Tag Archives: 30 Rock

Ranking the Shows I Watch – 2014 Edition: The Outcasts

14 Jan

Breaking Bad

It’s time for an annual beginning-of-the-year tradition over here at Drug of the Nation, the ranking of the shows I’ve watched during the previous year. This is my fourth annual ranking, and I’ll repeat the caveat I placed atop last year’s ranking introduction:

Because the TV season is no longer the fall-to-spring trajectory that it used to be, I arbitrarily rank things on a calendar basis, and that leads to strange situations where I’m occasionally ranking the end of one season and the beginning of the next season in the same ranking. It’s strange, and not ideal, but I have to pick some point in the year to do the rankings, so I’ll roll with the punches and mention within the article if there was a significant change in quality one way or the other between the end and beginning of seasons covered in the same year.

I’m only ranking shows I watched all of or just about all of the episodes that aired last year; if I’m just two or three behind I’ll rank it, but if I’ve only seen two or three, I won’t. I’m ranking three episode mini-British seasons but not shows with one-off specials (Black Mirror’s Christmas special is the most notable example this year) . These rules are arbitrary, admittedly, but any rules would be. No daily variety programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are eligible either.

The rankings this year were incredibly difficult, and a generally weak fall slate of TV shows had me forgetting just what an utterly strong year on the whole 2014 had been for television. I was forced to put shows I liked a lot towards the bottom of these rankings, and unlike previous years, there are just about no shows on this list that I’m one bad episode away from stopping, or that I’m just stringing out due to past loyalty until they finish. It’s absolutely brutal, and although I was forced to make tough choices, that doesn’t mean I don’t genuinely enjoy just about every show on this list. TV is that good, folks.

We start, as last year, with the shows that made last year’s list but didn’t make this year’s for one reason of another. This year these are almost entirely because they ended or didn’t air in the calendar year, so I’ll just run through them quickly, with some additional notes about the few that didn’t fall off due to simply not airing last year. This year I’m going to additionally throw in where a show ranked last year for context.

Here’s a quick link to last year’s final ranking as well. Now, on to the outcasts…

Breaking Bad – 2013: 1

Treme – 2013: 4

Eagleheart – Last year: 6

30 Rock – Last year: 10

Venture Bros. – 2013: 12

Top of the Lake – 2013: 15

Arrested Development – 2013: 17

Childrens Hospital – 2013: 21

Broadchurch – 2013: 23

Happy Endings – 2013: 24

NTSF: SD: SUV – 2013: 31

Black Mirror – 2013: 36

Family Tree  2013: 37

Siberia – 2013: 38

Luther – 2013: 45

The Office – 2013: 46

Dexter – 2013: 48

Enlightened – 2013: 6.5 (Initially, an embarrassingly mistaken omission)

Ben and Kate – 2013: 23.5 (Initially, an embarrassingly mistaken omission)

Take a deep breath. All of these shows did not air in 2014, so that’s the simple explanation why they’re not on the list. Many of these shows ended, Top of the Lake was a miniseries, several have extended offseasons and will be back in 2015 or later, and a couple are in extended hiatus, waiting to see whether they will return or not (looking at you, NTSF: SD: SUV). Easy enough.

Homeland – 2013: 41

Homeland

After a season and a half of utter frustration with the show’s inconsistency at best, and downright lousy and lazy writing at worst, I cut the cord, deciding not to watch the fourth season after a third season that really was not a very good season of television. People have told me the fourth season is better, and if a critical consensus emerges I’ll consider coming back, but I’m not that close to it. I got so sick of the show and Carrie and Brody in particular; if I had cut out earlier, I might have been more easily convinced to come back. It’ll always have an absolutely all-time first season, and is worthy fo remembering just for that, reminiscent of an athlete like Mark Fidrych who blows away the league in his first season only to never do anywhere close to the same again.

Under the Dome – 2013: 47

 

Under the Dome

Oof. Under the Dome’s first season makes the third season of Homeland look like the fourth season of Breaking Bad. It’s still stunning to me that I made it almost to the end of the first season (I never actually watched the season finale; either with only one left, I couldn’t bring myself to). The plot was incredibly stupid, the acting was generally pretty bad, and the characters were horrible. It’s hard to imagine a time when it could have been decent, but alas, a sneakily bad show is bound to end up getting watched sometimes when you watch so many shows.

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30 Rock and the Ravages of Sitcom Incest

10 May

Jack and LizDuring the course of its run, I sometimes felt 30 Rock, while a very good show, was overhyped, stealing all the love and awards from some other deserving comedies running during the same time.  However, when the hype quieted down, I found my impression of the show went up, especially as it put in an exemplary final season.

There’s lots to like about the show, but the aspect I’d like to focus on today is how they treated romantic relationships of the two main characters.  First, I’d like to congratulate the show on having the guts to have the two stars be an unrelated man and woman that viewers have absolutely no doubt will never get together.  That’s great.  In 99% of shows, we’d be expecting at some point in the show’s run, Jack and Liz would at least hook up, if not more.  In 30 Rock, not only do they not, but there’s not even a worry that they will.  They just don’t have that kind of relationship.  That in itself, even though it sounds simple, is bold and daring for a sitcom.  It seems like the sitcom handbook says that these shows thrive on sexual tension between leads, and 30 Rock, said, fuck that.

Even more than that, 30 Rock avoids the greater plague of sitcom incest that pervades almost every other non-family based sitcom on Earth.  What I mean is that, every show has a small pool of main characters, and on most shows, that means these characters have to hook up amongst themselves and form relationships, permanently and/or repeatedly.  This has happened for decades.  In Friends, the formative show based around, well, friends (as opposed to family or workplace), from way back in the 1990s, Ross and Rachel had their chemistry right from the start, and then Chandler and Monica had to get together.  Two of my favorite current comedies suffer from this syndrome.  In New Girl, within two seasons, four of the five main characters have gotten into serious relationships with one another, Nick and Jess, and Schmidt and Cece (poor Winston).  In Parks and Recreation, Ben and Leslie are now married, Chris and Ann are back a relationship, and Andy and April are married, while Tom dated Ann for an uninspired and weird stretch a season ago.  In the recently finished The Office, sure, Jim and Pam were the central couple of the show, but Dwight got with Angela, Erin with Andy and then Pete, Ryan and Kelly, and so it goes.  Throw at least six sitcom characters against the wall, and it’s almost certain some of them will get together with one another.

I don’t actually write this to say that this is necessarily a bad thing, and the urge to make this happen from a writer’s point of view is understandable.  These are the characters who viewers know the best, so that it has the greatest emotional impact when they get together with one another. These are the relationships the fans are often rooting for, and you can get mileage out of will they/won’t they, and general sexual tension building throughout the show.  In addition, when these actors work together for seasons, it’s a fairly likely possibility that a couple of them will generate a chemistry that maybe even the writers didn’t anticipate beforehand.

Still, 30 Rock, in contrast, said, fuck that, and I applaud that.  Jack and Liz had many romantic interests through the show, but never with cast members, and that didn’t at all stop Criss and Liz’s wedding and adaptions in the final season from being inspiring and gratifying emotional moments.  I was invested in all (at the least most) of the relationships Jack and Liz engaged in, and there were several great ones, without the concern that I knew they had to end because Liz and Jack had to end up with someone on the show or each other eventually.  Not only did Jack and Liz not get together with coworkers, nobody did.  Having all the relationships be with characters from outside their workplace also removed some limitations, and the writers were free to go in whatever direction they wanted with the relationships, such as making one a serial killer (bizarre choice I was never the biggest fan of, but still the point stands) or having one kidnapped by North Koreans.  If a relationship worked it could be extended, if not, cut off, without having cast-wide impact.  The different relationships offered some of the show’s best moments (Floyd and The Cleve, Peter Dinklage and “Shut it down,” Alec Baldwin as Mexican soap opera star, every Dennis Duffy moment) and they might never have existed if 30 Rock had decided to go the traditional route with in-cast sexual tension.

So, 30 Rock, kudos, for bucking the sitcom norm, another reason why I may appreciate 30 Rock now that it’s off the air more than I did when it was on.

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Ranking the Shows That I Watch – 2012 edition: 18-16

13 Feb

Three more on my list of the best shows I watched in 2012 – the rules to be included are here, and 18, 17,  and 16 are below.

18.  Homeland

Brody and Carrie

I never thought I’d see the day when The Walking Dead would be a mere one slot below Homeland, and if we’re just using the last few weeks of 2012, Homeland would be behind.  Homeland is somewhat the victim of bad timing; the show aired too late to be considered in my first ranking the summer of 2011, and if I had conducted a ranking this time last year, I was prepared to select Homeland #4 overall.  The first season really was that good; I can remember very few first seasons which have knocked my socks off like Homeland’s did, just about stem to stern.  In fact the most serious problem with the season was just that the writers had, due to events towards the end of the first season, put themselves in a potentially very difficult place to go out and write a second season as strong.  That’s pretty much what happened; the second season had some great parts and great episodes but was seriously flawed, especially in the second half, enough so for the show to continue to be worth watching, but no longer a member of the elite.  I ranted and raved some thoughts about the second season in a longer entry, but suffice to say by the second half the show runners had dug themselves into a hole which they could never quite figure a way out of, leaving the main plot threads of the second season to end in disappointingly unsatisfying ways.  The show changed its focus and veered way too far into 24 action hero territory.  The second half of the season seriously made me question whether the first season was merely incidentally stumbled upon by everything going right, making it unrepeatable.  Homeland at least put itself in a place where the slate is much cleaner than it was starting the second season, and hopefully, at least behind the scenes, the writers realize the predicament they put themselves in last year, and plan better now to avoid it, especially now that they know they’re likely to get a fourth and a fifth season.

17.  The Walking Dead

Rick and Crew

As Homeland goes one way, The Walking Dead goes the other.  No show has improved its fortunes more in the past calendar year, or, really, in the last four months of 2012, than The Walking Dead, which moved from an incredibly problematic second season into a much-improved third season.  This was accomplished largely by much better pacing but also by adding new characters and subtracting old ones who were running out of material.  The second half of the second season which aired in the spring of 2012 featured a lot of the problems of the first half; absolutely terrible pacing and too much time spent on less interesting characters.  Even the second season had moments which made it seem like the show could be a lot better, such as a tense situation in which Rick and a couple of other characters are looting an abandoned bar and run into some other strangers who may be either friend or foe. Rick is forced to make a quick decision about how to deal with them, and these interesting situations about how to deal with issues of trust and the value of humanity in the post-zombie world are gripping.  There were a handful of these powerful scenes but they’d couldn’t obscure the wasted episodes that came in between them.  The third scenes basically scrapped this formula and moved much quicker. It also killed off characters without abandon, leading to a situation in which it feels like no one but Rick is truly safe and the same interactions amongst the same personalities were less stale.  The addition of a second location, the Governor’s town, was interesting in and of itself and likely improved the pacing because of the back and forth.  The Walking Dead hasn’t always had character compelling enough, Rick aside, to get by on mere constant personality squabbles, working much better when those squabbles are forced by external circumstances, and there were simply more of those circumstances in the third season.

16.  30 Rock


 30Rock2

I’ve occupied a strange position in regards to 30 Rock over the last few years, but really ever since the show started.  Once I caught up, while the show was in its second season, I was an ardent supporter but always felt it was wrongly cited as the best comedy on TV, especially while The Office was having some of its best seasons, and then later on, when Parks and Recreation and Community emerged as gems.  Particularly, I had been down on 30 Rock more recently, calling the show out not for being terrible by any means, but for seeming to make a bit of a slip from its peak years.  I’ve had a change in attitude.  I could chalk this down to some combination of this season making a marked comeback in quality, but maybe also to the fact it’s the show’s last and I’m appreciating it in light of its impending end.  As much as I have liked 30 Rock over the years, and I have, I thought I was ready for the show to end, but only now, after really enjoying the final episodes did I realize that I’m actually going to miss it when it’s gone.  While The Office, a great show over the run of its life, bumbles its way to the finish line, 30 Rock goes out in high style, and there’s something to be said for that, but also for giving 30 Rock its due in the canon, where, while maybe never the best comedy at any given time, was always worth watching, and that’s worth a lot.

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Ranking the Shows That I Watch – 17: 30 Rock

4 Oct

You know the Thursday NBC line up is coming up through this list (and if you didn’t, well, you know now).  30 Rock might be many people’s top of the line up, but it’s my bottom, but that’s really no disrespect – it’s the best single network night on tv.

I do always feel a little bit mystified by this weird consensus that had formed around the show as the best on TV, though I think that’s faded a bit in the past year or two, as the mainstream Emmy voters throw their love towards Modern Family, and the more edgy writers towards Parks and Recreation and Community.  In hindsight, I suppose I’m glad it has its time ; it would be foolish for me to spend more time talking about how it’s a little bit overrated than on how it’s actually a very good and very funny show.

The past season had some excellent plots and parts and some exceptionally strange ones as well.  In the strange category, some of the leading candidates offhand might be the scam pulled with Jenna, Kenneth and Kelsey Grammar  involving ice cream cakes, Jack’s wife being kidnapped by the North Koreans (is this really a permanent exit for her on the show?  Seriously?) and Jack using Kenneth to fill in for his wife, after her disappearance in the last episode, featuring one of the simplest yet funniest lines uttered by Kenneth, as he says grace at the table with Jack (it’s not going to work as well written, but I’m still writing it), “Dear God, thank you for this venison. Onion god, thank you for these onions.”

Another highlight of the season for me was Jack’s competition with his boss’s granddaughter, portrayed by Chloe Moretz for future control of the company; hopefully we’ll see their rivalry again in future seasons.

It’s worth making a comment about the live episode 30 Rock aired towards the beginning of the season.  The episode had plenty of laughs, as any episode of 30 Rock does, but it felt awfully unnecessary, and although I understand the idea, it’s very hard for a live episode to not seem gimmicky for me.  Only once or twice did the episode take advantage of the fact that it was live for comedic purposes (a flashback with Julia Louis-Dreyfuss portraying Liz).

About the cast as well, all of them are funny when put in the right positions, but it feels like Kenneth and Jenna (and sometimes Tracy) are overused a little bit, at the expense of the writers (Judah Friedlander, Toofer, et al), who certainly don’t need to be elevated hugely, but in some episodes don’t even get more than one or two lines.  It all comes back to Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin at the show’s heart, with the other characters there to provide absurd b-plots, and I think the show realizes that.

Why It’s This High:  Alec Baldwin is truly masterful, and the scenes with him and Tina Fey are the essence of the show and the best part

Why it’s not higher:  The supporting cast is not nearly as strong as the two stars

Best episode of the most recent season:  “Queen of Jordan” – the entire episode is shot as a reality show starting Tracy Jordan’s wife and her entourage and it is a gimmick that actually does work, and contains another great 30 Rock wordplay joke – the promotion celebration that Mrs. Jordan’s single “My Single is Dropping” is dropping.

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