Best of 2022: TV
In my original draft of this post I opened by talking about how, out of all the pandemic years, this year’s best-of list for TV was the easiest one to put together. But then I realized there were a couple shows I had forgotten to add to the list, and there are also a couple shows that I’m thinking will work better on the 2023 list since we’ll have seen more of them by then. All of which is to say: This ended up being harder than I thought it was going to be.
As a reminder, I have a completely arbitrary rule of not including shows that I’ve included on a recent years’ list. If I didn’t have this rule, then St. Elsewhere would very likely be number 1 — or at least number 2, like it was last year. So let’s start there, with a short list of runners-up:
St. Elsewhere had an amazing run. 137 episodes over six seasons. Multiple cast changes. Long story arcs mixed in with more episodic fare. A smattering of form-defying episodes (“Sweet Dreams,” “After Life,” and “Weigh In, Weigh Out” among the best of them). And even though the last season isn’t nearly as good as the first five, it holds its own. The only episode that felt completely superfluous was the clip show near the end of season 5. In the crowded field of medical TV dramas, St. Elsewhere is among the very best, and I miss it so much.
Search Party season 5 was a great way to end a great series. After a disappointing fourth season, Search Party found an interesting season-long arc to cap off a series that reinvented itself season after season. One of the most creative and funny shows in recent memory, even with that abysmal fourth season.
While most shows tend to drag on for way too long, the anime Death Parade felt too short at only 12 episodes. The premise is simple enough: Two people arrive in a purgatory-like space that looks like a hotel bar. They’re dead, although they have no memory of having died. In this space they’re greeted by a bartender who asks them to play a randomly-generated parlor game. As the people play the game, their true natures surface, as do their memories. The bartender, who is actually an arbiter, then determines whether each person should be reincarnated or if their soul should be banished to the void. Death Parade has a really interesting hook, and it fleshes out the world by adding lore to the staff who run this purgatory. It’s this last aspect that felt too rushed for a dozen episodes. Still, a really interesting (and quite dark) anime.
The eight-episode Korean sci-fi series The Silent Sea felt like an extended Doctor Who story. In the not-too-distant future, extreme climate change necessitates the rationing of water. Meanwhile, a team of scientists and soldiers are sent to an abandoned research facility on the moon — a facility where something catastrophic happened five years ago related to a top-secret project involving lunar water. There’s suspense, there’s intrigue, there’s double-crossing, there’s action, there’s a really ridiculous neck tattoo. Unfortunately, the dialogue was rather basic, and at eight episodes it felt like it dragged. As with most mysteries like this, the build-up to the reveal is more interesting and entertaining than the reveal itself.
10. Rap Sh!t
Issa Rae’s follow-up to the amazing Insecure had some big shoes to fill. And as with most follow-ups, it’s hard not to compare the new project to the old one. For example, it’s hard not to see Shawna and Mia’s friendship as a rehash of Issa and Molly’s friendship, or Cliff as this show’s Lawrence. Once we were halfway through the season these comparisons became less noticeable, but it was hard not to imagine Issa Rae playing Shawna.
The biggest detractor for me was how heavily Rap Sh!t leaned into the social media point-of-view. It often seemed like 90% of an episode was told through Instagram stories or Facetimes. It honestly felt like too much. Those precious few times when we got what I can only describe as a third-person camera POV were so lovely and nice (probably because they were also the most honest moments since the characters weren’t performing for social media) that I wanted more of the story to be told that way.
Lastly, Shawna and Mia are, in my opinion, some of the least interesting characters in this show, so it’s a shame they’re the main characters. Chastity, Lamont, and Cliff are all way more dynamic, and I often found myself wanting to follow them more than Mia and Shawna. Still, I look forward to what happens in season 2 — hopefully with less of the social media presence.
9. The Sandman
Neil Gaiman’s comic book series The Sandman is considered one of the greatest graphic novels of all time. But it’s also been notoriously difficult to adapt into a moving image medium. Since as early as 1996 there have been talks of a Sandman movie or a Sandman TV show, and nothing materialized until earlier this year. Whether that was because studio execs didn’t want to commit to such a seemingly unfilmable story or Neil Gaiman being protective of his intellectual property (or a combination of the two!), I’m not sure. Either way, The Sandman TV show has been a long time coming.
Overall, I’m pretty impressed. The show brings to life a world I could only imagine in panels, while updating it for the 2020s — largely by making more of the cast women of color. I think Tom Sturridge is a great Morpheus. The problem is that Morpheus himself is a rather dull character, so Sturridge’s performance is often affectless, as that’s how Morepheus appears in the comics. As with Rap Sh!t, I find most of the ancillary characters in The Sandman more interesting than the main characters: Boyd Holbrook is chilling as the Corinthian, and Vivienne Acheampong is perfect as dream librarian Lucienne (a great example of updating a character who was a white man in the comics to a Black woman in the show). The first season follows the first two books in The Sandman’s run — so closely, in fact, that sometimes it just made me want to re-read the comics instead.
8. Bo Burnham: Inside
Is this Netflix comedy special a TV show or a movie? It’s neither, but I’m putting it on the TV list.
You’re probably already familiar with Bo Burnham: Inside since it debuted in the summer of 2021, right around when we thought the pandemic was officially over. I didn’t see it until Christmas of last year when my sister and her husband suggested we watch it. While the music is great, the non-musical bits are often hard to watch. Not only because we witness Burnham’s psychological breakdown, but also because it hits so close to home. I mean, I didn’t feel like my first year of the pandemic was nearly as bad as what Burnham shows in the special, but there’s no question that he captured the essence of a very specific time. It’s a piece made in a moment that still feels a little too soon. Still, there’s no denying those are some banging songs.
7. The Patient
Steve Carell dons his I’m-acting-seriously beard in this tense ten-episode series from Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, the creators of The Americans. Carell plays Alan Strauss, a therapist with personal baggage (of course!), who gets kidnapped by one of his patients (Sam) who hopes that Alan can cure him of his urges to kill people. It’s kind of like the Darkest Timeline version of In Treatment, as here the therapist is chained to a bed in the basement of a serial killer. And as with In Treatment, most of the show is dialogue — particularly between Alan and Sam.
Both Carell as Alan and Domhnall Gleeson as Sam are fantastic. The writing is quite good, and each episode tends to end on a moment that makes you wonder how the next one will play out. There’s a strong momentum, even if the show requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief. The high-wire act that Fields and Weisberg navigate over the course of the season wobbles here and there, but largely they’re able to maintain that heightened sense of danger that’s at the core of the premise. Not a show that I think will stick with me for very long, but a very good one that we watched on a week-to-week basis as it premiered.
6. Ten Year Old Tom
This show was the greatest surprise of the year. I’ve long been a fan of Steve Dildarian’s work since I somehow discovered The Life and Times of Tim way back in the early 2010s. Tim is a Curb Your Enthusiasm-esque animated show about a 20-something average Joe named Tim who wants to do well but finds himself in situations that tend to spiral out of control until he looks like the bad guy. I thought the first season was pretty good, but the second season got even better, and the third season was the best of them all. Then HBO canceled it in 2012.
Fast forward to earlier this year when I was aimlessly scrolling through the HBO Max app and saw the poster for Ten Year Old Tom. I immediately got excited because the artwork had the same exact look as The Life and Times of Tim. I clicked into it, and sure enough — Steve Dildarian. How I hadn’t heard of this show before is beyond me. (I even follow Dildarian on Twitter!) I’m just glad that I happened to stumble across it, because Ten Year Old Tom is essentially season 4 of The Life and Times of Tim, only with a different cast. At the heart of each episode is Tom wanting to do well (maybe by following the misguided advice of adults) only for things to go horribly, hilariously wrong.
Dildarian’s work has always felt very niche. If you’re a fan of his style of comedy then there’s no question you’ll love Ten Year Old Tom. I’m so glad/relieved that HBO renewed the show for a second season — one that I am eagerly anticipating, hopefully sometime in 2023.
Oh, and this show features the best theme song on this entire list — Walter Mitty and His Makeshift Orchestra’s “Auntie Earth.”
5. The White Lotus (Seasons 1 and 2)
Although we were late to The White Lotus party, I'm glad we finally arrived. Having now finished both seasons I think I can safely say that the first is better than the second, if only because the second too often felt like it was treading similar ground as the first.
If you’re not familiar, The White Lotus is a show that satirizes the 1% in the same way that Stephen Colbert satirized Fox News in The Colbert Report. This is particularly true for the first season, which follows three different groups of people visiting a White Lotus resort in Hawaii. The theme for the first season was money and privilege, and it was funny (in a sad way) to see people like Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) drift through her stay completely disconnected from reality, or Shane (Jack Lacey) a spoiled rich kid who has grown into a spoiled rich man who obsesses over a suite in the resort that he and his wife aren’t staying in. The three groups of guests in the first season were all interesting, and I loved Armond (Murray Bartlett), the manager who slowly loses his patience with Shane.
The second season shifts to Italy, but it was all too easy to find season 1 stand-ins in season 2. For example, Lucia and Mia, two young sex workers, feel like a replica of Olivia and Paula from season 1. There’s also the fact that both White Lotus managers — Armond and Valentina — are queer, and both have crushes on hotel staff. While season 2 focuses more on sex than it does money, there’s no question that the privilege all the characters have factor into their drive for sex. So that’s what I mean when I say that season 2 feels like it treads similar ground. While season 1 felt fresh and new, season 2 was like a remix of a song we’ve heard before — a really good remix, and one that stands on its own, but one that you can’t help but compare to the original.
4. Hasan Minhaj: The King’s Jester
Another Netflix special that is neither a TV show nor a movie, but something in between. The King’s Jester is a solid hour of standup from Minhaj, the former Daily Show correspondent and host of Patriot Act. (I’m still upset at Netflix for canceling Patriot Act — particularly because the pandemic-produced episodes without an audience were among the best in the entire series.) This hour focuses a lot on Minhaj as he and his wife start a family, but it also touches on celebrity and the difficulty balancing the two. It feels like a more mature comic telling stories in a more assured way.
I love how intimate Minhaj gets with some of these stories because it really drew me in as an audience member. Even through the TV the whole experience felt intimate. It’s hard to say that Minhaj is at the top of his game (because I think he can keep this up and maybe even do better), but I am beyond excited to see what he does next. Maybe become the next host of The Daily Show???
3. Mystery Science Theater 3000 (Season 13)
After Netflix canceled the revived MST3K in 2019 after two seasons, I was worried that was going to be it for a while. Thankfully, Joel and the rest of the cast and crew started another Kickstarter to create their own streaming service: The Gizmoplex. Season 13 was another crowd-funded season, this time featuring three hosts: Jonah (and his bots) from the Netflix seasons, Emily (and her bots) from one of the tours, and Joel (and Emily’s bots) reprising his role as Joel Robinson, the original host of the show.
Unlike with Netflix, they chose to release the episodes throughout the year — roughly one per month. After each live episode premiere there was some kind of live show/Q&A with the cast and crew, and these were all very fun to watch. In addition to the new episodes there were also tribute episodes where they replayed a classic episode with new host segments and a live after show. But maybe the best hidden gem of them all was the Synthia Selects segments in the vault picks, where Synthia Forrester (Rebecca Hanson) introduced each classic episode that fit that month’s theme. Hanson has transformed Synthia into such a fun and dynamic character, and these segments often make me laugh out loud.
Of course, this season would be nothing if not for the heart of MST3K: the riffs. This is hands-down the strongest season of riffs since the revival — although, to be fair, I really like the jam-packed riffs of the Netflix seasons. But this time around they let the riffs (and the movie) breathe a little more. On top of that, Baron Vaughn is a riffing god. His delivery and inflection is incredible. I also love Jonah and Conor and Emily and Hampton — hell, everyone is really good, although I admit there was a period of adjustment to Kelsey’s Crow. The point is: The riffing was really strong this season, and I’m so glad there will be more to come.
2. Severance
Here’s a really interesting show that comments on issues of our time without explicitly feeling like it’s part of our time. In the world of Severance, employees can opt into a program where their work life is completely severed from their home life. This essentially creates two versions of themselves (the “innie” and the “outie” in their parlance), and the two parts of themselves have no knowledge of the other. A show like this coming out after many of us had to learn how to restructure our home and work lives so that they can somehow co-exist, Severance brings a fun Twilight Zone or Black Mirror-esque spin on telework. It does this without feeling particularly of this moment, and I think that’s partly because the work world relies so much on antiquated technology.
Adam Scott, Tramell Tillman, John Turturro, and Britt Lower all give fantastic performances, particularly Tillman as menacing supervisor Milchick. He is so good at playing those shifts from benevolent boss to terrifying reprimander. I also love the cold, ascetic look of the office environment (those long, maze-like halls!) and how the innies slowly become less and less compliant. The season finale was my favorite episode of the season and I can’t wait for more.
1. The Rehearsal
Look, I’m a huge fan of Nathan Fielder. I thought his Comedy Central show Nathan For You was incredible, and How To with John Wilson (a show Fielder produces) was my favorite show from last year. So yeah, I’m a fan. But that also meant that going into The Rehearsal I had very high expectations — and thankfully, Fielder lived up to them.
The only thing straightforward about The Rehearsal is its premise: Fielder wants to help people who are anxious about some aspect of their lives (typically having a tough conversation with a loved one or close friend) by having that person rehearse the conversation over and over and over again so that they can be prepared for any possible reaction. This alone is a fun idea, particularly because it’s something most of us do on our own, right? I can’t be the only person who (over)prepares for hard conversations by writing out scripts or thinking through various permutations. Fielder captures the essence of these fraught times and distills them into a concept that, at the end of the day, is completely moot. One thing I love — and that this show demonstrates — is that we often overthink these things. The people who are close to us are close to us for a reason (they love us, they care deeply for us), and they will continue to love us even after we have this tough conversation with them. (At least, I should hope so — if not, then they are probably better off not being a part of your life.)
But of course nothing is ever straightforward when it comes to Nathan Fielder. The main throughline of the first season is Angela, a woman who isn’t sure if she wants to have kids. So Fielder devises a hilariously intricate scenario where she can rehearse being a mom. Much like with Nathan for You, the humor comes mostly from how needlessly involved these plans are: Angela’s fake son, Adam, is a series of child actors switched out every so often so she can see what it’s like to be a parent of an infant, a toddler, a small child, etc. Due to child labor laws, these kids can only work something like a six-hour day, which means at night this necessitates the use of robot infants who will cry whenever a real infant in the control room cries. This is just one example of how something simple can quickly become A Lot.
Things take a turn when Fielder himself joins the experiment: He, too, has wondered what it would be like to be a dad. This is not the last time this season where Fielder will inject himself into a world he creates (or re-creates), and this is where things start to get kaleidoscopic. How much of what we’re watching is real? What does “real” even mean, both in the context of this show and reality TV as a whole? This show raises a lot of questions and never answers them, which I think is frustrating for a lot of viewers but is something I love about it. It’s like a magic trick, and Fielder refuses to give away the secret.
The Rehearsal is like if Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York and William Greaves’ Symbiopsychotaxiplasm had a baby (a mechanical baby controlled by someone watching a real-life baby’s movements). It is mind-bending stuff that is always grounded in something unexpectedly and/or preposterously funny. It’s truly unlike anything else on this list, and I loved it.
