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.

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Winter TV Review: Dexter Comes to an Unsatisfying Close

It's been a while since we did some real recapping of television here at NYaT, but since the "T" stands for "Television", I felt that last night's finale of Dexter was a good time to get back into the television business. Dexter is one of the more under-appreciated shows out there; a funny and serious show that makes you laugh, cringe, and hide your eyes all in the span of a few minutes. People took the leap to rooting for a drug dealer in shows like Weeds or Breaking Bad but those shows always put the characters actions in the context of "this was for their family". Dexter is a serial killer who kills to satisfy his own dark passenger and fans eat up every minute of it. It was anything but safe and predictable and that's what made it different and exciting. But after a season and season-finale that was less-than-spectacular, I wonder how many of those fans are questioning their devotion to Harry.

The Season 5 Dexter finale wasn't one of the show's best (Showtime)

It may be that expectations of Dexter are so high, but I just felt like Season 5 didn't hold a candle to Season 4. John Lithgow was fantastic (and got Emmy recognition for being fantastic) and so it was going to be hard to match The Trinity Killer. But it wasn't Julia Stiles fault Season 5 didn't match the aura of last season--actually I found her quite good in the role and wished she had stuck around*. And it wasn't Jonny Lee Miller (previously of Hackers and Eli Stone fame) who was convincing as the ultimate bad guy. My issues were the plot holes so large you could drive a surveillance van through them and the way the show just dropped plotlines like they were body parts into the ocean.

*Side Note: The last time that Stiles made a non-Bourne movie that got a "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes? 2001 with The Business of Strangers. She also starred in O that year which got a "fresh" rating. That's it for her non-Bourne career. Although I liked 10 Things I Hate About You, her career has been choc full of movies like The Omen, The Princess and Me, A Guy Thing, and Down to You (four movies I've never seen and it seems with good reason). Why do I mention this? Because Stiles should have begged the people behind the scene at Dexter to keep her on board. Jimmy Smits resurrected his career and he was less-than-great on the show. Lumen and Dexter for another season would have been awesome.

The early seasons of Dexter were like the character himself: always grasping with whether Dexter is a good person while making sure that everything is cleaned up neatly by the end. As fans, we were given the real dilemma as to whether we could truly root for a character who is a serial killer. We debated with ourselves as Dexter debated with himself how much proof he truly needed before he could kill someone bad and whether he was really doing a service for society or feeding some monster inside of him. Now? It all seems black-and-white. Dexter can kill whoever he wants and we're not supposed to feel conflicted. What, really, did Liddy do to deserve to die by Dexter's hand according to Harry's code? Nothing. Is it OK that he killed him? Sure. But what happened to Dexter grappling with that?

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Freddie Prinze Jr. On 24 (?)

Just was looking through my Twitter and saw this from Ausiello:

EWAusielloFiles Breaking: Freddie Prinze Jr. clocks in on new season of 24 as head of CTU field ops Cole.

Let me be the first to say "huh?". The Jeanane Garofalo as Janice experiment didn't really work this year and so Freddie Prinze Jr. is going to bring more to 24? Allow me to be a little skeptical.

One new show addition I am intrigued by, John Lithgow as a serial killer on Dexter (according to Ausiello as well). In my head, he does the deliciously evil much better than Freddie Prinze Jr. does head of CTU field operations.