Joss Whedon Showed Us How Horrible He Was Before We Knew The Truth About Him, Part 2: How His Treatment of the Characters in Buffy's Later Seasons Foreshadowed His View of Humanity

 

Buffy’s sixth season is almost universally considered the worst season of any Joss Whedon series period; at the time, few fans could find anything redemptive about it, and in hindsight, it actually looks worse. What makes it look even worse in retrospect is how little the world of the supernatural has to do with so much of the horrors of the season – all they do is essentially magnify, if not completely destroy, almost every bond fans had come to love about Buffy for the last five years.

Perhaps we should have been clued in from the beginning of the season when the remainder of the Scoobies decide to bring Buffy back from the dead after nearly six months in the ground, with little if any consideration for the consequences. Willow, who is now the de facto leader of the gang, brooks no argument saying that Buffy must have spent the last several months in a hell dimension. The resurrection spell does work – but Buffy comes back to life in her grave (we see her decaying corpse become whole) and she has to dig herself out of her coffin. She spends the opening episodes essentially as a zombie. Then in the third episode, Buffy lies to her friends and tells them she was in hell – and then confides to Spike at the end of the episode that she was at peace – “I think I was in heaven.” This inability to deal with reality commands all of her actions for the remainder of Season Six and increasingly drives a wedge between her and her friends.

They are, for the record, doing a pretty good job destroying themselves. In a more unbelievable storyline Willow is increasingly becoming ‘addicted’ to dark magic and using spells to manipulate her friends. This causes her girlfriend Tara to break up with her a third of the way through the season, and actually causes her to go even deeper into addiction. (‘Smashed’ – an episode where Willow essentially spend in a magical crack house – was considered the creative nadir of the season. I’d argue it was a feature of the season, not a bug.) Many of the gang continue to have trouble trusting Willow from that point forward.

Xander and Anya, in the meantime, who have been a couple for the past two seasons get engaged and plan to get married. Anya is a former vengeance demon, so the wedding plans are, problematic, to say the least, but the couple seems to be doing fine until their wedding day, when a demon, taking the version of a future Xander shows himself to Xander, and shows him a vision of the future where the two of them are in a horrible marriage ultimately hating each other. Even when the demon is exposed as a fraud, Xander still ends up dumping Anya at the altar. Xander’s home life has always been the most troubled of the Scooby Gang, and its made very clear that Xander’s father has been abusive to his mother and to Xander himself. The writer’s try to show that Xander is afraid of what he will become but it still speaks of sloppy writing above all else. Anya reacts by become a vengeance demon again, and even worse having sex with Spike on a closed circuit feed that the rest of the Scoobies see.

By this time, Buffy’s life has completely deteriorated. Her mother died the previous season, her father has essentially abandoned her and Dawn, and by this point Giles has returned to England. (At least this part of the story was outside the writers control: Anthony Stewart Head had tired of playing Giles and was no longer a series regular.) Combined with her emotional numbness from coming back from heaven, Buffy begins having destructive sex with Spike, the vampire she utterly loathes because it’s the only way she can feel anything. When she tries to terminate the relationship, Spike becomes frantic and nearly rapes her on the Summers bathroom floor. Between this, the ‘villains’ of Season Six work a spell on her to make Buffy believe that her entire life in Sunnydale is a delusion and that in order to go back to ‘normal’, she must kill all her friends and sister – which she comes perilous near to doing.

The villains, for the record, are universally considered the weakest in the history of the series: three minor characters who had been nerds in high school who, on pure impulse, decide to ‘take over Sunnydale.” They are completely incompetent at what they do and have no clear aim, but it soon becomes clear one of them – Warren – is worse than the other two and murders a woman who broke up with him. Jonathan (Danny Strong) who’s never been fully committed to the mission, more or less turns against him near the end of the season.

This leads to perhaps by far the worst arc of the miserable season. Tara and Willow have gotten back together. Xander attempts to reconcile with Buffy. Then Warren shows up with a gun, determined to kill Buffy for ruining his plan. He shoots her, but a stray bullet ends up hitting Tara, and she dies. The death of one of the few purely good characters, as well as the only gay regular on the series, is still something fans have not forgiven Whedon for. Even worse is the fact that Willow effectively becomes ‘Dark Willow’, tracks down Warren, and right in front of Buffy, effectively flays him alive. Attempting to stop her from killing the other two, Buffy and Willow end up fighting each other with her nearly killing her. Giles emerges to try and stop her, and Willow drains him of his magic – leading her to, complete spur of the moment, to destroy the world.

Now (spoiler) she is stopped by the pleas of her best friend Xander, in what is admittedly one of the show’s greatest moments. But honestly, everything in the last ten minutes of the seasons seems completely ham-handed, especially Buffy’s remarkable regaining of her will to live and her decision to become a better sister to Dawn.  Everything about Season Six is miserable, and it seems Joss Whedon and his writers limited the supernatural element in regard to the character’s misery and made the ‘Big Bad’ so utterly powerless to basically send a message that all the supernatural power in the world will still get their ass kicked by the real world.

The seventh season is an improvement, but not by much. Willow returns to Sunnydale having been ‘healed’ by Giles, but there are no consequences for her actions, legal or otherwise.  Anya stops being a vengeance demon but seems tangential to the Scoobies from that point on. Sunnydale High, which was famously blown up at the end of Season 3, has been completely rebuilt by the beginning of the season – just in time for Dawn to matriculate there, and Buffy to take a job as guidance counselor. But all this normality is essentially being done while the writers are essentially tearing down the mythology of the series.

‘Potentials’  - young girls who have the possibility of being Slayers – are being murdered across the globe. (The fact that there’s never been a hint of this through the series to this point is actually the least of the problems of the mythos.) By the time Sunnydale learns of this, the Watchers’ Council has been decimated and the home offices in London have blown up. When Giles returns with a few stray girls at the halfway point of the season, we are finally told of the threat – ‘The First Evil’.

Now, we were introduced to the First Evil in a Season 3 episode and told fundamentally that this was the source of all evil and was impossible to be killed. Buffy dealt with at the time as a tangential threat, and because the series knew that there wasn’t much to be done with this, moved on. The First Evil is now engaged in  a plan to eliminate the Slayer line, finishing up with Faith and Buffy and then destroy the world. The thing is, by this point the characters have been dealing with the apocalypse on a yearly basis (it’s practically a running gag by this point) so its hard to see how this threat (which is incorporeal and at most seems able to shift its form into the dead) is somehow more serious than all the ones have come before. The writers try to up the stakes by saying that the First Evil can not be killed. What the writers never even try to do is explain why, after having been dormant for millennia, the First Evil is moving now or even what happened to make the threat more obvious. The First Evil may have been planning longer, but there’s nothing to make us think that’s it more dangerous than any of the Big Bads it almost casually takes the form of throughout the season. I think the overall explanation is simple: everybody knew at some point this was going to be the final season and they just wanted to make it as big an ending as possible. But you’d think after writing for seven years, they’d have worked through it by now.

And at the end of the day, Whedon and his writers aren’t really interested in that threat – they’re still interested in tearing up the foundations they’ve spent the last seven years building. In the final third of the series, Giles is led to believe by Principal Wood that Spike – who has been in control of the First for much of the season – must be put down. Without talking to Buffy, he tries to do so and when she finds out, the betrayal is so great that there is a wedge driven between them that is never quite healed.

In the next episode Faith (Eliza Dushku) is driven back to Sunnydale by Willow (I’ll get to that in the next part) to help with the fight against the first. Considering the two of them never got along and the last three times they met, they tried to kill each other – this is not a warm reunion. But there are bigger problems: Caleb (Nathan Fillion) the vessel for the First has shown up in Sunnydale. A fundamentalist preacher who believes women are the source of all evil, Buffy underestimates him when she leads her troops into battle. They pay a high price; several potentials are killed and Xander loses an eye.

There’s a definitely fissure among the Scoobies at this point; the next time Buffy tries to order them into battle, there is an open revolt and the entire group – including Dawn – orders her out of the Summers house and on the streets, which by this time have been essentially overrun by the forces of darkness. I still have no idea why this happened, by the penultimate episode, Buffy’s back in charge as if nothing has gone wrong. I think it was just another reason for Joss to drive another wedge between the group.

By this time, it’s almost inconsequential that almost every other human resident of Sunnydale – and quite a bit of the demon population – has vacated the town in a mass exodus. The fact that for the entirety of the series nobody in the general population of Sunnydale seemed aware of everything going on but somehow all simultaneously decided to leave everything they owned behind is just overlooked; the fact that the few family members the Scoobies have all leave as well is completely ignored. The implication, I guess, is that by now the Scoobies are essentially a family, but this would mean more if Whedon and company hadn’t spent the last two years essentially driving them apart.

Of course, the real reason why everybody in Sunnydale has left is made very clear in ‘Chosen’ the series finale. In an effort to take the fight to the First, Buffy leads her troops for one final, definitive battle in which she has decided to utterly change the rules. With the help of Willow, she has decided to open the Slayer Line “In every generation, a Slayer is born because a bunch of men decided thousands of years ago made up that rule.” In what seemed to be the ultimate victory over the patriarchy, the most powerful woman on the show broke that rule, and now any girl who can be the Slayer will be the Slayer.’

I’m not going to lie: the last fifteen minutes of the series are extraordinary. Watching women across the world, many of them being bullied or harassed at the time, suddenly gaining strength is incredible. Seeing one of the weakest potential smiling and saying: “This is gonna be fun,” was brilliant. Watching Spike the ultimate sacrifice to save mankind, was excellent. (Of course, if you’d watched the final season of Angel you know it was temporary – and definitely not planned by Whedon) . And watching the last school bus drive out of Sunnydale as the Hellmouth closed for good – taking the entire town of Sunnydale with it – was the finale we all wanted.  And if the final shot of the series where Dawn asks Buffy: “What do we do now?” with a pure smile appearing on Buffy’s face as she realizes for the first time in years she can actually consider this question, is beautiful.

But I’m  not going to lie, a lot of this is negated by two factors, one of which occurred later on, the other that was going on simultaneously. The first would involve a new set of comics, authorized by Whedon and the show. The second was the storyline that was going on Angel which came to its climax the same week as Buffy.

The final two seasons of Buffy had been dark, no question – but there were people like me who fundamentally thought that the last season had basically redeemed the show. But even if you were willing to ignore all of the ways the show was fundamentally destroying the characters we’d loved for seven years, it was a lot harder to ignore the message that Whedon and his writers were sending us in the final episode of Season 4 of Angel. I will make that message fundamentally clear in the next story in this series, in which it becomes crystal clear that Whedon’s treatment of his characters pales to his vision for humanity as a whole.

 

Joss Whedon Showed Us How Horrible He Was Before We Knew The Truth About Him, Part 1: See How He Treated His Characters

 As I’ve probably mentioned on this blog, I’ve written my fair share of fanfiction over the years and read infinitely more. So much that, after a certain point, that when you go through the title page with the disclaimer and introduction my eyes just don’t process it any more. But sometimes, there are obvious exceptions.

Several years ago – I don’t remember how long – I was engaging in one of my favorite fandoms, Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The name and author are long lost to my memory. What is not is one of the key lines I saw as to why the writer wrote the piece. It was four short words: “Joss is a dick.”

Now there are two things you need to know. The first is, when this fanfic was written, the rumor mill about just how toxic a personality Joss Whedon was had not even begun to hum, much less the evidence supporting that this statement was true. No one knew the kind of man Whedon was behind the scenes, the toxic work environment on the set, the fact that he was sleeping with many of his underage co-stars, the fact that he had created virtually an entire storyline on the fourth season of Angel to punish Charisma Carpenter for getting pregnant.

The second is one of the main reasons many people – I include myself – write fanfic in the first place. It is because even though we love a series and find it a work of art, there are flaws in the characters and plots that even the most devoted fans can not ignore.  That is why many people wrote so much fanfic excoriating J.K. Rowling well before her views on LGBTQ became very public knowledge, why so many wrote alternate Star Wars stories well before anyone claimed the final three Episodes ‘ruined’ the franchise, why I have been writing alternate Lost fanfic well after I learned what the ’flash-sideways’ were. 

Now the last year, Buffy has begun to air reruns in syndication. I’ve rewatched quite a few of the episodes in the last several months, and despite what I know about Joss Whedon and everything he did behind the scenes, the fact remains it’s still a damn good show. A lot of this is because of the quality of the acting, from the incredible work of Sarah Michelle Gellar on down. But I have to say is because of the writing. No matter how much you may hate Whedon now (and I’m going to give you more reasons in this article, believe me) the show was, for much of its run, a masterpiece. James Marsters work as Spike is still dazzling, episodes like Pangs and Band Candy are still hysterical, episodes like Hush and The Body are still triumphs of the medium, and the overall arc of so many of the characters – Faith in particular, despite the controversy about her – is still impressive. Some will say it was the product of its time. I say it still holds up.

But. What becomes incredibly clear the more you watch Buffy – and to a far greater extent, Angel – is that Whedon had a very dark and cynical view of every aspect of humanity. In many of his interviews, particularly in the lead up to The Avengers, Whedon made multiple statements that he felt very clearly “someday the world’s going to be destroyed and it will be our fault.” It’s understandable for any person to think this way. But what becomes clear the longer his body of work began to unfold is that not only did Whedon think it inevitable, but he actually may also have thought it wasn’t entirely a bad thing if the world did end. (The characters in Cabin in the Woods actually state that directly.)  And the more you look into so many of the situations and characters of the Buffy verse, you get the feeling that Whedon holds many of the characters he’s created either in contempt or acting out of futility.

This is not an unusual attitude to be found in Peak TV; not long after Buffy debuted HBO essentially changed TV as we know it by creating a number of series that argued the best days of America are behind it and that the institutions we believe in are fundamentally broken beyond repair. But it’s one thing for a series like The Sopranos arguing that people will always act in their short-term interest rather than any good or The Wire arguing that the drug war, politics, or education are utterly broken. It’s another for a fantasy series set in a high-school where teenagers are trying to save the world on a weekly basis.

This is bad but that’s not the reason for that slur on Joss or why so many fanfic authors thought the same. How do I put this best? In the classic ‘Surprise’, the curse on Angel is put this way: “One true moment of happiness…of contentment will bring about darkness.” And that’s what happens that night when Buffy and Angel make love for the first time. This was one of the great moments in TV history – but we didn’t know that this curse was essentially Joss’ mission statement for basically every character in the world of Buffy and Angel.

None of them would have a happy relationship or a lasting one. Furthermore, most of their relationships ended so badly than when Riley flew off to join the Army, leaving Buffy behind screaming his name frantically, it would count as one of the ‘easier’ breakups in the show’s history.

I often thought that the way Shonda Rhimes would destroy couples by killing off one or both members was the most cynical statement a showrunner could make about love. Turns out, Whedon did her one better. He argued that killing off someone you love didn’t even begin to the end the emotional carnage it could do to a person. There are so many example of this in the Whedon-verse that it’s kind of appalling, but I think by far the one that sums it up the best is the relationship between Wesley Wyndham-Pryce (Alexis Denisof) and Fred Burkle (Amy Acker) on Angel. 

Note: Because the world of Whedon was so dense and all-encompassing that (to use a phrase one of his characters might well use) the Cliff Notes version would need Cliff Notes, in order to explain much of the reasoning behind this I have to summarize a lot of the story behind both characters and shows to explain the nature of this sin. I ask you to be patient.

When Wesley was introduced in the third season of Buffy, he was a replacement watcher who basically seemed to be an example of everything wrong with the Watcher’s Council. When he wasn’t incompetent, he seemed to be comic relief. Either by chance or by design (we may never know for sure) Wesley ended up on Angel halfway through the first season. As was the standard for most of the characters in the Buffy-verse, he underwent a great deal of personal growth as the series progressed, taking over leadership of Angel Investigations halfway through Season 2 when Angel left and holding it well after he returned. 

Near the end of the season, the story engaged a four-episode arc that involved the characters traveling to an alternate dimension, in part to rescue a girl named Winnifred Burkle, a physics students who had accidentally ended up there five years ago and had been stranded in isolation ever since. Fred returned with the team at the end of the season (Acker was made a series regular in Season 3) and spent the first part of the season learning to come out of her shell and gradually rejoin civilization. There was clearly an attraction between Fred and Wes, but it was complicated by a similar spark between her and Gunn (J. August Richards). Halfway through the season, Fred and Gunn became a couple. In hindsight, this action was the first step towards the destruction of Wes as a character.

Immediately following this, Wes interpreted a prophecy that led him to believe Angel would kill his infant son. In one of the most wrong-headed moves ever done by any character in television history, rather than tell any of his friends what he had learned – and he was given multiple opportunities in the next two episodes – he chose to side with Angel’s worst foe, Holtz. He betrayed Angel and ran off with the child, only to have his throat slit by Justine, Holtz’s most loyal follower.  When Angel’s son was lost to an alternate dimension, Angel’s eventual reaction was to try to smother Wes in his hospital bed.  Wes never truly recovered from that betrayal, even after he rejoined the team.

During the remainder of Season 3 and the early part of Season 4, Wes continued to drift unable to decide where he was. He spent many episodes literally sleeping with the enemy, Lilah , the chief representative of Wolfram and Hart, the show’s ‘big bad.’ He refused to either join evil or truly commit to good. Even when he officially rejoined the team at the end of Season 4 (I’ll get to how that relates in the next part of the article) there was no real sign of reconnection with the forces of good. He was more violent and impulsive than he had been before. At one point when a man claiming to be his father appeared and threatened Fred, he shot him five times before the threat could be finished. The fact that his father was in fact an animatronic recreation did not diminish his hatred. 

Meanwhile by this point in this series Fred and Gunn’s relationship had imploded, mainly because he had murdered the man who had made sure she was sent to Pylea so she wouldn’t. The two were distant for the rest of the season. Wesley was still attracted to Fred (they even kissed at one point during a time of desperation) but neither seemed willing to commit. Then halfway through Season 5, the two finally seemed to have worked past all their baggage and got together. So naturally, that’s when Joss did the worst thing possible.

The very next episode, Fred inhaled some toxic dust that turned out to be the spirit of an ancient demon known as Illyria. The entire team focused all their energy on saving her, only to learn there was nothing that could be done. Fred was going to suffer a face worse than death – and on this show that said a lot. Her body would still be there, but her personality and soul would completely eradicated. Not just from Earth, but from existence. Wesley could only watch as the woman he loved worsened, coughed, and then changed into a different being.

Then it got worse. The being still had the appearance and memories of Fred but she didn’t have a single human emotion or impulse in her. Worse because her civilization and relics had died years before, there was no place for her power. Illyria had been brought back to existence for what amounted to nothing.

I should mention a few episodes earlier, Angel had unexpectedly been cancelled by the WB. At the time, I was enraged at the death of a series whose ratings had finally been going in the right direction. By the time this episode aired, the only reason I was still watching the show was because the endgame was now in sight. Had the series still been promised another season or beyond, I would have stopped watching right then. The official ‘death’ of Cordelia a few episodes earlier had been bad enough (and how Charisma Carpenter was persuaded to come back for a final appearance after everything that we now know Whedon did to her in Season 4 is incomprehensible to me) but essentially killing off Fred just four episodes later was a bridge too far. And it wasn’t just that Whedon had killed off Fred; for all intents and purposes Whedon had killed off Wesley with that action. From that moment on, he essentially had nothing left to live for.

Which brings me to the series finale. In the final minutes of the episode Wesley is fighting a powerful wizard (I’ll get to the how and why in the next part) and ends up mortally wounded. Illyria finds him and tells him: “Do you want me to lie to you now?” Wesley nods. She takes the form of Fred (something she has the ability to do) and says goodbye to him with compassion, making sure the last words he hears are: “Now we can me together.”

So it turns out there is a writer with a more cynical view to love than Shonda Rhimes. At least she believes that two characters can be together in the afterlife. Whedon lets his characters be miserable for eternity.

Even before I knew of the toxic work environment that existed on Whedon’s sets, I was astonished that after Angel both Denisof and Acker worked together with him on multiple projects. It’s not like either was lacking for opportunity; Acker landed a job on Alias  the year after Angel ended. Was the writing so good that both of them were more than willing to return to the fun and games that pervaded his shows? Were they somehow completely oblivious to what was going on with their co-star the previous season?  It boggles the mind.

But why should we be surprised that Whedon was determined to make the characters on his shows completely miserable. That’s actually on brand for how he seems to view not only his characters, but the human race as a whole. I’ll go into that in great detail in the next article in this series.

The Best TV of 2022, Concluded: Performers Who Showed Us Over and Over How Good TV Was This Year

 

I’m going to wrap up my best of the list with a group of performers who proved themselves in multiple formats and once again demonstrated just how incredible they were. I look forward to seeing what they do in the weeks to come. I may bend the format some more, but who really cares?

 

Naveen Andrews: Demonstrating Menace in Every Way Possible

Andrews was one of my favorite actors on Lost throughout its run, taking the role of a member of the Republican Guard, who spent the length of the series trying to find a way for the part of him capable of horror to be overcome by the good man he was. Our heart broke for him because he never seemed able to succeed. After small roles on cult series over the 2010s, Andrews made an impact in two small screen series in a big way.

On The Dropout Andrews memorably played Sunny Balwani, Elizabeth Holmes conspirator and lover in Theranos who served as comforter and mentor in her business’ early stages and slowly but surely became a partner-in-crime who did as much as she did to perpetrate the massive fraud the company became. Some (Holmes herself) would argue that this series doesn’t go far enough to show just how culpable Sunny truly was. But in every episode of the series you see a man who slowly works to create an image of company and, like everyone else, is too late to realize just how big the monster is he’s helped created. Andrews was robbed of an Emmy nomination this year for his work.

Then a few months ago, he took on the role of Kadmar, the crime lord at the center of the second season of the fascinating new Fox Drama The Cleaning Lady. As Thony got deeper into the criminal enterprise that she had been trying to stay abreast of since the series began, Andrews was exceptional getting to play a proper villain, oozing charm at one point, capable of murder in the next. I compared him at one point to Gus Fring, and there was a similar resemblance – right up to his death at the end of the season. Andrews has renewed his career with his work in 2022, and I look forward to seeing what he does next.

 

Niecy Nash-Betts: Finally Getting Her Due

At the beginning of 2022, Niecy Nash-Betts’ intriguing crime drama Claws ended after four interesting seasons on TNT. I wondered how long it would take her to come back to the small screen she has dominated in almost every genre for the last fifteen years. I didn’t think she’d come back this quickly.

In the fall of 2022, she took on the lead role in the new spinoff drama: The Rookie: Feds. In the unlikely role of a forty-ish former guidance counselor whose now a probationary agent at the FBI, it would have been easy for her to lean in to the over-the-top nature she’s done in quite a few roles. Instead, she’s done that far less often and has become more fascinating with each new episode, demonstrating that studying the lives of children for nearly twenty years has given her the kind of inside this new unit needs. The spin-off is a fascinating show in its own right, with a superb and interesting supporting cast. But Nash-Betts is the star that shines the brightest and I’m glad to see her make it work for her. And while I’m far less inclined to give any credit at all to anything connected with the Netflix limited series on Jeffrey Dahmer, I won’t lie and say that I’m not thrilled that Nash-Betts has been getting her share of award recognition the past month, earning a Supporting Actress nomination from both the Critics Choice and the Golden Globes for her work as Glenda Cleveland. She’s getting her due this year, and I’m thrilled for it.

 

Laurie Metcalf: Is There Anything She Can’t Play?

There was a point in the summer of 2022 when it seemed like Laurie Metcalf could receive an Emmy nomination for three different series. And while she only received one, it’s a testament to such a talent that the Academy would not have been out of place giving her as many.

In addition to recreating her iconic role as Jackie on the fourth season of The Conners, a series that continues to have relevance and humor well after the departure of Roseanne, Metcalf had the role of Weed, the roadie who is initially in charge of Deb’s RV across America. It’s not easy to steal scenes from Hannah Einbinder and Jean Smart, even when you’re literally stuck in the same space in them, but Metcalf managed to do it as the roadie utterly devoted to the itinerary – so much so Deb had to order her to stop after Weed through Ava’s fathers ashes out of the car at a rest stop  - and someone who did not seem to think even Deb was the boss of her, right up until the point Deb fired her. That Metcalf deserved the Emmy more than the three other actresses nominated for Guest Actress in a Comedy is a subject for debate; that her performance was the most hysterical of the four is not.

And it was complete change of pace from her work on The Dropout as Phyllis Gardner, the tech CEO who has Elizabeth Holmes’ number from the moment Holmes’ sets foot in her office at Stanford, who knows from the start that Holmes is a fraud (and utterly resent that she has to work with the slovenly William H. Macy character to prove it) and whose confrontation with Holmes is both devastating for her and for all the women in tech that she knows will suffer as a result.

I’ve long since stopped being amazed at what Metcalf has been capable of (and given how good her daughter Zoe Perry is at playing a younger version of character she made legendary on The Big Bang Theory shows that ability has not skipped a generation). She found time from her work on The Conners to take part in two completely different kind of series; I hope she finds time to do more this year.

Aaron Paul and James Marsden: More Than Sending In the Clones

I made it clear in my Overrated Series earlier this year that I thought Westworld was one of the most overblown shows in the history of television, not knowing that in a sense, it would serve as an obituary for the show. But all my problems with the series never extended to the exceptional cast connected with it.  And two actors in particular continued to prove that there range was far greater than just being part of this mess of a series – as if there was any doubt to that before.

Aaron Paul’s work in the final season of Westworld was some of the best the series ever did. Watching the host version of him trying to find a way to save himself – climbing over dead versions of himself the entire way – all so that he could find a way to deliver a message to his daughter across time and space – was one of the best episodes of 2022, and that’s coming from someone who didn’t like Westworld at all. Of course, while this was airing we were watching him recreate his iconic role of Jesse Pinkman in the final season of Better Call Saul. But while Bryan Cranston’s appearance seemed more of a fan shout out, Paul’s appearance in the penultimate episode where he had his one interaction with Kim Wexler was, in hindsight to the entire Breaking Bad-verse, perhaps the most important interaction in the show’s history as Jesse, who had doubts about letting Saul in the world, was convinced by Kim that he might be worth their time.

James Marsden who, in typical Westworld fashion, was killed off in Season 2 but came back in Season 4, had the critical role of helping Dolores (or Christina ) realize just how important she was in the grand scheme of things, setting up the never to be realized final season. Then a few weeks later, he returned to a much-lighter role (sort of) as Ben, the alcoholic, vitally conflicted identical twin brother of Sam who ended up having an affair with Jen after revealing that he’d hit her with a car. (Makes sense on this show, trust me!) Marsden received a Critics Choice nomination for Supporting Actor in a Comedy for this role, and I hope that down the line the Emmys are just as rewarding.

 

The Cast of The Old Man: Don’t You Dare Call Them Seniors

For reasons that are irrelevant, I did not include FX’s remarkable new series on my Top Ten List this year. (It was a close question until December.) So let’s take this opportunity to pay tribute to the incredible veteran cast that demonstrates yet again how brilliant they are.

Jeff Bridges may be the greatest actor in history that Hollywood never took seriously. But even after watching him play the grizzled old man to perfection in True Grit and Hell or High Water, I never thought for a moment he could take on the role of an action hero and beleaguered sixtyish former spy. Yet here he is, having survived cancer and Covid, tearing through much younger attackers, playing multiple versions of personality, heading on a rendezvous with an Afghan Warlord he is certain he will never come back from. I long ago thought Bridges could never surprise me. I was wrong.

I’ve never stopped being impressed by John Lithgow. His television work alone has won him six Emmys in four different categories over the decades. Still knowing what little I did about this series; I was expecting his retired FBI director Harold Harper to be the heavy in this category. Wrong again. Recovering from the loss of his son, he is trying to rebuild his life when a case he never wanted reopened comes to the forefront. He tries to find a way to get Bridges’ character out of the fire, and then finds that he’s even deeper in to what is happening than he ever imagined and has been betrayed by two of the people he trusted the most in the world. It’s one of the most human portrayal Lithgow’s been able to play in a very long time and he clearly relishes it.

Bridges and Lithgow have already received nominations from both the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice for their performances. But let’s not forget the wonderful of two other industry veterans doing some of their best work in decades. Amy Brenneman finally realizes the potential she had when she shot to stardom in NYPD Blue as Zoe, the frail divorcee that Chase takes on out of sympathy who reveals herself to have steel in her backbone. And Joel Grey is magnificent in what turns out to be the title role, the man who was responsible for both Harper and Chase’s life in the industry, had no problem betraying them both at separate times, and has even less trouble doing so even if it costs them their lives. Perhaps both will receive recognition later this year.

I don’t know where The Old Man will take us in the second season its been renewed for. But in the hands of so many capable actors I have little doubt that there’s far greater place to go and greater depths to be plumbed.

 

And as One Last Bonus:

Who is Amy Schneider?

Perhaps it is asking too much to give credit to Jeopardy again. But consider Amy Schneider was on television more often this year than, say, the Kardashians (and is far more photogenic and interesting to watch, in my opinion) it’s hard not to give credit to the Jeopardy contestants whose streak of 40 games is now second all-time to Ken Jennings, who has won more money in her original run than all but three other players (including Jennings) and whose triumph in this year’s thrill-a-minute Tournament of Champions officially ranks her as the fourth highest money winner in Jeopardy history. Throw in the fact that she made appearances at the White House and has become an idol for the transgender community across the country and perhaps the world, it’s hard to argue that Schneider has earned her place in history. I look forward to seeing her do so on the Jeopardy stage for years to come.

 

That’s it for the best of 2022, folks! See you next year.

 

 

 

 

The Best TV of 2022: Jury Prize, Shows That Just Missed The Cut

 In the style of my critical idol Roger Ebert, I have a habit of giving a jury prize to series and actors that would have my Best of year list but were excluded for reasons that are inconsequential. Because some of these shows fall into categories that  have overriding trends, I’m going to rank some of them in groups.

 

Series That Makes You Think Broadcast TV Might Still Have Imagination:

So Help Me Todd

It would have been wrong for me to ignore this series that gleefully goes out of its way not to fit in any real box. Ostensibly, it’s a legal drama, but its also a mystery series, a family series and one of the funniest shows I’ve seen in years. Perhaps it is fitting that So Help Me Todd is on the same network as The Good Wife, another ostensibly legal drama that spent the 2010s gleefully flitting between every format imaginable and being entertaining in all of them. So Help Me Todd isn’t there yet, but it sure as hell looks like it has the potential.

Powered by two of my favorite performers of all time, Marcia Gay Harden and Skyler Astin played Margaret and Todd Wright, a mother and son trying to help each other even though they are disagree about everything and drive everyone around them to distraction. As their bond has grown closer, both are becoming more reliant on each other and more loyal to their cause. The series also had a lot of interesting side characters that, while not as well developed yet, do have a lot of potential. There’s Lyle, the incredibly put upon (by Todd) investigator who has more layers with each meeting and is incredibly good at his job there’s Carol, the overachieving daughter who is the ‘good child’ in the family and keep showing incredible strain keeping it that way (her marriage may be crumbling, and an intriguing group of recurring actors who have enormous potential. (I particularly like Jeffrey Nordling as a seemingly incompetent attorney who has more layers that Margaret wants to admit. I’m hoping he gets his own spinoff.) Frankly the only thing that keep this show from long term success is that it doesn’t fit the typical CBS mold of procedurals and reboots. I hope being original and the early ratings are enough to keep it going.

 

Reboots Whose Existence Are Justified On More Than Nostalgia Alone

The Wonder Years and Quantum Leap

Last year, I gave a rave review to the reboot version of The Wonder Years set with an all-black cast in 1968 Atlanta and put on my top ten list. It did not make my list again this year, but that’s not because it got worse. Quite the contrary, the series continues to show immense range and growth in many ways, expanding beyond Dean and going around the complicated relationship between his pioneering mother and his enterprising father. When his brother came back from Vietnam with an injury, it added more layers to the show as he tried to find his own independence and showed that he had more layers than you thought. An episode involving a salon between his sister peace-loving group and the brother could have devolved into a fight; instead, it was one of the more hopeful scenes I’ve seen in resolving conflict on any show this year.

The series has been marking key points throughout the original series: Winnie Cooper’s brother who died in Nam in the Pilot of the original was highlighted in a late episode and the season finale involved the storm that Kevin and Winnie were trapped in the first season finale to – with similar repercussions for Dean and his love Keisha.  But this isn’t just the case of a series checking off boxed; this Wonder Years has its own heart and soul, and I look forward to Season 2 next year.

Many were inclined to similarly demean the new Quantum Leap before an episode aired, and I was more than willing to be one of them. But having watched much of the first season, there’s an argument that the new version is actually realizing more of the potential than the original ever had. It helps matters immensely that the new version has expanded the team behind the scenes, deepened the mysteries behind each of them (including showing a critical link between Ernie Hudson’s character and the original series) and shown more possibility for range and diversity without being really showy about. Quantum Leap may be ‘sacred’ to some, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t immense flaws in the original. This new version is, like the original mission statement, ‘putting right what once went wrong’, and putting added layers to it. NBC has already renewed this show for a second season. I hope that the series manages not only to be a success, but perhaps even resolve the cliffhanger that we were left with when the original was abruptly cancelled thirty years ago.

 

Movie to Television Adaptation That Does The Source Material Proud:

Let the Right One In

There have been more than a few very good adaptations of films to TV that have reached a level the original wasn’t capable of – A League of their Own went in direction the film couldn’t, and in my opinion American Gigolo was the right version of one of the most iconic 80s films with great casting choices. And considering the new version of Interview with a Vampire AMC developed this year, some might think that redefined what horror television was capable. But in my opinion the best TV adaptation of an iconic vampire film was one that demystified the lure of the vampire. Showtime’s Let the Right One In.

There are many reasons I love this new series, some of which have to do with the fact that there are deeper layers to it that have messages I’m not sure even the writers have in mind. (When the new year begins, I’m actually going to go into more detail about it because it deserves more room than I can give it here.) But one reason I think it’s extraordinary is because it focuses on two groups of two family members, one of whom is a vampire and one of whom is a monster. The series deals with what you do what you to do to protect the person you love most, even if that means damning your own soul to try and keep theirs pure – or perhaps more horribly, being willing to slaughter dozens of people or create monsters out of countless more in order to save one life. Both Claire and Mark would argue that the ends justify the means, but for both of them, they have completely rejected what the person they are doing it for is.

Of course, if you want to ignore the subtext (that’s going to be difficult but you can) you can still marvel in everything this series does will. Damian Bichir and Grace Gummer are exceptional as the caretakers who have sacrificed everything for their loved ones at the expense of their souls. Akoni Noni Rose is superb as Mark’s neighbor Naomi, NYPD who wants desperately to protect her son from the horrors of the outside world, not knowing that one of their representatives lives next door. And the series kept making you rethink your expectations with every episode right up until the final minute which is a game changer in the worst possible way for Isaiah, Naomi’s son who utterly loves Eleanor even knowing what she is. I don’t know yet if the series will be renewed, but if there is a Season 2, the biggest question on my mind is, how will Isaiah ever forgive Eleanor for this, even if he never learns the real reason he already had to hate her?

 

Returning Series That Make Me Have Some Faith in Netflix Yet:

Russian Doll and Dead To Me

Yes Netflix is in a lot of trouble, and its collapse may soon be imminent. But that doesn’t mean that we still can’t enjoy some of the truly brilliant TV its created before it faces changes we can’t handle. This year, two of Netflix’s most successful series returned after a prolonged absence to huge acclaim for one and great viewership for the other. But I’m not here to discuss The Crown or Stranger Things. Instead, I want to discuss two lesser gems that I had to wait for nearly is long in both cases, each of them created by and starring incredible talents and both of which are more than capable of testing the boundaries of the comedy series.

When Natasha Lyonne brought Russian Doll back for a second season after four years, I didn’t think I could be stunned by what she did after Season 1. Boy was I wrong. Nadia spent all of Season 2 traveling through her own past (taking the F Train there, naturally) and literally by going through her crazy mother and messed up grandmother’s bodies. At one point, she actually gave birth to herself.  I can’t think of an actress more perfect than Lyonne who can handle an utterly messed up situation like this with such utter aplomb and calm as she traveled through time, had conversations with her crazy mother, and tried to rescue herself from dysfunction even though it might destroy the space-time continuum. (If they ever decide to do an American Doctor Who, Lyonne is my first choice for the role. I kept thinking that watching walk through the streets of New York, with a duster and cigarette in her mouth.) We also got to see some superb actresses, including Chloe Sevigny, Elizabeth Ashley and Annie Murphy strut their stuff as the world just got weirder. Lyonne intends to wrap things up with a third season. I don’t know what she can do to top herself, but I have complete faith in her ability to do so.

The Emmys and other awards shows basically ignored Russian Doll. It’s far less likely they’ll do the same with the other brilliant Netflix comedy that returned this year, Dead to Me. Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini continued to demonstrate why they are two of the greatest actresses in the history of the medium as this series that started out with us learned that one had accidentally killed the other’s husband actually got darker and more absurd in the final season. (Jen got pregnant! Judy got cancer! Ben hit them with a car!) This could have been the plot for an 80s soap were it not so funny all the time; watching Jen and Judy constantly dodging disaster made you wonder if they could have done an I Love Lucy remake at one point.  This will likely be Applegate’s final role, given her diagnosis of MS last year.  And while its very early in the process, I’m not going to lie. I really would like if she won an Emmy next fall. I think we all would

 

Show That Continues To Bring Joy to Be After More Than Thirty Years:

Jeopardy!

I know, every third article I’ve written this year seems to deal with Jeopardy in some context. But having been through this calendar, it’s really hard to argue that the show hasn’t been more relevant or exciting than it has been in year. We started this year with super-champion Amy Schneider, who finished her run with 40 wins and nearly $1.5 million. We are ending this year with another super champion, Ray LaLonde, who has already won ten game and nearly $300,000. Between that, we’ve had two winners of more than twenty games, a sixteen game winner who somehow slipped under most people’s radar, the first ever Second Chance Tournament, which brought back eighteen runners-up who eventually proved they were all worthy of their second chance,  and a Tournament of Champions unlike any in the series nearly four decade run that took longer than any previous tournament and was eventually won by the most deserving player after an exciting and entertaining finals that among its virtues put Professors’ Tournament Winner Sam Buttrey on the map for more reasons than just being a great player.  I’ll actually go into more detail about some of the champions this year in my final entry in this blog, but it’s very clear that we’re still in the era of Peak Jeopardy and that the studio audience – back after a two year absence – is now getting as many thrills as the ones at home.

Tomorrow, I’ll wrap this series up with articles about some of the most impressive performers of 2022

The Best TV of 2022, Part 2: Top Ten, 5-1

 

5. The Dropout (Hulu)

Given that while this limited series was dropping, Elizabeth Holmes was on trial for the massive fraud she and her colleagues committed while running Theranos, The Dropout could not have been more timely.  Now that the verdict is in, I imagine it will gain more viewers who might want to know just how Holmes got away with her crimes and what made her tick. They will get answers to the former, but they will walk away just as baffled as to the latter. Perhaps most surprisingly some viewers – like me – might walk away with some sympathy for this particular devil.

Ever since Amanda Seyfried began stealing scenes from some of the greatest actors of all time in Big Love, she has been one of my favorite actresses of all time, and she deservedly received the Emmy for Best Actress in a Limited Series for her work as Holmes. It’s one of the most riveting performances of the year, precisely because we spend much of the first half of the series feeling warmth and compassion for Holmes and halfway through, she become cold, emotionless, and utterly without feeling with no real explanation. The original plans for Theranos were started with good intentions, and we all know what road that ends up paving. What becomes harder to comprehend is why so many people who should have known better, including former Secretary of State George Schultz (Sam Waterston in an incredible performance) not only were fooled by Holmes but refused to admit even to their own families that they might be mistaken about believing in her, even as the evidence began to mount. Maybe it was because Holmes was young and attractive, but creator Liz Meriwether and her staff put up a stronger argument – Holmes really had no personality and many of these great and powerful men were willing to read in to it whatever they wanted.

Holmes is a monster – that much is clear and the writers do nothing to soften that fact or even explain it. At no point in the story, even after her company has fallen does she show any signs of remorse. But I still came away with sympathy for her because the series also shows that there was something fundamentally missing from Holmes – she had no friends, she had no hobbies, she had no interest but her job. Yes, she may have been used in a way by her older lover (Naveen Andrews was robbed of an Emmy nomination himself) but the fact is she may have always been an empty vessel, incapable of feeling anything even at the end. The fact that Silicon Valley and titans of industry have a habit of using up people like her and that she wanted to be them before she even knew what she wanted to do with her life, in a way shows just how sad she truly was.

This is a dark subject to cover, and yet so much of The Dropout plays like slapstick comedy at times. From the exceptional episode where a Walgreen’s executive is essentially conned into signed with Theranos without even seeing the product the company’s investing in, to William H. Macy’s delightfully mean-spirited neighbor of hers who ends up exposing her more out of spite than the fact that it’s the right thing to do, there are more than your share of laughs in this series. Underlying this comedy, though, is a stark fact: maybe the reason Holmes and Theranos fooled so many is because we want to be fooled. Given certainly other tech failures the last year, there’s a good chance that Holmes is nowhere near the last con artist who will pull of that trick. The Dropout serves as cautionary tale and comedy at the same time.

4. Hacks (HBO MAX)

I don’t know about the overall fate of HBO Max as a streaming service, given the latest purges of new movies and programs, even those it has renewed for a second season and then canceled. But as long as this service continues to produce programs of the level of Hacks, its going to be hard to argue it has no value.

In just two seasons, Hacks has quickly become one of the greatest – and oddly, most optimistic – comedy series in recent years. Even more encouraging it is powered by two of the greatest comedy forces in history: Jean Smart (who deserved the second consecutive Emmy she won this year) and Hannah Einbinder (she’ll get one; it’s a matter of time) playing comediennes of different generations who have nothing in common but are true soulmates, even and especially where they’re screaming at each other.

This season Deb and Ava went on the road to work out material for Deb’s new act. It started disastrously with Deb learning about Ava’s badmouthing Deb to a potential in a drunken rant and with Ava’s mournful apology which led to a lawsuit that became one of the season’s best running gags. We traveled to a state fair, a lesbian cruise and a one-night stand in the middle of nowhere. And through the many disaster and countless mess, Deb and Ava became a true and utter force, showing the power that women have especially in a field which does everything to make their lives miserable.

The series would have made my top ten list had it only been for Smart and Einbinder. But the series back them with an incredible cast. Paul Downs continued to steal every scene he was in as Deb and Ava’s eternally brow-beaten agent who had to deal with the most incompetent assistant on the planet – who turned out to have depths he never expected. (Please give Megan Stalter and Downs their own spinoff!) Carl Clemons-Hopkins showed countless range as Deb’s aide-de-camp, now dealing with his relationship traumas. The series featured five actors in guest roles who deservedly earned Emmy nominations for short stints, from Laurie Metcalf, who won an Emmy as the impossible road tour manager, to Harriet Sansom Harris as an old rival of Deb’s who she thought she had driven out of the business – until we learned a truth she needed to know – to Jane Adams and Elizabeth Olson, two great actresses in their own right, perfectly playing Ava’s too lost mother and Deb’s still searching for her own way daughter. Not since The Good Wife has any series used its guest cast more effectively.

Lucia Aniello and Downs have created one of the greatest series in years, and their Emmys for writing and directing last year were more than earned. Neither repeated this year (for reasons that will become clear further down the list) but they did triumph at the HCA for Streaming Comedy Teleplay and Einbinder deserved took a Supporting Actress prize in that same category. It is rare for a single series to justify the existence of an entire network. Hacks has done that in two seasons, and it looks like it will for many more to come.

3.  Barry (HBO)

The wait between the second and third seasons of Barry was not quite as long as the wait for Atlanta – three years instead of four – but it was no less interminable, especially considering that the former unlike the latter had ended on one hell of a cliff-hanger. When Barry returned this spring, just as with Atlanta, Bill Hader and his cast proved that the wait had been worth it.

With the third season of Barry Hader has proven (if there were still any doubt) that he is one of the greatest talents to work in television ever. Writing or co-writing every episode and directing almost all of them, his performance as Barry reached new levels that even the first two seasons gave us no indication he could reach. He started the season utterly and completely lost, doing his best to atone for his sins and eventually realizing there was no coming back from who he was. There was far less humor in watching Hader this season, but you could forgive that because this was one of the most wrenching acting performances given by anyone – comedy or drama -  in all of 2022.  With all due respect to Hader’s former SNL cast mate Jason Sudeikis (who to his credit reached some depths of his own on Ted Lasso) I feel in my heart Hader was robbed of an Emmy this year. (Then again, he already has two for the first two seasons, so I don’t think he would mind.)

The series also featured exceptional work from the whole cast, both dramatically and comedically. Anthony Carrigan merged the two perfectly as Noho Hank, whose romance with a rival crime lord destroyed almost everything in its path. Stephen Root was hysterical as Barry’s mentor who took all the wrong lessons from being in isolation, and yet set a force of avengers on Barry that wreaked unthinkable carnage. Sarah Goldberg was magnificent as Sally, who finally achieved the success she dreamed of and the very next day lost it because of ‘the algorithm’. (Among its many other virtues, Barry presaged how streaming is beginning to collapse. ) And Henry Winkler, brilliant on every level, terrified, angry, comedically frustrated, nervous, doing a balancing act he could never managed. (I loved Brett Goldstein’s speech, but Winkler should have won at the Emmys too.) Throw in the last three episodes, featuring a ten minute motorcycle chase down a road, Barry in the midst of a fugue state among all the people he’s killed over the years and a finale which featured a powerhouse sequence involving Noho Hank, a ruthless interrogation of Gene, and the breathtaking final five minutes – and you have an accomplishment that few series could ever manage. I don’t blame the Emmys for not giving Barry the love it deserved – there was a lot of good competition this past year (particularly from the previous entry and the next one) but I am gratified that the HCA gave it three awards (for Hader, Winkler, and Best Director)

Barry has been renewed for a fourth season, which may well be its last. (Given the season finale, its hard to imagine the series going much further than that.) And perhaps more than most comedy series, the ending will be critical to how history regards it. What is clear is that, just like Glover and his colleagues, Hader and his team have created a series that defies the boundaries of what we expect from a comedy.

2. Abbott Elementary (ABC)

In the first week of January, I made the decision to DVR the final season of This is Us in favor of watching the brand new comedy series Abbott Elementary. Critics and audiences have vindicated this decision. While I would not go as far as to rank this series, as TV Guide did, the best show of 2022 its hard to argue that this is not the most significant, funniest, and most good-natured comedy television has had in decades. Broadcast TV, the workplace comedy, teachers, minorities, hell, the world – is better off because of Quinta Brunson’s new creation.

Brunson is by far the greatest talent to emerge from 2022: no one would dispute that. She created, is the head writer, directs many episodes and is the lead character in this incredible show. Brunson is magical and perfect in every part of her work – there is nothing Janine does connected to this series that I don’t love unabashedly; her utter optimism in the face of everything her job entails, her relentless determination to be a good person and a good teacher, the way she fights for everything she does, even if she’s wrong. Every minute she’s onscreen, I smile just watching her.

And what a cast she’s assembled! In my heart of hearts, I didn’t think the Emmys would have the good sense to nominate so many of the incredible talents with this series and yet they did. Janelle James, whose work as the clueless, social media driven utterly incompetent principal is a marvel of comic timing; Chris Pernetti as Jacob, one of the few white teachers at Abbott, doing everything he can to be an ‘ally’, but having a pure soul underneath; Tyler James Williams as the far too serious Gregory who is brilliant in his dialogue and even better just when he looks at the camera, and the utterly irreplaceable Sheryl Lee Ralph as the veteran, church-going Barbara, who is used to doing more with less but still tries to keep plodding along. Ralph’s triumph at the Emmys was a great balm to my soul even before she got up on stage. (I hear now she wants to host. Yes please!)

The series finished its freshman year as an utter triumph and has given no signs of any sophomore slump. The nation has fallen in love with Abbott Elementary and so has the awards show circuit. The TCA gave it four awards in August; the HCA gave it four more, including three for Brunson. The Emmys by contrast almost underrecognized it, giving it ‘only’ three but recognizing Ralph and Brunson for the Pilot. Given the plethora of nominations the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice have given in this past month, Brunson and her colleagues are going to be walking red carpets for much of next spring and most likely for years to come. There are few casts and creators that I can think of who deserve it more.

And let’s give an extra round of applause to Brunson for having faith that ABC rather than any cable or streaming service was the right home for Abbott. It would have been easier for her to take her work to HBO or any of the countless streaming services and get more creative freedom than she could have gotten at a network, particularly in an era where the reboot is becoming king on every broadcast network over anything that has the sound of originality. Add to that the fact that the cast is almost entirely African-American, and she would have been justified in not thinking that they would listen to her in her needs. But they did and now she, ABC, and television has a whole is richer for it. Bravo.

1.    Better Call Saul (AMC)

But there was never any doubt in my mind what series was going to be the first on this list. Well before the final season began, there were more than our share of nattering nabobs saying that this was going to be the last great show in the history of Peak TV. I had reason to doubt the veracity of that statement before that even though I understood why it was being said: Saul is one of the greatest shows in history, perhaps even better than Breaking Bad. Sacrilege? Given how the final season went, I’m not talking it up.

Let’s be honest: if the first half of the season was all we got of Saul this year, there’s an excellent chance it would still have been ranked as the best show of 2022. The remarkable season premiere in which we saw Lalo and Nacho trying to get out of Mexico, Nacho’s going on his death march which led to a death scene so magnificent it rivaled that of Hank Schrader in ‘Ozymandias’. (Michael Mando should have gotten an Emmy for it.) The long con that Jimmy and Kim were playing against Howard throughout the season; Kim’s learning the truth about Lalo’s fate and going on, and then ‘Plan and Execution’ in which the full nature of the con unfolded and the last five minutes when Howard Hanlon became the last casualty of Jimmy McGill’s old life. The last minute was one of the most shocking all last year, and part of me does wish that Vince Gilligan and company had kept us waiting one more year (and not just because I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.)

But then we got the final six episodes and each one was more heartbreaking than the last. Bob Odenkirk said that he was expecting more violence in the final season of the show, but the violence was so much more emotional. Sure we saw the demise of Lalo, the fate of Howard (which was worse) and that Kim did survive the series but broke Jimmy’s heart and probably her own. Then, oddly enough, the series flashed to the present and went to Jimmy’s third life as Gene, finally covering the black and white flash forwards we’d seen for the first five seasons. (By the way, I don’t know if Carol Burnett just showed up because she wanted to cross ‘Appear on Vince Gilligan off her bucket list, but I’m so glad we had this time together.)  The much anticipated cameos of Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston recreating their first meeting with Saul Goodman (which in hindsight showed just how great Gilligan and company are at continuity) were actually less important to the show than the smaller scenes between the only meeting between Jesse and Kim in the series.

The ending was not what any of us expected, certainly not me. But even though Saul didn’t escape justice, there’s a very good argument he – and Kim – got a happy ending after all this. And in a way, that makes the final episode not just better than Felina but maybe as a final word on the world of Breaking Bad. Saul and Kim escaped the world of Heisenberg alive, in each other lives, and faced who they were. That’s a happy ending, not just by Gilligan’s standard but by any Peak TV show.

Accepting the prize for Best Cable Drama Series from the HCA, Odenkirk mentioned that the key part of Gilligan’s work was that every character in Saul had layers you didn’t expect but that they never truly were able to realize. Kim was an ethically driven lawyer at the start who liked giving into her dark side. Nacho was a gangbanger who just wanted to control his own destiny. Howard Hanlon was set out to be a force of evil but in reality was basically a good man who was driven to destruction by his relationship to Chuck and Jimmy. Even Gus Fring, the major villain of the series, in his final image on the show was seen as a man who at his core was looking for a human connection. We already knew that Mike Ehrmantraut and Jimmy himself had far more potential for goodness them in but were driven to being bad by factors they couldn’t control. If Breaking Bad was fundamentally about how a good man became a monster, Better Call Saul was ultimately more ambitious and showed that all of us have depths that are not obvious and that those of us who come across as evil never start out that way.

The HCA was more than generous to Saul than the Emmys ever were, giving it Best Drama, a Best Actor prize for Bob Odenkirk, Supporting Actor for Giancarlo Esposito and best of all, Supporting Actress for Rhea Seehorn, whose work as Kim Wexler is the breakout role of the show. Yet again the series was shafted by the Emmys, but its going to be a lot harder for them to do it next year. The series is likely to be dominant at the Critics Choice awards in a few weeks and there are promising signs for Odenkirk at both the Golden Globes and SAG Awards. If the Emmys doesn’t Call Saul next fall, then we’ve seriously got to consider whether the cartel is controlling the voting membership.

That’s it for the Best Shows. Tomorrow, I will give my jury prize for series and trends that just missed the cut.

The Best TV Of 2022, Part 1: Top Ten Shows, 10-6

 

I have no doubt that many who watched television this year thought that 2022 was the end of an era. Several of the greatest and most important series of the past decade – among the ones I will list black-ish and This is Us – aired their final episodes this year.  Much of the world of television is considered to be in flux, with broadcast networks beginning to cut back on original programming as a whole and possible cuts into their schedule.  Netflix, considered the gold standard for streaming for the past decade, has spent much of the last year involved in a financial, creative, and cultural collapse. HBO Max, a promising entry into original programming, is in the midst of an ownership change which is taking on the context of a purge when it comes to programming.  Others fear that given the current trends in so many programming buys throughout television general, that television as we have known in the past twenty years may be undergoing a creative shift it will never recover from.

All of this may very well be true. But that said, I came away from watching TV this year with a sense of optimism that pervades much of my top ten list and beyond.  There have been signs that both the network drama and comedy may have true creative potential for the first time in years. The hiatus that led many of the series I spent years waiting for many of these series ending with some of the most incredible television in all of 2022. And while it is true that some of the greatest shows of all time are ending, there have been enough new series premiering in the last year and a half in unexpected places to make me believe that Peak TV may never truly come to an end.

Before I begin my list of the ten best series of the past year, I should make the addendum that this list only includes series that watched every episode of the current season in the calendar year. This will lead to the exclusion of the current season of The Crown and The White Lotus among others.  In addition, I occasionally will forego some of the more obvious choices for the best of the year list to put it in some series that might very well have been overlooked by so many of the critics this year.

 

10. Alaska Daily (ABC)

I debated which brand new broadcast drama I would put in this slot the longest – it was either going to be this series or the equally imaginative and engaging So Help Me Todd, which puts the best spin of the legal drama since The Good Wife did thirteen years ago. Ultimately though, Alaska Daily won out because it took on a format at its center that few, if any TV series have tried in decades, and did so in broadcast television.

At the center of the series is Hilary Swank as Eileen Fitzgerald, who plays a character so complicated and hard-to-like that you don’t see outside the world of Shondaland. Unlike so many of those characters, however, Eileen is driven fundamentally to try and make a difference at the most fundamental level and is working in a job that is in more jeopardy that lawyer and political fixer – print journalism.  The story at the center of the series is a superb one, too, as Eileen and native Ros Friendly (Grace Dove) try to figure out the fate of missing Alaskan native that is part of a larger pattern of how the world views the fate of anyone who isn’t a white person. This couldn’t have been driven home clearer in the fall finale when the paper examined how much time, energy and money was being expended to find a white twenty-ish girl who drunkenly fell of a cruise ship and how little was being spent to find a native woman.  It was brilliantly illustrated and the kind of story we need to be telling anywhere. The series is superbly cast all the way through, including Jeff Perry, finally getting to play someone admirable as the editor of this troubled paper. 

Created by Thomas McCarthy, one of the great writer-directors of the 21^st Century, this series would have been just as sensational had it premiered on cable or streaming and much more likely to have a future if it did. That said, I think Alaska Daily’s exactly where it needs to be. Like the profession at its center, the quality broadcast drama is in danger of extinction as budget cuts loom and network are driven towards the safest possibilities. We need series like this to remind us what they are for. With Swank taking a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress earlier this month, there’s a chance critics realize this. I hope that ABC does too.

9.  The Gilded Age (HBO)

Those of you who read my columns on this show last year know the ecstasies that I went into about it when it debuted way back in January. I called this extraordinary period piece the best new drama of the decade and the first truly great drama to debut on since This is Us. While I was wrong in some regard (I’ll get to why in a moment) its hard not to come away from a series so creative remarkable as The Gilded Age and not look away in wonder. This is even more remarkable considering that Julian Fellowes, the wizard behind it, was the force behind Downton Abbey a series that I outright dismissed when it was on the air.  For all I know, Gilded Age is just an earlier American version of that same series. But even so, you have to marvel at just what you are seeing.

Here is a show airing on a network known for pushing every single boundary you can imagine and it looks like it would be just as at home on Masterpiece Theater. There has been no violence, no  real nudity or sex and if there’s been a use of any obscenity stronger than ‘goddamn’ I don’t recall it.  But the dialogue is just quotable and often as witty and anything one would hear on Deadwood. There’s a cast nearly as large as that series, too, but not one of them seems wasted. And the women are at the absolute of this series, with three of the greatest actresses in television history Christine Baranski, Carrie Coon, and Cynthia Nixon – at the center of it all doing work that rivals their best ever. The entire cast is equally able all the way down, from Morgan Spector as one of the most dynamic millionaires you’ll ever meet, Louise Jacobson, demonstrating that Meryl’s brilliance has seeped down to yet another daughter and all the smaller roles involving such brilliant character actresses as Debra Monk, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Audra McDonald.

This series is, in my opinion, infinitely superior to Succession when it comes to discussing the lives of the very wealthy, in that demonstrates the level of conservatism between ‘society’ and new money. It’s also infinitely more optimistic as the world of the Roys shows the end of all of this climbing. The Gilded Age represents the beginning of the Progressive Era and the changes that would unfold, also showing how utterly resistant the old guard was to it all the way through.

Appropriately, The Gilded Age is symbolic of the new wave of great television that has begun since the decade began.  The previous year we were graced with the presence of the incredible Yellowjackets and the astounding Cruel Summer. (The former will return next year; I wait in breathless anticipation for the latter.) These series, combined with The White Lotus, The Old Man and some of the other series that will appear on this list make as strong an argument for those of us who cling hard to the idea that the Golden Age has passed that progress never stops even for Peak TV.  ‘We are witnessing history,” is said at one point in The Gilded Age. And change never stops.

 

8.  Zahn McClarnon – Dark Winds (AMC)/ Reservation Dogs (FX on Hulu)

Yes, I’m violating one of my own rules by putting two shows here but trust me I’ve seen TV Guides list and their worse offenders by far. Besides, the link between these series is far clearer than some of the ones they tried.

Zahn McClarnon has been one of the great Native American actors of our time who, like so many, rarely gets work worthy of him. This year, he finally managed to land the lead role in a new recurring series that is the kind of show both the network, actors like him and the genre it represents, needed.

For years television’s idea of the mystery series has either been locked in the procedural or relocated to Britain, despite the literally dozens of American set mystery series that climb the best-seller list. With Dark Winds AMC has adapted to the screen Tony Hillerman’s legendary Leaphorn and Chee mystery novels, set on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico in the 1970s.  McClarnon takes the role of Leaphorn in a complicated series of murders that ultimately involve a high-stakes bank robbery, corruption among the FBI and the desire for independence against a world of oppression against Native Americans.  Featuring exceptional acting (Noah Emmerich and Rainn Wilson are cast memorably against type) the series starts in an ethically grey area and ends in even murkier territory. By the end of the first season, the law had triumphed over the criminal element, but not even the characters who survived are clear whether good has triumphed over evil.  Then again, given the world most of them live in, evil managed to win a long time ago. Dark Winds was deservedly renewed for a second season and considering how many novels Hillerman wrote they will have no shortage of material for a long time.

McClarnon, because of being lead in Dark Winds, had less time to appear in his semi-regular role as another reservation lawman, Big on Reservation Dogs. (Though the writers did go out of their way to give his character a memorable acid-trip conspiracy based episode that was perfectly true to him.) But the series was just as fine with his diminished presence. The already rollicking series became slightly more serious as the gang of four split when Elora went with archrival Jackie to California on a trip that was a disaster. She and Bear spent most of the season vehemently opposed to each other, with not even deaths and reconciliations working. Only a move by Cheese near the end of the season brought them back together and to California at last. The series also expanded its world by looking at the parents and families of the children  - and showed that some of the troubles they have are deep – but they don’t stop trying to live.

Both series are written and directed by Aboriginals and considering how much their voices have been suppressed, its incredible to hear them speaking out in two completely different series with completely different tones. Both series have been renewed for another season and I look forward to seeing what stories they will tell.

7. Gaslit (Starz)

There are days I am prouder of my chosen profession than others. They include the days that the Hollywood Critics Association and The Critics Choice Awards give their nominations for TV, and almost inevitable both groups make better selections than the Emmys. (Many of the shows on this blog benefited a lot from them.) I was particularly grateful when the HCA gifted Gaslit with five nominations in the Limited Series and, after the Emmys had shafted it, the Critics Choice gave it four. The only reason I can think that the Emmys decided to nominate such infinitely more juvenile series than Inventing Anna and Pam and Tommy over it was because they appeared on streaming platforms that the Emmys recognize, whereas Gaslit airs on Starz, a cable network the Emmys have decided doesn’t exist. It certainly had nothing to do with quality or historical or cultural relevance.

Half a century after the break-in at the Watergate, some might think there’s nothing left to say about what we once called the greatest scandal in political history. Creators Rob Pickering and Sam Esmail proved us wrong. By centering the story around Martha Mitchell (Julia Roberts in a triumph) once simply considered Attorney General John Mitchell’s ‘crazy’ wife (an unrecognizable Sean Penn), a human element was put upon just how a man utterly devoted to the President will do to protect the chain of command – even if that means utterly destroying the woman he once loved.

Nixon only appeared in the series in stock footage and recordings, but at this point what’s left to be said about Nixon. Gaslit told a more compelling narrative – that the President’s men were loyal to a man who didn’t respect him (most of the names were played by comic actors) that the Plumbers who organized the break-in were incompetent buffoons who had no business being near the White House and that the only reason the truth came out is that the man who came out the hero (Dan Stevens as John Dean) only came around to doing the right thing when there was no other choice.

They also point out that we may very well have learned the wrong lessons from Watergate – that it was a story where the system worked, the corrupt forces were brought to bear and good triumphed over evil. Did it really? The good guys -  Frank Willis and the FBI agents who did the ground work – never got the credit they deserved. Most of the bad guys ended up serving reduced sentences or no time at all. Nixon spent the rest of his life traveling the world as an elder statesman. And as for whether the nation got the message – there’s a reason one of the last shots of the series is of a campaign poster for Reagan with a very familiar slogan. Gaslit puts a human face on what we consider a victory for truth and justice and makes it very clear that there wasn’t much of either. Maybe that’s one of the reasons the Emmys basically ignored it.

 

6. Atlanta (FX)

The world spent better part of four years waiting to see what happened to Earn and Paperboi on the European tour when the second season of Atlanta ended in 2018. In the last eight months, we got the last two seasons of the series. In my opinion, it was well worth the wait.

The third season of Atlanta was a stirring and remarkable achievement, yet many fans of the show had a mixed reaction to it. I have little doubt that it had less to do with the quality of the episodes and more to do with the fact that they had left the familiar world. I don’t just mean that nearly half the season Donald Glover and Hiro Murai seemed to set the show in an alternate universe that seemed like David Lynch and Jordan Peele were collaborating; I mean that the rest of that season was in the confines of Europe and somehow made the rest of the weirdness of the show seem out of place. I don’t think the quality diminished one bit: ‘New Jazz’ was a wonderful episode and the season 3 finale featured some of the best work Zazie Beetz ever did for the series, but I can understand why the fans wouldn’t accept this world, even if they could handle ‘Teddy Perkins’ just fine. We got the barest hint that their might be some connection between the worlds in the season finale, but it was never followed up on. I think that was for the best; would any explanation have sufficed?

Season 4 returned to Atlanta, and the surrealism continued to a new hype. Trips to the malls became sites for riots, we saw just how ugly the world of Mr. Chocolate could be and it turns out ‘crumping’ could get you killed. Nor did we completely abandon the alternate universe of Season 3; in one of the last episodes of the series, we got a B.A.N. documentary of the only African-American head of Disney and learned just why A Goofy Movie was the blackest movie Disney ever made. Even the episodes that might have been considered heartwarming – Earn and Van finally committing to a relationship and agreeing to move to LA together – were undercut by the increasing oddness of their daughter, who for some reason doesn’t like her birthday. (If Glover ever tried to do an Atlanta follow-up, I’d like to see how their daughter turns out ten or so years down the line; that kid’s gonna be messed up somehow.)

The series ending on a perfectly surreal note in which the viewer, like Darius, is utterly unconvinced as to the reality of the world around him. Some might feel cheated one way or another, but having watched the series for four entire seasons, how convinced are you that any episode of the show took place in anything resembling reality? Glover and Murai have spent four season showing you just how utterly bizarre the world that Earn and his friends live in. A St. Elsewhere type ending might actually be too normal for the show we’ve watched.

Donald Glover has spent the last decade proving that he is one of the greatest creative forces in any form of media he chooses to inhabit. I have little doubt he will return to TV in some form at some point. But he’ll never create another Atlanta. There was only one series ever like it, and we should be grateful we got to inhabit this weird world.