their conclusions and showing an awesome, wicked delight at sending the show's premise spinning in a wildly new direction. (The episode is also surprisingly funny at points, particularly when Hector is spelling things out with his bell.) It doesn't necessarily contain Bryan Cranston's greatest performance of the season, but it does take the character into fascinating new territory, one where they now might as well go ahead and retitle the show Broke Bad. The stage is well set for a terrific fifth and final season next year.

1. Community, Season 3 Episode 4 – "Remedial Chaos Theory"

The first two seasons of Community each have a pair of episodes that loom tall and monstrously above the rest as little 22-minute comedy masterpieces among the best television has ever seen. Season one had "Modern Warfare" and "Contemporary American Poultry." Season two had "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" and "Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design." And now season three is halfway to the same place with "Remedial Chaos Theory," a blast of dizzyingly clever comedic brilliance that singlehandedly makes almost all of the tens of thousands of sitcom episodes that have come before look lethargic and unambitious in comparison.

It has a hugely clever and perfectly-executed central gimmick, does terrific character work spanning the entire cast, is loaded with uproarious jokes, and has as heartwarming an ending as anyone could hope for, one that filled me with warm fuzzies that even Parks and Recreation at its best struggles to measure up to. If Community gives us just two or three more episodes on the level of this and the other four I mentioned before series' end, Dan Harmon can look back on a life's work and consider himself one of comedy's great architects.

Homeland, Season 1 Episode 4 — "Semper I"

I've decided to, in addition to my NBC Thursday night sitcom roundups, start doing episode-by-episode reviews of a few other shows. For now I'm starting with Homeland and Chuck and adding Spartacus and Game of Thrones when they return next year. I toyed with also doing Parenthood, but, although I really like Parenthood (more than Homeland and Chuck, even), I'm worried there wouldn't be much to say after each episode other than "Yep, that was pleasant." But I could always change my mind, and could always opt to add other new shows as well. I'm volatile as fuck!

But for now let's focus in on Homeland's fourth episode, "Semper I." Review behind the cut, lest the uninitiated be callously spoiled.

Pilot Inspektor Tim: Homeland

The show: Homeland, Sundays on Showtime

The premise in ten words or less? CIA agent believes rescued American POW may have been turned.

Any good? Homeland is really, really good, something I was worried I wouldn't have the pleasure of saying about any new series this fall. It doesn't have an obscene budget or do anything particularly flashy to achieve its goodness, it just plain puts in the work, delivering a complex, fascinating story, well-defined and very well-acted characters, real stakes, real thrills, real edge, real mystery, and striking contemporary sociopolitical relevance in what it says about the invasion of privacy in the post-9/11 era.

The show is primarily about two people who only very briefly interact in the pilot: CIA analyst Carrie Mathison, played by Claire Danes, and U.S. Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody, played by Band of Brothers' Damian Lewis, who has just been rescued after eight years of captivity in Iraq. Problem is that, while on site in Iraq before getting benched in Langley for her erratic behavior, Carrie got a tip that an American prisoner of war had been turned by Al-Qaeda, and Brody is the only American POW who has been found since then.

The government intends to utilize Brody as a media-friendly symbolic hero, so Carrie, left out in the cold, conducts a one-woman operation to discover if he's truly gone bad or not. While Brody either readjusts to domestic life with his now-alien family (including a young son with no memory of him whatsoever) or pretends to do so while plotting terrorist action, Carrie has cameras installed all through his house and holes up in her ratty apartment obsessively watching everything that goes down in the Brody household, from meals to conversations to Brody fucking his wife, eyes peeled for any hint of terrorist sympathy or activity. And things only get more fucked up from there!

The best way I can sum up the series is as 24 meets The Conversation meets The Manchurian Candidate, or perhaps simply as the thinking man's 24. That isn't a slam on 24, exactly – I've seen every episode of 24 in existence – but simply acknowledgement that even at its best that series was more or less a cartoon that existed entirely for the immediate base thrill. Homeland shares much with 24, including showrunner Howard Gordon, writer / producer Alex Gansa, composer Sean Callery, and season-spanning anti-terrorism storylines, but it's a more patient, more subtle, more intelligent series, one that approaches homeland security in a realistic manner and has no reliance on weekly gunfights or car chases to be nervy and thrilling.

Now, if you've seen Damian Lewis as Dick Winters in Band of Brothers, you don't need me to tell you that he's really good (on the other hand, if you've only seen him in Dreamcatcher, you probably do), giving a performance that befits the uncertain, mysterious nature of his character's true intentions. Firefly's Morena Baccarin brings wounded cautiousness edged with hope as Brody's wife Jessica, while Mandy Patinkin is gravitastic as Carrie's CIA superior Saul Berenson, who is less than approving of her methods. The rest of the cast also does good work, even the Brody kids, but the show's true secret weapon is Claire Danes as Carrie.

When I mentioned above that things just get more fucked up, what I was alluding to is the pilot's eventual reveal that Carrie is crazy. And when I say crazy, I don't mean neurotic or even irrationally intense like Jack Bauer (although she is the latter to some extent), I mean the character is literally crazy; she requires daily anti-psychotic medication to function in society. While not a true villain protagonist in the manner of Tony Soprano or Breaking Bad's Walter White – she believes everything she's doing to be for the good of her country, and as we don't yet know the truth of Brody, it could well be – Carrie Mathison is a dark, disturbing, fascinating figure, probably my favorite new TV character of the fall, and Danes is a revelation in the part.

Everything about Danes' performance is brilliantly edgy and tense, and, while spying on the Brody household for long, silent stretches, she says more with her eyes and body language than most other TV actors could with pages of monologues. Little things like her looking up when someone says her name, the way she makes eye contact, and her vaguely erratic movement are disquieting in this wonderfully subtle way I can't even define. There is absolutely no trace of Danes' angsty high schooler from My So-Called Life or celestial princess from Stardust here. It's a transformation that should sweep Emmy off its feet.

Also, I really hope that at some point during the season Carrie runs out of her anti-psychotic meds at a crucial juncture and can't get more, because, much as I appreciate the subtle tightrope of Danes' performance now, there's definitely a side of me that wants to see her dial it up to eleven for at least an episode.

There's still other subplots I've barely touched on, including Jessica Brody trying to hit undo on various parts of the life she made after assuming her long-missing husband was dead and the CIA's hunt for the show's big bad (and Osama bin Laden stand-in) Abu Nazir. Needless to say, this show is heaving with content from the word go, yet it still manages to keep it all feeling sleek and streamlined. It's equal and equally skillfully part character drama, espionage thriller, conspiracy thriller, and terrorism thriller. And in case you need some of that lowest common denominator good stuff to give you a final push, there's f-words, nudity, and a guy gets beaten to death.

I do have some concern about the future of Homeland, namely how and if they can sustain the show into a second season and beyond. They could resolve the stories of Brody and Abu Nazir and have Carrie confront a new terrorist threat ala 24, but that could get generic. Alternately, they could extend the mystery of Brody's allegiance beyond the first twelve episodes, but that could get tired (and Lost has made me permanently wary of series-spanning arcs). But while I'm nervously curious about what Homeland will look like a year from now, for the time being ignore my petty pessimism and watch it, because it's really damn good.

Will I watch again? They have me for at least the first season, guaranteed. Beyond that we'll have to play it by ear, but if the rest of the season is paced and structured in a way befitting the quality of the pilot and climaxes in a suitably unpredictable yet thrilling fashion, they'll have me for good.