The previous 48 episodes -- covering nearly five seasons -- of the best show to ever air on television all lead up to this. ("-30-" is the denouement and coda.) "Late Editions" manages a tremendous narrative feat, taking what should be, in hindsight, events so utterly overdetermined -- Lester and McNulty, the would-be heroes with their romantically desperate, ill-fated, and naive plan to make a difference unraveling, crash headlong into ignominy, while Michael and Duquan, the innocents, pass the point of no return, unmistakably headed toward lives inseparable from the drug trade -- and miraculously make the viewers wonder what will happen next without feeling like they have the slightest clue. A devastating sociological critique of how the margins cities are manhandled, forgotten, and swept away, swept away, shepherded by storytellers compassionate enough to let the unforgettable voices of the city speak through.
We expected Generation Kill to be ugly because it's about the military (our military, no less), it's about Iraq, and because it's a David Simon/Ed Burns production. And as it begins, introducing the Marines at their most racist, sexist, homophobic, chauvinistic, juvenile, and jingoistic, the miniseries certainly keeps our sympathies for its subjects at arms' length. However, as we should all expect by now from Simon and Burns, Generation Kill devotes time and care to stretch its portrayal of Marines -- and especially the guys in Bravo Company's second platoon -- beyond the merely ugly. The grunts that we see are thoughtful and reptilian, pragmatic and hopeful, eloquent and profane, baby-killers and peace-keepers, Dartmouth grads and goonish mouthbreathers, idealistic and homicidal, sometimes all at once, and almost all self-aware. In short, these grunts, in their acrid, fragrant glory, are the most realized characters you can get in seven episodes -- which is a testament to the possibilities that televisual narratives offer over other entertainment media -- and go a long way to dispelling the odious myth of an American service full of immoral, criminal, brain-dead thugs.
Similarly, the entire series itself is at once hilariously irreverent and despairing, an incisive depiction of the difficulties plaguing the Iraqi invasion delivered through the most scathing and humanist indictment of institutional power since... hey, The Wire. "Bomb in the Garden" drives home all of the themes that arced through Generation Kill (which will remind viewers of The Wire): that individuals trying to affect structural change will always be crushed by those faceless, detached leaders whose first duty is to make good political theater, a structural hierarchy dramatized most vociferously once First Recon Battalion reach and occupy Baghdad. Sgt. Colbert tries to single-handedly defuse the unexploded ordinance littering one neighborhood, explaining that "if we keep killing civilians, we're gonna waste this fucking victory," only for his one-man mission to be cut short, leaving a live shell half-buried in a hole next to a residential home. (To add insult to injury, he's told that a bunch of Iraqi kids playing on a destroyed tank were slaughtered by newly arrived Marines. "They're screwing this up," Colbert says in disbelief. "Fucking idiots. Don't they fucking realize the world already hates us?" This from the guy who once told some liberated Iraqis, half-jokingly, to vote Republican.)
His commanding officer, Lt. Fick, tries his best to organize efforts to restore basic services for the civilians but is thwarted by the chain of command which constantly re-billets his platoon before they can effect any significant, positive change. In the end, because of how poorly the whole operation was planned (the entire battalion has only one Arabic-speaking translator, which prevents them from sending out more than one patrol a day -- to wit, "How the fuck are we supposed to take over Baghdad on one patrol a day?"), all of their best efforts are about as lasting as Ray's, who in the beginning of the episode left his mark on Iraq: writing "USA" into the sand with his piss.
Runway hasn't exactly been on a winning streak lately. The sixth season, which has already finished shooting, is stuck in legal purgatory. The last finale (with Korto, Leanne, and Kenley) didn't feature terribly noteworthy collections, to top off a rather lackluster season overall. Then again, it didn't have some fashion Tourettes' constantly regurgitating "fierce," "ferocious," or "mess" of hot or tranny varieties, so hey, maybe the fifth season was terrific!
Honestly, as we got closer and closer to Bryant Park, this season had its share of enduring images, and in fact, it would take something profoundly awesome to displace Tim and Leanne on a tandem bike (which is what I want on my tombstone) as the pinnacle of Runway.
But as it just so happened, a chorus line of drag queens permanently left their mark on the runway with incomparably supreme fabulousness, and even some cattiness (e.g. Miss Understood telling Blayne he was lucky to have her, because if his model were Hedda Lettuce, they'd have to put a bag over Hedda's face). Because they're so beautifully liminal -- and also because they do it with such flair and style and because they're funny as hell -- they can get away with such cutting insult as Sweetie did when she proclaimed, "I'm gagging at the silver sequins across the room," or shooshing Blayne when Blayne spoke out of turn, "No one asked you, other designer." Cat sound!
Moroever, Acid Betty and her psychedelic kabuki number were, appropriately, a trip. Normally, I'd say that if it didn't win that week, then the design (courtesy of Terri) was robbed, but seriously, Joe's piece for Varla Jean Merman, was HOT. (And surely, the way Varla worked it was magic.)
Every season of Project Runway should feature drag queens at some point, because not only were they resplendent with all the ferociousness that a certain enfant terrible from the fourth season could only dream of, they brought out the inner divas in everyone else on the show. Tim Gunn encouraging Suede not to cave to Hedda Lettuce's intractability: "You've been to a different rodeo, and don't you-know-what with me, sister." Joe, who wasn't even sure what drag was about, getting his own freak on. And Stella grommetted something. Wild!
Oh, and before I forget, it introduced "hiding the candy" into my lexicon. I admit I've yet to find the opportunity to bust it out, but one of these days...
One of these days!
Indie rating: The Raveonettes - "You Want the Candy"
I've come to decide that for all of its accolades (most of which date, appropriately, back to the first season), Friday Night Lights is a little too enamored of precipitous melodrama to be the messiah in naturalism that some of its more overzealous fans claimed or wanted it to be since it dips so frequently into the well of emotional confrontations. Personally, I'd love the series more if it just showed the Coach and Mrs. Taylor at home in real time for one tv-hour over them dealing with a new crisis each week.
That said, FNL often begins storylines with refreshingly temperate calm, even though they may quickly devolve into conflict-addled hysterics meant to stretch the drama into feasible season-filling lengths. So why stick through the predictable histrionics? The third season premiere answers: When Smash asks why Coach Taylor is driving him so hard to rehab his knee when the odds of Smash ever playing football again are becoming ever more remote, Coach responds, "'Cause I need something good to happen." Which is to say, the resolution to these stories so often features that rare, deft magic which captivated us in the first season, is captured once more -- maybe even rivaled -- by the send-off for Smash Williams in "Hello, Goodbye."
Smash's rehabilitation -- physical and mental -- constitutes the best arc that the show has had in a long time and hands down gives Gaius Charles the best material he has had to work with as Smash Williams, whose arrogance typically kept us from sympathizing with him as much as some of the other characters. But when his swag got knocked off in the season premiere, he's working fast-food full-time, we don't pleasure in his misfortune. Instead, just as we're seeing Smash's emotional valences uncovered by his circumstances, we realize the hidden depths of affect and sympathy are at work in places we never thought they'd appear, and in Smash's case, he's the character whom I most wanted to see recover because his irrepressible spirit did not belong in an Alamo Freeze uniform. (And you know that FNL loves all of its characters too much to stick them permanently in small-town hell.)
So after a handful of episodes with the expected (and, honestly, desultory) ups and down and "what's the point of all this" moaning, we get the payoff in "Hello, Goodbye" where Smash prevails, as we knew he would, but the unrestrained -- unrestrainable -- joy that bursts through is that something good that needed to happen to Coach Taylor, and FNL viewers too; in the midst of all of Dillon's mess of drama, Smash represented the restoration of idealism and hope.
Indie rating: Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. – "Buy The Moon Of Jupiter"
By tv algebra, I should've stopped watching The Sarah Connor Chronicles year. Its acting is perfectly mediocre (with the sad exception of Shirley Manson -- it pains me to say that she ought to concentrate on music). It's supposed to bring a battle-hardened post-apocalyptic mindset but usually engages in the moral danger of a shrinking violet. And its entire premise is based around Skynet -- fighting Skynet, stopping Skynet, finding out what Skynet is after, etc. -- so even if the humans score a victory, another Skynet plot will pop up, undercutting any real sense of plot progression and leaving us with an interminably drawn out serial. Yet I haven't missed an episode, the reason for which has to be more than the attractive leads (since in Tvland, they're a dime a dozen).
The second season opened with a respectably improved premiere, though it featured one unforgettable moment in which Summer Glaubot -- always lissome and pouty, usually John Connor's protectrix but now malfunctioning and trying to terminate him -- is caught in a trap set by him and his human allies. In a desperate gambit (as far as cyborgs are capable of desperation), she screams out, "I love you, John, and you love me!" The heretofore unspoken tension of a young man being guarded by a lithe protectrix is finally exploded into a last-ditch ploy to exploit this exact adolescent fantasy, and TSCC finally challenges its target audience to beyond the complacency that previously characterized this series.
While this scene remains the single most indelible image on TSCC, the rest of the second season hasn't always lived up to it (Sarah Connor's three dots storyline has been a non-starter). But from beginning to end, "Self Made Man" exemplified this image of TSCC at its most uncompromisingly robotic -- Glaubot has a secret project in which she's befriended a paraplegic cancer survivor/library assistant. Over the course of one night, they slowly unravel the mystery of a man who came from nowhere to build a real estate empire in the 1920s, a man who crushed his rivals ruthlessly, a man who happened to be a Terminator. (The episode had a bit of fun with how the '20s admirably interpreted the Terminator AI's literalism as hard-working stoicism.) As the two amateur historians find out more about this Terminator, it becomes more and more obvious to everyone (except the attention-starved library assistant) that Glaubot is blatantly exploiting him for his access to historical records, summoning girlish charm only when he becomes suspicious of her cold and demanding behavior until eventually she drives him to suicide, which she finds out only when she meets his replacement, and at which point she starts her project over again. All the while, the hard-nosed exploration of cyborg ethics in "Self Made Man" is underpinned by some mind-tickling time-travel scenarios, and the underachieving series that can't seem to be killed, not even by low ratings, has unexpectedly come up with the most intriguing American sci-fi narrative this year.
I may be gauche for saying this, but I was never a Donna Noble fan. So I guess it's little surprise that my highlight of the fourth season was this Donna-less episode, which I watched towards the tail-end of a deliriously sleep-deprived all-night fourth-season Who marathon (no tacos), which is a great way to experience such a claustrophobic, paranoid variation on the lifeboat scenario.
The episode begins as a benign and chummy jaunt, but as befits its title, "Midnight" quickly spirals into pure horror when everything about the revived series, everything that's familiar, becomes an ingress for an unknowable evil. The Doctor's greatest virtues -- his curiosity in the new, his confidence bordering on arrogance, his impulsion to take charge, and to add insult to injury, his gift of gab -- are all systematically, sadistically turned against both him and the viewer, as the improbable keeps eating away at perceptions of safety until the impossible materializes: Sky's repeating becomes parallel, simultaneous echoing and, finally, prepeating. (Even Rose's cameo, on a TV screen, silently shouting for the Doctor but unseen by anyone but us, is transfigured from a moment of excitement into an anguished and futile cry of helplessness.)
Perhaps most nightmarish of all, the Doctor's unwavering compassion is set upon him; the other passengers suspect him of complicity with Sky precisely because he was the only one kind enough to speak with her prior to this disaster, and this perversion of compassion nearly costs him his life. If the Doctor as the ultimate believer in humankind is stripped of all his power and his righteousness, then where does that leave normal humans?
As Heroes entered its second season, it carried the burden of megahit expectations and thus made a bid to be taken as some kind of serious enterprise, not some fluky one-hit wonder cult show that miraculously veered into the mainstream. Heroes abandoned the breakneck, reckless pace of season 1 in favor of methodical and deliberate storytelling, delaying gratification for a built-up payoff, and psychologizing its characters; in short, it tried to grow up in season 2, which, not coincidentally, was terrible. Heroes succeeded in the first place because of its narrative excesses bordering on ADHD to the point that continuity and logic were minor inconveniences to be dealt with with the least effort possible so that it can return to throwing mounds and mounds of "plot" "development" (in the guise of big balls of fire and GUNZ) at the viewer each week. (Also, as a character on another program often used to say, psychology is a soft science.) And therein lies the secret sauce that makes Heroes such a radical narrative -- no other primetime show is so concerned with the immediate moment, constantly destroying and then regenerating its own mythology in an endless process, even while it supposedly operates within the continuity-obsessed genre of serial narratives. That might smell like excusing inept storytelling, and in a narrow way that assessment is kind of right, but Heroes elevates itself above dreck (unbeknown to people like EW's Jeff Jensen) because of its camp absurdity, mixed in with its fondness to slyly play with and tweak its own fans.
Case in point: "The Second Coming." Hiro makes a stupid decision that basically sets the third season in motion, and you can blame the writers for resorting to such a cheap tactic to get Hiro from out behind his desk, or embrace its cheek for departing from solemnity and knowingly going with the ridiculous, a love of adventure for adventure's sake. What's more, when Sylar stalks Claire in the Bennet home, what should be a scene thick with tension is undercut by Sylar when he summarizes his Mexican jaunt from last year, "That’s all behind me now... It was like a long night after a bad taco." A line that corny would sink more serious shows, but if we keep in mind the campiness of Heroes, his line is golden. And generous supervillain that he is, we get another keeper of a quote, this time one that teasingly acknowledges us stupid fans: "Eat your brain? Claire, that's disgusting."
Almost as a rule of the genre, procedurals often mine topical events or subjects for stories (that is, when they're not ripping their stories from headlines -- I'm looking at you, Law & Orders). And since Bones already has a reputation as a procedural that's also lighthearted, I wouldn't expect it offer as delicate and moving a story as "The He in the She." What jumps out most of this episode is its subject matter -- a post-op trans pastor, who, of course, has been murdered -- but the episode actually transcends matters of biology and approaches something much more spiritual. In fact, Sweets cuts to the chase: "The term 'trans' conveys a meaning of 'beyond the cross,' moving further. There's a very spiritual component," and in the worldview of this episode, the spiritual component -- not the physical body -- lies at the core of human essence. Which is where the church angle enters the discussion, and where "The He in the She" closes: a congregation of "gay and straight, black and white, fat and thin, man and woman, saint and sinner," as preached by Ryan Stephenson, the prodigal son who sought redemption among the fallen (e.g. the addicts at a detox center) to find redemption at his father's Inclusion Church, which was entirely composed of people from society's margins. Thus borne out of familiarity with the Other, arises a utopic vision of religion at its most hopeful, its most all-embracing.
Indie rating: Antony and the Johnsons - "My Lady Story"
If you haven't sussed out or if you haven't been reading this blog for at least a year, I've been doing a top 10 episodes of the year list under the pretense of the year's best 10 hours (which is a concept so golden that I'm sure Entertainment Weekly stole it. Where in installments past I've lumped the decalogue in a single post, this year I'm going to devote one (1) whole post to each entry, with this week unveiling numbers 10 through 6 each day, while numbers 5 through 1 will be announced next week (because I still have to write up my thoughts on the lot of them).
10. So You Think You Can Dance, Finale, (4x23; FOX, 8/7/08)
Read more after the jump. Don't underestimate simplicity. In a year that featured some of the consistently worst reality contestants across so many different programs, SYTYCD actually assembled a cast that was likable and capable without sacrificing telegenicness, and which culminated with its festive celebration of a finale. An uncomplicated night, to be sure, mostly free of irony, with four finalists captivating us in their own ways, buttressed by an extravaganza of guest dancers, all of which we could watch simply on the terms of pure dance. No losers this night, everyone came away winners.
First a desultory top 10 8 albums of the year, though with a nota bene: I don't think I've been this disinterested in putting together a year-end list in recent memory. That doesn't have anything to do with the quality of the year's releases; rather, my media priorities and critical attention have shifted unequivocally towards teevee, and I haven't felt the urge to keep up my indie cred as years past. This list makes no claims as to comprehensiveness:
* The Electrelane ménage -- krautrock and gorgeous melodies -- hooks up with sweet, heartbroken lyrics. Much rejoicing. (Come back, Electrelane! -ed.)
≈ An ambient record you have to listen to, spacious and intimate. The key is to disappear into the waves...
† Never heard anything so loud.
℘ Nothing wrong with Peej doing pretty, especially as a Civil War ghost.
∞ Baltharian reveries on the Cylon baseships.
1234 Geddit?
∪ Cheating, sure (i.e. Pink live!), but I finally get Merzbow now, he just needs to play behind a hardcore punk-metal trio shredding out the best post-Motörhead long-player ever. (Nb. the linked video isn't with Merzbow -- you'll just have to imagine the track with more industrial noise.)
∫ The most pummeling quiet record -- ever?
Enough of the music bollocks, here's the TV
If you're a regular reader, you probably have picked up my contrarian views which, I'll admit, are sometimes (oftentimes?) blatant provocations, playing the devil's advocate just for its own sake. And one of the unstated assumptions that underlies this blog (and explains the amount of energy I put into it) is that tv land always has quality, it's not the underachieving wasteland that various cultural sentinels would have you believe it is. Critics who complain about any given year's quality are these dour sentinels, or else they're deluged by the sheer volume of mediocrity that's unavoidable in any medium, and I have little time for their opinions.
That said, I compiled the 10 Best Hours of 2007 with difficulty, though to avoid historical revisionism, I had a hard time doing it last year, too. Part of the reason is that the new shows mostly disappointed (though I swear to God, Reaper delivered on its promise), while the old favorites either stumbled along during Fall 2007 (which piled additional detritus onto the sublimity of Spring 2007 that I had to mentally sort through) (also, the strike didn't help, but we'll probably never know just what could have been if things had been business as usual), or skipped this year altogether, whether by HBO's strategized scheduling practices (you guessed it, The Wire) or because their runs simply ended (Teen Titans, Justice League Unlimited).
And sometimes I'm just behind the curve. Just this year, I've caught up (and I'm still catching up) on no fewer than 5 shows of which I'm now an entrenched fan, and no doubt I'll still be discovering new shows. But for the moment, if I could propose an amended 10 hours from 2006, they'd look something like this (new entrants bolded):
10. Justice League Unlimited, "The Great Brain Robbery" (5x08) 9. Friday Night Lights, "Pilot" (1x01) 8. Survivor: Cook Islands, "People That You Like Want To See You Suffer" (13x10) 7. Heroes, "Fallout" (1x11) 6. Teen Titans, "Things Change" (5x13) 5. Lost, "Live Together, Die Alone" (2x23) 4. Veronica Mars, "Not Pictured" (2x22) 3. Battlestar Galactica, "Resurrection Ship, Part 2" (2x11) 2. America's Next Top Model Cycle 6, "The Girl Who is Going to the Moon" (6x09) 1. The Wire, "Final Grades" (4x13)
Given that almost half of my top 10 of 2006 got turned over, anything I put together for 2007 is destined to be no less temporary. (And let's not forget that we're talking about tv here, that gloriously ephemeral and intangible medium -- at least it was before the DVD, which, like the edenic serpent, introduced to it the death of permanence and respectability, but that's another matter).
But the real reason a list of 10 was hard this year and probably will always be hard is that for all the tv I watch, I don't watch enough to compile awesome episodes from 10 different shows, which is sort of reflected in my year-end music list as well. I don't have enough time to watch that much tv, I don't have cable, I'm afraid of getting hooked on shameless trash (like, say, The OC), I don't believe in the concept of a canon -- whatever combination of these reasons is the case, I don't come close to comprehensiveness, and so if you ever read me saying "this year was a bad year in tv," feel free to launch a projectile of your choice (I suggest: a football) towards my groin.
Which is all to say that the following list is a project of simple vanity. Just because I include certain shows on an arbitrary list doesn't make them more legitimate or better than anything anyone else watches (even if I make claims to the contrary -- remember, I'm an admitted hypocrite). In addition to the vanity, a top 10 lets me reflect on some shows, to work through why I enjoyed them, with perhaps a dash of evangelism for the more ratings-challenged ones.
Finally, I should state that despite the anti-canon equivocations of the preceding paragraphs, the top five includes episodes that sent me into ecstasy -- whether of the unadulterated variety or the kind that involves endorphin-releasing schadenfreude -- enough so that 2007 was a great tv year, however you slice it.
(Nb. I realize that one of the entrants below is actually two hours, but for the sake of symmetry, shut up.)
10. So You Think You Can Dance, Week 1, Top 20 Dancers Perform (3x06; FOX, 6/13/07) The overall talent level, if not the choreography, was exponentially better than years past, and all the promise offered by the dancers was nearly as exciting as anything they actually did. Also, this was kinda hot, and a certain host put the "cat" into "lolcat."
9. Project Runway Canada, "Opposites Attract" (1x06; Slice, 11/12/07) Just as you'd expect, the Canuck version of Runway doesn't have the same bite as its southern cousin since, as we all know, Canadians are scientifically more polite than Yankees, which, when it comes to reality tv, is to sadly blander effect. (I can make this un-PC generalization because I watched an episode -- one whole episode! -- of Canada's Next Top Model.) For instance, Evan Biddell, the show's self-styled heavy, slimmed down from his pre-Runway weight of 300 pounds, then bit off the catchphrase of an infinitely more colorful American Runway contestant. Some heavy!
Yet, the most notable trump card that Runway Maple Leaf holds over Runway Crying Eagle is its host, Iman. While Runway Canada kicked off with as much empty space and personality as the Northwest Territories, Mrs. David Bowie single-handedly raised her version above any stereotypical and expected Canadian blandness. Iman owns the whole show in a way that Heidi -- bless her always-smiling Teutonic femmebotness -- never has. Iman informed the designers of their upcoming challenges and all eyes were of course on her. Her hosting style was uncompromising as she takes her sweet time with her line readings. Where Heidi bids farewell to eliminated contestants with the impersonal "auf Wiedersehen," Iman tells them what's up, "You just didn't measure up." But it was in the sixth episode of the season that she at last decided to utterly dominate the show, letting loose with charisma, humor, and an effortless strength of opinion that is captivating.
In fact, she almost single-handedly raised the show's game at the opening of the show when she reminded everyone that she can still bring the woah:
I haven't seen someone work the shadows like this since Sydney Bristow. It's safe to say that she'll always be an elegant lady.
She also combines my two favorite things: glasses, and white girls.
8. Bones, "Mummy in the Maze" (3x05; FOX, 10/30/07) Even if I never remember the procedural bits, Temperance Brennan makes science and empiricism sexy.
7. John From Cincinnati, "His Visit: Day Five" (1x06; HBO, 7/15/07) The most thrillingly weird moment on TV since the first season finale of Twin Peaks. Prepare yourselves.
Sure, this scene is pure spectacle that pointed to mythological depths at the time but instead opened up a can of worms that ultimately turned out bottomless -- but sometimes payoff is unnecessary. Some things just can't be expressed yet remain beautiful all the same. If you can let yourself be enticed by the unanswerable mystery, the unfettered unknowable, and unbounded possibility, then you'll have stumbled onto the allure of the ineffable. It's a vastness which, if I were the grandiloquent type, I'd call God. (Also if I were a blasphemer.)
Oh, and who can forget this sparkling performance? Camp (albeit unintentional) and weirdness -- John From Cincinnati really is the Twin Peaks for the '00s.
6. Reaper, "The Cop" (1x08; The CW, 11/13/07) Remember how I'm never wrong? Still the best new show of the season. Yes, a lot of Reaper's own viewers have cited the show's uneven tone or its meandering master narrative, but I could barely care less and I'm still not wrong. Look, if I acknowledge every one of my mistakes, that'd make for exceedingly dull reading. Like our own beloved president, never admit to error! So here's how I reason my way out of this quandary: for me, nearly any narrative deficiency can be compensated for by hilarious wit, especially the sophomoric variety, which Reaper has no problem with. As a for instance, peep this. (Start at about 8:30.)
5. Survivor: Fiji, "It's a Turtle!" (14x10; CBS, 4/19/07) In Fiji, the lines drawn in the sand split the would-be survivors into two principle camps: the players I adored -- Yau-Man and Earl -- and the players I hated -- Alex and Mookie, who liked to figuratively flex their muscles and kick sand in the face of slight professor Yau-Man. (There was a third camp, the people I couldn't care less about, but that describes exactly how much energy I want to spend on them.) Alex was a piece of work inside and outside the game, but I loathed Mookie, whose defining moment came two episodes earlier, during a projectiles-throwing challenge, when he ridiculed Yau-Man's unorthodox technique which, of course, had the weight of science behind it as he pwned Mookie (start at about 2:30 for the goods -- don't miss his shock and dismay that a skinny old dude could manage to outperform him). That instant crystallized the jockish presumption that typified Alex and Mookie, and when they thuggishly tried to strategize against Yau-Man and Earl and dubbed themselves (along with Dreamz and Edgardo) something as junior-high pimply as "the Four Horsemen" (of what? Delusionally Inflated Ego and Pathetic Macho Dick-Swinging?), their plans obviously and completely unraveled with the frothiest layer of schadenfreude ever on Survivor. The bad guys don't always get their comeuppance in reality tv -- much less reality qua reality -- but when it does, there's nothing sweeter.
Also, Boo's FLOZ hat is destined to be the enduring mystery of our times.
4. Friday Night Lights, "Mud Bowl" (1x20; NBC, 3/28/07) Season two has made me reconsider the fabled first season's naturalism, which is more accurately Naturalism since the situations so often were larger than life and their consequent outcomes concluded neatly by preternatural maturity (which season two tried to complicate by rolling back and/or conveniently forgetting a lot of character growth). But scratch the substance and you reach the show's real meat, its style. Don't let the vérité influences and flourishes fool you, because they're precisely the point, and did "Mud Bowl" ever bring the ruckus: Of course Dillon was going to win its regular season finale to go on to the State Championship, which would've been predictable and lifeless if the moment was anything less than heart-stopping and epic. A neutral site built days before the game. A torrential storm torn straight from YHWH's Old Testament wrath. Motherfucking Isis. Boys entering the crucible of flooded ash and the annihilation of all ego, and emerging men of character. And a television show transcending the shackles of substance and into the realm of pure aesthetics.
3. Heroes, ".07%" (1x19; NBC, 4/23/07) Wherein Nate loses out on Linderman's pot pie, and the show's nerd quotient goes through the roof. I never plotzed so much.
2. 30 Rock, "Greenzo"/"Somebody to Love" (2x05, 2x06; NBC, 11/8/07, 11/15/07) See what I did there? Together, not only were these two episodes the most riotous consecutive weeks in sitcom history (not even God, if She were a divine comedy Supercomputer with all eternity to write half-hour laff-fests, could come close to the hilarity), but they also add up to one hour! I'm smart, like Al Gore.
1. Veronica Mars, "The Bitch is Back" (3x20; The CW, 5/22/07) Loathe as I am to admit it, the fans were partly right, the third season was the least of the three. Yet for all the foul cries and spurned oaths, Veronica Mars was never a categorically bad show. Season three shifted its method; instead of one grand mystery, the season was split into three abbreviated mystery arcs (though in the end, that last arc got chopped even further into mostly standalone episodes so the CW could look for Pussycat Dolls), and as a result, the show's scope and focus consequently suffered. Not much, mind, but enough to throw fan nation into a frothy spaz.
Yet all that was erased when Veronica Mars and her father Keith became mired in a sex tape and election scandal in the Veronica Mars episode ever. Their fates were never so much in doubt, and the show was never so uncompromisingly urgent, its status quo never so ruthlessly overturned -- all of which would have still applied even if the season finale hadn't officially become the de facto series finale. Leaving the Marses -- heretofore the most self-sufficient and self-composed father-daughter duo ever to grace network tv, I'd gather -- dangling over this network show's most dangerous and uncompromising knife-edge (a show which, on a regular basis, dealt frankly with teen sex, teen drug use, and teen angst) to no resolution was as cruel of a kick in the teeth as the agony that Keith and Veronica suffered.
Just a warning: Next year, if you're still reading and I'm still blogging, expect to see an all-Wire top 10.
I'm a bit surprised that I've taken so long coming up with a Top 10 TV shows, especially because 2006 was a fairly strong year in terms of reality TV plus Veronica Mars (haters can shut it), and that I'm as obsessed with TV as ever. Compare TV to my music geekness, which has abated considerably, though nonetheless I've decided on a moderately stable list of 10 albums:
Special mention goes out to Electrelane's Singles, B-Sides & Live collection.
Anyway, back on the TV front. To cut some suspense, stuff that is totally up my alley -- Justice League Unlimited, Teen Titans, and Battlestar Galactica -- aren't on the list because like a failed nerd, I only started watching their first seasons this year -- I have a feeling that once I get completely caught up, a lot of reality tv would get bumped off this list.
So, without thematizing the entire year (which, if you ask me, is an exercise in futility and arrogance), an ascending list of my favorite hours from 2006 with brief-to-briefish commentary:
10. So You Think You Can Dance, Top 10 Dancers (2x16) The judges were witless annoyances, the reality wasn't narrative-based, and I still don't know a quickstep from a jive, but SYTYCD is the younger, snottier, snappier, and sometimes "edgier" (i.e. including krumping as a style) version of Dancing with the Stars. Clearly, all of the hip-hop styles are on the show to appeal to younger viewers, who would be more familiar with popping-and-locking than fan kicks, but amazingly, the most impressive, sublime moments of the second season of SYTYCD were lyrical, paso doble, and the Cuban rumba, and this episode featured two of these styles. As shallow eye-candy goes, SYTYCD is fluffier (even if the final prize is actual employment for the winner), but as camp as a high-energy disco number, fluffy goes a long way.
9. The Amazing Race, "5 Continents...10 Countries...And More than 59 Thousand Miles!" (9x12) Wherein smelly hippies flex their brains to beat almost heterosexual fratties!
8. Scrubs, "My Transition" (5x18) OK, so Scrubs makes the list 9.5 hours. Add "My Urologist" (5x17) if you're into Dr. Acula. Vampires and absurdist high-comedy -- how could I not love this?
7. Friday Night Lights, "Pilot" (1x01) Friday Night Light perfectly blends the football action with searing melodrama in its first episode. Also: QB1 vs. QB1.
6. Survivor: Cook Islands, "People That You Like Want To See You Suffer" (13x10) Many reviews point to the preceding "Mutiny" episode (where Candice, and then Jonathan, abandoned the Aitu (Survivorese for "hero") Tribe) as the turning point of Cook Islands, since it turned the most likeable contestants Ozzy and Yul, who to that point were among the likeliest contenders to win the game, into underdogs. At the same time, the other tribe, composed of young white kids (& Nate), dared to treat the solemnity of the Survivor as no more than The Real World: Cook Islands, thus earning the contempt of most viewers. (Insert boring tangent about how the white kids, AKA the face of homogenous America, rejected the Protestant Work Ethic, which the two Koreans, a Mexican, a black woman, and a middle-aged Jew were left to pick up.) In other words, "Mutiny" completely deserves its place in Cook Islands lore, but in all of 2006, I don't think that my schadenfreude got as much of a work out as it did when I saw Candice blub because she was surprised that the tribe she betrayed to make out with her show-boyfriend was angry at her.
4. Heroes, "Fallout" (1x11) Lost-lite, but a very candy-coated version that, thus far, doesn't take itself quite as seriously as its progenitor, as summed up by Matt and FBI Girlfriend's telepathic flirting (better known as the awesomest exchange between shippy characters ever).
3. Lost, "Live Together, Die Alone" (2x23) Even though Lost consistently disappoints and frustrates me, the finale to season 2 rates this high almost because it stands out so much from the rest of that tease of a season, much of which was satisfied with maintaining its insular little world as the series became preoccupied with drawing out its status quo. Without answering existing questions, the show introduced new mysteries that were entirely within the parameters of the status quo, and as a result, many viewers felt like they were strung along. But by the finale, Lindelof, Cuse, et al seized the chance to blow up the insular little world they'd created and show us that, yes, another world existed beyond the Island, a world much larger with a whole different vocabulary to describe its own questions. (Unsurprisingly, this outside world has been a non-factor in season 3.)
2. Veronica Mars, "Not Pictured" (2x22) Maybe my taste is questionable (obviously it is with all these reality tv shows), but Veronica Mars was no less enjoyable in its second season than it was in its first. (Caveat: I only saw the mythological episodes that UPN reran during the summer hiatus.) The season finale typified everything I love about the show and even added a cherry on top: snappy and "epic" dialogue that culminated with Logan's impassioned and equally epic speech to V, a reveal that was unexpected but not out of leftfield, and a serious and genuine sense of danger during the climax (which is the cherry, if you're still keeping track).
1. America's Next Top Model Cycle 6, "The Girl Who is Going to the Moon" (6x09) Before this year, I wouldn't have listed a recap episode at all, much less rank it this high, mostly because it's simply a summary of what's happened so far in a show's season. However, I picked a recap episode is because if it would stand in for the whole season, and I otherwise would've listed multiple episodes of Cycle 6. But "The Girl Who is Going to the Moon" also helped me realize two benefits of recap episodes. The first: "deleted" scenes that offered hilarity -- Joanie doing her Furonda impression, Danielle and Joanie rapping in the kitchen, etc. The second: it allows viewers like me, who originally couldn't stand Jade's mentalism, to revisit such classics as, "This is not America's Next Top Best Friend." The difference between the first time I heard her inanity and the second time were was Joanie and Danielle had both been built up into protagonists who could face (or play) off against Jade. As long as Jade was a credible threat to win, and without any frontrunning girls to keep her winning, I couldn't enjoy her Sister Soldier antics; but when Joanie and Danielle became the prohibitive favorites to reach the top two, I could safely dwelve into Jade's analystic mind.
