*10. /Cougar Town/ (ABC)
*/Cougar Town/ isn’t for everyone. While some shows succeed based on
universality, /Cougar Town/ succeeds because it’s willing to annoy the
hell out of people who want nothing to do with its central Cul-de-Sac
Crew. While some shows retool by reaching out to new audiences, /Cougar
Town/ retooled by becoming even more insular, letting its running jokes
run amok and indulging in some legitimate absurdity. Instead of
off-putting, this often feels liberating. The show gets its heart—its
wonderful central mother-son dynamic, for instance—from the same store
where it gets its talking toilets, and its most broadly drawn
characters—Busy Philipps’ Laurie and Brian Van Holt’s Bobby—are often
its most appealing. /Cougar Town/ has become ABC’s smartest sitcom by
staying true to itself, no matter how ridiculous that self may be.
*Best episodes:* “Letting You Go,” “Finding Out
,” “You Don’t Know How It
Feels ”
*9. /The Good Wife/ (CBS)
*Proving that procedurals don’t have to begin and end with “ripped from
today’s headlines,” /The Good Wife/ delivered up-to-the-minute court
cases—based on everything from newspapers that publish cartoons about
Muhammad to a superstar liberal politician sexually assaulting his
masseuse—along with some of the juiciest prime-time soap-opera plots
around, involving infidelity, boardroom power-plays, and the
bare-knuckle world of Chicago politics. The second season has been a
little subplot-heavy so far, but it’s largely maintained the momentum
the show built up in the stellar back half of its first season, when
nearly every episode tied a genuinely tricky case-of-the-week to Alicia
Florrick’s (Julianna Margulies) growing awareness of the moral
complexities of politics and law. Not since /The West Wing/ has a TV
drama been so frank about the compromises of public and private life,
and few shows on the air today are as plugged in to the way we live
right now, with text messages, social media, cable news, and viral
videos redefining the boundaries of our personal space. Add to that an
all-star cast of guest stars and supporting players, and you’ve got one
of the most reliably entertaining hours on network television each week.
*Best episodes:* “Bang,” “Mock,” “VIP Treatment
”
*8. /Lost/ (ABC)
*Going into its final season, /Lost /had a lot of expectations to meet
if it wanted to please all its fans. It failed, which is probably to be
expected. Given how much time the show gave over to the inexplicable,
the convoluted, the narrative dead-end, and simple, flat-out stalling,
there was no real way to come up with a conclusion that would somehow
justify every dropped question. Instead, /Lost /delivered the broadest
possible conclusions to its mythology, allowing plenty of room for
interpretation and infuriating the portion of its audience who believed
they had a right to something more satisfying than “Well, see, there’s
this magic pool…” Given the way the series played with audience
expectations, it’s hard not to sympathize with the disappointment, but
for those less interested in the concrete, /Lost/’s final bow was
thrilling, moving, and at times even transcendent. Shifting the show’s
traditional time-jumping structure into a mysterious “sideways” universe
allowed characters a chance for a grace note before the end, and the
last episode provided emotional closure with a powerful, melancholy
dignity. All in all, /Lost/’s final season/ /wasn’t perfect, but it sure
was grand.
*Best episodes:* “Happily Ever After
,” “Across the Sea
,” “The End
”
*7. /Terriers/ (FX)
*In a network landscape cluttered with high-tech investigative
masterminds, we need more shaggy private investigators who drive around
in battered pickups and try to concentrate on solving other people’s
problems, even as they can’t stop themselves from making their own
problems worse. We need Donal Logue wearing a flannel shirt and
obsessing about his ex-wife as she plans her dream wedding, and we need
a thoroughly convincing Michael Raymond-James as a bad boy turned good.
Produced by /Shield/ mastermind Shawn Ryan and created by Ted Griffin,
/Terriers/ boasted the catchiest theme song, the scruffiest heroes, and
the most unfortunately obscure title on television. A tiny but
passionate cadre of fans tuned in for great, mumbly dialogue and comic
misadventures, then got hooked on wrenching plot twists that had them on
the edge of their seats, begging these perennial screw-ups to hold it
together for one more hour. Since the show was cancelled, we won’t even
get that.
*Best episodes:* “Fustercluck ,” “Agua
Caliente ,” “Quid Pro Quo
”
*6. /Party Down/ (Starz)
*There have been remarkably few comedies about what it means to simply
give up on the American dream. The second (and sadly final) season of
Starz’s /Party Down/ fit that description even more fully than its
first, throwing the failed Hollywood dreams of the waiters and
bartenders at the Party Down Catering Company into even starker relief
via a blend of pathos and cringe-inducing comedy. Over the course of the
season, Henry (Adam Scott) slowly worked his way back toward the acting
world, Roman (Martin Starr) learned the importance of rewrites, and
romances sputtered almost before they’d begun. Set against a former
co-worker’s wedding—the season finale, not intended as a series finale,
but forced to become one—left the characters in a place of
open-endedness that nonetheless feels like closure. In the world of
/Party Down/, the mere act of trying again, of putting your hat back in
the ring, is the bravest step anyone can take.
*Best episodes:* “Steve Guttenberg’s Birthday
,” “Party Down Company
Picnic ,” “Constance Carmell
Wedding ”
*5. /Mad Men/ (AMC)
*/Mad Men /has rarely allowed protagonist Don Draper (Jon Hamm) to fail,
yet this year, the master pitchman’s creative glow dimmed, replaced by
boozy self-pity. That sense of transition permeated much of the show’s
searching fourth season, which found one of its most enjoyable threads
in the story of young Sally Draper’s coming of age. Sally, portrayed
with precocious talent and nuance by Kiernan Shipka, became the ultimate
foil for the adults around her. Her blossoming maturity played against
the childish tantrums of mother Betty (January Jones), and her visits
helped moor the increasingly adrift Don. Don also formed a deeper bond
with protégé Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) in one of the series’ finest
episodes. But by the season finale, Peggy was back at arm’s length, as
was the deliverer of this line: “I hope she knows you only like the
beginning of things.” It captured Don perfectly, and suggested that the
arc of his latest chapter—Don Draper as ordinary man—had already begun
its decline.
*Best episodes:* “Waldorf Stories ,”
“The Suitcase ,” “The Beautiful Girls
”
*4. /Louie/ (FX)
*Our choice for the best new show of 2010, FX’s /Louie/ is the closest
thing television has to a true auteur project: It’s a deeply personal
half-hour comedy written, directed, and edited by creator Louis C.K.,
who also stars as himself. Chasing away the ghosts of HBO’s /Lucky
Louie/—C.K.’s overly aestheticized (but still underrated) attempt to
update /The Honeymooners/ for the darker world of modern
domesticity—C.K. converted a modest budget and total creative freedom
into a rich, ever-evolving product of his life, his city, and his
comedy. Though built around acrid bits of his stand-up comedy—and in one
hilarious scene, a bracing takedown of a heckler—each episode of /Louie/
finds C.K. reinventing himself, fiddling playfully with tone and
structure, with themes as particular as raising children post-divorce
and as broad as the existence of God, and with aspects of himself most
artists would be too timid to reveal. It’s a funny show, but it’s a
surprisingly beautiful and touching one, too, centered on a man who
insistently looks for truths in comedy and in himself.
*Best episodes:* “Poker/Divorce ,” “Bully
,” “God ”
*3. /Parks And Recreation/ (NBC)
*/Parks And Recreation/’s first season radiated boundless potential. The
premise, cast—headed by the always-winning Amy Poehler—and creative
staff all promised greatness. Yet it underperformed creatively. In its
oft-transcendent second season, the former redheaded stepchild of /The
Office/ evolved from underachiever to spectacular overachiever with
arguably the strongest, funniest ensemble cast on television. Aziz
Ansari continued his unstoppable ascent to stardom as a
pop-culture-warped Manhattan baller trapped inside the body of a
diminutive provincial bureaucrat. But the season’s real MVP was Nick
Offerman, whose Ron Swanson, a strangely dignified, Reaganite boss, has
quickly become a cult icon. Alas, NBC inexplicably felt the need to
punish /Parks And Recreation/ just as it was beginning to gain momentum,
thanks in part to high-profile additions Rob Lowe and Adam Scott, by
pulling the series off the air to make room for (ugh) /Outsourced/.
It’ll be back in 2011, however, and hopefully stronger than ever.
*Best episodes:* “Galentine’s Day ,”
“Summer Catalog ,” “The Master Plan
”
*2. /Community/ (NBC)
*The premise is better suited to a 90-minute Adam Sandler movie than a
TV show: A jerk lawyer, shamed into attending community college after
it’s discovered he never earned a proper degree, tries to impress a
hottie do-gooder by hanging out with a bunch of losers. General
heartwarming ensues. It’s a limited narrative, and one /Community/
largely abandoned by the midpoint of its great second season. But the
idea still speaks to the series’ central theme. The show’s seemingly
boundless inventiveness and its ability to embrace parody, drama, meta
commentary, slapstick, and sentiment, are rooted in a refreshingly
honest take on the lies we tell to become who we wish we could be. The
jerk who dreams of heroism; the snob who wants to save the world; the
Disney princess who yearns for three dimensions; the detached observer
longing to be a real live boy; the goofball maturing into
adulthood—these are familiar archetypes, but in the hands of
television’s strongest comedic ensemble, given voice by a writing staff
that hands out punchlines and heartbreak with equal panache, these parts
add up to a warm, ridiculous, rewarding whole.
*Best episodes:* “Modern Warfare ,”
“Cooperative Calligraphy ,”
“Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas
”
*1. /Breaking Bad/ (AMC)
*The best TV of 2010 took big chances, whether by going to deeply
personal or deliberately obscure territory for laughs, or by deploying
well-timed plot twists or character developments that were seasons in
the making. None, however, took as many big chances or succeeded as
often as AMC’s /Breaking Bad /, which
improbably topped its remarkable second season with 13 episodes full of
men losing their souls, twin assassins, and a professional hitman able
to take his victims out with a shoe and some balloons. The series
expanded a world that never felt insular to begin with, deepening
characters like seemingly mild-mannered drug tycoon Gus Fring (Giancarlo
Esposito) and shady lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), while adding
layers to characters who’d been there from the start, like Skyler (Anna
Gunn), who spent the third season torn between doing the right thing and
considering the big duffel bag of money her husband toted around, or DEA
agent Hank (Dean Norris), who battled his demons and the men bent on
killing him. And at the center of it all were the two best-performed
characters on television, Bryan Cranston’s Walter White and Aaron Paul’s
Jesse Pinkman, two men who began producing meth almost on a whim, but
who now find it defining their lives, dragging them deeper and deeper
into all-consuming darkness. Creator Vince Gilligan was open about the
fact he and his writers made up much of the season as they went along,
but when they can improvise as successfully as they did here, there’s no
need for extensive planning.
