Top 10 TV Shows of 2014

Here's some caveats before I get into my top 10, because I certainly haven't seen everything that has aired this year:

- I live in Canada. There are some shows, like Transparent and Review that simply have not become available in Canada through any (legal) form yet, so they have gone unwatched.
- I do not have any pay cable channels. As a result, there is no Game of Thrones or Girls or Boardwalk Empire on this list. There is one exception to this, which we will get to, because it was available on DVD before the end of the year.
- I give up on shows fairly quickly, so if a show got considerably better over the course of the year past the initial reviews and my initial impressions, I don't typically try to catch up. For that reason I don't watch shows like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I also only got into serious TV watching around 2011, so shows that started earlier than that (such as The Good Wife) may be unwatched as well.

So, this is by no means an exhaustive list. But without further ado, here is my top 10 shows that aired in 2014. I watched enough of about 25 shows to be considered for this list.

First, honourable mentions this year go to The Killing and House of Cards.

10. Survivor
Yes, really. I'm just as surprised as you are. I'm not sure what bug infected me that I started watching Survivor again this year, but I quickly became obsessed with it. No other show this year did I spend more time obsessing over the ins and outs of what was really going on. The combination of trying to figure out the best strategic moves as well as how to deal with people in the game has not yet really gotten old for me. Plus, this year's two seasons both gave plenty of food for thought, as they were two of the least straight forward and most unpredictable seasons ever. It's completely unlike anything else on this list, but I don't look forward to any other show more, nor did I discuss any other show as much. Seriously, look at my Disqus comments since I joined. They are literally 95% Survivor comments. So I had to put it on the list, and this was the place for it.

9. The Walking Dead
This is an odd one for me. All at once, somewhere halfway through the previous current crop of episodes, a bunch of critics including Andy Greenwald of Grantland and Todd Van Der Werff of Vox posted columns about how The Walking Dead had finally gotten good after years of being mediocre. Meanwhile, I've thought Season 5 has been business as usual for the show, which for the longest time I've been more positive about than the general community, particularly through Season 2. Comes onto the list this year after not even getting an honourable mention last year for two reasons:
1. Three stellar episodes this year. When The Walking Dead  is at its best, it is one of the top shows on TV, no exaggeration. It hit those highs this year with "After", "The Grove" and "Self Help".
2. The baseline for the show has improved. In previous years, when The Walking Dead was bad, it was quite awful. This year, the Walking Dead had no episodes that I would give any worse adjective to than tepid. I still would like to see better consistency from the show, but having no episodes reach the lows of some of the later Season 3 episodes or the Season 4 midseason finale is a nice step.

8. Fargo
Considering how many great shows I haven't seen, putting Fargo this low on the list is practically trashing it compared to the general critical community. Voted the number 1 show of the year by the critics polled for hitfix.com, it is beloved. And the show is pretty great at multiple things. It has possibly the best command of tone of any show on this list, effortlessly switching between dark comedy and heroic drama. It's that tone that is the biggest tie between it and the movie, and being able to pull that off makes the project a worthy sequel to the movie. It also has one of the top 3 characters on TV, Molly Solverson, played wonderfully by previously unknown Chicago theatre actress Alison Tolman. Martin Freeman also gives a great performance that is nothing like either Bilbo Baggins or John Watson. And while I have fairly major problems with the character concept, Billy Bob Thornton is having a lot of fun and chewing a lot of scenery as Lorne Malvo.

However, the problem is that the degree of heightened reality that the show employs doesn't work very well for me. I find that it removes the character just enough from my world that they become tougher to dig into and really explore in proper context. For instance, there is no exploring to do with Lorne Malvo. He's a cartoon character who is evil incarnate and nearly unstoppable for most of the run of the series, and he sucks everything around him into his vortex of ridiculousness. I find it hard to scrounge for something worthwhile among the carnage he creates. Still a pretty good show, and I'll be looking forward to next year, especially with no Malvo to be seen.

7. Happy Valley
Even as I'm writing this post, I'm still playing around with my rankings. I originally had Happy Valley in the 5 hole, but I moved it down as I was writing the blurbs for the next two shows. Happy Valley  is pretty flawless, and does a good job not being exploitative or misogynistic with a kidnapping case, something almost every other show falls into. It does a great job sketching out its main character in Catherine, who feels so much like a real person, and can hit the emotional moments and absolutely wreck the viewer when it is aiming for them. I highly recommend it. It doesn't have uniqueness of many of the other shows on this list, which is why it dropped as there's not as much about it that sticks with me, but it is extremely well executed, compelling, and does some great character work.

6. True Detective
It was a great battle between anthology series this spring, as everyone was picking a side between Fargo  and True Detective, and it had to be one or the other. At the time of airing, True Detective had all the accolades and buzz surrounding it, and Fargo was the much smaller show airing later that so many assumed was much better. This was not the side I thought I'd be taking, especially after about 6 episodes and this show seemed to be running out of steam. But the much maligned finale brought it all together for me, that this show was never about the Yellow King or murder mysteries involving antlers. This was a show about a broken man, Rust Cohle, who was so damaged by the loss of his daughter that he just couldn't be a person any more, and instead decided to be this philosophy touting piece of cardboard that didn't really resemble a human being. To watch the little pieces of the real Rust come out among the acting, in his dedication to a case he pretended wasn't important in the grand scheme of things, before finally emerging in that wonderful speech in the finale was compelling and some of the best character work of the year. The show is flawed, the case wasn't that exciting and it took the flashback and interrogation room form as well as some spectacular directing to tie us over while the show built its foundation, but there was some really fascinating work under the surface. It's a show that missed the boat on the cable antihero era and therefore seems a little tired, but there's something new and different about it nonetheless.

5. The Americans
This is, bar none, the most morally complex show on television right now. There is no other show that is so dedicated to making us care, and care deeply, about people who routinely kill and ruin the lives of innocent people as part of their daily life. It is committed to showing the toll it takes on them, and the acting of those characters is fantastic. And this season, by centring the season so much around Phillip and Elizabeth's children, it turns that around. It puts a new set of innocents in the path of the wreckage of their jobs, but this time it's innocents that they love more than anyone else in the world. Choosing their undercover life fighting for a theoretical sense of patriotism and right and pitting that up against the things that affect them on a more real and emotional level was a brilliant play for this show and paid major dividends.

I just wish I could feel the show like some of its biggest proponents can. It's just that Phillip and Elizabeth are just so far misguided and so inhuman at times that I just can't drum up the empathy for them that I need for this show to fully succeed and take me through the slower stretches. The good episodes of the show are fantastic, but there are enough dragging ones that I simply can't justify putting it higher, especially since I'm so much more invested in the main characters of these four shows above it.

4. Hannibal
At this point, there's not much left to say about Hannibal that hasn't already been said. The number 1 show at the AV Club, with a finale that I would consider probably the best episode of television this year, the psychological dance between Hannibal and Will Graham this year was nothing short of a masterpiece. The way Will embraced his darker side to lure Hannibal in to ultimately trap and catch him was both brilliant and tragic to watch, as Will struggled with the difficulties of empathizing with serial killers like never before. And that finale left everyone, including the viewer, as an absolute wreck. A fantastic season of a fantastic show, one I'm not sure of how it continues to exist, but we get a Season 3 and I couldn't be happier.  And I almost forgot to mention the best cinematography on TV.

3. Rectify
As far as concepts for a television show go, there are few that have as much depth and complexity as a man getting off of death row 19 years after being convicted as a 16 year old, and having to find his place back in the world again. There's something so bittersweet about the show, a sense of joy and loss mingled with one another, forcing you to put yourself in Daniel's shoes and feel along with him. And the show lives up to that concept, as Daniel's character is even more than you expect. This season, he's shown to be just weird enough and off-kilter enough that you wonder whether his time in prison completely distorted a normal human, or whether he was already a weird dude and death row just exacerbated the problem. And if it's the latter, was he strange enough that he did commit the crime he was convicted of?

I've heard many say that it's not important whether Daniel committed the crime or not, but I disagree. Learning whether Daniel is capable of murdering his girlfriend is essential to learning who Daniel is, and what kind of person he is. And that is ultimately what the show is about. And it's so intellectually and emotionally stimulating to try and parse that out.

The show does very well with its supporting characters such as Ted and Amantha as well. It manages to make them both off-putting and downright unlikable at times while still maintaining their basic humanity. This is something many shows struggle to do with their main characters, much less their supporting ones.

Ultimately, this could have been my number one show this year if it had been a little tighter. The expanded 10 episode order this year meant it spent a little too much time with "Lezlie with a z" for my liking. But the highs were so high, and the finale was so good, that even disregarding the premise that is tailor-made for my TV sensibilities, this show fully earns this spot on the list.

2. Mad Men
I'll talk more about what makes Mad Men so great near the premiere of the final stretch of episodes, but suffice to say that it's a show that manages to cover the broadest range of topics with the most depth. After spending the last two years very invested in the societal changes of the 60s, this half season it dug deep into the technological changes that were on the horizon. It made the visionary of the show, Jim Cutler, into the primary antagonist and ended up with the two obsolete members of the agency dominated the final episode. And the fact that it had the men of past winning a victory over the ways of the future in the end showed how subversive and unique Mad Men can be. Plus, thematic material aside, those last two episodes were great and fully showed off possibly the best cast of characters on television. I thought this was a down year for the show. Yet it's still the show, and wasn't going to drop any lower than this.

1. Orange is the New Black
This has everything you could possibly want in a television show. It has the highest quantity of great characters anywhere, and makes you care about every single one of them (that aren't complete sociopaths). It tells diverse types of stories with a diverse cast, incorporating the experiences of people from all classes, races and religions. It can be hilarious, enough that many consider it to be a comedy. It highlights flaws in society, particularly the prison system. It's centred around women, something traditionally under-represented on TV. It points the finger at privilege, and makes the least likable and most out of touch character the one that is most similar to the majority of the audience (that would be our good friend Jason Biggs). It does standalone episode arcs, and they are brilliant. It does season long episode arcs, and they are brilliant. It incorporates flashbacks in ways that add to the characters without protruding too much into the main story.

In my mind, this year of Orange is the New Black was pretty much perfect in every way and I couldn't be happier to have it as my number 1 show of 2014. I'm honestly surprised that it is not the consensus choice for best current television show (or whatever) of people everywhere, that is how good I think this show is. If you haven't seen it, do whatever you need to watch it. It is amazing.

The Highs and Lows of The Walking Dead

The following article contains spoilers for the first 4 seasons of The Walking Dead.

The journey of The Walking Dead has been a curious one. It is the most popular scripted show on television, and has been for many years now. It could easily sit back and focus solely on giving the audience the zombie action they clearly want and keep the plots and themes simple and the characters as ciphers. But it hasn’t done that. I would argue that no other show on TV is more committed to fixing its problems than The Walking Dead. Yet, for all its constant tinkering, and changing showrunners over “creative differences,” it hasn’t actually gotten any better over the years. So as we stand on the precipice of a new season, once again thinking that the show is on the cusp of becoming the show it has always had potential to be, let’s reflect on the journey of the show.

Season 1 arrived with a bang. I still consider the pilot of the show to be one of the great pilots, if not the greatest pilot, of the last 5 years. It was perfectly paced, focusing on Rick’s slow realization that something very wrong was going on. Its character interactions between Rick and Morgan are to this day some of the best dialogue the show has produced. It has an extremely touching moment after Rick leaves towards Atlanta, where Morgan takes one of Rick’s guns and just mows down the zombies, trying to bring himself to finally shoot his wife’s living corpse and let go of the fact that she’s not coming back. It hit on the main theme of zombies; the dead are right there in front of you, walking, symbolizing the idea of loss, and how when you lose someone they never actually leave. They continue to stand outside your door, haunting you. It made full use of the symbol of change, and the need to let go the life you had that may seem better, the days gone bye, and instead focus on the life that is in front of you. It looked like the start of a classic show, possibly the start of the defining genre show of the era of television.

That show never materialized. The rest of the first season was concerned with the idea of lost hope and crushing any inkling that there is still a chance things could be like they were, but never really fleshed out the point. The characters introduced after the pilot were either bland, cartoonish, or annoying, and not once was the show able to develop that same depth it found with Morgan with any of the rest of the cast. The show stayed popular because it was able to satisfy on a visceral level, there were people covering themselves with zombie guts and shootouts between warring groups. There was an attack on the survivor camp that led to deaths that should have had emotional resonance but fell flat. There was a trip to the CDC and a scientist who lost his wife searching for a cure. There was a theoretically interesting moral conundrum of whether to keep living in a world that will never be the world that was or to just let go, and let things end. And while the thematic material was interesting on the surface, the show just never was able to generate the character depth to bring emotional stakes to what was happening. And though the show remained interesting and satisfying on a visceral zombie attack level, though the direction and music choices were often great and though the show was able to find its own voice and style, it was failing at the most important of all aspects of a TV show: make interesting characters. Because for a TV show to sustain itself, it needs to be able to slow down from time to time and focus on the people in it. If there are no people that anyone cares about, it simply isn’t going to fly.

The slowdown came in Season 2. Season 2 is the most reviled of the seasons of The Walking Dead, and I think that is an unfair evaluation. In fact, I would probably argue that on the whole, Season 2 is the best season of the show. The problem is, that unlike other seasons, the bad episodes are all centred in one spot, namely episodes 4, 5 and 6. And even then, episode 4, “Cherokee Rose,” is the only one that’s a complete disaster. The problem is that these episodes all had the same major weakness: nothing was happening, and the characters weren’t developed enough to make up for it. And three straight episodes of nothing happening on a show that the pilot had primed people to expect to be great are enough to turn people against the show.

This is where the showrunner switches start to come into play. There is no evidence in the 1.5 seasons of The Walking Dead that Frank Darabont had any idea how to properly structure a TV show. We know Darabont can create great movies. The Shawshank Redemption is considered one of the great movies of all time and The Green Mile is no slouch either. And the pilot of The Walking Dead basically acted as a movie with an hour and a half running length. And it was great. The problem is that there are only two episodes that Darabont was involved with afterwards that are top tier episodes of the show, and they were both written by far and away the show’s best writer (and soon to be showrunner), Scott M. Gimple. “Save the Last One” is the best episode about Shane, portraying him as either the only character who realized the type of things you need to do to survive, or a maniac obsessed with Rick’s wife. The show would start to lean towards the latter with him in particular, but since his attitude and actions started to become commonplace among more sympathetic characters over the course of the series, the episode stands as a landmark for the show. “Pretty Much Dead Already,” the last episode Darabont was associated with the show for is great for one set piece. Shane and company release the zombies Herschel kept in his barn while Rick’s group fires away at them, killing the zombie who was Herschel’s wife and family in the process, when out walks Sophia, the girl they had been searching for to that point. Watching Herschel and then Carol’s grief was entrancing, and to this day is probably the best setpiece the show has ever done.

The rest of Season 2 is decent, a fact which is often forgotten when the season is evaluated in hindsight. It stays on the farm, yes, but is centred around a growing resentment between the mercenary attitude of Shane and the desire for civilization of Dale. In the end, both extremes are eliminated, leaving the group at a crossroads. There’s no room in the world that they live in for Dale’s, people who are wholly selfless and empathetic. But do they need to become copies of Shane to survive? It’s a point that Darabont’s successor, Glen Mazzara, is very concerned with in his term on the show.

In fact, Mazzara is so concerned with this and Rick’s moral state that he adapts the Governor as a mirror of Rick rather than outright making him the lunatic he is in the comics. He wants to make the Governor the funhouse mirror version of Rick, someone who is initially so concerned with protecting his people that he’s willing to destroy anyone else’s people that get in the way. In fact, the point made in the 3^rd season, and why I was one of the few who found the finale effective, is it presented the solution of the matter as Rick discovering that there is no dividing line between “our people” and “your people”. There are just people. The Governor wasn’t the real villain of Season 3, and that was why he wasn’t killed in the finale but instead revealed to be the insane person he was. The possibility of Rick becoming the governor was the real threat, and that threat was overcome.

It’s exciting thematic stuff, and that’s why ultimately I point to the Mazzara era as my favourite section of the show. However, the show clearly still had problems, and big ones at that. The characters still weren’t there as people, they were there as ciphers of whatever thematic material the show wanted to present at the time. Andrea was especially bad, because any development she got in the first two seasons was basically thrown out the window and she became a completely different person in Season 3. Similarly, I could not tell you one notable thing about Glenn except that he liked Maggie, because he tended to adapt to whatever character traits the show needed him to have at the time. The plot remained exciting most of the time, though as the Governor really started to wear thin at the end of Season 3 due to a lack of complexity, the Rick-Governor plotline began to wear thin as well.

After Season 3, Mazzara quit the show because of creative differences, and Scott M. Gimple took over. As previously mentioned, he was the show’s best writer to this point, writing 3 of its top 5 episodes in the aforementioned “Save the Last One” and “Pretty Much Dead Already,” as well as the Season 3 standout, “Clear.” Gimple had two missions: Undo everything Mazzara had done at the end of the third season, and actually get the characters some development. The start of Season 4 was primarily concerned with the former mission, and suffered as a result. At the end of Season 3, a busload of people from the town that the Governor ruled over filed into the prison where Rick and his group were staying. It was the proclamation that all humans are equally important and care must be taken for all of them, even if they’ve fallen into the thrall of an evil dictator. Well, at the beginning of Season 4 those humans were promptly all killed off. There was no one from Woodbury left by the midpoint of the fourth season. Also, the Governor running away was an indication that while the Governor may be gone, the ideals he represents could always be lurking behind any corner. Well, the Governor was brought back for three terrible episodes (though “Live Bait” and “Dead Weight” were only terrible in hindsight, “Too Far Gone” is by far the worst episode the show has ever done) and killed off real good this time. Then, after Rick had received this epiphany that he can’t be the Governor, his season 4 arc is about spinning him back towards the person who realizes he needs to kill and be animalistic at times to survive in this world, basically rendering his season 3 arc worthless. It was an unfortunate schizophrenic turn thematically for a show that had been excellent on that front to that point.

But in character work, Gimple and crew did much better in Season 4. Carol had an excellent arc in season 4, culminating in the divisive, but for me, classic Gimple penned episode “The Grove.” Carl had a very nice character episode in “After,” taking him from a character I was pretty lukewarm on and making him to one of the ones I care most about. We got to actually learn something about people like Beth, and Bob and Sasha. Tyreese had a very nice season. Herschel probably had the best individual character episode in “Internment,” a nice wrap up to his arc on the show before getting beheaded in the midseason finale. The plot definitely suffered to try to get these characters depth and to make them into real people, but it was a necessary suffering. And unlike the plot-light arc at the beginning of Season 2, the time spent with them separated and developing their own stories looks like it will be very beneficial to the show long term.

So Season 5 in a way may be the last chance for The Walking Dead to actually become a quality show. For the first time in the show’s history, we have a foundation for all the characters. We have a showrunner already signed on to another season after this, which means there is a clear vision of how the show is going to proceed, and it is the vision of the show’s best writer. The leftovers from the Mazzara era are cleared out, so there will be no more sudden turnarounds to get rid of things that Gimple was unhappy with from Season 3. I do worry that the show will suffer thematically, as Gimple doesn’t seem to have as good a grasp of that aspect of this show, but better and more rounded characters more than makes up for that. As soon as Gimple gets his plot train rolling, it’s perfectly possible he can take this show to new heights.

Or maybe he won’t. This is The Walking Dead after all, a show that makes its living on squashing the hopes and dreams of its characters over and over and over again. It only makes sense that it keeps doing the same to the viewer as well.