Random List: 10 Best TV Shows of 2008

Okay, here they are , my long-awaited Top 10 list of the best shows in '08:

1. The Wire -- Goodnight, sweet television drama. What more can I say about this show that hasn't already been said? If you watched it, you already know how good it is, and don't need to listen to me. If you didn't watch it, then you're a moron. But a lucky moron -- you still have the chance to see each and every show for the very first time. I advise strongly for you to do so.

2. 30 Rock -- The funniest show of TV got funnier in '08. It features everybody's favorite Emmy winner Tina Fey, and added flashy guest stars just about every week, but it was the regular supporting characters which usually stole the show. Limited to small rules, Tracy Morgan, Alec Baldwin, Jack McBrayer, and Jane Krakowski are all still among the best comedic performers anywhere on TV.

3. Dexter -- Already a great show, Dexter ramped up it's quality even further in '08. It started with a careless Dexter killing an honest man, ands with him cleaning up the streets from a monster he made. The Addition of Jimmy Smits as Dexter's partner in crime was a master-stroke, and allowed the show to stretch its limits. Dexter found himself playing good cop for once, showing us he does know the difference between the bad guys, and the really bad guys.

4. Breaking Bad -- The best new show on TV in '08. It starts with an almost unbelievable premise -- a husband, father, and high school science teacher becomes a meth cooker -- and explains how believable, and real it can really be. It's also cool, and dramatic, and very, very funny. Also: well-acted -- Bryan Cranston already won an Emmy for lead actor.

5. Mad Men -- The first season showed us it was one of the best shows on TV. The second season showed us it has a chance to be one of the best shows ever. It took until the second season for creator Matthew Weiner to really show that meandering, mysterious storytelling that made his alma mater, The Sopranos', such a masterpiece. I can't wait for season three.

6. The Shield -- For most of the show, it was a sleazy good time, a fun ride through the bad part of town, punctuated by tense, surreal moments of high drama. In its final season, it was all tension. By the end, there wasn't a drop of fun to be had for miles. But that was how it had to be. Laughing and joking while breaking laws and making enemies, as Vic Mackey did, can't last forever. The show opened with Vic enjoying a friendly barbecue with his team before ganging up with one to kill another. We knew then he was bad, but he charmed us -- and everybody else -- for a good while. In the end, there was no more fooling, but Vic, the ultimate survivor, was still around.

7. The Closer -- The best procedural on TV. All others above on this list have to entertain, but are not forced to play by the restrictive rules of having to be framed by a crime -- it starts with a murder, and ends with an arrest almost without fail. But all the characters are so real and entertaining -- especially Deputy Chief Brenda Lee Johnson -- and the dialogue is so well-written, it never feels like a cookie-cutter, as so many others do.

8. House -- The show got back to regular business -- set cast, no more "competition" -- and never missed a beat. The subplot with House's best friend Wilson giving up on their friendship was a welcome change from Wilson usual uber-patience with him. The supporting characters have all taken a back seat as most of the personal storylines revolve around House, but that's probably for the best.

9. Lost -- Every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in. There's simply been too much time, energy and attention devoted to this show for me to not care about what happens. I've been doubting they will ever come up with an over-arching story which will explain away everything that's happened so far, but I'm still enjoying the ride.

10. Friday Night Lights -- This season's best episode may have been the first of 2009 -- and there's still next week's season finale to go -- but the groundwork was laid in '08 when the show's third season found the same groove they had in the first. In was major bounce-back year for the show, which went of the tracks in season two by trying to sex up the show too much in an attempt to raise mediocre ratings. In doing so, they lost their positive word-of-mouth from fans and critics, and were essentially cancelled by NBC. But DirecTV swept in to save the day, airing the show on their Channel 101. The season was such a success, NBC wants them back -- they'll be airing all of season three starting in two weeks.

TV Review: 'Worst Week'

This is the part where I act like an authority on entertainment, and criticize the work of professionals who are, without exception, more successful than I in the industry in which we both work. Some people would say this is proof I have "balls", or "chutzpah" in Jewspeak. Others would say it's proof I'm a "douchebag". To catch up on any old reviews, you can find the link on the right hand side of the page, or just click here.

The multi-camera sit-com has been dying a long, slow death the past few years, its stale interiors and studio audience laugh track pushed to the side by popular single-camera sitcoms like ’Curb Your Enthusiasm’ and ’The Office’. The single-cam shows have more life (partly because they don’t revolve around a small number of sets), and feel a bit more real, with no audience prompting you when to laugh. They are also able to take their storylines into a wider range of places due to their ability to shoot anywhere, and employ more actors.

But now that the tradional multi-cam sit-coms have largely disappeared (CBS’s ’Two and a Half Men’ and ’How I Met Your Mother’ are two of the last still-popular dinosaurs), a new type of show has emerged -- a hyrbid. These are shows that are filmed without a studio audience, have no laugh track, and can filmed in any number of locations, yet still hold true to many of the old multi-cam-type cast and storylines.

One of these hybrids is ’Worst Week’, an adaptation of a British show (yes, another!), ’Worst Week of my Life’. This one was developed for American TV by Matt Tarses, a former writer for ’Sports Night’ and ’Scrubs’. It plays like an old-fashioned sit-com, with most of the action taking place in one location with a smaller cast of characters, but is shot with a single camera and has a new school life and energy.

The storylines stay within a very narrow framework -- how Sam Briggs continuously stumbles into trouble while staying with his soon-to-be in-laws, either through his own fault, or someone else’s -- but still manages to entertain. In this way, it’s very much like HBO’s animated sit-com ’The Life & Times of Tim’, only with a ton of physical comedy -- usually Sam taking some kind of pratfall or similar embarrassment. Like so:



This routine of poking our lead male character with pins like a voodoo doll for comedic value (or “Stillering”) can grow old quickly. What elevates this above the aveage sit-com, is the perfromances of Kyle Bornheimer and a terrific supporting cast. Bornheimer brings Sam an indefatigable good nature which steers him through even the most embarrassing and frustrating situations. No matter what happens to Sam, he manages to keep a smile on his face, and most of his “accidents” occur because he’s only too eager to help.

Sam’s polar opposite is his finacee’s father, the aptly-named Dick Clayton, a perptual grump, played perfectly by the veteran of both large and small screen, Kurtwood Smith. Smith is great at playing the curmudgeon, and he does again here with Dick, who clearly doesn’t feel Sam is good enough for his daughter, the beautiful and understanding Melanie (Erinn Hayes).

Melanie’s put-upon mother (played fantastically by Nancy Lenehan) also holds Sam at arm’s length, and Sam can’t seem to help from screwing up the Clayton’s house, cars, belongings, and just about anything else he gets close to. But, somehow, we don’t mind watching them all. On paper, we should root for this clutz, this glutton for punishment. Why? maybe the answer lies in the tagline for the show: “Good guy. Bad luck.”

Using the age-old Hollywood scale of judgment -- HIGHLY RECOMMEND/RECOMMEND/CONSIDER/PASS (circle one) -- I rate 'Worst Week':

RECOMMEND

TV Review: 'Summer Heights High'

This is the part where I act like an authority on entertainment, and criticize the work of professionals who are, without exception, more successful than I in the industry in which we both work. Some people would say this is proof I have "balls", or "chutzpah" in Jewspeak. Others would say it's proof I'm a "douchebag". To catch up on any old reviews, you can find the link on the right hand side of the page, or just click here.

The previews I saw of HBO’s new sit-com, ’Summer Heights High’ didn’t interest me much. The gag of one actor playing multiple characters became exhausted sometime around the second “Nutty Professor” movie. But Chris Lilley, an award-winning writer/actor/comedian from Australia is more Peter Sellers than recent-era Eddie Murphy. That is to say, the laughs come more from the people's internal flaws than from their external ones. He has an amazing gift for characterization, the small habits and details -- dress, body english, expressions, vocabulary -- which make people feel real. This realness then becomes a wellspring from which the comedy can flow freely.

We laugh because the character quirks are at once ridicluous and familiar. We’ve all known the self-righteous know-it-all who feels the need to leave helpful, instructive notes around the breakroom, or the kid with no attention span or discline whatsoever, or the plastic, self-involved bitch. Lilley brings those three people to life in this mockumentary about a public high school in Australia and exposes all their flaws -- as well as the acidic atmosphere at many public schools -- for maximum comedic effect.

The fact that you can buy the 33-year-old Lilley as a teenage girl tells you how far he gets into character. That character is Ja’mie King, a holdover from Lilley’s previous show in America, ’The Nominees’, which aired on IFC and was based on his award-winning show in Australia, 'We Can Be Heroes: Finding Australian of the Year'. Ja’mie is a bitchy and spoiled exchange student from a private school who insults everyone at the public school she meets whether she means it or not, and doesn’t hesitate to tell her new friends she pities them for their meager surroundings:



She’s just one of the three characters Lilley inhabits -- another is “Mr. G”, a cutting and egomaniacal drama teacher at the school:



The last is Jonah Takalua, a Pacific Islander who probably resembles the most immature, disruptive kid you knew in high school -- as entertaining as they are annoying:



Each of the characters are so well-portrayed, you're disappointed when the POV switches away from, only to be excited to see what the next one is up to. They're like car accidents you simply can't look away from, and the interaction between them and their peers is so awkward you almost can't stand it. In that way, it reminds one of 'The Office', or that other HBO sit-com with the lead you love to hate, 'Curb Your Enthusiasm'.

Following the lead of those shows is a good place to start, but it's not enough. You still need to bring your unique flavor to the genre to make it work, and Lilley clearly has plenty of that to spare. I have a feeling we're only just beginning to get a taste.

Using the age-old Hollywood scale of judgment -- HIGHLY RECOMMEND/RECOMMEND/CONSIDER/PASS (circle one) -- I rate 'Summer Heights High':

HIGHLY RECOMMEND

TV Review: 'Life On Mars'

This is the part where I act like an authority on entertainment, and criticize the work of professionals who are, without exception, more successful than I in the industry in which we both work. Some people would say this is proof I have "balls", or "chutzpah" in Jewspeak. Others would say it's proof I'm a "douchebag". To catch up on any old reviews, you can find the link on the right hand side of the page, or just click here.

Yet another re-make of a British show, the new ABC drama 'Life on Mars' is reflection of its concept -- it looks great on the surface, but there's not much underneath. The conceit is interesting enough: NYC Detective Sam Tyler (Jason O'Mara) gets hit by a car and somehow ends up 25 years in the past, in 1973. What's more, he's still a cop in the same city -- just a different world.

It's a world which doesn't understand DNA evidence, and a force where he works with racist, homophobic cops like boss Lt. Gene Hunt (Harvey Keitel) and Det. Ray Carling (Michael Imperioli), who prefer beating up suspects to simply interrogating them. And there are hippies, and bell-bottoms, and sideburns, and cool retro tunes. This all sounds good, right? Only the entire show seems to exist for just this reason -- to be a cool idea.

Digging deeper, however, there doesn't seem to be any foundation to the story which necessitates any of this. In the pilot, Sam is dealing with real-life issues with his partner and love interest, Maya (played by Lisa Bonet), while following a serial killer suspect when he suffers his accident. Back in 1973, he meets the serial killer as a child, and the impression is given that Sam is able to convince to not grow up to be a serial killer. (I know, it's patently ridiculous, but try and play along.) But once this stpryline is over, Sam never goes back to the present, so there is no driving force keeping the story moving forward, no reason to be in the past.

As future episodes progress, a new motivation develops -- Sam wants to go home to his love, and therefore needs to figure out why he's here. But we're also given hints that maybe he's just in a coma -- he hears Maya calling his name, telling him it will be alright. He also sees her reflections in windows, the show's writers seemingly searching for any device which will allow them to keep that storyline alive, despite there being no real link. But Maya disappears in episodes three and four, and Sam seems to move on quickly, flirting with Gretchen Mol's Officer Anne Norris (called "No nuts" by her male colleagues -- clever, huh?) and a hippy chick down the hall.

They also go out of their way to remind us of the differences in our times -- like 1973's ignorance of terms like "hate crime" and "gaydar". It's an interesting idea, but it would help if there were some substance to go with all our style. It also doesn't help that the execution is ham-fisted -- the tone jumps from emotional and reverent to madcap and goofy and back in a heartbeat, and the switch is usually accompanied by an equally jarring switch in classic rock songs (the best thing about the show).

The cast is a strong point. O'Mara is believable in an unbelievable role, Mol is particularly good (always underrated, really), and Imperioli and Keitel are as good as advertised, albeit in roles well within their comfort zone. It's in the writing where the show becomes a bit cartoonish. This shouldn't come as surprise -- the creators (Andre Nemec, Josh Applebaum, and Scott Rosenberg) are the same team which brought us last season's one-and-done dramedy 'October Road', which served up syrupy melodrama with extra helpings of pap.

'Life on Mars' is just good enough -- and superficial enough -- to do very well with middle America, the folks who actually decide the fates of most TV shows (as much as us cultural elitists on the coasts would like to ignore that fact). For that reason, this is the kind of show which can be on for some time. But that can only happen if the creative forces behind it can make the concept last, and that will take a bit more than what they've delivered thus far.

Using the age-old Hollywood scale of judgment -- HIGHLY RECOMMEND/RECOMMEND/CONSIDER/PASS (circle one) -- I rate 'Life on Mars':

CONSIDER

TV Review: 'Eleventh Hour'

This is the part where I act like an authority on entertainment, and criticize the work of professionals who are, without exception, more successful than I in the industry in which we both work. Some people would say this is proof I have "balls", or "chutzpah" in Jewspeak. Others would say it's proof I'm a "douchebag". To catch up on any old reviews, you can find the link on the right hand side of the page, or just click here.

‘Eleventh Hour’ is a CBS procedural from producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and if that sounds familiar, it should. That relationship has became a veritable factory in recent years, seemingly comprising half of the CBS primetime programming ('CSI', 'CSI: Miami', 'CSI: New York', 'Close to Home', 'Cold Case', 'Without a Trace'). I guess, then, it should come as no surprise that their latest effort feels quite familiar -- even before you find out it's yet another re-make of a British show.

It’s not that ’Eleventh Hour’ isn’t any good. It had solid acting, competent writing and direction, and a decent premise. It’s more that it feels like a derivative of better shows which have preceded it. The basic structure of the show, in fact, is almost a carbon copy of a formula which has had great success of late: Couple a brilliant, but socially-challenged man with a sharp, pretty female handler/partner.

The list of shows which use this model includes some quality entertainment -- ’Monk, ’House’, ’Life’, ’The Mentalist’, ’Fringe’, Bones’ -- but the window is closing on it, if not already shut. Not all those are perfect fits -- House doesn’t really have one partner (they switch them around a bit), and Bones flips the genders -– but you get the idea. Maybe that’s why ’Eleventh Hour’ feels so flat.

It’s not because of the acting. Lead Rufus Sewell is fine as Dr. Jacob Hood, the FBI’s head weird science dude (sorry to get so technical on you), and Marley Shelton isn’t bad as his partner, agent Rachel Young. Although, Sewell’s smoky voice and aloof demeanor is a bit more suited for the villains he usually plays, and may not be warm enough to draw a viewer in week after week -- at least, not in this cold of a role. In short, his character isn’t the quality of the aforementioned shows.

Sewell and Shelton are also asked to carry the show completely, with no colorful peripheral characters to fall back on, as many of those other shows do, which leaves the show resting on two less than fascinating characters and that week's storyline. The storylines are solid, some quite interesting, but not quite enough to overcome a familiar formula, structure and subject matter.

In other words: Knowing CBS, and their love for all thing procedural and middle-of-the-road, this show will be on for a long time. And if not, it'll probably be replaced by another procedural brought to by the good folks at Jerry Bruckheimer Productions.*

Using the age-old Hollywood scale of judgment –- HIGHLY RECOMMEND/RECOMMEND/CONSIDER/PASS (circle one) -– I rate ’Eleventh Hour’:

CONSIDER

* My writing partner and I actually had a meeting with a development exec at Bruckheimer's office once and it is amazing. It's located down at the end of a modest little street by the 10 freeway in Santa Monica, and doesn't look like much until you walk in to find a massive converted warehouse, done up in rustic Santa Fe-type decor, and a huge paining -- something like 20 feet high -- covering one wall. It was just like one of his movies -- big, expensive and cheesey.

Weekend Link Dump

-- Searching for the perfect gag gift for a buddy? Need to make a gesture for someone who's done you a favor? Pissed off your girlfriend, and need a way to make her laugh? Then I've got the perfect site for you. Show your loved ones you give a shit, by giving them a shit. That's right -- I shit you not.

-- I find this story funny, sad, frustrating, and several other conflicting emotions. How two old friends from high school couldn't figure out a way to share that kind of money when it literally appears from nowhere both boggles my mind and strikes me as typical at the same time.

-- This just might be the best link I ever provide: If you can think of a TV show from the 80's, then I can almost guarantee you can find a video of intro to that show here. It's a great time-waster. Seriously, I just wasted like 45 minutes on it just while typing out this blurb. I found these old favorites from my childhood:





And this forgotten relic:



Not to mention, this cheesey gem:



The only negative thing I can say about it is the intro clip for 'Manimal' has been taken down due to copyright infringement.

-- And finally, as we head toward the holidays, I decided to dig up this oldie but goodie: