5. Paradise
(Hulu)
Let's not kid ourselves: the
twist at the end of the first episode of Paradise is the kind of thing that is out of
either a bad M. Night Shyamalan movie or 10 Cloverfield Lane. And it
might very well be too much for many viewers to stick with it past the Pilot.
The reason it works – and why the first season is a masterpiece – is twofold.
The first reason is that the
showrunner is Dan Fogelman whose previous masterpiece This Is Us started
with a similar twist and then spend the entire series basically doing similar
tricks with both the format and chronology to tell a bigger story. Fogelman has
never done twists because he can, he does so for emotional reasons and to draw
anticipation for every part of it. He will show what's going to happen to his
characters and then draw every element of emotional power out of it.
So while it could have just as
easily been a gimmick that he chose to reunite with Sterling K. Brown, who won
an Emmy for playing Randall Pierson, Fogelman and Brown take every chance to make clear that
Xavier Collins is NOT Randall. Yes he is a father of two kids and a devoted
friend and he has a lot of emotional baggage from the loss of his wife. And
he's also one of the few black men in the openly white world that is Paradise.
But he also a force of honesty and righteousness, perhaps one of the few people
left on Earth with a clear sense of right and wrong. And that makes him a hero,
not because he wants to solve the murder of the former President but because
he's taking a stand even when everyone wants the status quo maintained.
The second reason it’s a
masterpiece is because most shows that deal with the end of the world are not
interested in world building. That's basically much of what Season 1 of Paradise
is about. Fogelman does this by telling each episode from the perspective
of a major character: Sinatra in the second (Julianne Nicholson) the
psychiatrist who serves as her aid (Sarah Shahi), even Cal Bradford himself
(James Marsden) and so on throughout each episode. By the time we get to the
penultimate episode of Season 1 where we actually see the apocalypse
unfold through TV reports, a panicked White House and a President who decides
not to follow the script – creating all kinds of chaos on the ground and in the
air – we finally understand the emotional wreckage that has been driving every
single character who survived and is living in Paradise. When we finally learn
who the murderer is – and the full metaphor to today's world is made bluntly
clear – it is one of the most stunning moments of the year and perhaps the
decade so far.
Many were surprised when Paradise
was nominated for Best Drama and Brown, Marsden and Nicholson all received
Emmy nominations this past July. I predicted all four. This is not a humble
brag; anyone who watched this show knew it was a masterpiece. It is just as
dark and unforgiving as other great shows that had their second seasons this
year (Andor, Severance, The Last of Us) but unlike all of them it ended
on a sense of hope, however remote one can find at the end of the world. I
don't know what Season 2 will be like, either inside the bunker or outside it.
But I know that Fogler has always found a way to find ways to get to the heart
better than any showrunner. It was there in the message Cal left for his son,
it's there in Xavier's search for his wife and I know we will find it no matter
what awaits us.
4.
The Studio (Apple)
I suspect part of the reason it
took me until well after The Studio had received an awe inspiring 24
Emmy nominations to finally get around to watching it was because I had been
there before a few months before it debuted with HBO's The Franchise, a
so-called satire that used a comic book franchise to essentially do what I now
consider the HBO approach to all major institutions in comedy: attack every
part of it with a kind of nasty mean-spiritedness, punctuating by horrible name
calling and a genuine contempt for everybody in it. I'd never really liked this brand of comedy
whether it was Curb Your Enthusiasm, Silicon Valley or anything that Ricky
Gervais or Armando Ianucci did for HBO and I had really hoped it was dead and
buried. (I was relieved when the show was cancelled after one season. And I
feared The Studio would be more of the same.
To be sure there is a fair amount
of backstabbing, power plays and sucking up going in Seth Rogen's Hollywood but
it's always done in such a way that really seems like this is the sausage
getting made, not that the sausage is disgusting even when your finished as you
get with so much of HBO. And Rogen always went out of his way to make it clear
that everyone of his characters was never as unpleasant as any of the ones I've
met in the Meyer White House or Pied Piper nor were they idiots who had gotten
as far as the Peter Principle. It would
be a cliché to say that The Studio is a love letter to all things
Hollywood but that's genuinely true. Rogen clearly loves movies as much as Matt
Resnick does and that's seen in really every long take, every character name
and even most of the movies that are being made. The best joke is that Matt,
for all his jadedness, still cares about every part of the industry while most
of his associates think he's an idiot for doing so. It's that heart that makes The
Studio sing and shows like The Franchise crashed.
And this is clear not just with
his brilliant cast of regular but all of the directors and talents he gotten to
play slightly skewered versions of themselves. Here is Ron Howard, taking the
time to humiliate Matt against his nastiness. Here is Olivia Wilde being such
an auteur that no one is willing to call mean. Here is Martin Scorsese,
charmingly saying he wants to make a $200 million movie about Jonestown and
being upset when its canceled. Every cameo is gold and does it with incredible
attention to detail that people like me can appreciate. Perhaps the best thing
I loved about the Golden Globes episode was that every step of the way the presenters,
the host and all of the people who gave acceptance speeches all seemed very
realistic winners of actual awards. (I really loved how Jean Smart and the
writers from Hacks were present considering that they have regularly
attended every Golden Globes in the last three years – and will now be competing
against The Studio this year.)
Did the Emmys go slightly
overboard when it came to giving it a record eleven Emmys? Perhaps. But considering how long Rogen's been in the
trenches both in TV and film and has never won anything, how can anyone deny
him becoming the first person in history to win Emmys for acting, writing, producing,
and directing in the same year, outdoing Orson Welles and Warren Beatty at the
Oscars? And having watched the entire show play out, ending in a season finale
that should have been disastrous but ended in joy despite all odds, well, then
there's only one thing left to say about The Studio: Thank you, Sal
Saperstein! (And come on we all want to know how many times that's going to be
said at this year's Golden Globes!)
3.
Hacks (HBO Max)
Another year, another top ten
list with Hacks being third. This is a testament to another series that,
like Abbott Elementary, is already one of the all-time classic comedies.
And who could have thought that Season 4 would be its most realistic season in
its run? Certainly the showrunners couldn't.
After half a century of
struggling Deb Vance (four time Emmy winner Jean Smart) finally got her shot at
late night. Of course it started with the fact that Ava (Hannah Einbinder
finally got her Emmy!) had to blackmail her in order to do it. It is telling
that for most of Season 4 we cared far more about the damaged relationship between
our two heroines then whether they'd have a successful show. The fact that Deb
finally showed herself willing to put someone else above her own needs was one
of the most moving moments in four incredible seasons.
Truthfully what I found the most
realistic part of Season 4 was not the fact that Deb eventually had to give up
her dream in order to stand up for her friend. As we all know that's not what
has happened in late night this past year. What was more fascinating and no
doubt missed was the struggle the two were putting up between showing something
meaningful in their work (as Ava insisted Late Night be about) and Deb's
determination to get a big audience as possible. The bosses made it very clear
the danger late night was in even before the first episode aired (another
warning sign about the health of the industry before this) so it is telling
that Ava has taken the view of what might be considered the Stephen Colbert/Jimmy
Kimmel version and Deb took the position of Jay Leno. The argument was never
resolved one way or the other but it's a conversation Hollywood should be
having – and I'm not sure they are.
That part aside Hacks remains
just as magnificently funny as ever, not just with its two main leads but watching
its supporting cast. Paul W. Downs has achieved perhaps the most unlikely role
as Jimmy and Megan Stalter's Kayla steals everything that isn't nailed
down. Julianne Nicholson showed off her
comic gifts in a way I haven't seen her do in twenty-five years of watching her
and we were gifted with a wonderful group of performers from Helen Hunt to Tony
Goldwyn and even more brilliant cameos then usuals.
This year will be the final
season for Hacks. I have no idea how Jen Statsky, Lucia Aniello and Downs
will end the incredible journey of Deb, Ava and everyone around them. I will be
sorry to see it go but I know that Deb herself, they will always leave us
laughing and crying, having created one of the masterpieces in this decade, if
not this century so far. (For your next project, maybe do a Jimmy and Kayla
spinoff?)
2.
Yellowjackets (Showtime)
It doesn't take a Citizen Detective
to figure out that I think that Yellowjackets is one of the greatest
shows on TV today. Even before I spent much of Season 3 speculating and
reviewing about it I had ranked the series the best show of 2023. Judging by
the immense numbers of people who have looked at my articles on it this past
year a lot of you feel the same way. I may very well have run out of words to say
why I think it's just as much a masterpiece as ever. But I'll try.
When we saw the opening minutes
of the very first episode the question on everybody's mind was: "What
could have turned this group of high school teenage girls into butchers and
cannibals?" When that scene got replayed at the end of Season 3, the
viewer had an answer: they did. Some might desperately want to speculate that
theirs something in the woods that turned them into that. But Ashley Lyle and
Bart Nickerson seem to be leaning in very hard on the idea that there never was
a wilderness: just them.
And the scariest thing about Yellowjackets
at the end of Season 3 is that even after all of the horrible things that
have happened, both in the woods and in the present everyone who survived to
that point refuses to accept that basic idea. In the opening minutes of Season
3 a teenage Shauna writes in her journal: "Once upon a time a bunch of
girls got stranded in the wilderness and went completely f---ing nuts." And by the time Season 3 ends we are convinced
more and more that is all that happened.
But the tragedy of the show is
that none of the girls then or grown up have accepted that it is all that
happened. They believed there was spirit as girls; they have spent the last
twenty five years denying it, shifting responsibility, saying they can't
remember anything happened, placing the blame on each other. When all that
really happened was a combination of trauma, mental illness and a series of
completely logical events then and their own delusions.
In the 35 years since Twin
Peaks debuted no other series can claim to being the heir of David Lynch
more than Yellowjackets. This is true in every detail, from the casting
of the girls as adults as former child stars (this year Hilary Swank joins the
insanity) from the increasingly bizarre dream sequences and hallucinatory
actions (this year we had a frog orgy!) to the incredible level of guest
casting (this year Joel McHale became a survivalist guide completely unprepared
for what he sees in the woods). And the writers have actually gone to a place
scarier than any monster in either the original series or the revival: the idea
that sometimes the most dangerous thing in the woods is just you.
It was announced, somewhat
surprisingly, that the fourth season will be the last one earlier this year.
Considering that Season 3 ended with the girls connected with rescue that
actually seems to be a good thing: the writers have no intention of overextending
themselves. But it also means were coming closer to an end that is sure to be
insane and terrifying as everything we've seen before. But if it doesn't end
with a lot of Emmys – certainly one for Melanie Lynskey – in the final season,
then in my opinion, that deserves every member of the academy being hunted down
and having their hearts eaten.
1.
The Pitt (HBO Max)
It might seem like I'm delusional
if I made the argument that there are common threads between Yellowjackets and
The Pitt, my choice for best show of the year. But there are certain
commonalities.
For one thing, The Pitt is
a mashup of genres like Yellowjackets is, though in the former case,
it's just two even though they shouldn't work together at all. It is the meshing
of the medical drama such as ER with the real time aspect of 24. These two absolutely should not work together
at all and yet Scott Gemill has made them work absolutely perfectly. Dr. Robby
(Noah Wylie) is in an underfunded Pittsburgh emergency room for a twelve hour
shift that would be the longest day of the life for most real people but until
the final events actually seems like a pretty light day. And not just Dr. Robby
but the entire staff has to deal with a crisis that Jack Bauer never had to: an
underfunded ER with angry patients, horrible technology and a never ended cycle
of crisis that not even Chloe O'Brien could help him through.
There's also the very similar
theme between the two, only in The Pitt it's far clearer: mental trauma.
In the pilot Dr. Robby has to go to the roof of the building where the night
shift head (Shawn Hatosy in a brilliant Emmy winning role) is not seriously but
seriously considering jumping. And as the shift goes on its clear everybody is
suffering from similar stretches. Dr. Robby is here on the fifth anniversary of
the death of his mentor and keeps telling everyone he's fine. Dr. Collins is
hiding her pregnancy and by the time the shift is half over she'll have
suffered a miscarriage. Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball) is ultra cynical and we
learn halfway through he's addicted to painkillers. Dr. Samira is compassionate
and moves at a slow pace because she cares and there's a sense she's addicted
to these kinds of traumas. Dana Evans (Katherine LaNassa) the head nurse seems
to be the most together until she gets beat up by a disgruntled patient. It's a
bit of a stretch to imagine them going from this to drawing from a deck of
cards and making sacrifices to the woods but far less than one might think (And
considering that all of this done to the backdrop of a bureaucratic supervisor
who seems more concerned with patient satisfaction scores when there's an eight
hour wait time for a doctor, I think we all know who's heart they'd want to rip
out.)
Now of course the biggest
difference between The Pitt and not only Yellowjackets but any
drama I've seen on TV in a long, long time is that the drama is not in watching
bad people doing bad things but flawed people trying to do their best in a
system that keeps slamming them and never gives them a moment to breathe. There wasn't a single regular in The Pitt I
didn't feel sympathy for and even empathy for during the entire series. There's
not an antihero to be found, just people struggling with a system that was
broken when they got into it and is now completely melting down. And that's before
a mass casualty that floods the ER at the end of the season. For a television show on any service to do a
show with basically good people is rare; coming from the network that started
the revolution with The Sopranos and The Wire is astounding.
And just as promising is how favorable
the response has been from critics and audiences alike. For the second
consecutive year the Emmys was spot on when it gave its Best Drama prize to The
Pitt along with four other Emmys. Noah Wylie has had this coming for nearly
thirty years but just as deserving were LaNassa and Hatosy. And it makes sense
that audiences responded as they did. After a decade of the worst impulses
being reflected in even the best of art and much of the 21st century
being devoted to the worst aspects of man's cruelty to man, we need more shows like The Pitt. My
top ten list reflects how the best shows of this year show that aspect of
humanity so well but none more than a show where even those who win for it go
out of their way to thank the first responders and hospital workers across the
nation. They are the real heroes of this world and while the characters on The
Pitt may not be, they are a reasonable facsimile and everything the world
needs.
Tomorrow I'll wrap things up with
my Grand Jury Prize for 2025.
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