- Breaking Bad
- Mad Men
- Game of Thrones
- Parks and Recreation
- Girls
- The League
- Veep
- New Girl
- Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell
- Kroll Show
I'm also feeling the urge to preemptively defend some of my picks, but there will be plenty of time for that in future posts, I suppose. If you’d like to call me out on anything in particular, feel free and maybe I’ll cover them first.
Good call on Veep. Also, we just watched the last episode of Mad Men...this whole seaosn I felt like..ehhh nothing is really going on. And then on the last episode HELLA SHIT goes down.
ReplyDeleteYeah, this season has been great, but subtle. I'm gonna try and write a full article on my thoughts on this season, since I didn't get this thing going in time to do weekly posts.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, Veep is pretty great. Today I'm feeling like it should go up a spot or two, at least above The League. I think Veep has more jokes per minute (JPM?)than any other scripted comedy. Or at least more JPM that actually land and work pretty much every time.
I have only seen 6 of the shows on your list. This confirms that I need to put Veep in the Netflix Queue. I am skeptical about Girls, Totally Biased, and Kroll Show, so let's see how Veep goes first.
ReplyDeleteAs for the rest:
*I would personally put Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones 1-2, but I don't subscribe to HBO, so I haven't seen the most recent season of GoT.
*I thought this was a stellar season of Mad Men - I try not to get into any reviews or analysis until the end of the season, so I was little surprised to learn the fan reaction was lukewarm. Which is funny, because I've usually seen that show as somewhat overrated. The first 2 seasons were really solid before entering a disastrous 3rd season that no one seemed to mind (British automatons take over the agency, to goose your memory). The last 3 seasons have had a nice comeback trajectory that I think peaked this season.
*I like Parks and Rec, but that's pretty high for a show that has been steadily declining, and keeps writing itself into cutesy, annoying, Office-like corners (everyone gets married! everyone wants babies! everyone loves everyone except for that one jerk! etc.). If not for the random brilliant Andy moments, I might stop watching.
*Kind of the same thing goes for The League - I like it enough to keep watching, but the most recent season was a dud. I'd jump New Girl ahead of both of those shows.
I don't just want to slag or validate your picks, so I'll try to come up with my own Power Rankings and post them here.
Any honorable mentions?
I thought this season of Mad Men was great. Not as good as last season. I’m trying to do a post on it so I don’t want to write too much about it here.
ReplyDeleteDid you see Armando Iannucci’s In The Loop? Did you like it okay? Do you think Julia Louise Dreyfus can be hilarious? Then you might like Veep. The whole ensemble is great, but JLD really brings it.
I guess the trouble with ranking comedies with dramas is what I think constitutes a good comedy vs. what makes a good drama. I pretty much judge comedies solely on how funny they are. I agree that Parks and Rec has taken a dive story-wise, but the characters are inherently funny enough that to me their stories don’t matter. The Office took a dive once they changed Michael from being a semi-unlovable jerk into the awkward sweet guy that you want to start rooting for. I think as long as they keep the cast of Parks & Rec doing things their established characters would do, it’ll be fine. Now that I’m typing this I am a little worried about April becoming head of animal control or whatever, but I also worried about Andy becoming a cop and he ended up flunking out of the academy, which is exactly what Andy would've done. The League is basically a bunch of dicks being dicks, so as long as they’re dicks and are funny about it, I’m in.
Girls is a tough sell. It’s super funny, but also a total bummer in a lot of ways, and it’s hard to really care about any of the characters, yet I do, probably because they seem so much like real people that I might now. I guess I think of them as people I see around a lot and don’t know but am always wondering “what’s their deal?” and then you get to see what their deal is once a week. And even though I might not like that person, I don’t want to see them make bad decisions and fuck things up for themselves, even though I have zero stake in their lives. And it helps that funny shit happens and Chris O’Dowd shows up. I feel like that’s the weirdest explanation for liking a show I've ever thought of.
As for the New Girl, I’m always ready to put up my dukes when people slag it off, so it’s nice to hear someone else might like it a little. It’s hard to convince folks that it’s a funny show that isn't just about Doe Eyes being cute. I would keep watching it if it were just the three male leads interacting with each other. In fact, that might be better, because I think they kinda jumped the gun with *spoiler alert, I guess* Nick and Jess hooking up so soon. They should've drawn that shit out as long as possible.
When I compiled the list I took note of all the show I currently watch and caught up on. The ones that didn't make the Top 10 are, in no particular order: Family Tree, Portlandia, Walking Dead, Bates Motel, Community, The Jeselnik Offensive, Maron and SNL. I’m not caught up on Boardwalk Empire, but unless it takes a real dump in the last half of season three it’s in my Top 10. Happy Endings was actually probably my favorite comedy, but it’s been cancelled so it didn't make the list. Oh shit, I forgot about Louie too. It’s been off for a while and isn't coming back for awhile, so it fell through the cracks. That’s way way up there too.
My love for Kroll Show, Totally Biased, The Jeselnik Offensive and Maron probably comes purely because I liked those comedians before their shows hit so I was somewhat sold before they premiered. Though to be honest Maron isn't very good. (I’m honestly paranoid he will Google himself and see this. I love his podcast, just not his show as much.)
I was a huge fan of "In the Loop", that's why Veep is an easy sell for me.
ReplyDeleteI also managed to put together my own top 10 TV power rankings, but I should mention that part of the reason I'm excited about this blog is that I generally don't like to start watching a show until it's been properly vetted. It's too much work to dig into a show that might get cancelled at any time, or worse, suck. I much prefer other people whose opinions I trust to do the leg work, since it's so easy to catch up on shows now.
Add to that the fact that I don't have any premium cable channels, and I am usually a season or two behind the curve. Thus, I'm including with each of my top 10 entries the last season that I watched, in order to put my opinion in context.
1) Breaking Bad (caught up)
2) Game of Thrones (finished Season 2)
3) South Park (caught up)
4) Homeland (finished Season 1)
5) Boardwalk Empire (finished Season 2)
6) Curb Your Enthusiasm (seen all but the most recent season)
7) Mad Men (caught up)
8) Burning Love (caught up)
9) New Girl (caught up)
10) Community (caught up)
tie) Arrested Development (caught up)
Wow. An excellent list! No disagreements from me, only things I haven't watched. I've seen some episodes of Burning Love and it's so good. I like so many people involved but I just never got around to watching it all, which I think is maybe available online, right? Or is that just the first one or two "seasons"? South Park is a show I think it hilarious and brilliant every time I watch, but then never ever watch. No explanation there. Still haven't seen Homeland. I don't get discs from Netflix any more so I should figure out if it'd be worth it to do that vs. just buying the first season on Amazon or something. Curb is on the list of HBO shows to catch up on with HBO Go now that I have it. Between Sopranos, the Wire, and Curb I have a lot of catching up to do.
ReplyDeleteI will say that the 2 shows I had tied for 10th are coming off relatively disappointing seasons, but I am still holding out hope they can recover. Community especially, now that Dan Harmon is back as the showrunner.
ReplyDeleteI also am in to New Girl. It's surprisingly one of the shows I look forward to.
ReplyDeleteI love Mad Men, as well, but I'd like to throw out a nod to some network dramas. I totally watch Grimm and Once Upon a Time. Grimm is way better and totally good in a Buffy sort of way. As for comedies, I'm into: New Girl, Modern Family, Parks & Rec, Community and I watch Mindy Kaling's shows and I'm unsure of it.
I just powered through the West Wing on Netflix and it was so good! I've watched the first ep of House of Cards (netflix version). Not sure if I'll keep going.
The Mindy Project is one of my favorite current shows. I forgot about it when I was making my top ten list
ReplyDelete