Tag Archives: ShowRanking

Ranking the Shows I Watch – 10: Terriers

27 Oct

I several times almost forgot about the existence of Terriers when working on this list as it was crushingly cancelled after its 13 episode first season  on FX in December, 2010.  The best new show of last fall’s TV season by a long shot, it gained traction with critics, but never with audiences and fans like myself were left wondering whether the terribly non-descriptive name played a significant role in preventing people from tuning in.

Earlier in this list, there were a number of USA shows. USA shows, as previously mentioned, are good, but due to the strictures of the network, they genrally have a ceiling.  Terriers is at its heart, a USA show, with the strictures removed.   Donal Logue plays an ex-cop who is a recovering alcoholic and is partners with Michael Raymond-James (Renee from True Blood), an ex-con, in a private detective business in San Diego, California.  The two solve week-to-week cases while working on occasional long-term projects and deal with each other’s personal life – Logue’s troubled sister and the marriage of his ex-wife and Raymond-James’s possible engagement to his long-term girlfriend.

The primary two actors are where the core of the show lies and their chemistry is the engine that keeps Terriers moving.  The show maintained a relatively sunny disposition, giving it that great USA easy-watch feeling without the sometimes forced famed USA Blue Skies mentality. Things don’t always exactly work out.  Logue and Raymond-James were the underdogs you loved to root for (maybe that’s where the Terriers name comes from?).  With such a promising first season, it’s depressing to think where the show could have gone if it just had more time.  The concept sounds incredibly generic but the execution is pitch perfect.  When I read about it at first, it didn’t sound all that great, until I actually watched it and I was hooked.

Why it’s this high:  The actors are great by themselves, and the relationship between Logue and Raymond-James at the heart of the show is strong – about as good as a largely procedural show can be

Why it’s not higher:  This is pretty fucking high for a show with one season which is cancelled already

Best episode of the most recent season:  It’s hard to remember exactly, having watched the show almost a year ago but I’ll choose “Fustercluck” partly because I just remember it better; I don’t think there were any one standout that was so much better than the pack.  In this episode, a character they helped put in jail asks Logue and Raymond-James to steal back $250 thousand of his own money in exchange for allowing them to keep $100 thousand of it.  They take the case, but follow him after he’s bailed about because they’re suspicious of his motives.  They then learn a little bit more about the season’s long local conspiracy plot.

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Ranking the Shows That I Watch – 13: Eagleheart

18 Oct

Probably the most obscure show this high on the list, Eagleheart is the rare show that I had never heard of at all before I watched it for the first time.  It was on after Childrens Hopsital on Adult Swim, and my friend, who I was watching with, said he had heard of it, and that it was supposed to be decent, so we decided to give it a watch.  Expectations were relatively low, and all we could tell right away was that it was a comedy in which Chris Elliott portrayed a ridiculous supercop charged with serious missions, along with his two partners, an idiotic guy Chris uses as a battering ram, and a woman who is generally more competent but whom he ignores.  We started to watch and we slowly started laughing and looking back and forth at each other until the realization gradually set in that this was actually pretty good.  We still weren’t entirely convinced, so we watched a couple more episodes and by the time two more were finished, we were pretty sure; surprised, but pretty sure.  Soon, we finished the series (it really only takes about two hours if watched all in a row – that’s how short the episodes are, eleven minutes each) and when I told my brother to watch, he balked.  When he eventually gave in, he was just as surprised, but enjoyed the show just as much as well.

It’s an excellent companion piece for Childrens Hospital, because the shows share a very similar sensibility.  The show is loaded with terribly corny wordplay which takes a certain appreciation which I understand not everyone has.  When Chris is captured on a blimp, the evil blimp captain baron tells him there’s only one day when one can leave the blimp – splatterday.  Yeah, it sounds stupid when I write it like that I realize.  But with audio and video it’s funny, I swear.

I’ll be the first to admit that this show is possibly ranked higher than it should be because I just watched it recently and the lines and laughs are fresh in my memory.  That said, I’m also glad that I put it this high because I think it’s probably the show in this tier that people are least likely be familiar with.  The show is so unheralded that the entry “Eagleheart” in wikipedia’s search takes you to Finnish power metal band Stratovarius’s thirteenth single release Eagleheart rather than the show.  I’ve read just about no buzz about the show, and I had never heard about it, yet I’m not sure why.  A lot of people may just not be into this type of comedy, but with each episode lasting a mere 11 minutes, it’s certainly worth giving a shot.

Why it’s this high:  It’s ridiculous, absurd, and though my brother noticed after watching a few in a row, there’s a pretty similar rhythm to the episodes, just because you know what’s coming doesn’t make it any less funny

Why it’s not higher:  I suppose when you have twelve eleven minute episodes it limits your peak here – the shows are short and sweet which is normally a good thing but may have a topping out point

Best episode of the most recent season:  I thought one would jump right out, but not as much – I’ll take “Chris, Susie, Brett and Malice,” in which the cops must disguise themselves as swingers in a swinger-unfriendly town.  When they try to shop in the supermarket and pick up some aluminum foil, the employees lets them know that they only sell “family foil.”

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Ranking the Shows That I Watch – 14: The Office

13 Oct

Let’s put this right out there.  I know quite a fair number of people who were long time Office fans for the first three, four, or five seasons who just don’t watch it anymore.  It’s over the hill they say, jumped the shark, however you want to put it.  To me, that’s a lot of shit.  Has that happened in shows before?  Certainly.  I’ve complained about it myself.  And I’m making no claim that The Office as of 2011 and seventh or eighth season is as good as it’s ever been in its entire run.  But that doesn’t mean it’s not quite good and funny and enjoyable.

Admittedly this season was particularly strange, paving the way for the departure of Michael Scott, with guest star Will Ferrell as a potential replacement boss appearing in the last few episodes of the season.

Some people have said, Steve Carell is leaving, maybe that’s a sign you should just end the show, whether to put it out of its misery, or whether it’s going out on top.  Normally, I’d think they have a good point. It can look desperate to replace a major character in a comedy, and worse than appearances, there’s a huge risk of it simply not working.  The show got so far because of the chemistry and laughs generated by the core current cast.  When you risk throwing that off, you could have a show that would never make it on air as a pilot, but automatically gets a season because of the show’s pedigree.  In this instance though, I’m not particularly worried, at least about Steve Carrell leaving, although, of course, who they bring in is another matter.  I’ve been advocating Steve Carell leave the show for another boss for a couple years now.  Not at all because I think he’s done a bad job. On the contrary, I think he’s been able to make a character awkward and funny in a way I think very few actors could pull off.  Still, the character has inherent limitations and it’s a credit to him and the writers that they were able to continue to generate laughs until the end, but fresh blood can be a good thing.

Just looking through the episodes of the most recent season I recall funny segments.  In the last episode with Will Ferrell the oddly hilarious dunk attempt that landed him in a coma –  I can’t explain exactly why, but my friend and I laughed for five minutes straight and had to pause the show.  Dwight at the garage sale, starting small and then trading up, until he is sold on Jim’s magic beans.  Dwight and Jim gags may be the most resilient part of the show.  By all rights, they should get old, but they never do.  Ryan’s grilling of Pam about her Christmas comic book gift was fantastic and emblematic of the newest and best iteration of Ryan’s character as a pretentious hipster.

A word is also worth saying about how the Office’s attempts to add new blood (new blood?  fresh blood?  same difference) with new receptionist Erin and corporate liaison/stooge Gabe have very much worked.  Gabe becoming wholly unhinged by Erin’s awkward and extremely public break up with him turned into what may have been one of the funniest running arcs of the season, highlighted in the last episode when he quizzed Andy, during his interview, about the sun, and when Andy knew the answers, ordered him to “Shut up about the sun!” Erin carefully walks the line between adorable empty-headedness and maybe-she-has-an-actually-problem with the defining moment possibly being her believing that disposable cameras were for disposing immediately after you took the pictures.

Why it’s this high:  It’s still The Office, more or less, Dwight and Jim antics are hilarious, they continue to do good work

Why it’s not higher:  Yes, you should still watch it, but no, it’s not as good as it was during maybe the third season

Best episode of the most recent season:  There’s no obvious choice but I’ll take “Andy’s Play” which had one of my favorite scenes of the season at the end – Michael’s word-for-word rendition of a Law & Order episode as an audition

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Rankings the Show I Watch – 15: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

11 Oct

It’s frankly amazing how long this show has been on the air, and just how big it’s become.  The scientific factor I use to determine its popularity is number of green men, the green lyrca full body suit mascot that Charlie wears during a couple of episodes.  I see at Philadelphia and national sporting events, and on Halloween.  The actual suit only appeared in three episodes of the series, and yet it spawned a phenomenon as green men are everywhere.

The show has the potential to get tiresome. In each episode, the “gang” – as the characters are known find a topic, be it racism, terrorism, abortion, or sometimes less political and more random, and go off, offending tons of people in the process and coming out making fools of themselves.  Yet it stays relatively fresh, and the writers have done a pretty good job of thinking of material that is new enough to keep me laughing.  I really tried to hold off this comparison for as long as could, even though I wanted to use it all article, but Curb Your Enthusiasm really is by far the most similar show on TV to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  They’re both basically shows that apply a similar process to a new set of facts every episode. You can enter a situation into the It’s Always Sunny machine, and it’s pretty easy to figure out how things are going to go, but it still generally ends up being pretty funny.  Like in Curb, it’s all about the main characters, and everyone else is the world is just someone for them to play off of. While in Curb about equal times the other characters are crazy or normal, in It’s Always Sunny, they’re generally normal conservative folks who are utterly outraged by the gang’s lewd, selfish and inappropriate behavior.

Highlights of the last season include Dennis implying that Mac and he will bring some women onto a boat, and since they can’t get off, there will be an “implication,” which is disturbing even for Mac.  Another highlight is the gang’s drunken memories in flashback form of a Halloween party in which Dee may have gotten pregnant, and in which Dee is remembered as more and more birdlike, eventually ending up as an ostrich.

Looking over the episode list, there aren’t quite as many stone cold classics as there have been in previous seasons, though to be fair, my opinions could change, for good or ill, with a second viewing.

Why It’s This High:  No show generates more out loud laughs than It’s Always Sunny, even after six years; Charlie makes me laugh.

Why it’s not higher:  It’s a little bit hit and miss, a little bit repetitive, some episodes are better than others, some of the best ideas were used seasons ago

Best Episode of the Most Recent Season:  “Mac’s Big Break” – My friends and I became somewhat obsessed with this strange part of the episode in which Dennis uses a strange voice on his radio show asking about the US’s involvement in two wars – I can’t find anything on youtube, so you’ll just have to watch the full episode.

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Ranking the Show I Watch – 16: Curb Your Enthusiasm

6 Oct

(Note:  This was mostly written before this past season, and the sentiment is pretty much the same but I added an additional best episode at the end)

This awkwardness factor in this occasionally makes the Office look like a comfortable place to work.  It’s another unique show – although I don’t have any proof of this, I would wager there’s more improvisation in this show than in any other that I watch, and that’s not necessarily a good or bad thing but it works for this show.

I can’t think of any other popular show, or show that I watch anyway, that is driven by a single person as much as Curb.  It lives and dies by Larry – he’s in almost every scene and he’s far and away the most important character.  His wife, who would be second, is not even with him during the seventh season, and Jeff, the third most, is here and there.  I’m particularly not a huge fan of Susie – her schtick of cursing a lot and banning Larry from their house gets old very quickly.  The show works through the idea (like in Seinfeld) that Larry (and his friends Jeff and Richard Lewis) are immature and inappropriate and say the things we all think but don’t say, and even a bunch of the things we don’t even think.

Each season has an extremely loose running plot, and last season’s featured Larry trying to put together a Seinfeld reunion so he could cast his wife, spend time with her, and get back together.  The Seinfeld reunion I think was one of the better running plots and I thoroughly enjoyed Jerry himself being in about half the episodes of the season – it reminded me why I like Seinfeld a little bit better than curb – the addition of a straight man within the show really does help.

As further part of my rediscovery that in the right instance the catch phrase can become a potent weapon rather than a silly crutch, I’ve been able to identify three or four signature Larry quotes and actions that are fantastic.  Classics include his long and probing stare at someone who he thinks is bullshitting him, his semi-sarcastic prett-ay good, prett-ay good, and his, before asking an inappropriate or inane question, “Let me ask you something” – one of my favorite uses of this is in one of my favorite scenes in the series, when Larry, masquerading as a limo driver asks John McEnroe a series of ridiculous questions – “you have allergies?,” “ you believe in a god of some kind?,” “you like life?,” “do you garden?”


What It’s This High:  Seinfeld 2.0 more or less – the neurosis, the common every day situations spelled out, continuation of a successful formula

Why It’s Not Higher:  Slightly more less than more Seinfeld 2.0 – I love it, but yeah, sometimes I just want to shake Larry and tell him to give it a break, and the situations are relatable a little less often than in Seinfeld

Best episode of the most recent season:  Even though it doesn’t have Seinfeld in it, “Vehicular Fellatio” which contains of the funniest scenes of the season when Larry David, who wants to break up with his girlfriend, portrayed by Vivica A. Fox, but feels he can’t because she has cancer, tries to get her to break up with him by bringing her to a doctor notorious for advising women to dump men, and trying to act as stupid as humanly possible – Larry, after braying like a horse – “horses do it – and I can see why they do it – it feels good”

For the most recent season now, I’ll pick “The Bi-Sexual” mainly because it has the single funniest scene in the season, shown below.

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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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Ranking the Shows I Watch – 19: Friday Night Lights

27 Sep

I don’t compliment my brother all that often, but there is absolutely no denying he does a wonderful impression of Coach Eric Taylor giving an inspirational speech to a player, family member, or random Dillon resident.  I wish I could somehow textually demonstrate his not great but still enjoyable fake southern twang and repeat his impressions word for word, but the crux of it is that Coach Taylor will tell this person, who has asked him for advice, or come to him with a problem, something like, “I can’t tell you how …(fill in the blank with whatever the person needs help doing),” implying that he is unqualified to give advice on said topic.  After a breath, though, he comes in with a “but I can tell you this” and precedes to dish out some fairly generic speech which leaves the target invigorated, recharged and/or inspired.  This really encapsulates everything about the show.  It’s essentially a soap, but one that instead of being designed to be trashy and low-brow, is designed to make you feel good and that through everything people are innately good, and that all is right with the world (though they did make just about all the woman extremely attractive – they’re not crazy).  Although it’s by no means a religious show, if you had to convince someone who had been isolated away from humanity of the essential good of humankind, I can think of no better programming to send that message than Friday Night Lights (though you best show them whole seasons – things can get a little morally stickier in the cliffhangers).

What’s possibly more impressive by my standards, is that, while pushing this story that has a man-is-generally-good feel and with ridiculous inspirational dialogue happening in nearly episode that people don’t say in real life, or certainly not that often (to be fair, sports is one of the places where it happens, but at least half of the inspirational dialogue on the show has nothing to do with football), it seems neither righteous nor cloying.  Righteousness probably drives me crazy as much if not more than almost any other quality, and my nose for it usually picks it up if I think there are even the slightest traces left at the scene.  Yet, I don’t really feel it here.  A lot of things about the show aren’t perfect – the plots certainly aren’t the most original or interesting and I’m probably a little biased because subjectively it doesn’t have the feel I prefer in a show.  I can’t think of another show that pulls off what it does well though, and it’s watching for that alone if for nothing else.

Why It’s This High:  Kyle Chandler rules as does Connie Britton, and the heart the series shows should feel cheesy but always feel authentic

Why It’s Not Higher:  The show has great heart, but the plots can be incredibly simple and the dialogue, although feel good, is unmemorable

Best Episode of the Most Recent Season:  I’m not fully caught up yet so I’m limited, but “Kingdom” – the road trip was fun and heartwarming which is what the show does best, and watching coach get frustrated playing cards with the fellow coaches was fantastic

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Ranking the Shows I Watch – 20: Boardwalk Empire

22 Sep

I have mixed feelings about Boardwalk Empire.  First of all, this is certainly not the  most important facet to me of a television show, but it bears saying that Boardwalk Empire looks fantastic.  HBO should be commended for paying for such great production values for their dramas and Boardwalk is no exception.

Both superficially and not so superficially, Boardwalk has a lot in common with creator Terrence Winter’s old employer, The Sopranos.  The main character, Steve Buscemi’s Nucky Thompson, is a man-who-runs-town figure who is also the head of his town’s (Atlantic City) organized crime family in 1920 as prohibition is about to begin.  As in Sopranos, he is thoroughly trained in the old school, but he on the brink of a new order, as prohibition means great opportunity for organized crime, but also allows for the quicker rise for a younger generation of mobsters who play by a different set of rules.  Micheal Pitt’s Jimmy Darmody, who was close to Nucky for years, plays what seems to be the Chris Multisanti role (thoroughly less insane, at least so far, and more serious, but bear with me).  Nucky, like Tony Soprano, struggles to bend and not break while melding some of the old school with some of the new, with plenty of even more conservative associates on one side threatening to end him if he moves too much in one direction, and younger change-oriented associates, like Jimmy, threatening over overtake him if he doesn’t, all while rival organized crime organizations smell blood.

One of the stranger aspects of the show is that a handful of major characters are real people, while the rest aren’t.  This gives Boardwalk a weird amalgam between real and invented, and we know a few things that have to happen – Al Capone is going to rise up in power, and should the show continue to run through prohibition, Arnold Rothstein will be murdered in 1928.  A mafia history devotee could have called ahead of time that Big Jim Colosimo would die, at the hands of Johnny Torrio.

The show is solid but it just isn’t seriously top tier.  It’s main problem might be that it’s not a lot of fun.  It’s a little bit stilted, and even though formula is all there, I just don’t get the unbridled joy and rush of excitement I do from watching a Breaking Bad or a Game of Thrones.  This could change of course, but, and I know I keep comparing it to Sopranos, but it really is a fairly apt analogue, as deadly serious as Sopranos could be, it was also often fun, and that aspect seems sapped from Boardwalk.  Maybe the lack of a Chris, or a Paulie Walnuts, or a Roger Sterling from Mad Men, hurts that, and maybe it’s just the feel of the show and that’s how the creators wanted it to be the whole time.  I wouldn’t mind it loosening up a little bit though.

Why it’s this high:  It’s high time Steve Buscemi got to star in his own show, and the production is beauitful

Why it’s not this high:  Try as it might, it’s not quite Sopranos, and it’s a little bit wooden – it feels almost like someone tried to create a color-by-numbers show in the mold of Sopranos

Best episode of most recent season:  I don’t remember a clear standout but “Hold Me In Paradise” because I’m a sucker for history and this is probably the strangest and most thorough crossover into historical fiction – parts of it take place at the Republican National Convention, particularly talking about the redoubtable Warren G. Harding, and Arnold Rothstein deals with fallout of the Black Sox scandal.

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Ranking the Shows I Watch – 21: White Collar

20 Sep

USA is showing up all over this list, but I believe this is its last appearance.  White Collar is a USA-style show about a federal agent and his partner, an ex-con who is helping out the FBI as part of a crazy special deal to suspend his sentence.  Basically, Neal Cafferty, a top class white collar criminal, master of cons, burglaries, forgeries and art theft among others, was a fugitive who top class FBI white collar agent Peter Burke chased after for years, before the show’s beginning.  Burke was the Tommy Lee Jones to Cafferty’s Harrison Ford.  Eventually, Burke gets his man, and due to a number of circumstances not worth explaining here, a unique Mod Squad like bargain is struck in which Cafferty will work for the FBI with an anklet around his, well, ankle, letting the feds know his location in case he leaves a set radius outside of the FBI office.  The two team up to solve all sorts of while collar crimes using Caffery’s knowledge and con-artist skills and Burke hard-nosed disciplined attitude, along with the help of Neil’s best friend, the eccentric Mozzie, who seems to be a bit of an expert on everything.

I love a good grift show. (who doesn’t?)  I’ve watched a good deal of Leverage, and a couple of Breakout Kings, but just short of the amount I’ve required to give either a spot on this list.  That said, White Collar is light and fluffy for a show about federal agents, but it’s a little bit more serious than some of USA’s shows, like Royals Pains or Psych, and it’s very well executed considering its set USA network limitations.  Individual episode plots are just about always nicely wrapped up in neat little packages, with, in USA fashion, little bits of continuing storyline slowly advanced throughout a season.

I couldn’t finish this article without noting one of the scene tropes I most enjoy in White Collar.  Occasionally, Neil and partner-in-crime (quite literally) Mozzie need to employ a grift for whatever end.  They talk about it, and rattle off a bunch or ridiculous names of grifts, such as the “Cannonball” or the “Lazy Susan,” which apparently any grifter worth his salt knows by name, and then one or the other will explain why that’s not suitable with a small snippet like , “too crowded,” or “don’t have a dog.”, before one of them will pick one and explain why it just might work.  It’s an exceptionally silly segment if you step back from it but also quite enjoyable in the moment.

Why It’s This High:  It’s probably the best USA show – it’s enjoyable every week, fun to watch, the chemistry between the two main characters is great, and as I said above, I love a good grift.

Why it’s not higher:  Some of the same factors that make USA shows have a floor of enjoyability, also give them a low ceiling – they’re fun to watch, but don’t have the depth required for greatness

Best Episode of Most Recent Seasons:   We’ll go with “Burke’s Seven” – It contains a couple of the great grifting tropes – a team – rather than the usual two man cons run on the show, and a character, FBI employee Peter, having to prove himself innocent of a frame job, through con – figuring out how a criminal stole Peter’s fingerprints to put them inside a gun which shot Mozzie so our heroes can clear his name to Peter’s boss, the always wonderful James Rebhorne.

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Ranking the Shows I Watch – 22: Workaholics

15 Sep

Comedy Central runs through shows faster than well, choose your own analogy. Fast is the point.  If you’re not the Daily Show, Colbert Report or South Park, and you’re on Comedy Central, you probably won’t be next year.  I’ve tuned in here and there, but I try not to get too attached, because I know whatever show I’m watching won’t be around.  It’s usually not difficult because most of them are terrible or at least forgettably mediocre.  Dog Bites Man?  Remember that one?  Halfway Home, the prison-meets-real-world premise with Oscar from The Office.  Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire?  The only point of that show was that I had a new nickname for Frankie Rodriguez.  For this reason, it was hard to get too excited about Workaholics as the season progressed, marching towards its probable inevitable Comedy Central doom.  It was a sign though, that it wasn’t just me, when some executives there deemed Workaholics worthy of receiving the coveted second season.

I feel like this is true for about third of this list, but I started watching the show at least partially ironically.  Not ironically in the sense that I thought it would be horrible, more in a way that was several layers of anti-humor away ironically in that, upon the appearance of Workaholics commercials it was pretty much decided I was watching whether it ended up being good or not.  One such commercial featured a character asks one of the main characters, named Anders, if his name is Finnish, to which he replies, “No, sir – I’m just getting started.”  Not brilliant stuff, I know.  But it’s kind of funny.

Luckily, it actually ended up being pretty good, or at least there were funny parts in the first few episodes, enough so to keep me watching.  It’s not a sketch show, but it has some of a sketch show feel (think Michael and Michael Have Issues if you actually remember that Comedy Central show). There are three main characters and they work in a call center and do a bunch of stupid and/or ridiculous things in every episode.  Even better, as the season went forward, the episodes actually got significantly stronger – the consistency rate of laughs was higher.  The characters got themselves into sticky situations, such as ending up at a meeting of the Juggalos, and, to their advantage, unlike what happens in some sketch shows where the emphasis is on wacky plots and not characterization (as it should be, for the most part), the characters feel at least a little bit different.   You couldn’t simply switch their plots around in every episode.

Why it’s this high:  When it hits, it captures dumb funny as good as any show on TV – best moment perhaps – one character threatening a larger guy invading a party –  he says, “If we do this there’ll be two hits… me punching you in the face. and Kid Rock’s Bawitdaba playing in the background”

Why it’s not higher:  It’s tough on sketch-type shows – you get your hit and your occasional miss.

Best episode of most recent season:  “To Friend a Predator”  – just the premise alone is darkly funny and the episode delivers on it – the guys take it upon themselves to bait and take down a local child molester, only to find out he’s a really cool guy to hang out with.

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