Zoe
Parks and Recreation
Maybe it’s disingenuous to pick a show I started watching this summer as the year’s best, but dammit, I’m going to. In part this is because Parks & Rec‘s third season was incredibly strong and its fourth season shows no sign of slowing down. In part, it’s because the show was so delightful I wanted to watch it again and again — and had to, because I was on a mountain with literally nothing else to watch. It’s not a perfect show and it’s not as comedic as other comedy shows, but it’s TV that actually has me looking forward to seeing it every week. As much as I like all the shows I regularly watch, Parks and Recreation is the only one I never get behind in. It’s just a delight to watch every week and one of the least condescending portrayals of Real America on a comedy. Plus, it doesn’t help that all the couples I want to see make out do.
Honorable Mentions
Downton Abbey is probably not a fair pick since season two has only aired in England so far. But America, get excited. Not only is my favorite soap opera as wonderfully soapy as ever, but season two is far better than season one, which was pretty damn good itself. There’s something about a World War that brings out the best in everyone. Downton Abbey takes the opportunity the Great War offers and runs with it, adding depth and pathos to every character on the show, while never abandoning its snippy society roots. It’s some of the most fun I’ve had watching TV all year and it’d be my top choice if it wasn’t so unfair to do that to people who hadn’t seen it yet.
Community is a show I adore without being as hardcore about it as, well, the rest of the internet. In fact, that element probably scares me away from being a fan more than anything. Yet it’s hard to deny how good the show has been this year, even if the threat of cancellation still looms. I’m not sold on season three yet, admittedly, but the highest highs of the season have been some of the best comedic TV work I’ve seen. And the lows, well… I like to pretend they’re not there. Moreover, the show managed to invert the “will they, won’t they” paradigm, make a Western paintball shoot out seem realistic and if not redeem Chevy Chase at least keep him away from the rest of the cast a lot more. I don’t think Community needs to be on the air for another 10,000 years, but it certainly deserves at least another season to finish the story it’s started.
Dennis
Parks and Recreation
What a difference a few months make. As of September, I was threatening to break up with Parks and Rec. Not because it wasn’t a good, heartwarming show, but because I wasn’t laughing enough for a tiny period of time there. But any momentary laugh-related restlessness has most certainly passed. Parks and Rec has truly become a rare TV occurrence, a show that just keeps on steadily improving with age. Unlike its sorta-sister show The Office, Parks and Rec’s characters continue to actually grow, and I in turn grow to love them more with each episode. No matter how many internet memes are erected in worship of Nick Offerman’s Ron Swanson, Amy Poehler will always be the deserving, delightful star of this show, with Adam Scott getting second billing in greatness as the perfect love interest for lovely Leslie Knope. Meanwhile, it’s perhaps the anti-Ben and Leslie, the spontaneously married Andy and April, whose wonderful wackiness is often the root of show’s comedic gold. While I’ll refrain from doing so, I could spend days reciting the great things show has done with many of its supporting and recurring players (such as Aziz Ansari’s Tom “Chicky Chicky Parm Parm” Haverford, Retta’s sardonic Donna, Jim O’Heir’s fantastically forlorn Jerry, Mo Collins’ lustful lush Joan Callamezzo, and Ben Schwartz’ goofball sidekick Jean-Ralphio). And after this year’s birther-battling episode “Born and Raised,” I can’t wait to see what Parks and Rec has in store for the election season next year. Beneath all the usual NBC comedy zaniness, I like that this political world-set show actually has something to say satirically. Parks isn’t all recreation, and for that reason and many more, it’s my show of the year.
Honorable Mentions
My apologies again this year to The Good Wife, which is more often The Great Wife, for falling to the runner-up position again this year (an overdose of Eli might’ve contributed). Justified came close to the top spot too, for a more than just fine sophomore season. I will admit I almost gave the top spot to The Glee Project too. If you had told me last year that the best reality show of 2011 would be one on Oxygen devoted to casting people for a show I don’t really even enjoy anymore, I wouldn’t have believed you. But Project was far more compelling and consistent than the scripted show it spun off from. Then there’s Revenge, which gets props for being way better than I ever expected it to be, and which was the best soap primetime has seen in years. And the sleek and stylish British import The Hour slides nicely into the Mad Men-sized honorable mention period piece hole. This was also the year of Damon Wayans Jr., who briefly appeared on Fox’s New Girl (a show way more than just having an– ugh, I’m going to say it – adorkable lead) before returning to his day job on the inconsistent, but also oftentimes uproariously hilarious Happy Endings. Sadly, the happy renewal for Endings likely factored into the end of ABC’s other underrated comedy Mr. Sunshine, whose short life I still mourn. And lastly, there’s, Beavis and Butt-head, who scored in their return from the dead, thriving in the often dumbed-down land of Snooki and 16 and Pregnant. Heh heh. I said “score.”
Robert
Homeland
I had almost no expectations going into this new series after seeing the initial promotional spots for it over the summer. I didn’t even realize that it was based on an Israeli TV series called Prisoners of War (although, aside from the core premise, I can’t imagine that the two are all that closely related). All I knew was that I’ve always liked the lead actors since their breakout TV roles years ago—Damian Lewis in Band of Brothers, Claire Danes in My So-Called Life—and that the show was being produced by the minds behind landmark TV hit 24.
Whatever genetics it might share with that terrorist thriller are dialed back in favor of setting up a world far more familiar to our own, where things slip through the cracks and people often make the wrong decisions despite having the best intentions. Most of all, characters in Homeland are motivated by real emotions and circumstances, giving the show a very natural feel as it progresses from one episode to the next. When Sgt. Brody returns home as a distant husband and father, it’s unsettling and suspicious, but when we learn that in his eight years of captivity, he taught and essentially adopted his captor’s son only to see the boy fall victim to a US airstrike, we understand his reluctance to embrace family (and country) again. And when it’s revealed that Carrie entertained a momentary tryst with her supervisor Estes, we start to understand how it was a result of (and perhaps contributed to) her ongoing emotional imbalance, which ultimately leads to other, greater improprieties that risk the security of the nation and those around her.
As I’ve noted throughout its dozen or so episodes since it debuted in October, it’s been a surprising discovery that I’ve found myself completely invested in. While I was initially concerned that it would flex its pay-TV muscles a bit too much by going overboard with sex and violence, the show found a comfortable balance and ditched any gimmickry after a few episodes. Instead, its smart, topical writing and methodical pace give us a chance to get to know the characters and why they are the way they are, rather than pushing forward to the next giant plot reveal. Because of that, when those big moments do come, they feel all the more rewarding. In that regard, Homeland resembles some of the better shows on TV today, and certainly one of the best of this year.
Honorable Mentions
I first saw the pilot of Breaking Bad over a year ago and wasn’t impressed. I thought the premise was intriguing, but it moved at a snail’s pace. When I finally gave it another try this past summer, I finally understood what all the fuss was about. The (mis)adventures of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman are some of the most compelling and heartbreaking I’ve ever seen on television, and somehow, this year’s fourth season surpassed everything that has come before it. One can only wonder where things go from that truly explosive finale.
Meanwhile, in the fictional town of Dillon, Texas, life for the Taylors came to a close as they moved on in the final season of Friday Night Lights. Yes, murder plot and all, getting to know those fictional characters and their lives was probably the closest I’ve ever equated watching a TV show with watching real friends and neighbors.
TV also got medieval this year, and while I was adequately pleased with the noble effort to adapt Camelot yet again, and I continued to enjoy the brutality and hedonism of Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, it was Game of Thrones that came away with all of the acclaim—and rightfully so, considering that it’s probably the heftiest wager ever on whether or not hard adult fantasy can work on television.
Scott
Friday Night Lights
I am not a crying man. I can count the number of times I’ve cried in my entire life on both hands, and the times media has made me cry on one. But I totally lost it at the end of the Friday Night Lights finale, the overwhelmingly emotional capper of a series that will go down as one of the greatest that TV will ever produce. FNL is a deceptively simple show composed of good, normal people trying their best to live good, normal lives, grappling with issues we’ve all dealt with: relationships with the people we love, the closing of chapters in our lives, the joy of success, the pain of loss. But over the course of five years, it’s impossible for anyone who watched the show regularly to not feel like a part of the Taylor, Saracen and Riggins families. Its final season sums up what made the series as a whole so great — the good guys win a few and lose a few with nobility and grace — but the final few minutes accomplishes it even more beautifully. The game was never the ultimate end, it’s the lessons learned on the field as a team that guide you through life. Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose. A simple idea carried off completely guilelessly.
Honorable Mentions
Breaking Bad exemplifies the very best that TV can achieve, with a magnificent season — probably its best yet — that continually boosts a small, intimate show to mythic proportions. HBO is getting closer to replicating their Sopranos/Deadwood/Wire glory days with fantastic freshmen series Game of Thrones and Enlightened. The triumphant return of Beavis and Butt-head proves the immortality of its characters and format. And on the cancelled front, my beloved Men of a Certain Age was simply too nice and sweet to live, and Onion Sportsdome was too nasty and smart.
Paul
Community
For no reason in particular, 2011 became a year in which I very nearly opted out of mainstream entertainment altogether. I listened mostly to old stuff in my iTunes library and obscure electronic soundtracks for cult webcomics, attended fewer movies than I do in a normal year, and watched almost no television. Only one show kept me from being utterly disconnected: Community. Dan Harmon’s brilliant sitcom has only gotten better in its third season; it’s joined the august ranks of “things so great I cannot believe they exist.” Seriously, how does this show continue to get made? Complicated characters, intricate multi-season running gags, animated foosball facedowns… it just doesn’t stand to reason. Community is almost too good.
Honorable Mention
With its surreal, psychedelic art direction and design, and its almost Twilight Zone-esque stories, Adventure Time is another show whose continued existence baffles me. I hope to remain baffled for season to come.