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."
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.
With the WGA strike threatening to wipe out the second half of this season, you might be thinking just how to amuse yourself during the interim. I'm here to tell you that you can think no more! Below is the story that the network did not want you to see! Read at your own peril!
BROTHERLY LOVE: THE TRUE STORY OF NATHAN AND PETER PETRELLI A Story in 13 Panels
At its core, Heroes is a fringe cult-show that somehow became a monster hit, but now that the show is slow out of the starting gate, the citizens (that's what us nerds call the lot of you) are jumping off the bandwagon with righteous ire and lamenting the lost halcyon first season and its impeccable thrills. But now I bring nothing less than Promethean Fire to burn away that golden-hued nostalgia: the first season was as flawed as this season has been (and as I've said before, the series succeeded because of its flaws, or at least owed its charm to them, not in spite of them).
Heroes debuted with what I hold was a wretched pilot: horribly paced, laughably shallow characters, ponderously stilted dialogue, enormous plot holes (e.g. when Hiro entered loft the loft of a freshly Sylared Isaac, why did the time-manipulator pick up the gun at the scene of an obvious murder?), and general implausibility. The second episode wasn't much better, and I was on the verge of dropping the show when for whatever reason I gave it one more chance. I didn't expect much, and gave only 60% of my attention to the third episode, when two things happened. First, "One Giant Leap" really was a giant leap in quality, wherein the show found its excuse (e.g. fighting Sylar) for outrageous and often corny spectacles playing fast and loose with the show's continuity. Second, I readjusted both my expectations and the way I watched the series -- instead of expecting to watch a show that's put together well in a classical sense (naturalistic dialogue, adherence to in-show continuity, at least a token attempt at psychological/physical plausibility), I accepted the fact that Heroes was and is at its heart frothy entertainment.
All that being said, "The Kindness of Strangers" exhibited glimpses of life again, maybe because Sylar killed somebody. You see, death makes life more precious! Also, now that we've got the first glimpse of a narrative that might actually move some place. (Parkman's dad? The Bogeyman?!)
To make an easy analogy, the Heroes viewership over time relates to the show in a similar way to the viewership of Lost -- an exciting genre show meets phenomenal success in its debut season, the press and fans hype it up as one of TV's golden geese, the show believes the hype and, in a bid for Serious Show-hood in its second season, favors the solemn, po-faced storytelling that in mainstream cultural consciousness signifies Important Art while at the same time suppressing or eliminating the pulpiness that made the show such an exhilarating experience in the first place. As a paradoxical consequence, the show sheds all but its most hardened fans (read: nerds). While Lost has lost (hurr hurr) a lot of its pop cachet, Heroes -- only four episodes into its second season -- still has time to avoid a parallel obsolescence of its spiritual predecessor.
The scenes between Claire and West, on their own, were inane enough that the editors/directors needed to amp them up with a vertigo-inducing surfeit of EDGY and COOL camera angles. No, the usual shot/reverse shot camerawork wasn't good enough, they had to shoot the scene from about half a dozen different angles -- take me on my word, I don't recommend watching the scene again.
I'll give West some credit, though -- he's singlehandedly keeping the Heroes streak of horrible hair growth alive.
Just a brief prognosticatory note: Hiro and Kensei are going to become enemies over Yaeko; Kensei bears a grudge for almost 440 years until the our favorite ("favorite") supers, now without a Hiro in the bunch, are vulnerable to getting killed!
Indie rating: Stereolab – Animal or Vegetable (A Wonderful Wooden Reason)
I've written about the loose narrativeness of Heroes before (which was an apologia for the sputtering climax of the finale), but I like to repeat myself (especially when I don't have much new to say), and moreover, I think I'm justified in revisiting and refining what I observed in "How to Stop an Exploding Man" by this young season so far. The upshot: Heroes is as purely about the moment as a serialized drama can get.
Which of course begs the question, "WTF?" To expand a little bit: Even though last season had the Sylar-arc and this season has its new bogeyman, both of which lurked over and supposedly defined nearly everything that goes on in the show, the season-long (pseudo)narratives mask the how unnarrative the show is. Rather, the real bread and butter of Heroes is the spectacle, the unnarratorial moment loosed from logic or continuity or expectation. Hiro disarming the renegade samurai, or Claire frakking cutting off toe, or the like, those moments bring joy to the series, not necessarily answers to persistent questions like "Who Is Nu-Bogeyman?" or "Who is Linderman?" Taking the latter question for example, did it matter so much that Linderman was a geezer with vague healing powers, or that he was stingy with his pot pie when Nathan didn't want to play ball with him? In the long-run, I vote the latter, as should you. On a far more trivial scale, I actually find Ricky's "Oirish" accent endearing, because it has the silly, amateurish, unserious vibe of continuity-light Silver Age comics, which means, uh oh, ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, like it or not, you're nerds for liking this show.
But if a show is predicated on awesome spectacle, well, it needs to deliver awesome spectacle. (I'm just now realizing that since this show's strengths lie with the SNIKTS and KABOOMS as well as the JUMPING OUT OF THIRD-STORY WINDOWS, you can reasonably argue that the stupid fight between Sylar and the Heroes was actually kind of stupid.) As of this writing, the series is still mapping out the foundations of the various character arcs, which, unfortunately, is work that's entrenched in the narrative mode and which Heroes is plainly not very good at. So as long as it's busy psychologizing Claire's desire to not blend in with the crowd, or shading the contours of Mr. Bennet's Resistance Group, the show is going to be pedestrian. Cutting Claire open isn't enough spectacle to rekindle my nerdlust for this show.
So remember when I praised the season 1 finale for how adeptly it flouted proper storytelling conventions? The second season premiere flouted proper storytelling conventions, but without half the breathless élan of the S1 finale. Even ignoring the fact that the premiere has to refrain from awesomeness of the revelatory type, "Four Months Later" did little more than trot out a litany of cliches dressed up as characters, some new, some old. Granted, Heroes has never been a stranger to cliche -- even generic, non-superhero cliches -- but the premiere didn't leaven it with levity or throw Claire out of a third-story (or whatever) window. Let's count them off, shall we?
Amnesia
Selfish and venal "hero" needs to learn how to become honorable and boring stuff of legend
Mohinder lectures to disinterested and sparse crowd
Teenager can't follow directions, only hormones/desire to show up head cheerleader
Jessica/Niki annoying
All that's missing is a cute meet...
Never mind... though with that haircut, I'd call it a fug meet.
The concept of Heroes was never fresh; what was fresh was the nerdy glee with which it executed the concept, but with "Four Months Later," even the execution was heartless, artless, and empty.
But lest I sound unrepentantly harsh, I didn't hate "Four Months Later" like I hated the first three episodes of season 1; I'd give this episode a passing grade, something around a gentleman's C+. Notwithstanding the lowish but passable mark, there were still moments that I enjoyed. The Parkman/Mohinder ménage was cute, and I loved Molly Parkman Parker's newfound precocity, which made me wonder if she's played by a Fanning. (Answer: No.) Also, no Jessica/Niki, DL, or Micah is yet another point in the episode's favor. Speaking of the lad, my hope is that this season's heavy -- presumably the guy who charged Papa Nakamura :( -- is Micah on stilts, and that we'll have the Showdown of the 11-Year-Olds between him and Molly come the finale.
I'm also looking forward to making high-concept jokes about how Veronica Mars was able to solve all those cases because she's actually a mutant.
(Bennet helps Peter up from off the street) Peter: Thanks, man. Bennet: Please, call me Mr. Bennet.
The moment Hiro ran Sylar through with a sword, you could feel the sweat flying off of the nerds sprinting to the nearest Internets and complain about the finale. They dismissed the "lame and anticlimactic ending" because it lacked the setpiece slobber-knocking showdown between Peter and Sylar that Heroes seemingly teased for the entire second half of the season; but what's more, their complaints overshadow the entire episode, which is in fact close to a classic.
The secret to this show is to realize that it's not a teleological narrative (i.e. a narrative that drives towards a final outcome), and its strength lies in the spectacular style and flair through which the stories are told. Non-comics readers might not be acclimated to this sort of narrative, though; comics, especially longform serial titles, are endless iterations of story arcs that oftentimes traffic in EPIC BATTLES FOR THE FATE OF THE WORLD, again and again, so by the time you've read a story where the world is saved after some monumental struggle for the nth time, you start to realize that the resolution is less important than how we got there, a "how we got there" filled with frankly unnarrative treasures. While I'm disappointed that there wasn't a gnarly setpiece between Sylar and Peter or the rest of the good guys, the relative lameness of the climax illustrates how Heroes at its best bypasses the very notion of an authoritarian, plot-driven narrative -- and the finale WAS FRAKKING AWESOME YOU DORKS -- to set up a new narrative iteration that functions as a vehicle for spectacular thrills.
The exemplar of the authoritarian, teleological narratives is of course Lost, where every detail, incidental or overdetermined alike, could be a clue to unraveling the single figure that dominates the show's very existence: What's up with the Island? Everything in Lost serves the Mystery in what could be called the dictatorship of the Mystery.
But for all of its mind-swerves, Lost remains predictably unpredictable. The show relies on an unchanging structural formula of the Mystery: the Lost narrative sets up a question, then another question, and then a third and a fourth question, then offers a non-answer to the first that begs a new question and yet another new question, and then a polar bear. As a result, after 3 seasons of this formula, viewers know to expect some kind of twist -- just not its specific details. So even when Walt reappears out of the blue to tell gut-shot Locke to get up from the pit of Dead Dharma, Lost is missing a sense of awe and wonderment. Viewers expect the unexpected.
Not so with Heroes. Which is to say: Enough about Lost.
Where plot presupposes linear progress and rationalism, Heroes suspends formalist rules -- just as Hiro suspends time and space -- in favor of the simple and pure joy of the spectacle: the cheese that tickles the geek, the occasional setpiece to appeal to everyone, and the flying effects which create a sense of primal awe.
In "How to Stop an Exploding Man," the plot, in all of its teleological trappings, didn't so much climax or explode as crawl unseen into the sewer (so we're lead to believe). Instead, the joy of the episode shrugs off rationalism and narrative in favor of heroic spectacles that awe the viewer through sheer, astonishing audacity and humor that celebrates geek culture. Throughout the series, when we behold Claude the Invisible, Nakamura père, Charles Deveaux, or Linderman, we break the insularity of the narrative because we see more than their characters, we forget the plot fleetingly to exclaim, "Look! It's Dr. Who, Sulu, Shaft, or Dr. Soran, or I mean Alex!"
Like Claire leaping through a third-story window, these flourishes momentarily break the rationalism that permeates the quotidian -- the streets of NYC, in reality suffocated by pedestrians and traffic, are completely barren in the finale to let the Heroes get where they need to be. And with them we viewers are moved -- in all senses of the word -- unfettered by rationalism, into an ineffable timelessness.
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.
I've said a number of times in various media that Heroes is the only show that I consider a guilty pleasure of mine (i.e. I take Top Modelvery seriously). Heroes is a guilty pleasure because I can't ignore how badly some characters annoy me in particular and how it often it falls squarely into cliched conventionality (in dialogue and in plot (who didn't already know that Sylar was going to bust out at the beginning of this episode? And that by the time Eden was going to take matters into her own hands, she'd be the reason he got out?)). But sometimes, those conventions tap straight into my nerd pulse: Time traveller who joyfully riffs on old Spider-Man quotations? Episodes that end on cliffhangers after actually resolving a prior (if minor) plot arc? I'm sold (even if you could debate the second point).
Easily, my favorite scene from "Fallout" was psychic cop Matt and FBI Girlfriend Audrey sitting in the cruiser -- "Actually he's kind of cute," she thinks to herself. "Oh god, did he just hear that?" TOO CUTE.
Second favorite scene was Eden's swansong. Obviously anyone who reads comics could tell what a boner she was about to pull (and of course, Heroes creator Tim Kring doesn't read comics), but at least she had the guts brain matter to shoot herself before Sylar could make with the slice 'n dice. Still, I wonder why Sylar couldn't have scooped up the bits of Eden's sprayed gray matter, make brain tacos or something.
In truth, Eden's scene wasn't my second favorite scene, I just wanted to make some jokes. My real second-favorite scene is anything with Hiro in it.
