THE BEST OF 2019 - The Best TV Of The Year

THE BEST OF 2019 - The Best TV Shows of The Year

- So, wow - it's the end of the year, the end of the decade, the end of the world (almost! maybe?!) - and so, as is tradition, I'm here to provide my list of the best of this past year in a number of pop-culture categories - starting with TV. I'll preface by saying that, in the interest of HOW MUCH there is to talk about - we've got best-of-2019 posts, BEST OF THE DECADE (!) posts, etc. - I'm going to aim for brevity in each of this year's Best-Of blog posts. I know, going against my very nature ... but hey: evolve or die, people.

So let's talk TV. 2019 was again a year of WAY TOO MUCH TV. Streaming services everywhere, each with tons of CONTENT ... so much of it seemingly aimed specifically at me. I mean, man, I remember the days when young sci-fi nerd me had basically *one* good show to watch (The X-Files) and a couple of not-as-good shows. Now, there's a whole DC Universe streaming platform with nothing but DC Comics shows and THAT DOESN'T EVEN INCLUDE WATCHMEN. Sorry for shouting so much ... I have a lot of pent-up blogging in me that has been screaming to get out. But yeah, there was a time, not that long ago, where I felt like I could reasonably watch pretty much all of the good stuff. Well folks, that day is now very much in the past. I've only just started Succession. I've not yet seen Bojack (it's on my list ... but, man, my list is super long ...). I am but one man, and I can only watch so much.

2019 did, I think, feel like the end of an era though. Game of Thrones was the last great water-cooler TV show. With that having ended, we're left with a lot of content that nobody is watching at the same time. It's a constant state of "no spoilers, please." It's kind of sad. It's so funny though how it's weirdly refreshing that The Mandolorian on Disney Plus is doing one episode per week - it's great. Please get on the bandwagon, Netflix and Amazon. Great pop-culture is meant to be carefully consumed and digested. It needs time to simmer. There needs to be that weekly period of speculation and discussion and theorizing and debate. If we do fully lose that, then I think we will have lost an essential element of the peak Peak TV era that may now be sunsetting. On a similar note, 2019 was also a year of a lot of *very, very good* shows but few truly great ones. The 2018 end of The Americans left a bit of a void, I think. Nothing this year got me quite as hyped as the final season of that all-time classic. But a few things did come close ...



DANNY'S TOP TV SHOWS OF 2019:



1. MR. ROBOT

- Season 1 of Mr. Robot was lightning in a bottle. It was an incredible season of TV ... but the show couldn't quite sustain that momentum through Seasons 2 and 3. But man, the fourth and final season of this mind-bending, twisty, punk-rock show somehow re-captured that lightning. Mr. Robot - like main character Elliot Alderson - could sometimes have multiple personalities. Was it a cyber-thriller? A meditation on mental health and the suffocating pressures of the modern world? A Lynchian mind-%$&#? A meta-narrative about reality vs. fiction? Well, Season 4 struck the perfect balance between all of those things - delivering pulse-pounding intrigue, deep dives down the rabbit hole that is Elliot's mind, and jaw-dropping twists that turned the entire series on its head - making us question everything that had come before. The hype is real about how good Rami Malek was on this show - he gave a captivating, often surreal performance that went to some very deep and very dark places. Christian Slater was similarly great as Elliot's "protector" - the role of a lifetime for one of my favorite-ever actors. Carly Chaikin as Darlene was the unsung star of the series - a punk rock icon who gave the show its sardonic, badass edge. And Portia Doubleday was similarly great as Angela, the girl next door who increasingly became a tragic figure - lost to the tidal wave of Evil. And, oh, I of course have to mention BD Wong as White Rose - an enigmatic villain with a mesmerizing backstory. What an all-time great final episode this show delivered. What a crazy ride it was.


2. FOSSE/VERDON

- In college, a screenwriting professor had us all watch Bob Fosse's autobiographical film All That Jazz. It blew me away, and really opened my mind towards movies that I might have previously considered outside of my comfort zone. So I was really eager to see this new take on the Fosse story, and I was not disappointed. The series got better with each episode. It had capitol "A" ACTING from Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams. It brilliantly weaved back and forth in time and painted an incredibly affecting picture of two creative partners who were both the best and worst things in each others lives.


3. VERONICA MARS

- "A long time ago, we used to be friends ..." - and a long time ago, Veronica Mars was one of TV's most underrated cult-classics-in-the-making. It was an ahead-of-its time mystery series with razor-sharp wit, expertly-plotted mysteries, a kick-ass cast of characters, and one hell of a theme song to boot. Cut to years later - and, amazingly, the show is back - via Hulu - and delivers its best season since the seminal S1. This return to the neo-noir beachfront town of Neptune, CA had it all - a multi-layered mystery, expertly-penned banter, satisfying character arcs for new and old faces a like, and some truly jaw-dropping moments that left me stunned. It was great having V Mars back in 2019.


4. THE RIGHTEOUS GEMSTONES

- I long ago became a full-fledged member of the cult of Danny McBride, Jody Hill, and David Gordon Green. These guys have produced some of the most brilliantly ridiculous and hilariously dark comedy of the last fifteen years - from The Foot Fist Way, to Eastbound & Down, to Vice Principals, and now ... The Righteous Gemstones. This is just a wickedly funny satirical look at a family of evangelical celebrity preachers - that dares to go places that no one else but this warped trio would go to. Few comedies are able to truly shock me, but McBride, Hill, and Green never fail to leave my jaw on the floor.


5. FLEABAG

- How to describe Fleabag to the uninitiated? It's sort of like Curb Your Enthusiasm, but more female, way more British, far less improvised (i.e. not improvised), and with a much deeper emotional core. Okay, so maybe the Curb comparison doesn't 100% work. So really, you just have to watch it. You just have to realize that it's writer and star Phoebe Waller Bridge putting her biting sense of humor and knack for great characters on your TV screen. It's a character getting into ridiculous situations and then getting out of them in brilliantly hilarious ways. It's just really, really good and I highly recommend it. 


6. WATCHMEN

-The funny thing is ... it took me a good couple of episodes to warm up to Watchmen. I mean, it's Watchmen! Only a pseudo-sequel to the greatest comic book ever written, on HBO, with a big budget and top-notch cast and ... I mean, if this wasn't an immediate A+ ... And it took a little while, but by the time we got to Episode 6 - a stunning flashback episode that took one of Alan Moore's biggest comic book mysteries and re-invented in a surprising and jaw-dropping fashion - well, I was all-friggin'-in. Watchmen took a little time to find its footing, but the back half of the season delivered one holy-$%&#-this-is-good episode after another. And as a bonus, the show was a super-cool experiment in multimedia storytelling, with the Peteypedia website dropping weekly bits of series lore that were a legitimately awesome supplement to the episodes. I know Alan Moore can't be proud - but he should be.


7. TRUE DETECTIVE

- I know that S2 of True Detective lost a lot of people (me included), but I'm glad I gave S3 a shot at the beginning of the year. The show got its groove back, delivering a gritty American Gothic mystery that harkened back to the superlative first season. S3 was brimming with atmosphere, danger, suspense - and anchored by two incredible lead performances from leads Mahershala Ali and (in what has to be his best turn ever) Stephen Dorff. The show used the first season's time-jumping conceit to great effect, creating an epic, decade-spanning mystery that kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end.


8. BROOKLYN NINE-NINE

-Don't call it a comeback. Saved from cancellation hell by a last-minute NBC pick-up, B99 was back and better than ever in 2019. Somehow, the show seems to improve with age - the writing just keeps getting sharper, the cast's chemistry keeps getting better, and the show, somehow, was totally hitting its stride in Season 6. It's seriously a national travesty that the great Andre Braugher has not yet won an Emmy for his work on this show. He's made Captain Holt into one of the greatest and funniest sitcom characters of all time.


9. CHERNOBYL

- Well, I was late to the game on this one ... but, no question, Chernobyl is just a masterful piece of storytelling. It's also one of the scariest and most disturbing piece of content I consumed in 2019 - painting a downright nightmarish picture of one of the most dangerous man-made disasters in history. The cast is excellent. The writing is really smart. And it speaks a lot to modern day issues -  showing how denial of the truth in the name of pride and politics can lead to catastrophic disaster.


10. THE SOCIETY

- An underrated gem of 2019, The Society may have come off like just another YA sci-fi series, but it had - seriously! - some of the best and craziest and most jaw-dropping storytelling of any TV show this year. The Society was Lord of the Flies meets Lost meets The West Wing - a teen drama that dared to go dark, to get political, to give us some of the best and most binge-worthy cliffhangers of any show I've seen in years. Netflix is churning out so many series these days that it's hard to keep track - too many get lost in the shuffle. But don't let that happen with The Society. This is one of Netflix's best.


The Next Best:


11. BARRY

-  Barry is a show about an assassin who just wants to be an actor ... and somehow, it works. It's funny and also intense and also often just insanely entertaining. When I think about Season 2 of Barry, I mostly keep coming back to its fifth episode ... aka one of the craziest episodes of TV I've ever seen. In it, Barry runs afoul of a seemingly ordinary suburban dad, who turns out to be a low-key Taekwondo master. The two proceed to have an episode-length battle across town that just escalates and escalates and produces insane moment after insane moment. It's a perfect encapsulation as to why Barry is the bomb.


12. GAME OF THRONES

- I could write pages upon pages about Game of Thrones' epic, flawed, controversial final season. But I'll say this: while I didn't love how it ended, I great enjoyed the journey to get there. I don't know ... this show became so big and had so many moving parts that it was hard for me to look at with too over-critical of an eye. What I mean is: it was clear going into the final season that the show had *a lot* of ground to cover in a very short time, and that we were going to be getting the big story beats - one after another - rather than the deep dives and methodical plotting we'd at times gotten from the show previously. And those big story beats gave us, I think, some all-timer moments. I mean ... Arya by-god Stark and The Night King. Classic. Epic. Applause-worthy. The final season gave us a couple more of those big moments that no show did better than this show.


13. THE MANDALORIAN

- The Mandalorian just really, really works for me. If Star Wars (especially the OG trilogy) is in many ways a space-western, then The Mandalorian doubles down - giving us a classic stoic cowboy hero who rides into town after town, reluctantly serving up some old-fashioned justice. Except this cowboy wears space-armor, travels from planet to planet, and protects Baby by-god Yoda from all manner of scum and villainy. The series has had some flat episodes, but man, when it works it works - and it delivers some endearingly old-fashioned one-and-done storytelling with a Star Wars tinge. And also: that score! Amazing.


14. BROAD CITY

-  What a great final season Broad City had - including but not limited to one of the best final episodes of a TV comedy I've ever seen. Funny and heartwarming and with a lot to say about growing up and adulting and the entire Millennial experience, Broad City went out on a high note that cemented it as one of the defining comedies of this decade.


15. BIG MOUTH

- Big Mouth takes perverse glee in being as filthy as any show has ever been, ever. But what makes this lovingly gross look at the trials and tribulations of puberty so good is that: a.) it's really really smart, b.) it's really really funny, and c.) at it's core, it's one of the most painfully truthful looks at adolescence ever put to screen. Some of the show's biggest laughs come from its most absurd and out-there moments, but what keeps me binge-ing is what lies beneath (cue the Hormone Monster making a snappy joke at my expense).


16. THE HANDMAID'S TALE

-  Season 3 of Hulu's signature series started out, well, pretty slow. But in its second half, it got really really good and took the series into some very dramatic places. June is now a full-blown freedom fighter, and her underground railroad of sorts leading kids out of Gilead led to an emotionally-packed season. Similarly, the rising tensions between Serena and Fred reaches a boiling point - and it's fascinating to see the two at odds. I definitely wouldn't mind if the overall pace of the show picks up in S4 - but there's no doubt it delivered some scary-good drama in S3.


17. THE GOOD PLACE

- At some point, the weighty plot of The Good Place became, perhaps, a bit overwhelming - and the jokes suffered for it. But even so, The Good Place remained (and remains, until its series finale in early 2020!) one of the best overall comedies of the last ten years. There were meditations about morality, incredibly-quotable dialogue, and a killer cast. It's going to feel like we're all in The Bad Place when this one is gone.


18. CRASHING

- An underrated series through and through, HBO's Crashing channeled the humor of comedian Pete Holmes into a very funny, surprisingly deep series about one man's journey through the wild and crazy world of stand-up comedy. Crashing was up and down in S2, but 2019's third and final season was consistently great - bringing the fictionalized Pete's story to a messy yet satisfying end.


19. THE DARK CRYSTAL: AGE OF RESISTANCE

- This unlikely prequel to the 80's Jim Henson kid-movie classic was a visually-stunning, unabashedly geeky, whimsical adventure that was a delight to watch through and through. The show picked up as it went - once a lot of the complex world-building was out of the way, it could focus on just being a good, old-fashioned bit of epic fantasy fun. And again, the visuals were flat-out eye-popping - the combination of muppetry and CGI creating a world unlike any other we've seen on TV.


20. THE BOYS

- The Boys took one of the most insane, darkly-satirical comic books I've ever read and, amazingly, gave us one hell of an adaptation. This look at superheroes-gone-wrong maintained the in-your-face tone of the original Garth Ennis comics, while also updating the characters a bit to be relevant for 2019. The result was one of the best Amazon series to date.


21. DEADLY CLASS

- Let me pour one out for this sadly cut-short series that, had it not been prematurely cancelled, could have become one of the all-time greats. This stylish adaptation of the Rick Remender comic book series - about a school for young assassins - did a fantastic job of bringing the book's punk-rock sensibilities to the screen. The cast was uber-talented, the storytelling was compelling, and the soundtrack rocked and rocked hard. Oh what might have been.


22. RICK & MORTY

- This would probably be higher on the list if we'd gotten more than the handful of episodes we got in 2019, but I will say that this pop-cult phenom came out firing on all cylinders at the end of 2019 - with a string of amazing episodes that showcased the series' spot-on humor and intense commitment to never skimping on the sci-fi. The hype for this show can sometimes get out of control, but in many ways it's well-deserved. There's nothing else on TV like Rick & Morty.


TIE: 23. STRANGER THINGS

- I had mixed feelings about Season 3 of Stranger Things, but ultimately, it comes down to that final big moment where the theme song of The Neverending Story saves the day. I mean, that alone ... that's the kind of thing that Stranger Things does so well. It's nostalgia, it's childhood wonder, it's fan-service, it's ridiculous - it's the kind of stuff that, when done right, I'm a huge sucker for. And there was enough done right in S3 that I couldn't help but continue to geek out for Stranger Things.

TIE: 23. BLACK MIRROR

- The abridged Season 5 of Black Mirror didn't quite live up to the series at its best, but it still delivered some pretty cool, thought-provoking installments. I thought "Striking Vipers," the episode about two men who find companionship via a VR videogame, was really well done. It smartly examined modern masculinity, and intriguingly explored the possibilities of reinventing and finding oneself in a virtual world. I also really liked "Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too" - the Miley Cyrus episode about a pop star replaced by an AI designed to approximate her. This was a fun and surprisingly poignant episode. Black Mirror has raised the bar so high - but it's still an absolute must-watch.


24. SILICON VALLEY

- The final season of Mike Judge's tech-world satire was, IMO, a return to form for a series that, at times, seemed to go to the same wells over and over again. But with the end of the series' run in sight, Judge and co. delivered a tighter, higher-stakes, and more consequential narrative than we've seen from SV in a while - including a fantastic final episode that picked up ten years later with an Office-style mockumentary. Overall, the final season just felt funnier and more energized - and it served as a reminder that, when on its game, Silicon Valley was one of the best comedies of the decade.


25. THE GOLDBERGS

- You know what? Give it up for the Goldbergs. The show had one of its funniest seasons ever with Season 6, with some truly on-point joke-writing and some deceptively emotional moments. The Goldbergs might be a little old-fashioned in its sensibilities, but it's old-fashioned in the best way possible - it's sitcom comfort food that mixes spot-on pop-culture references with very good joke writing and the occasional, sneakily-heartwarming moment to boot. 


Just Missed the Cut:

- Russian Doll
- G.L.O.W.
- Doom Patrol
- Swamp Thing
- His Dark Materials
- Good Omens
- The Umbrella Academy
- The Other Two
- Riverdale
- American Horror Story: 1984
- Documentary Now


INDIVIDUAL AWARDS:


The Best TV Heroes of 2019:


1.) Elliot and Darlene Alderson -Mr. Robot

2.) Arya Stark - Game of Thrones

3.) Sister Night - Watchmen

4.) The Mandalorian - The Mandalorian

5.) Veronica Mars - Veronica Mars



The Best TV Villains of 2019:


1.) The Homelander - The Boys

2.) Whiterose - Mr. Robot

3.) Aunt Lydia -The Handmaid's Tale

4.) Campbel -The Society

5.) Ms. Coulter - His Dark Materials



The Best TV Anti-Heroes of 2018:


1.) Barry Berkman - Barry

2.) Billy the Butcher -The Boys

3.) Saya - Deadly Class

4.) Crowley - Good Omens

5.) Adrien Veidt - Watchmen