TiVoGirl’s Top Ten TV Shows of 2011

Caveats: I know there are good shows out there that I haven’t gotten around to watching yet.  Since I don’t watch them, they don’t make it on the list (sorry).  Also, some of the ordering is very arbitrary – it’s hard to objectively compare dramas to comedies, or shows you really enjoy watching with shows that are brilliant, but may not be quite as entertaining week-in, week-out until you reach the payoff in the finale.

WARNING: Spoilers Ahead!

Honorable Mention: Fringe

Fringe was originally on this list, until Toaster pointed out that I’d left Cougar Town off.  Just off of basis of what aired the second half of last season (January to May), Fringe would have the final slot.  Season Three of Fringe was by far its best ever – they hit the ground running with an adrenaline-packed opening with our Olivia stranded “Over There”, and never really seemed to lose momentum.  There are plenty of things I could nit-pick, but this was a show that I happily followed on Fridays, waiting up for Toaster to get off work and staying up past 1 AM to watch.  In spending close to half the season “Over There”, the show roughly doubled its characters (without adding much to its cast).  They did a great job both introducing those characters and making you feel for them.  The flashback episode, digging deeper into the origins of “Over Here” Olivia’s ability to cross Over There and back, and also revealing how “Walternate” came to know about it, was brilliant.  Unfortunately, Season Four has been decidedly more lackluster thus far.  We’re in yet another alternate world (this one setup by the non-existence of Peter).  Not only did I miss Peter all the weeks they kept him off the air, but I have missed our Olivia and Walter.  The best sign that my interest has wavered is the fact that Toaster and I usually don’t get around to watching it until Sundays.  Hopefully they will course correct early next year so we can get back to the characters we know and love (including their Alt-Universe versions).

10. Cougar Town

Despite having a great season (creatively anyways) last year, Cougar Town was held off the air this fall and has had its episode order reduced.  But let’s focus on the good.  2011 saw Travis fall apart and nearly drop out of college after his girlfriend leaves him, necessitating a group vacation to Hawaii to try to bring him home (and a guest appearance sad-sack Ted from Bill Lawrence’s other show, Scrubs), Bobby finally moving off the boat and into an apartment, Jules and Grayson beginning to talk about kids, Laurie and Smith break up, and Ellie and Andy continue to largely forget they have a child.  But Cougar Town isn’t really about the plots and storylines – Cougar Town is just a bunch of friends getting together, drinking wine, and being completely entertaining (Bobby and Andy’s bro-mance, Jule’s obsession with wine glasses – or, in a pinch, Hotel room candle-holders – that can hold a bottle of wine or more, Ellie and Grayson’s battle with the home school kids, etc.).  This is one of the most entertaining shows on television, and I hope ABC brings it back soon.

9. Boardwalk Empire

Boardwalk Empire had a strong second season, made stronger by the (BIG TIME SPOILER ALERT) phenomenal, shocking Season Finale.  In killing Jimmy, the second biggest character and a fan favorite, they have proven that they are one ballsy show.  This season saw Nucky struggle to hold onto power, eventually realizing the truth in Jimmy’s advice that he couldn’t be “half a gangster”.  We learned more about Chalky, who wrestles for power and justice in a world that considers him a second-class citizen.  Margaret attempts to reconcile her love for Nucky and the life he can provide for her and her children with her Catholic guilt, which is exacerbated when her daughter develops Polio.  In the end she marries Nucky so that she can’t be compelled to testify against him.  Then, upon realizing she’s been lied to yet again, she signs over his big land deal to the Church.  Next year should be very interesting for these two.  Jimmy grappled with his decision to follow his father in rising up against his father-figure Nucky, and later stepping into a leadership role when his father had a stroke.  His wife is killed, and in heroin-induced flashbacks, we learn why he left college to join the army: one drunken night, Gillian (his mother!) seduced him and slept with him.  He completes the Oedipal circle by killing his father, then resigns himself to death at Nucky’s hands, showing up unarmed and ready to be set free.

8. The Good Wife

Probably not as good a show as Boardwalk Empire, but I find myself more eagerly anticipating each new episode.  And like I said, the ordering here is fairly arbitrary.  In splitting Alicia and Peter up this year, the show has gained new life.  Alicia’s ethics have become far more compromised, both in court (working to get a known murderer off in order to gain a witness in another case) and in her personal life (sleeping with her boss).  The more ethically compromised she becomes, the more this starts to resemble a great cable drama, and I love it.  I miss the friendship between Alicia and Kalinda, but its felt right to have their relationship so strained this season, plus it’s given Kalinda more time to spend with Eli, whose integration into the law firm has been very entertaining.  Despite being a procedural, the show manages to feel fresh each week, with each case taking a very different route (out of court settlement, arbitration, mistrial, etc).  The ongoing storylines are much more robust than the average procedural and the exploration of Chicago politics is intriguing. 

7. Parenthood

Perhaps not as brilliant a show as some of the others on this list, Parenthood is still one of the shows I most look forward to watching each week.  The best aspect of this show is when it cuts very true-to-life and presents a problem with no clear solution – or really, no good solution, no solution in which no one gets hurt.  Sarah’s ex-husband, struggling to get clean, tells her he wants to fix his family.  She wants to help him, but she also has a boyfriend, and knows that she probably shouldn’t take him back.  Crosby’s son Jabbar gets tired of eating lunch with his cousin Max, who has Aspergers and is something of a difficult lunch companion.  But Max is so happy to have a friend that Crosby tries (badly) to explain Max’s condition and asks Jabbar to keep eating with him.  Of course, this ends with Max and Jabbar in a fight on the schoolyard and everyone mad at Crosby.  Plenty happened this year (Adam losing his job, Christina having a baby, Joel and Julia trying to adopt, Crosby cheating on and losing Jasmine, Haddie fighting with her parents over her relationship with Alex and temporarily moving out, Haddie and Alex eventually breaking up, Amber not getting into college and spiraling downward from there, Max returning to public school, etc) but it’s the little moments that stick with me, the moments where the show doesn’t pull it’s punches, where it lets there be no good, happy, easy, TV resolution to a problem, and just lets life, in all its messiness, unfold.

6. Shameless

This show is raunchy, outrageous, hilarious, and occasionally sweet (though usually in a somewhat twisted way).  Fiona tries her best to keep the bills paid and her brothers and sisters out of jail, but she’s forever struggling, having to bargain, borrow, and steal their way to survival.  The best scene of the series came with their mother shows back up unexpectedly, having decided that she wants her youngest child, Liam, back. Fiona loses it, going off on her for all the ways in which she failed to be a mother to her.  Lip gets some great scenes as well, when he finds out his father sleeps with his best-friend-with-benefits (in Frank’s defense, he was hopped up on painkillers and not totally willing).  When Frank comes to beg for forgiveness (a pretty big step for the self-centered Frank), Lip offers him a way to atone – by opening his window and peeing on his father.  Ian struggles to remain in the closet in a neighborhood that is not exactly tolerant.  He juggles the affections of two men, married Kash (who’s much too old for him) and criminal Mickey.  He works to get Lip to accept the fact that he’s gay, and also comes out to Fiona (who, of course, already knew).  Debbie adopts an Aunt, kidnaps a baby, and manages to be the most twistedly sweet kid you’ve ever met.  I look forward to spending more time with this wonderfully fraked-up family, including drunken patriarch Frank, budding sociopath Carl, and baby Liam, when it returns January 8^th.

5. United States of Tara

The season finale of United States of Tara wasn’t planned as a series finale, but it worked well, tying up most of the loose ends, and leaving us in a pretty good place – Tara’s going to try treatment again, but will never really be free of her alters (though she has managed to kill the most destructive one, Bryce); Max is under way too much stress but will stick by his family through anything; Charmaine and Neil are in a good place and will be moving away with their baby (“Wheels”) and will presumably be happier when they are free of all the Tara-drama; Kate and Marshall, meanwhile, realize that for better or worse, they’ll always come home. Kate grows up a lot and offers to move back home so she can take care of her brother.  The season as a whole saw Kate finally find her calling as a flight attendant, and her first decent boyfriend in Evan.  Marshall, now out of the closet and in a relationship, cheats on his boyfriend Lionel, struggles to understand why his parents would choose to have him when they knew about his mother’s condition, and is absolutely devastated when, late in the season, Lionel dies in a car accident.  We learned more about Max when we met his somewhat agoraphobic, hoarder mother, and begin to understand why he might have fallen for someone as crazy as Tara.  Tara herself went to a dark place, with a new alter as her childhood abuser Bryce.  As the show fully embraced Tara’s condition and Tara herself descended into madness, becoming a danger to herself and those around her, the show abandoned any pretense of being a comedy and was a better, richer drama for it.  It will be missed.

4. Parks and Recreation

This show has been on an absolute roll this year.  All 16 of Season Three’s episodes aired in 2011, as did the terrific first half of Season Four.  The first season of this show was rough around the edges.  The second season improved considerably, and the show grew to be one of my favorites.  In Season Three, the show became the best comedy on TV (and I could easily make an argument for this being the best show on TV, period).  Season Four has more or less continued that momentum – the one episode that I was slightly disappointed with (where Leslie becomes a little too manic in her efforts to continue working with her ex, Ben) had such a phenomenal and unexpected ending (Leslie and Ben get back together, office romance rules and her City Council campaign be damned) that I forgave any earlier missteps.  2011 saw April and Andy hook up, get married way too fast in a ceremony that managed to be both hilarious and moving, and mined their blissful irresponsibility for humor (rather than going the traditional route and making them fight to generate conflict and jokes).  Ben moves in with April and Andy (him trying to get his roommates to grow up just a little bit, to buy plates and utensils before X-Boxes and Marshmallow guns, has been comic gold), breaks the rules to hook up with Leslie, breaks up with her so that she can run for City Council without a scandal hanging over her shoulder, buys a Batman suit to cheer himself up (Toaster is jealous), and finally gets back together with Leslie, falls on his sword and resigns to save her job, and tells her he loves her via a court stenographer.  Leslie, in addition to her relationship with Ben, fights to keep the Parks Department afloat following massive budget cuts, pulls off a miracle with the success of the Harvest Festival (including a moving and effective speech delivered to the Pawnee business community while she was hallucinating from the flu), spars with her rival from Eagleton, begins a run for political office, and fights to save her job and campaign after coming clean about her relationship with Ben.  Ron F’ing Swanson remarries and quickly divorces his evil second ex-wife (Tammy II), mourns with the loss of his favorite steakhouse, struggles to keep Leslie from throwing him a birthday party, convinces a young girl on a field trip to City Hall to become a Libertarian, falls back in with his evil first ex-wife (Tammy I), and jumps in when Leslie’s campaign staff abandon her, getting everyone in the office (except Jerry, whom no one bothered to tell) to volunteer.  I could go on and on about this show.  Parks & Recreation is a show about government that works, friendships that work, and relationships that work.  Its lead character is impressively competent, ambitious, optimistic, and successful.  You wouldn’t think those would be the bones of the funniest show on television (one also capable of misting up the eyes on occasion), but there you have it.  Great writing, great acting, and a show that actually makes you feel good about the world.  I can’t wait to see what they do next year.

3. Friday Night Lights

Friday Night Lights aired its third and final series finale in 2011 (they’ve been on the brink so often, that the Season One and Season Three finales were also designed to work as Series Finales), and it’s a mark of how good a show it is that all three worked so well.  This time, we knew for sure the show was over, so the writers really let everyone scatter, with Luke ending up in the Army, Julie and Matt in Chicago, and the Taylors in Philadelphia.  More impressively than that, though, the show proved once and for all that it really isn’t about football, cutting away in the middle of the State Championship game to show a montage of “8 months later”.  The winner of the game is only revealed if you watch closely, if you see the banner on the Lions field being taken down, or spot the Championship ring on Vince’s finger.  The game wasn’t the point.  The point was Coach Eric Taylor finally sacrificing his career in favor of his wife’s; The point was Julie getting her life back together by finding her way back to Matt; Vince learning how to be a man despite a lack of role model in his own family; Becky struggling to find a family; Tim struggling to find his way back from the very dark place he went while in jail.  In true Friday Night Lights fashion, the finale was bittersweet: the Lions win the Championship, but the program is still shut down in favor of the town’s beloved Panthers.  Vince will play a year as a Panther, but without Coach.  He will no doubt go to college on a football scholarship, but Luke will seek his fortune in the Army.  Tim will stay in town and try to rebuild his life, starting with a house, while Lyla and Tyra, the two loves of his life, move on to bigger and better things.  Jess will realize her dream of student coaching, but will have to leave Dillon, and her boyfriend Vince, behind.  Julie and Matt will get their happily ever after; Becky will watch her boyfriend head off to the army, and, presumably, war.  Coach and Mrs. Coach will be happy, but they’ll be in Philadelphia, not Dillon, the town we came to love.  This is one of the best shows to truly capture a community, good and bad, and I will miss it.  Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose.

2. Breaking Bad

Toaster and I finally got into this show over the summer, and damn, it’s good.  Jesse dealt with the weight of his first murder, spiraling downward and returning to his addiction.  He was used as a pawn between Walt and Gus, and found himself increasingly siding with Gus. I, too, started to find my loyalties wavering - as we learned more about Gus’ back story, I found my sympathies increasingly leaning in his direction.  Then in the final episodes, it seemed that Gus had poisoned Jesse’s girlfriend’s son, Brock, and I was firmly in Walter White’s camp.  I groaned and rolled my eyes when Gus seemed to walk out of Tio’s phenomenal wheelchair suicide bomb unscathed… then my mouth dropped open and I cheered a bit when I saw that he was missing half his face, when he collapsed to the ground and died.  Walt’s “I won” explanation to Skylar was chilling, but at least the good guys came out on top.  It turned out Brock wasn’t poisoned by Ricin, but he was going to live, which was good, so I didn’t question it so much.  Then we got the final shot, showing the plant used to poison Brock.  The plant growing in Walter’s back yard.  Damn.  When the show started, I never would have believed Walter White was capable of putting a child in mortal danger, and it’s a mark of how wonderfully and methodically the show has evolved the character that I don’t question that he would be capable of it now (not that it wasn’t still a shock).  Walter White has gone from being the hero (granted, a dark, cable-type hero) to being the undisputed bad guy.  Tony Soprano never went that far.  Damn.

1. Game of Thrones

This show probably gets extra points for introducing me to the George R. R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” books, which are really outstanding.  But the adaptation of the first book was phenomenal, adding a few scenes as needed, making judicious cuts where necessary, and doing a bang-up job of capturing all that was wonderful about the books –complex characters, political intrigue, stunning settings, and excellent, pull-no-punches writing.  That they killed Ned Stark, their main character, their most recognizable actor in Sean Bean, in the first season is stunningly impressive (it’s also the sort of thing that makes you want to throw something at your TV, but it’s a mark of how good the storytelling is that you’re that upset).  The casting of the child / young adult actors was incredible (specifically Arya and Dany, though Sansa and Bran are also well-acted).  The adult actors are also great - Peter Dinklage’s Emmy is very well-deserved.  The visuals, such as the shots of the Wall, Kings Landing, and the Eyrie were stunning.  A few of my favorite moments: Jaime pushing Bran from the ledge (damn!), Arya’s sword fighting lessons, Robb rallying his troops, Tyrion strugging to buy his way out of trouble in the Eyrie, Ned’s execution (no!), and the birth of Dany’s dragons (and return of magic to the world).  When a show ends a season, you’re left with a final shot of Dany and her dragons, reborn from Drago’s funeral pyre, and damn, that was one hell of a final shot.

Thanks for reading!  Now hit the comments and let me know what I got wrong.