By Joshua Cornelius

Contrary to Alexandra’s opinion, I think this year was a great one for television.  Sure, if you weren’t watching Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones, it might not have seemed that way.  This seemed to be the year that the traditional sitcom format finally crashed and burned, but arose like the mighty phoenix once more in the form of 2 Broke Girls.  I want to preface this article by saying that I’m in total agreement on most of the shows Alexandra picked for her top 3.  This year just found me gravitating more heavily towards drama.

2012 is sure to be an exciting and tumultuous year on the small screen.  Community is all but cancelled.  The Walking Dead is floundering (though more popular than ever).  Mad Men returns after a two year absence, and a shrug-worthy finale last season.  In all, 2011 was the first year I found my entertainment fulfillment largely served by a few big television shows, rather than in the cinemas.  Whatever is to come next year, it has a tough act to follow.

Alexandra’s Faves

1. The Hour – Only the BBC would think to take the mod stylishness of Mad Men and mix it liberally with both an Ian Fleming style spy story and the behind-the-news grittiness of Good Night, and Good Luck.  This is the best tv show you didn’t even know aired in 2011.  Watch it immediately.

2. 2 Broke Girls – I don’t even like sitcoms, but i would watch Kat Dennings do anything.  The supporting cast on this show could use work, but the realistic, touching, hilarious female friendship front and center is pitch perfect.  Also, i didn’t know you could say vagina on network TV before 9 pm.

3. Community / New Girl – It really says more about the sorry state of hour-long dramas these days than it does about my own personal tastes that I have so many half-hour comedies on this list.  These two shows are charming and sweet, but I actually think both are kind of foundering right now.

Summary:

2011, to me, was actually not a great year for television.  Downton Abbey technically aired last year in England, and I haven’t yet seen the second season that aired this year.  Doctor Who totally lost me, but the new Sherlock coming out on January 1 should kick the year off splendidly.

Josh’s Faves

1. Breaking Bad – My journey with Walter White began not too long ago.  A few friends were talking about the insanity of what was taking place on the show and I decided to queue up Season 1, Episode 1 on Netflix streaming.  Two weeks later, I’d seen all 46 episodes of this hour long drama.  Sucked in isn’t even the right term.

Ostensibly Bad is a show about a high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with cancer who decides to make crystal meth to pay for his treatments and care for his family.  If you’re anything like me, that sounds like cringe worthy, hackneyed pandering.  Weeds with a dude.  I can assure you that what series creator Vince Gilligan has actually created is something much more complex and interesting than any show I’ve ever watched.  That includes The Sopranos and Mad Men.  I’m in agreement with NPR’s David Edelstein on this one, nothing topped the level of entertainment value I took from the last few episodes this season.  The show is so tight and expertly constructed that it plays as one extended cinematic experience.  A show that so rarely misses a beat or holds a note too long.

Honestly if this could have been my top film of the year, it would have been.  Bryan Cranston deserves to win an Oscar for his work on the show.  It’s just too good for television.

2. Game of Thrones - Full disclosure; I have as much interest in reading George R.R. Martin’s series of books on which this series is based as nothing.  If I had, I might have known what to expect during some of the major plot twists of this season.  The shows unending twistiness – an inability to settle – is exactly what I loved about Thrones this year.  It might also have something to do with the dearth of good cinematic fantasy in the wake of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  The comparison doesn’t mean the show isn’t content to leave staples of the genre as a launching pad to something much more satisfying and dramatic.  The culmination of the season features a fantasy genre convention that is so worn out that on any other show it would have seemed like pedantic fan baiting.  It’s a hard earned moment that works so well because it was bought with the intelligence that helped transform the show from costume drama to something much more relatable and real.

This show left me breathless at least twice this season, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for the next.

3. Louie - I’m of the general opinion that comedians don’t work on television.  They’re either one note, have no screen presence or are crammed into a set of conditions (by studio, format or genre) that represses their natural timing and rhythms.  Louie, I think, is the first real successful foray into television… by any comedian.  It helps that Louis C.K. is the writer, director and editor of nearly every show.  His storytelling predilections help to shape each episode into a series of vignettes, sometimes loosely related but often altogether different.  Some of these vignettes see resolution, while others peter out.  Not everything is readily explained or summarized.  Subsequently the show has a hand-crafted indie aesthetic, shot in intimate locations with minimal lighting using what I assume are digital cameras.  This carousing, roving camera follows Louie all over the streets of New York as he struggles to maintain sanity in his life as a divorced forty-something father of two little girls.  Coupled with a simple violin driven and jazz infused score, the show is reminiscent of the early works of Woody Allen (minus the whining and infantilism).

As far as television goes, the chameleonic persona of the show is light years away from the rote patriarchal mimicry a thousand other comedians have forced on us.  I like Louie most for what it’s not.

Summary:

My biggest bummer of the year was AMC’s firing of Frank Darabont from The Walking Dead.  If that wasn’t enough for me to want to write the show off entirely, every episode of the as yet unfinished season 2 has just sucked ass.  I’ve never seen a show waste such promise or spin it’s wheels the way The Walking Dead has.  Restrained budgets have seen the cast jaunting around nondescript woods and bickering for episode after bleeding episode.  Sure AMC, I understand it’s a lot cheaper to pay actors to talk than it is to pay for zombie makeup and VFX, but it exacerbates a huge problem with the show – ALL of the characters are unlikeable.  Seeing them squabbling over pedantic bullshit only makes the problem worse.

Some of the problem lies in the source material.  The Walking Dead comic books follow a pretty routine pattern – there must be a zombie attack at least once every issue.  In graphic novel form, this meant that every ten pages or so a walker would surface.  That’s because the real secret stars of The Walking Dead aren’t Rick and his cronies at all.  AMC seems to have forgotten that.

At this point, I think The Walking Dead is unsalvageable.  I’d be happier to see Rick and Co. slaughtered and our narrative to focus on another band of survivors.  One that isn’t comprised of some of the most wretched, delusional or self-serving characters ever written for stage or screen.

Other than that, it was a great year for television!