My Top Ten Shows of 2009

As the year is coming to a close, many websites are touting their "Best of the Year/Decade" lists, and I've read enough of them to know that the best list is always your own list. Looking back on the countless hours of television that I've watched and how much I loved certain things for very different reasons, I can see why critics spend weeks on their lists - they're lots of fun to compile because you get to re-experience all the wonderful stories, but you get into serious debates with yourself, constantly second guessing and rearranging.

After so many changes of heart, you finally have to accept that it's impossible to get it perfectly right. I'm pretty happy with mine. I left off some shows that I love because they either didn't have great seasons this year, or because they are new and I don't feel like I've seen enough episodes to judge yet. Then there are a few that I left off because I haven't seen them yet--after reading the lists of my favorite tv critics, Maureen Ryan from the Chicago Tribune and Alan Sepinwall from the Star-Ledger, I have now moved Torchwood and Parks & Recreation up to the front of the line on things I need to watch.

10) Bones- Giving Booth a brain tumor and a coma dream in which he was married to Brennan gave a new burst of life to this show. Before that, things had fallen into a bit of a lull in which the interactions between the two main characters had become a cycle of life lessons. Now, however, their relationship has become the central focus of the show because Booth is keenly aware and dealing with his love for his partner on a daily basis, just as she is reaching a place where she is starting to realize her love for him. Someone could make a montage of all the emotion you can see in Booth's eyes when he looks at Bones--it would be the most romantic thing ever.

9) The Office- I love these characters so much after 5 years of awkwardness, hilarity, and sweetness, that I will continue watching for a long time. I recognize that the constrained setting means that storylines will be constrained as well and not always be at the same quality level as they once were. But the end of Season 5 was absolutely brilliant, interesting, and funny, as Michael, Pam, and Ryan formed the Michael Scott Paper Company. The beginning of Season 6 has had its ups and downs, but those Spring episodes remain one of my favorite parts of the entire show.

8) Mad Men- Season 3 was the year I fell in love with this show. I had always appreciated the exceptional writing, acting, and vision, but it was more of a fascination with what the characters would do than a deep desire to find out. Beginning with "Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency," all of that changed. With the finale "Shut the Door. Have a Seat," my obsession was sealed.

7) Chuck- Sure, I sometimes get annoyed with Chuck for not manning up. But at the end of the day, this is probably the show I have enjoyed the most over the past couple of years. It's well-made and fun, when it usually seems to be one or the other. After the Season 2 finale--"Guys...I know kung fu."--I knew what a wasted opportunity it would have been if the show didn't return. Luckily, I never had to deal with that. The show was renewed for a third season, which begins in January, and I rejoice.

6) Sons of Anarchy- The premise itself was intriguing enough to make me watch Season 1. Motorcycle club that serves as "The Law" in the small town of Charming, CA. Young man gains a new perspective on life when his son is born and he discovers his dead father's memoirs. All very loosely based on Hamlet. It was pretty great, especially in later episodes. Then Season 2 premiered in September, and I was excited to have something to watch on Tuesday nights. Little did I know that the end of the season premiere would shake me up and leave me in an emotional knot for the next 3 months. I've already written about how mind-numbingly amazing Katey Sagal was. It's worth repeating. She was incomparable.

5) Dollhouse- Aside from the final 3 episodes airing in January 2010, this show's life began and ended this year. It took a little while to find its footing, but it did--just as I knew it would--and it has since developed into as smart and engaging a show as Joss Whedon has ever done. We got to know the Actives (Echo, Sierra, Victor), the Clients (various), and the Dollhouse (Adelle, Topher, Boyd, Ballard, et al). Nothing was as simple as who was right and who was wrong. What this show presented was the idea that, no matter what heights technology reaches, you can't erase a soul.

4) Friday Night Lights- With its return to form in Season 3, fans have learned to forget that the abysmal second season ever happened. In 2009, FNL regained its clear eyes and full heart, and just as the saying goes, it couldn't lose. Tami became the principal at Dillon High School, Julie realized what a fool she had been for letting Matt go, Riggins had the

first healthy relationship of his life with the first girl he had ever loved--Lyla, and Coach Taylor had to deal with an even more annoying booster than Buddy Garrity--Joe McCoe, father of gifted freshman quarterback, JD. One of those limits of making a tv show that deals with high school is that you have to figure out the exact ages of your characters, and then acknowledge that you will have to let some of them go, no matter how talented they are. With "Hello, Goodbye," and "New York, New York," FNL gave beautiful sendoffs to Smash Williams and Jason Street. Then with the finale, a show-changing thing happened when Eric was fired from the Panthers and offered the head coaching position at the newly-redistricted East Dillon Lions. Season 4 would be no longer see our beloved coach at a well-established program, with funds and talent in abundance. Everyone loves a good underdog story. Friday Night Lights itself is one such story.

3) Battlestar Galactica- With the series concluding in March of this year, BSG had a lot of ground to cover in the ten episodes of Season 4.5. Who was the Final Cylon? Where would the fleet go now that their dream of Earth had been shattered by the discovery of a radioactive wasteland? What the heck was wrong with Starbuck? All of these questions, and more, were addressed, if not fully answered (but really, nobody wanted that--it would have taken away all the mystery). The highlights of the end of one of the greatest tv masterpieces of all time: 1) The Zarek-Gaeda coup. This is when characters were tested and true loyalties revealed. I loved seeing Starbuck and Apollo jump into action for Adama. 2) The Cylon history lesson in "No Exit." 3) The deterioration of Galactica, concurrent with the decreasing health of Laura Roslin. The performances of Mary McDonnell and Edward James Olmos were tragic and deeply moving. 4) The gathering of the fleet in "Daybreak." There's a line. Pick your side.

2) LOST- Every episode of Season 5 was full of momentum and tension. It took a while to get used to the time traveling, but after "316" (the episode in which Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Sun, and Ben returned to the island), it was clear that LOST was approaching its end. We knew that the show was no longer about getting off the island. The Oceanic 6 had come back, each for different reasons, but knowing that it was where they belonged. With the season finale and the possible "RESET" that happened when Juliet hit the bomb, people are concerned that all the character development over the past 5 years will mean nothing if she changed time and made it so that Oceanic 815 never crashes. That won't happen. Without having seen more than a couple of intriguing alternate reality commercials and some cryptic hints from EPs Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, I feel confident that 2010 will bring a phenomenal conclusion to one of the most complicated, but rewarding, viewing experiences I have ever had, and will ever have.

1) True Blood- So much of this year was about True Blood for me. Because of this show, I got some really great opportunities that have brought me closer to my dream of being an entertainment journalist. I got to interview Charlaine Harris twice. I started writing for my first website, and now True Blood has become part of my daily routine. I love the characters and the story. I think the cast, crew, and writers have managed to create something that's bizarre, funny, scary, emotional--and completely addicting.

Upcoming posts:

-Six Feet Under. I finished the fifth and final season about 2 months ago, but I haven't written about it yet, which is probably a good thing. It was kind of a soul-draining experience that I can only now talk about with any real sense of clarity.

-New Year's Resolutions, by which I mean the shows that I will watch in 2010.

Glorious New Shows of Fall 2009

When I was deciding what to write for my college newspaper this week, I mostly wanted to spend the entire article mourning the cancellation of Dollhouse. This is the first time I've had to endure the loss of a show that I truly loved, that I thought had a lot more story to tell. (Note: This statement only applies because I didn't watch the my other tragically-cancelled favorites--Firefly, Veronica Mars--as they aired). But, while I am still sad about this, even more I am glad to have been able to enjoy it as long as I did. I am grateful for every single episode, and as always, I always look forward to whatever projects the people of the Whedonverse do, so now I get to add Enver Gojak, Dichen Lachman, Miracle Laurie, and Fran Kranz to that wonderful group. So I didn't spend my article ranting about Dollhouse, but instead took a happier tone and celebrated the great shows added to my viewing list this fall season.

In the ever-changing world of television, you might wake up one morning and a new show has become the talk of the watercooler. More often than not, however, shows have to fight to establish themselves with an audience. So far this fall, networks have already cancelled those series that never really made it out of the gate, like ABC’s Eastwick and Hank. It requires a challenging balance of broad appeal and intriguing, multi-layered characters to make viewers want more.

This fall has been a pleasant surprise, with a handful of memorable new shows that probably have many seasons in their future, as well as several shows in their second season that have managed to overcome the dreaded “Sophomore Slump.” The best freshman series have been spread pretty evenly across the major networks, and come from a diverse range of genres.

CBS has been very popular on the procedural front. The spinoff of the very successful NCIS, featuring Mark Harmon as the sarcastic team leader of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, is NCIS: Los Angeles. Starring Chris O’Donnell and LL Cool J, the new show, which follows its parent show on Tuesday nights, is able to retain much of the audience, and is doing a good job of finding its own sense of humor while appealing to procedural-loving Americans. Also on Tuesday night is the solid new law drama, The Good Wife. Julianna Margulies stars as a woman in the aftermath of her politician husband’s public affair and corruption charges. In her best role since playing Nurse Carol Hathaway for 6 years on ER, she exudes intelligence and empathy as rookie lawyer Alicia Florrick.

V follows the same setup as the 1980’s sci-fi show on which it is based—an alien race called “The Visitors” arrives on Earth and seeks an exchange of water (to them a valuable resource) for technological and medical advances. After the masterpiece that was the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, I will never judge a sci-fi show as cheesy without first giving it a chance. After only a couple of episodes, V has not disappointed. LOST’s Elizabeth Mitchell stars as an FBI agent who is rightly skeptical of the V, led by the ethereal Morena Baccarin of Firefly fame. They claim that they are “of peace, always,” but their intentions are thrown into a new light when it is revealed that a group of Visitors have been living on Earth for years under assumed identities. Presumably, they have sought to infiltrate the human race in preparation for some master plan of destruction upon the arrival of their species.ABC is continuing to offer quality sci-fi/fantasy fare with FlashForward and V. Both are definite products of a post-LOST era, in which television is becoming highly less episodic in favor of serialized shows that develop over season-long arcs through intricate character development and slowly unraveling mysteries. FlashForward, with an ensemble cast that includes Joseph Fiennes, Sonya Walger, John Cho, Gabrielle Union, and Courtney B. Vance, tells the story of a world in panic after every person blacked out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds and witnessed their lives 6 months in the future. Observing people’s different responses to the event would be an interesting enough psychological study, but add to it that the flashforwards aren’t necessarily set in stone and the possibility that a couple of enigmatic, evasive individuals might have caused the blackout, and you have a pretty compelling drama.

In perhaps the most unexpected development of the fall, ABC also has some great comedy programming. The Wednesday night lineup contains a block of half-hour comedies—Modern Family, The Middle, and Cougar Town. All have their own merits, and a respectably sized viewership. Modern Family, in particular, has been outstanding. Starring Julie Bowen (Ed, LOST) and Married…With Children’s Ed O’Neill, the show follows the same documentary style filming made popular by The Office, this time on the wisdom of parenting. Modern Family is a wonderful combination of laugh-out-loud funny, smart, and endearing,

NBC’s Community, with Chevy Chase and Joel McHale, has also become a fan-favorite, focusing on a quirky group of students at a community college. Although the peacock network doesn’t really have any other noteworthy new shows, Parks and Recreation has been gaining momentum in its second round of episodes, after an uneven freshman season. Amy Poehler, Aziz Ansari, Nick Offerman, and Rashida Jones are taking that show to new levels of hilarity, as they continue to tell stories about local government through the lens of the Department of Parks and Recreation of Pawnee, Indiana.

Keeping in tune with the current crazy-hotness of vampires, The CW has found favor with Twilight and True Blood fans in The Vampire Diaries, based on a series of books by L.J. Smith. The young cast is led by Nina Dobrev, Paul Wesley, and Ian Somerhalder, who portray the strong-willed human girl (of course) and the vampire brothers.

While the next series might not have the most viewers, it has without a doubt the most devoted new fan following. FOX’s Glee has flashy musical numbers, adolescent hormones mixed with sweet emotion, and a unique, if inconsistent, sense of humor. From the creative vision of Ryan Murphy (going from Nip/Tuck to Glee is not exactly the straightest of lines), this series showcases the talent of musical theater superstars like Lea Michele, Matthew Morrison, and Amber Riley. It is the dry wit of comedienne Jane Lynch as cheerleader coach Sue Sylvester that usually redeems even the shaky episodes. Plus, Glee has been so widely embraced by the Hollywood and Broadway communities that they are also able to bring in a shining presence like Kristin Chenoweth, or in future episodes, director Joss Whedon and Spring Awakening star Jonathan Groff.

Another gem of the fall season has been FX’s Sons of Anarchy. Although technically in its second year, this show has seen a rebirth, surging into the pantheon of great television. SOA follows a motorcycle club in the small town of Charming, CA, and, odd as it may seem, is a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Charlie Hunnam (Green Street Hooligans) plays Jax Teller, the impetuous young VP of the Sons, whose outlook on life is changed by the birth of his son and the discovery of his dead father’s journal. Jax’s stepfather, Clay Morrow, is the club’s hard-headed president, skillfully portrayed by Hellboy’s Ron Perlman. Katey Sagal plays Gemma, the matriarch of the Sons. In Season 1, she had a toughness to rival any of the tatted, bike-riding criminals, but a brutal attack in the Season 2 premiere left her broken and vulnerable. Sagal’s real-life husband, Kurt Sutter, is the creator and executive producer for SOA—the man knows how to tell a story. Another memorable performance comes from Maggie Siff (Mad Men), as Jax’s rekindled love, Tara. Overall, a great cast and a fascinating glimpse into the hierarchical dynamics of an MC. Because it airs on cable instead of one of the major networks, this drama has short 13-episode seasons instead of the normal 22, so it feels okay to talk about this one as a relatively new show.

All of the above-mentioned shows are worth checking out. There is some high-quality television being made right now, and these new series are rising to the challenge.