It's the holiday season, a time of cheer, good tidings, eggnog, and gift-giving and gift-getting. We should be finding solace and joy in our fellow men and women, but let me tell you, I'm dreading December 10th. This day represents, in some ways, the end of television in 2010. Of course, I don't mean this literally, but on December 10th, pretty much all of the good shows on TV will be on a winter break or will have ended their seasons. Only a few weeks ago, my TiVo was positively overloaded with shows to watch: Real Time with Bill Maher, Boardwalk Empire, Mad Men, Rubicon, The Walking Dead, Bored to Death, In Treatment, Sons of Anarchy, Terriers, Community, Fringe, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Chuck, Parenthood, and more. By next Friday, all of these shows will be gone from the air for a while, with the exception of Jon Stewart's satirical news show, and that's only because the show's on all year long.
As of right now, one of these shows is permanently finished. Rubicon was a good show, a slow-boil of a conspiracy drama that wasn't able to hook in audiences who wanted to watch something akin to a two-hour thriller every week, as opposed to watching a two-hour thriller expand into 13 hours. I'm not thrilled that it's gone, but I'm also not surprised or sad. The show's ratings weren't great, and as soon as The Walking Dead came onto the airwaves and got huge ratings, it was clear that AMC wants to be seen as more dominant with its newer, less established programs. What's more, the finale was mildly disappointing; I don't demand all of the serialized shows I watch to end with cliffhangers, but some of the most exciting and compelling characters were left off to the sidelines in the finale for no good reason. What's more, one of the two conspiracy threads throughout the season just petered out. While the demise of Miranda Richardson's character was creepy and evocative, it was also a wasted opportunity. All of the build-up over 13 episodes for that? No thanks.
AMC has had stronger stuff this fall from Mad Men and The Walking Dead, two very different shows that have managed to both feel right for the same network. As is the case these days, when Mad Men is on the air, there's nothing stopping it from the being the best TV has to offer. The season's driving force was exactly what it always is: pushing Don Draper forward even as he pushes back, hoping to regress to childhood. Jon Hamm, Elisabeth Moss, John Slattery, and the rest of the sterling ensemble cast continued to impress this year, especially Hamm and Moss in the episode titled "The Suitcase," wherein they spend nearly the entire episode hashing out the past three-plus seasons' worth of drama between Don Draper and Peggy Olson. What else can you say about a show that now joins such dramas as The Wire and Deadwood, where a bad episode of the show is still equal to one of the best episodes of any drama of the year?
There are a few shows that I'll be most sad about as they head off into a break or their finales. First on the list is NBC's comedy Community, which has become easily the funniest show of the new season, what with Parks and Recreation being held on the bench until January 20. Sidebar: Why did Parks and Recreation not just air after The Office to begin with? Why wasn't it on at the beginning of the season, at that? I'm glad that the show will eventually find its way there, but the road's been unnecessarily long. Back to Community. The first season of this show took about 10 episodes or so--a relatively natural amount of time for most freshman programs--to find its solid footing; if you watch the DVD of the first season, you'd be surprised at how the writers assumed that Chevy Chase's character, Pierce, would best be paired with Troy, played by Donald Glover. Within only a few episodes--with the "Biblioteca" rap--it became clear that Troy and Abed, portrayed by Danny Pudi, were a dynamite duo.
Nowadays, Community continues to be another show on NBC that manages to stay alive simply because NBC is so damned screwed. Take, for example, Chuck, a show that's ended each of its first three seasons with ardent fans mounting "Save Our Show" campaigns of various types. Such campaigns may be pointless this year. Is the show being canceled? No. Has it been renewed? No. Have its ratings gone up or down? No. The answer is simple: Chuck has stayed constantly mediocre in the ratings, but for NBC, mediocre is amazing. When NBC announced its massively overhauled winter schedule, only a handful of shows remained in the same timeslot and day; among those shows are The Office, Community (the best sign for the show as of now), and Chuck. Ratings aside, Community has grown in its second season into the sharpest, fastest, and wittiest show on television. I've already waxed on and on about how great the show is; if you need further reasons to watch, its Christmas episode comes up on December 9th (though it has a new episode this Thursday), done in stop-motion animation a la the Rankin-Bass specials of the 1960s. High hopes abound.
The other show I want to highlight here is FX's freshman detective show Terriers. Title and marketing aside (no, it's not about dogs), this is genuinely the most successful detective series since Veronica Mars (which ended too early, but at least got 3 years out of the deal) and it's dying in the ratings. I've always wondered why the show just didn't air directly after Sons of Anarchy, and for a number of reasons. Both shows are run by former writers of The Shield, both shows are probably well-targeted at men ages 18-34 (a demographic which, as a note to the many advertisers reading this, I am part of), and both shows have somewhat similar sensibilities. The former is the highest-rated show on FX, so it would seem logical to pair the two, yes? Whatever the case, the season finale--and I do hope it's just that--of Terriers airs tomorrow on FX at 10 p.m. Eastern. What do you need to know? This show is about Hank and Britt, a private-detective duo who usually work small cases but have recently been roped into cases way bigger than they are. In particular, they've stumbled upon a massive crime perpetrated to destroy the town of Ocean Beach so a new airport can be built. Shades of Chinatown, to be sure. Hank and Britt's personal lives have been slowly fraying at the edges, and both men have been pushed away and towards each other throughout. I can't get into the details without it sounding boring (which the show is not; it's often raw and painfully emotional, in the best ways possible), but you need to watch. Fingers crossed that FX keeps it around.
I'll have a best of the year list in the coming month, but it's going to be hard this year, especially since I'm not counting shows like Lost (yes, I liked the finale), and I've not gone on and on about some of my new favorite shows like Bored to Death yet. Point being: I love TV, and the creative minds behind the best shows on TV have justified my love for the medium this year. I can't wait for 2011 to come, so we can get even more greatness on the boob tube.
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