The 2011 Television Year In Review

Well, this certainly was an interesting for television. Without Mad Men or that second season of Terriers that should have happened populating the airwaves, dramas felt a bit lacking. Comedy didn't fare much better, with fantastic shows like Community and Cougar Town getting benched for also-rans. And that’s to say nothing of the terrible comedies (Whitney, Free Agents) and dramas (The Playboy Club) that also premiered. And while it would be incorrect to call 2011 a great year for television, it was still very strong, assuming you knew where to look.

But before for we get to all that list making, a few rules/clarifications:

1.       I can’t watch everything. I may try my best, but I’m a grad student, and that takes up a lot of my time, and unlike most professional critics, I don’t have the assistance of screeners, or even a DVR. There are some shows (The Good Wife) that would make this had I been able to see them, but most of them started back when I was an undergrad and

2.       No, I didn’t “forget” your show. Even if I can’t watch everything, I do watch a whole lot, and I even make sure to sample the shows that I can’t watch regularly, so I do have a pretty good idea of where shows lie in terms of quality. If it’s not on here, it probably wasn’t good enough. Sorry, but lists by nature can’t be all-inclusive.

3.       I am allowed to change my mind. Maybe I've turned against a show that I praised when it was airing. Maybe I elevate an episode I initially didn't care for. Time does that to people’s reception of art.

4.       Your damn right this list in my opinion. All lists are made of opinions. Pointing that out as a way to undermine my lists, to prove it’s not “correct”, does you know good. If you want to see a show on here, make a case for it. If you can’t do that, then maybe your show isn’t that good in the first place.

5.       Show’s must air a majority of their season's episodes within  2011 to be considered for this list. Sorry, Friday Night Lights. (Though I must admit I hadn’t even gotten around to watching you yet.) Shows that have few episodes aired within 2011 - like miniseries or British imports - won't contain a list of the best episodes, because their brevity makes it hard to pick out standouts from the bunch. 

6.       Imports are considered based on their official airing within the United States.

The Baker’s Dozen:

13. Happy Endings (ABC) – If you had told me back in the spring that a Friends knock-off in a sea of Friends knock-offs would make any sort of Best Of list, I would have laughed, not just in your face, but for a solid half-hour after the fact. Yet while working the bubble for its first 13 episodes, the show quickly found its footing as a fast-paced joke machine, with a manic energy usually found in shows like Arrested Development and 30 Rock. It was the most marketed improvement in all of the television landscape of 2011, and it similarly made it one of the top comedies. This is a show never likely to grow beyond a cult hit, but a cultish attitude is what makes it work. You Gotta Watch: “Baby Steps”, "Secrets and Limos", “Spooky Endings”.

12. Misfits (Hulu) – After shows like Heroes, No Ordinary Family, and The Cape, America can be forgiven for thinking that the superhero drama couldn’t be done properly done. It was also a lesson that British scribe Howard Overman took to heart, as he created as show whose links with the superhero genre were superficial. Though the premise revolves around a group of young people receiving superhuman abilities after a freak lightning storm, it isn’t meant to be the starting point of some great adventure. Instead, these powers allow the show to explore what makes these characters tick, and pushes them to evolve emotionally, not psychically. Even better, the small-scale focus allows things to remain awfully, filthfully, unabashedly hilarious. You Gotta Watch: “Episode Six”, “Series Two, Episode Four”, “Series Three, Episode Two”

11. The Hour (BBC-A)– It was a good year for British Drama imports, at BBC America sought to use the toehold that mainstays like Doctor Who and Top Gear made to push more of their mother network’s programming across the pond. One such show was The Hour, and while it may have been derided as the BBC’s answer to Mad Men, this period piece had its own specific goals in mind. Less socially minded and more narratively driven, The Hour was a taught political and spy thriller that never lost its sense of time and place. Issues of class and gender also abound, but the real heart was the love triangle at the center, not just for the obvious drama it produced, but also for giving the audience three different viewpoints of the world these characters inhabited.

10. Men of a Certain Age (TNT) – Much like Misfits, Men of a Certain Age was interested in telling small stories above all else, only this show wasn’t so concerned with giving its audience purely likeable characters. The show wasn’t afraid to show Joe, Terry and Owen in a dark light, to open up their neuroses and darker impulses and draw us in as they sought to overcome their self-destructive habits. But that doesn’t mean that they show was afraid to let them be happy. Indeed, it was these darker moments that made their victories, however small, feel like the largest of accomplishments. There might be better shows on this list, but none gave us the most realistic picture of everyday life that also managed to be so moving. "A League of Their Owen", "Whatever Gets You Through The Night", "Hold Your Finish".

9. Mildred Pierce (HBO) – Adapted from the 1941 novel of the same name, Mildred Pierce is the second adaptation of the novel, and the first to adhere strictly to the source material. The miniseries may look extravagantly lavish – especially considering the narrative starts within the Great Depression – but what makes it really captivating is the many interpersonal relationships between the main character and those she comes in contact with. Centering all of this is a fantastic performance by Kate Winslet, as a woman with grand ambitions, but less than solid ideas for how to achieve her goals. It’s a role that could have looked like a positively misogynistic representation in lesser hands, but coming from a skilled actress in turned into a multi-faceted character that highlights the precarious social position in which most women found themselves in the 1930s.

8. Downton Abbey (PBS) – Given the way that television drama has evolved in the past decade, one would think that’s there no room for the British costume dramas that used to populate PBS stations in the mid-90’s. (Think all those Jane Austin adaptations.) But taking a page from Mad Men, Julian Fellowes created a show that’s lavish with the details, yes, but also isn’t afraid to uncover the issues of class and gender that pervaded in early 20^th century England through the uses of some inspired double entendres and general British snippiness. But what makes the show really soar isn’t just its glaring look at the wide class difference, but a look at the whole nuanced spectrum of the positions of the powerful to the powerless.

7. Community (NBC) – It must be hard being the most ambitious comedy on air, if Community’s run this year is any example. Facing burn out from producing so many high concept outings, the second half of the second season and the first half of the third began to rely on “more normal” episodes once more, a move that was met with some criticism. Yet even as the episodes themselves became less inspired, it opened the door for the show to take its character analyses even deeper. And that’s to say nothing of the great high concept episodes that still exist, and how they illustrate that the show’s still got its same chops, even if it’s employing them a bit differently. You Gotta Watch: “Paradigms of Human Memory”, “Remedial Chaos Theory”, “Documentary Filmmaking: Redux”.

6. Game of Thrones (HBO) – Much like the superhero genre, fantasy has been mostly left to die within the television landscape, and not without good reason. Fantasy genre shows either fall on the wrong side of the cliché-archetype continuum, or they fall under the weight of their original source material. HBO’s adaptation of the George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice books sidesteps this issue in the most ingenious way. By placing the focus strongly on the characters – something that fantasy series don’t do all that often, for whatever reason – gave the show the narrative drive it needed, while allowing the various allegiance and shifting loyalties to play out in the background. Understanding the politics may have made the viewing richer, but it wasn’t necessary, and this kept what could have been an overly complex mythology from disappearing up its own ass. You Gotta Watch: “A Golden Crown”, “Baelor”, “Fire and Blood”.

5. Parks and Recreation (NBC) – Community may have been the most ambitious comedy series, but it wasn’t the best. That honor goes to Parks and Recreation, which is quite a surprise when you consider that the heart of the show is a very sunny and optimistic one, which flies in the face of current trend in television comedies. One of the funniest lines from the show on any show this season was “Stop.Pooping.”, and fittingly, it’s P&R distilled down to its essence. It’s basic simplistic, transparent comedy, the kind that was tossed out of television at the turn of the millennium, the kind that should just feel old hat at this point. Yet with the current dearth of this kind of humor on, P&R’s approach to humor feels fresh once again for completely bucking the standard formula.  You Gotta Watch: “The Flu”, “The Trail of Leslie Knope”, “Citizen Knope”

4. Louie (FX) – Louis C.K.’s little show that could was a breath of fresh air last year for its genre breaking style, something which the show couldn’t rest on in its second season if it wanted to maintain its critical accolades. Instead of doubling down on arguably its biggest selling point (the humor), C.K. instead took the gamble of increasing the show’s panache for melancholy and pathos. The upshot of this was a show that felt even close to the description that accompanies its first season: a personal look inside the neuroses of the modern day man, with all the ups, downs, and sudden reversals that it includes. You Gotta Watch: “Oh Louie/Tickets”, “Duckling”, “Eddie”.

3. Justified (FX) – After a first season that fitfully flirted with greatness, Justified was bound only to improve, and improve it did, but in way that nobody expected. Instead of the traditional Big Bad arc that many great shows of the past, Justified took a riskier yet naturalistic approach to its storytelling, by introducing several antagonistic forces to main character Raylan Givens, and letting them develop in an organic way, both in their own bubbles and with through their interactions with others. It may have made for a confusing first couple of episodes, but as the tensions began ratcheting up over the season, Justified quickly became a show that you could not miss a minute of. And that’s to say nothing of the subtle yet moving performances of Timothy Olyphant, Walton Goggins, and Margo Martindale. You Gotta Watch:  “Brother’s Keeper”, “Reckoning”, “Bloody Harlan”.

2. Homeland (Showtime) – The post-9/11 landscape has been an interesting one for television, as auteurs took to the small screen in an attempt to world through their feeling and reactions to that horrible day. We’ve seen works that deal with our grief, take pleasure in revenge, and wonder why we all can’t just get along. But with Homeland, we get the show we need the most: the one that asks us to thinks about how the event has deeply fractured us as a nation. While some may see it as an answer for all of 24’s sins (and its refusal to uphold any one political viewpoint is highly admirable, and one of its strengths), the real power of the show lays in how it grounds all of this in outstanding character work. Ideals can make for interesting drama, but to make them work (especially foreign/alien ideals), they need to be made concrete to be believable. And that’s exactly what we get with Clair Dane’s Carrie Matheson, the most engaging and self-destructive anti-heroine ever scripted, and Damian Lewis’ Nicholas Brody, the most endearing Muslim you’ve ever laid eyes on. Who is right? Who is wrong? Even at the end of the season, the show refuses to answer, for their no easy answer.  You Gotta Watch: “The Weekend”, “The Vest”, “Marine One”

1. Breaking Bad (AMC) – What is there to say other than the best drama on television got even better? Okay, so last year I didn’t think it was the best drama on television, putting it as the eighth best show on television. But like many shows on this list, Breaking Bad took its latest season and inverted its original working formula for the sake of something new, and better. Where it was once a show once propelled by scenes of tension and explosive twists (and okay, it still had plenty of those in spades this year as well), this season turned into a more serious character study, but one that still delivered the same gut-punches that we’ve come to expect. While BB had previously proven that a show didn’t need to  be high-minded or slow-moving to be great, it now proved that good character drama doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice visceral storytelling. You Gotta Watch: “Box Cutter”, “Crawl Space”, “Face Off”.

Individual Achievements:

Not every television show can be great. But some can still the occasional episode that’s still worth mentioning. With that in mind, here’s a list of the best episodes from shows that don’t appear on the above list. (Most of the reviews linked here speak for themselves as to why I included the episode on the list, but others (especially the shows I don’t cover) will require a bit of commentary.)

Glee, “The First Time”

Wilfred, “Identity”

Doctor Who, “A Good Man Goes to War”

The Office, “Goodbye, Michael”

Fringe, “One Night in October”

The Walking Dead, “Pretty Much DeadAlready”

Lights Out, “War”

Cougar Town, “Something Good Coming”

How I Met Your Mother, “The Ducky Tie”

Chuck, "Chuck Vs. The Santa Suit"

Archer, “The Heart of Archness” Trilogy – Season two was an interesting time for Archer. In trying to expand its storytelling, it would at times lose sight of the fast-paced gags that were its bread and butter, and as a whole, the season felt very inconsistent because of it. Archer’s had better episodes than any of the three that aired this September, but those three represent the show finally coming into its own in terms of storytelling potential.

Parenthood, “Do Not Sleep With Your Autistic Nephew’s Therapist” – Parenthood works best when it is able to embroil the whole family in believably large dramatic circumstances, and while the show often struggles to find the right narrative push, this episode started the longest and most engaging battle ever waged within the confines of the Braverman caln.

Boardwalk Empire, “To The Lost” – While I’ve never really enjoyed Boadwalk Empire, even though I recognize that it has the trappings of a quality drama (I pretty much agree with Maureen Ryan’s take on the show), here in the season finale all of the plots that had been ruminating for the past eleven weeks suddenly fell together into one satisfactory whole. If only the whole show could feel like this, then I would be hooked.

Sons of Anarchy, "Hands" - As I've written about many times this season, Sons of Anarchy couldn't seem to shake some of the storytelling problems that plagued season three - that is until the show took a strong turn into pathos territory, and that all started with this episode, which also included a powerful performance by Maggie Siff. 

The Colbert Report, The Colbert SuperPAC – John Stewart can have his sarcasm and biting wit. This year, Stephen Colbert became the real political player of the two, as he exploited the Citizens United case, which granted corporations the same rights as people, and created his own legal yet morally dubious sounding political action committee, through which he can channel funds however he damn well pleases. While actual reporters are uncovering gambling rings, Colbert is shining a light on the heart of political corruption, and making us laugh all the while. 

Shows on Trial

The following show stand accused of the assigned crimes against television:

Dexter – For the most obvious, telegraphed “twist” to ever grace a television set. For misunderstanding how faith actually works. For making the final cliffhanger the same twist they’ve been teasing us with for the past three seasons. For somehow sucking so bad that even Michael C. Hall’s performance stopped being interesting.

The Killing – For taking an interesting idea and turning it into a series of red herrings and illogical plot twists and somehow think that’s “formula breaking”. For non understanding that people who don’t watch procedurals wouldn’t want to see that same formula stretched out over 13 hours. For failing to tell us who killed Rosie Larsen.

Torchwood – For taking the formula that worked so well for Children of Earth and producing a muddled, complicated, completely un-captivating mess. For making all of the character boring, even Gwen and Jack. For asking us to believe that a child rapist/murderer could somehow become a motivational speaker to millions. For failing to make the most out of an interesting premise.

Modern Family - For thinking its Emmy wins somehow excuse it from basic things like original storytelling or consistent characterizations.

Terra Nova – For taking an workable premise and then over-focus-group-ing it to death.

The Cape – For being the most uninspired superhero show ever.

Boss – For dressing up cheesy and ridiculous storylines in lush camera angles and eloquent monologues and passing the show off as a quality drama.

Glee – For failing to follow through on the promise to refocus on storytelling and characters.

Human Target - For taking what was once a fun throwback sort of show and turning it into a schmaltzy mess of unearned emotion, and awkwardly forcing a case-of-the-week format show to become adopt a random set of mythology.