Winter TV Review: The Best (and Worst) TV of 2010

I know I'm late to the party, but I have planned to get back to more television writing here at NYaT. I have to admit, I'm far from a TV expert. I don't have time to watch every show (and there are a few on my list to pick up in 2011) but I wanted to compile a list of shows I like a lot--and a few I couldn't stand. So without further ado, let's get to my list top television series of 2010:

Miss Blankenship was one of the best characters of 2010 (AMC)

Top 5 Series

1. Mad Men: It was a really weird year for Don Draper and SCDP but what made it different, made it great. In my opinion it was their finest season yet. The season started with the question "Who is Don Draper?" and by the end of the season we realized that it may be a man (and a company) headed for some rocky times. The omission of the very annoying Betty Draper for much of the season was enough to bump up the season and "The Suitcase" was one of the all-time great episodes of the show. The latter episode should get someone an Emmy (Elizabeth Moss who I have been critical of in the past was excellent) and I don't know what award we can give to "The Queen of Perversions", Miss Ida Blankenship, but maybe they can add her to the "in memorium" part of the Emmy's. Her death joins the "lawnmower scene" as the two most sickly funny things that have happened on the show.

2. Breaking Bad: Every once in a while I'll decide I've had enough of not watching a show that everyone else loves and catch up on it. Breaking Bad was an easy choice and I zoomed through two seasons of the show. I found it entertaining and was excited for the third season. And the third season blew me away like Jesse Pinkman blew that guy away in the finale. The shootout scene in the parking lot at the end of "One Minute" was something the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino would have been proud of. The season finale left a lot of questions in the air for Walter White, Jesse Pinkman and the whole drug operation, but the season answered a lot of questions about the contender status of this show: it's truly one of the best. The mark of a good show for me is that when I can recommend it to my dad and we both really like it. Dexter and Breaking Bad are two of the best and they both fall under this category.

3. It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. This show is beyond hilarious. I recently watched One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and it is amazing that Danny DeVito is the same actor who played Martini in that movie. 35 years later, DeVito is playing a character that should probably be locked up in that some mental hospital as Martini. Charlie had a great Season 5 (I've watched the "Kitten Mittens" video so many times) but I think the whole show has enjoyed a great Season 6. The 10th and 11th episodes of this season shows how different--but amazing--this show can be, from the weirdly hilarious "Charlie Kelly: King of the Rats" to the, well, just plain ole funny "The Gang Gets Stranded in the Woods". The Christmas episode had me dying as well as each of the characters shined in their own way. And then they all threw rocks at a train.   

4. Parks and Recreation: I am as surprised as you to see this here but after going through all the shows I watched in 2010, Parks and Rec definitely falls to the top of the list. The pilot episodes were good--but not great. This past season was great and was everything that The Office used to be when it was one of my Top 5 shows (watching Michael Scott has become unbearable at times). Amy Poehler's Leslie Knope is great and she isn't even one of the top 3 characters on the show. Ron "Effing" Swanson takes the cake as the top dog, Tom Haverford is amazingly funny, and April Ludgate is the Ryan Howard of Pawnee. And others are starting to take notice as well. They've gotten great guest stars like Louis C.K.and two guest stars from this past season (Adam Scott and Rob Lowe) are sticking around and should bring firepower to the next season.

5. LOST: Go ahead and call me a LOST homer, but I loved the show and I loved the ending. Sure, I wasn't a huge fan of some of the haphazard ways of the Sideways World, but in the end, we all got some sort of closure--and for Jack, the closure was beautiful. I never got so intimately involved with a show as I did with LOST and looking back at all the writing I did over a few months, I wonder why I don't have more free time now that it's over. The show had some amazing episodes ("Ab Aeterno" was built up for a long time and delivered the goods) and some not-so-amazing episodes (anything having to do with Kate). But in the end, the show brought us one of the most thought-provoking and entertaining pieces of media we'll ever see.

Top 3 New Series

1. 30 for 30: ESPN, at its best, puts out meaningful programming like this. There were very few misses here (the personal homage to Marion Jones being the one that sticks out most in my mind). The rest were either really interesting stories ("June 17, 1994"), really well done ("No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson") or both (especially my favorite, "The Two Escobars" and "Winning Time"). I've only seen half of them and can't wait to check out the other half (except, of course, "Four Days in October"). 30 for 30 just missed my Top 5 Sereis of the year list. I was skeptical about the series, but after stumbling upon "Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?" I was hooked.

2. Boardwalk Empire: It started out strong, hit a lull for a few episodes and then ended with a bang. The show had top billing with Steve Buscemi and Martin Scorsese and by the end of the first season, it had delivered. HBO has swung and missed at a lot of series lately and has lost viewers to Showtime because of it; this may be the return. With Mad Men and Boardwalk Empire, it's now shown you can do a period piece as a drama when previously they only existed as comedies (like That 70s Show). My biggest issue with Boardwalk was that they had too many rich, intertwined story lines. And if that's my biggest complaint, a show is doing well. 

3. Archer: It was a large drop from 1 and 2 to here, but that doesn't take away anything from Archer which was the Arrested Development of cartoons (and even had the same mother backing it up). It took me a while to get into it but I ended up catching all the episodes thanks to them being on Netflix Instant. It's different humor from It's Always Sunny or 30 Rock or Family Guy...but it's really funny stuff and delivered in that biting Arrested way. A close runner up to Archer was Brewmasters, the Discovery Channel show about the Dogfish Head brewing company.

The 3 Worst Series

1. The Event: I really, really try to avoid bad television but a show that called itself a cross between 24 and LOST needed to at least get a chance. Those are a few hours of my life I want back. Horrible acting, ridiculous plotlines, and open-ended questions that don't have compelling enough back-stories to keep you around, The Event was quickly deleted from my DVR after a few unimpressive episodes.

2. Hawaii 5-0: Here they actually brought in an enjoyable cast but I couldn't even sit through a full episode of this show. By the way, Scott Cahn being nominated for an acting award (and he was nominated for a Golden Globe for this show) was the television equivalent of B.J. Surhoff receiving a Hall of Fame vote yesterday. Just totally mind boggling and would cause me to pull my hair out if I had any to pull.

3. Big Love: This narrowly beat out Weeds but I think Big Love was worse because the show isn't funny enough to get by on bad story lines. It was too complicated, rushed and busy a season and it all fell apart by the end in a brain-hurting finish that left me wondering why the show's writers didn't try to spread out some of that action over a few seasons--or why they even tried to go that way at all. Even Chloe Sevigny said it sucked. Very close to just dropping off the DVR entirely, which leads me to my next list...

3 Shows In Danger of Falling Off the DVR

1. Weeds: I've spilled far too much ink over Nancy Botwin already. The show hasn't been good since Nancy helped to burn down Agrestic and I fear that it's already way past the point of return. Weeds was revolutionary and spawned a whole group of Showtime shows that follow the same formula of a dominant main character (Dexter, The Big C, United States of Tara, Californication, Nurse Jackie, etc) which helped Showtime get on the map following HBOs group cast-driven success (Sex in the City, Entourage, Six Feet Under, The Wire, etc.). But the everyone always tries to outdo the lead and sometimes the lead tries too hard to outdo itself. Here it's the latter.

2. Law & Order: Los Angeles: I like the Law & Order franchise (besides Criminal Intent which is a series that should have been "Judy Winslowed") but L&O:LA (or LOLA?) is just not very good. It's surprising too because it's a Dick Wolf show with a ton of good actors who don't do a bad job--I just don't feel as compelled by the stories or the actors as I did with Lenny Briscoe and Jack McCoy or Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson. 

3. Big Love: The only reason it's not higher on the list is because it's the last season of the show. In fact, if it wasn't the last season of the show, I would have been done with it already for all the reasons stated above. And no more of Amanda Seyfried and her sometimes partial nudity just takes one whole aspect of watching the show away.

5 Shows I Want to Start Watching

1. Treme: This is sort of an odd one on here because I saw the pilot--and then nothing else. I heard it was very good and I'm excited to pick it back up

2. Modern Family: You can't be told that "you'll love this show" as many times as I have about Modern Family and not tune in once to find out.

3. Community: Looks very funny, has a lot of people I like in it (like Joel McHale). Will have to be added to a Summer catch-up spot

4. The Walking Dead: Jay and others have raved about this show. Not a huge fan of zombies, but if it's good television, I think I'll find a way to deal.

5. Pawn Stars / Hardcore Pawn: Both fall into the same category of shows that look like I would love them and that I need to DVR so that I can catch them every once in a while.

3 Shows I Miss

1. LOST: (See Above)

2. 24: Movie soon? Please!

3. Law & Order: Can we at least get some Jack McCoy in SVU? Puh-lease!

The 3 Shows That Replaced the 3 I Miss

1. Breaking Bad: (See Above)

2. How I Met Your Mother: Really, ridiculously funny. My first episode was the one with Nick Swisher and I've seen the repeats and the new ones. NPH is amazing and "Barney's Favorite Things" ("you get a lap dance! You get a lap dance!") was hilarious. Legend-...wait for it...wait for it...wait for it....-ary!

3. 30 Rock: I had caught an episode or two in the past but watching it all the time has really added to my TV-watching experience. Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan, and Alec Baldwin could be the only three actors on the show and it would still be hysterical but add in all the other actors and guest actors and you have a winner.

My 5 Favorite Television Moments 

1. The End of LOST: It was beautiful and meaningful and well-done. It brought the show back to the beginning and although no one seems to agree with me, it brought closure to characters that needed it on a show that needed it. Bravo Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. (honorable mention has to go to Sun and Jin dying together though I would say it was more memorable than favorite)

2. The parking lot shootout in Breaking Bad: Just so amazingly heart-stopping that I don't think I breathed for about 30 minutes afterwards. Just simply amazingly done and so well built up that I was mad at myself that it came unexpectedly. Great work.

3. Tracy Morgan in the Cash Cab on 30 Rock: You can't combine two of my favorite shows in such a hilarious way and not end up on this list. Tracy's way of answering the questions correctly were too funny. I had to go back and watch again just to hear them because I was laughing too hard.

4. Jack Bauer takes on President Logan: There were some amazing scenes as 24 ticked down to 00:00 but the best of all had to be Robocop, Jack Bauer taking President Logan hostage. He didn't do what we all wanted to him to do at that point but no confrontation was even close being as many years in the making as that one was. Great drama.

5. Miss Blankenship's Death on Mad Men: Tell me you're still not laughing about it from the first entry on here?

Very Honorable Mention Jon Stewart and the 9/11 First Responders Bill: The Daily Show had a great 2010 but nothing was better, in my mind, than Jon Stewart exposing the media and politicians that were forgetting about 9/11 first responders. It was an act of politics so despicable that it made my skin crawl. If you haven't seen the show, go onto Comedy Central's website and watch it. Stewart is definitely left-leaning but usually steers clear of actual activism. Because of Stewart, the bill was passed. In 30 minutes of television, Stewart delivered a piece of activism so strong and so moving that it had The New York Times comparing him to Murrow and Cronkite. Bravo Mr. Stewart.

So what do you think? Agree or disagree with anything on here? Are there any shows I should be watching that I'm missing? Was I too harsh in leaving Dexter off off the best shows of 2010? Was I too easy not eliminating Entourage? Did I forget anything? Let me know in the comments below.