Category Archives: Glee

The 2010-2011 Caruso Awards: The Best New Characters of the Year

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In case you hadn’t noticed from my various rants about banks and politicians, I’m of the left, politically speaking. Like yer actual stereotype, I agonise about things I say on here, hoping that my fellow liberals don’t shun me for breaking one of the literally millions of rules we have to abide by (the handbook they give you when you join the left is hundreds of pages long, but then so is the handbook for the right). Just this morning I made a joke about that halfwit Gervais and his pathetic attempts to feel better about finding the word “mong” funny like the cruel little piece of shit he is, and I fear that a TV writer I respect  – a man who would never be as brazenly cruel and stubbornly contemptuous as Gervais) — might think I was serious. This will keep me up for hours, I know it.

So you can imagine my horror when this year’s crop of TV shows included so few strong female roles, or strong characters for ethnic minorities. Strong male characters are everywhere, but women were sorely shortchanged, usually included only as eye fodder or as obstacles (also known as “wives” to bad TV writers). I considered gaming this list to get more women and minorities in; “Chalkie” White from Boardwalk Empire almost made it in but when it was apparent he was only going to be in the show for about fifteen minutes it didn’t seem worth it. As for female characters, barely any came to mind.

It’s genuinely shocking that it has come to this. In the last couple of years we got Lucretia and Illythia in Spartacus: Blood and Sand. We got Alicia Florrick, Diane Lockhart and Kalinda Fricking Sharma in The Good Wife. We got Annie Edison, Britta Perry and Shirley Bennett in Community, Leslie Knope in Parks and Recreation, Sue Sylvester in Glee. This is only off the top of my head; give me more time and I’ll come up with a ton more. Ava Crowder and Winona Hawkins on Justified! Two more. But this year? Hardly any. It’s a pitiful state of affairs. It almost makes me wish David E. Kelley’s Wonder Woman got picked up, even though it would have been dreadful and probably would have set feminism back fifty years. Anything just to break up this miserable sausage fest.

And so, my list has been unliberalified. It remains obsessed with testosterone, but only because you, the reader, deserve my honest opinion. Please don’t judge me; judge the sexist pigs who run TV. Bastards! Down with the patriarchy!


10. Mrs. Blankenship – Mad Men

Mad Men is a funnier show than its reputation suggests; even as far back as the first season there were wonderfully dry moments. As the show has progressed through the Sixties, the tone has become lighter to reflect the way society became looser and more manic; a change most noticeable in the more colourful environs of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce as well as the fashions. Mrs. Blankenship – Don’s choice for secretary to prevent himself from foolishly sleeping with more staff – has attracted criticism for being too broadly drawn, but she’s in keeping with the change in tone. It also allowed us to see someone be treated like crap by the increasingly tetchy Don Draper but not let it bother them, much as Peggy eventually figured out how to repel his hostility. When Mrs. Blankenship died, the show suffered greatly, and not just because her death was a miserable return to season one’s clunky metaphors (this time about the death of the old America). It also meant we lost the most reliably funny character on the show. Let us bow our heads and remember Roger Sterling”s moving tribute: “She died like she lived — surrounded by the people she answered phones for.”

9. Alderman Ronin Gibbons – The Chicago Code

I’ll be honest. As much as I liked The Chicago Code I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. That’s partly because it was so obviously going to be cancelled it felt like a waste of time to get invested, but also because it was such a bizarre hodge-podge of cable-esque ambition and network compromise, rattling through so many plots and sub-plots that the only thing I felt by the end of each hour was numb exhaustion. It was up to main character Jarek Wysocki (supercharismatic Jason Clarke) to set the pace; he spent most of the series seemingly out of breath as he raced into shot and out spewing exposition like a broken fire hydrant. Hence SoC’s love of Alderman Ronin Gibbons; yet another villain in this great year for villainy. It’s not just his deviousness, and the oleaginous demeanour as he hides his corrupt ways from the police. It’s also not just the opportunity to get a hit of Delroy Lindo every week. We loved him because when he was onscreen, doing his calm evil thing, the show slowed down long enough for us to relish what showrunner Shawn Ryan was trying to do.

8. Gary Bell – Alphas

Oh how my heart sank when the pilot of Alphas introduced highly autistic Gary Bell, a “transducer” who can see and manipulate electromagnetic signals. There were tics everywhere, mostly in how Bell tweaks empty air and looks into streams of glowing data. It was all so gimmicky it became uncomfortable to watch. Autism is so often ill-used in drama (usually in some kind of awful savant genius plot) that its inclusion here seemed like an immediate mis-step. How wrong I was. Thanks to the work and research of British actor Ryan Cartwright, and a great writing team, Gary is sympathetically unsympathetic, a rounded character with goals and dreams of his own, instead of being a cypher. Yes he has powers, but it’s a show about superpowered individuals so it’s not based on the usual misunderstanding of what autism is. It wasn’t long before Gary became a fan favourite, providing most of the humour and heart to this entertaining show.

7. Agent Nelson Van Alden – Boardwalk Empire

This misfiring prestige drama needed a hook from the beginning that didn’t involve real-world articles about how expensive the show was, or how great it was to have Martin Scorsese on board, and erm… look at the sets! In order to give TV writers and critics something to sell to the audience it would have benefited a great central character, and instead we got tetchy Nucky; a good enough character, but no Tony Soprano. It needed menace and instead we got Nucky being a bit useless and Jimmy Darmody brooding in his Chicago hotel room. SoC loves Steve Buscemi, and likes Nucky Thompson a lot, but Boardwalk Empire suffered by not having someone larger than life in the central role. Luckily it had Nelson Van Alden in the background, and most of the first season’s best moments come from him. Personified by the amazing Michael Shannon as a repressed Hulk in a suit, this barely-sane monster went from awful righteousness to spiralling insanity as the season progressed. His religious epiphanies and sordid failings were electrifying. If you need a good reason to stick with Empire, he’s your man.

6. Louis Canning – The Good Wife

One of the many, many, many, many, many joys of this simply astounding CBS political drama is its large cast of recurring characters, often played by superb character actors such as Martha Plimpton, Joe Morton, Gary Cole, etc. etc. ad infinitum. It took approximately 30 seconds for Michael J. Fox to become our favourite antagonist yet; his first appearance, sneakily taking advantage of Alicia Florrick’s innate sense of decency, set up his character perfectly. Even better, the writers play clever games with our own sympathies. In every appearance so far, Canning’s motives are called into question; is he really as unscrupulous as he seems? Surely he can’t be. He’s played by Michael J. Fox! He’s suffering from a debilitating disease and so deserves our sympathy! And yet he remains a villain, but a villain with understandable and occasionally defensible motives. There’s a number of thin lines involved in constructing a character this odious and simultaneously delightful, and the writers — and of course, Mr. Fox – have done an incredible job in bringing him to life. Long may he haunt Lockhart-Gardner’s conscience.

5. Truxton Spangler – Rubicon

Why is American Policy Institute head Truxton Spangler on this list instead of suave, mysterious, deadly Kale Ingram? Mostly because Spangler – the man behind the mysterious plan that powers the entire series – is unlike any other villain around. He’s a bit absent-minded, eccentric (his love of cereal and insistence on eating it quickly so that it doesn’t get soggy), and lovable, so much so that when he realises he has been rumbled by Will Travers and must dispose of this complication, you end up feeling more sorry for him than you do for the show’s protagonist. Spangler’s a well-written character – just look at the tie speech in episode 4, which is probably the highpoint of the entire series – but he would be nothing without Michael Cristofer’s enigmatic and unpredictable performance. While the rest of the cast glowers or simpers, Spangler is vibrant even when sprawled in his chair, grinning with dastardly joy as his plan comes to fruition in the penultimate episode. Ingram can’t compete with that. And besides, he’s called Truxton Spangler, for crying out loud. Need there be any other reason?

4. Hank Dolworth – Terriers

It seems a bit unfair to include one half of the private investigator team from Terriers, when both Hank Dolworth (Donal Logue) and Britt Pollack (Michael Raymond-James) were such agreeable anti-heroes, but it’s obvious that Hank is the focus of the much-missed FX series. It’s his stubbornness, his vindictiveness and newly-awakened sense of civic duty that kickstarts the show, as he seeks to avenge the death of an old friend and uncover corruption that threatens his beloved Ocean Beach. He’s obnoxious and driven, unpredictable and often a bit callous. He also has his heart in the right place, and he’s loyal, and he’s brave. Logue is perfect as the rapscallion; his casting accounts for about 70% of Terriers‘ success (scientifically speaking). Shows with morally shady main characters are more common now (Dexter, The Shield, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, etc. etc.), but a show with a main character who’s a bit of an asshole? That, oddly enough, took more balls. In a perfect world, we could have spent more time with the lovable jerk.

3. Gatehouse – The Shadow Line

“You are the threads. I am the rope.” This line, delivered with a straight face, directly to camera by Stephen Rea, was the perfect capper to Hugo Blick’s bonkers thriller. As the final episode’s glurp of exposition revealed, the man who was running the conspiracy at the heart of the show was Gatehouse all along. This was not really news, especially to the audience. As great as the rest of the cast was (especially Chiwetel Ejiofor and a never better Christopher Eccleston), this was Rea’s show from the first moment he appeared onscreen. In any other context his stillness – punctuated by moments of creepily balletic violence – and his affected drawl, would tip over into mood-puncturing silliness, but Rea teeters just on the edge, a perfect visual accompaniment to Blick’s oppressive and mannered atmospherics, whether he’s hiding in the shadows, perched on a scaffold in the corner of a room, or skulking in an Irish clock-repair shop. By the end of the series we know almost nothing about Gatehouse, other than that he’s smarter than everyone, and more prepared. It’s as if he’s the God of the ShadowLine-niverse, and a twisted God at that. He’s an unforgettable creation; a bogeyman for adults.

2. Mags Bennett – Justified

In a list dominated by memorable villains, it’s dastardly redneck matriarch Mags Bennett who stands out the most. It’s not because she is quietly menacing and formidable, though she is. It’s not because she has a secret weapon – her poisonous “apple pie” – that generated more tension than any other plot device of the year, while also lending a fairy tale dimension to the otherwise grounded crime drama. It’s not even because she is eventually revealed to be even more callous and selfish than initially thought; midway through the season we discover that her plan is to betray the very people she professes to support, a move that sets her up as the enemy of those townsfolk, to her general indifference. No, the reason why Mags is the villain of the year is her mysterious sadness, her misguided motherly love that leads to her jeopardising her cause and alienating her sons as she desperately tries to keep hold of Loretta, the daughter of the man she kills in the first episode. This crazed desperation is hidden by her calm determination, leaking out at the wrong moments and ruining her plans. Thanks to the incredible Margo Martindale – in what is possibly the TV performance of the year – that contradiction is heartbreaking, while its unpredictability leads to some of this season’s most surprising and disturbing moments.

1. Tyrion Lannister – Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones had one of the hardest tasks of all the shows made this year. Adapting a series of books so beloved demanded great care so as not to anger the fanatical audience. Perhaps the realisation of Tyrion Lannister was the litmus test; get this right and the fans would relax – get it wrong and you might as well stay away from Comic-Con for the rest of your career. The fringe quibblers who still found something to carp about can go pound their indifferent, bile-spattered keyboards. The rest of us can rejoice at the magnificent incarnation of this much-loved character, brought to life with such life and soul that the show is poorer whenever he is absent. He also gave the show its first meme-able scene:

Peter Dinklage has rightly been lauded; this is the role of a lifetime. He embodies every contradictory nuance of the maltreated nobleman – Tyrion’s cruelty, compassion, sadness, joie de vivre, his tenacity, his cowardice and courage, his isolation and capacity for affection, and his deprecating sense of humour. The show might have been a hit without him, but he quickly becomes the focus of the audience’s attention, even more so than the “star” of the show, Sean Bean as deluded “hero” Ned Stark. What’s even better is that those of us who have read further know just what’s in store for him in season two; arguably his finest moment and his darkest moment, tragically intertwined. We can’t wait to see Dinklage bring those scenes to life, in all of their heart-stopping power.

Tomorrow, the worst new characters, with a number one choice as predictable as Tyrion.

The 2010-2011 Caruso Awards: The Best Episodes of the Year (35-31)

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Watching TV for a living is probably a depressing job. Poor Harry Hill is reportedly on the verge of quitting TV Burp because he can’t handle having to watch countless hours of Emmerdale and EastEnders. Poor bugger. I’m in a different situation. I watch a shitload of TV because I enjoy it, and can mostly focus on the good stuff, but even with a whole year to prepare for the Caruso Awards, I fall behind. There’s so much to get through, and some of it is really awful. I was genuinely looking forward to watching Camelot so I could have a good laugh, but watching it is agony. Next to Torchwood: Miracle Day and Blue Bloods, it’s the worst of the year.

It’s not just the bad stuff. I’ve also not watched Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, which is unforgivable. That said, part of the reason is the recent, tragic loss of Andy Whitfield, who played our noble hero. He wasn’t in Gods; his illness was the reason the prequel was created in the first place, in order to give him time to recover. Sadly that was not to be. Even though SoC is very much pro-Spartacus, the thought of watching it now is painful. Whitfield had enormous potential, and was a crucial part of the show’s success. His quiet nobility and command of the screen was memorable. He will be sorely missed.

Anyway, this weekend might — might — be the weekend that we watch all six episodes, so it should make it into this year’s awards (I’m that confident), so the real list, the top 30, should be ready to go next week. Until then, a taster. I watched enough TV over the least year that there were a few shows left over, and I thought I wouldn’t get to write about them. But this gives me a chance to hold off a little longer, and so here are the stragglers, the honorable mentions that lie just outside the main list. Nevertheless, they were genuinely good episodes, and I’m glad I get to honour them in my own small way.

35: The Event – Loyalty

The latest incoherent network LEP (Lost-Emulation-Project) spluttered along for five misfiring episodes, giving disgruntled viewers plenty of time to jump ship if need be, but early on there was a hint that there might be more to this alien invasion show than first appeared. Focusing almost solely on alien sleeper agent Simon, Loyalty used the previously exasperating flashback format the way Gods (Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof) intended; to give the viewer an insight into why a character behaves the way he does. The result is a surprisingly poignant tale of love thwarted by misplaced loyalty, as Simon leaves the love of his life for a cause that he can barely bring himself to believe in. Throw in an appearance by hardest-working-guest-star-of-2010-2011 Paula Malcomson and a well-staged FX blowout sequence involving a building being sucked into a wormhole, and you have a solidly entertaining 40 minutes of sci-fi TV.

34: Human Target – The Trouble With Harry

Not much in the disappointing second season of this DC Comics adaptation stood out, other than an amusingly Scroogelike Christmas episode (The Other Side of the Mall, featuring a terrific guest performance from John Michael Higgins) and this late season highlight. After weeks of perfunctory 70s style action nonsense, Human Target finally seemed to come alive and offer something other than cliches and repetitive arguments between the leads. Which is not to say The Trouble With Harry wasn’t riddled with the exact same cliches and arguments, but at least it did it with some verve. Getting first season showrunner Jonathan Steinberg back helped; he seemed to have a better grip on the characters than Matt Miller, who took over at the start of this season. Director Peter Lauer moves things along briskly, staging a couple of nifty action scenes that use the show’s seemingly paltry budget to great effect, and even manages to generate some tension; surprising considering the episode’s flashback format should make that difficult.

33: Glee – Furt

Glee‘s shambolic nature means that it’s next to impossible to care for any of the characters. They’re pieces in a game with no rules, and as such have no inner life to connect with. Events happen, desires are voiced, and dreams are crushed only for these things to be reversed in a short space of time; sometimes in the same scene. Nevertheless, the second season was better than the first, mostly by focusing on its strengths and giving some plotlines a real charge, especially the bullying arc that saw Kurt leave William McKinley High after being repeatedly humiliated by closeted homosexual Karofsky. This episode brings that plot to a head, and ends with Sue Sylvester, temporarily sympathetic as she contends with the reappearance of her awful Nazi-hunting mother (Carol Burnett), resigning as principal. Kurt also leaves for Dalton Academy, and his true love Blaine. Even better, Kurt and Finn’s single parents marry in a moving scene, and for once the flighty, impermanent nature of Glee didn’t matter. This is a show that is all about scenes rather than story, and the joyous marriage ceremony, uniting not just Burt and Carol but also their sons, is the best Glee scene of all.

32: Misfits – Episode Six 

Season two of Howard Overman’s irreverent superhero drama was another triumph of ambition and confidence over budget constraints, showing no sign of fatigue. It’s as if he’s single-handedly proving that the British model of TV writing (one author responsible for a short season of TV in order to maintain authorial identity) is the right way. Among the numerous highlights, perhaps this shone brightest. Our anti-heroes are outed by obnoxious probation worker Shaun, and instantly become famous. It’s the worst thing that can happen to the group; their selfishness and arrogance doom them all and the saintlike Daisy after they anger Brian (aka Milkneto, at least to us). The imaginative and deadly use of his superpower (Lactokinesis) is the key to this episode’s success. The group are genuinely in danger; Nathan’s grisly fate is particularly upsetting. In the midst of this, Simon finally discovers that he was/will be Superhoodie, and Alisha reveals she loves him. And that he is doomed to die saving her; classic good news/bad news. Of course, this episode led to an enormous plothole (Simon’s discovery should have been erased by Curtis’ last-act time jump but is still in place in the next episode), and the third season of the show will see Robert Sheehan gone and a team of new writers brought in, so this might be the show’s last great gasp. Fingers crossed I’m 100% wrong.

31: The Killing – Missing

After weeks of running on the spot, AMC’s remake of Forbrydelsen finally stopped moving for an hour, and provided the increasingly frustrated audience with the most moving and propulsive episode of the season. Shorn of the melodramatic sub-plots and histrionic nonsense that infests the programme, showrunner Veena Sud delivers what amounts to a bottle episode, even though the “action” ranges across rainy Seattle. Sarah Linden’s son Jack goes missing at the start of the episode, and she must find him as soon as possible, with the help of her feckless faux-gangster partner Holder. What follows is a quiet hour of conversation that reveals a shared background of parental absence which has scarred both detectives. Ironic, really, considering that the most nuclear family unit in the show – the Larsen family – was hiding terrible secrets that may have led to the delinquency and death of Rosie. Though little “happens”, there are more character revelations, surprises, and heartstopping moments than in the rest of the season put together, bolstered by superb performances from Mirielle Enos and Joel Kinnaman. If the show had just a couple more episodes as good as this, viewers would’ve been a lot happier.

Next week, the list proper, starting with 30-21. And hopefully some Spartacus.

The 2010 – 2011 Caruso Awards: Lessons What I Learned, Part The Third

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Please forgive me for that angry detour. And now, on with the complaining about bad TV.

Properly think through any second season revamps for shows that have only just avoided cancellation

V was never a good show (sorry @DarkEyeSocket). It was exactly the kind of nervous, apologetic sci-fi show churned out by a network with no real idea why they were revamping a beloved original other than that some mis-programmed spreadsheet somewhere said it was worth $Xm when actually it was worth a tin of chicken pie filling. For an alien invasion series that had a bunch of potential, V did nothing, it said nothing, its characters were inconsistent for the most part, it recycled plots over and over again, and it looked cheap. I couldn’t really hate it, though, mostly because things as time-distortingly boring as this usually only breed low, pulsating resentment.

That said, at least the showrunners seemed aware they had problems with the show; it limped into a second season with not much buzz and little critical attention, and so they needed to up their game to bring in new viewers. The first season ends with an overt act of aggression against evil alien leader Anna, which makes her lose her otherworldly shit and turn the skies red, while vowing to hunt the killer of her diabolically evil offspring. Exciting stuff (really, it was promising). So how did season two continue?

  • Anna does not get her revenge, and her “Red Rain” attack on Earth is instantly forgiven by everyone after a speech explaining that red rain is a nice thing.
  • Alien traitor Ryan vows to help Anna, then betrays her by helping resistance leader Erica.
  • He then betrays the humans by helping Anna. This is followed by another betrayal of Anna by helping Erica.
  • There are also lots of scenes of Ryan trying to sneak off, and onto, the alien mothership, pausing only to explain to people why he is sneaking off, or onto, the ship. No one seems that bothered.
  • Father Jack gets defrocked and wears a sad face for the rest of the season.
  • Jay Karnes appears. Shield fans are momentarily as excited as Firefly fans were when they saw Alan Tudyk and Morena Baccarin on the castlist for the pilot. This euphoria lasts about ten minutes.
  • Some stuff happens with Scott Wolf’s character but I wasn’t paying attention. I think he joins the Shriners? Or buys a dog?
  • Erica’s angry chip breaks because her vile teenage son has a number of tantrums related to him sucking as a person.
  • The rest of the resistance group congregates in its traditional awkward Circle of Debating to argue with her over every poorly-thought-through decision she makes from then on. This happens at least three times an episode.
  • The finale comes around after nine repetitive episodes, kills off a bunch of characters, introduces new ones, and completely changes the game in a number of ways that show great potential.
  • The show is then cancelled.

I guess what I’m saying is, if you have some radical ideas for how the show should be, introduce that shit IMMEDIATELY and don’t think you can just bluff your way through with low viewing figures. You don’t have time to be coy. The changes from season one to season two were just not dramatic enough. Look at how The Vampire Diaries stepped up its game about halfway through its first season, with an almost exponential increase in quality by the time the second season started. What looked like a tedious Twilight cash-in is now an indecently entertaining show with a modicum of justified critical respectability. That’s the model to emulate.

The other model to ignore was used by Human Target. SoC has long believed that dramatic shows with a small cast are onto a loser; you need a big cast of characters to have a wide array of storytelling possibilities to explore. Angel got really good when its core cast jumped from three to five, and the addition of Lorne in the fifth season pushed it over the top (Correction: TV writer and Angel fanatic @RowanKaiser maintains Lorne became a regular in season 4. Ooopsies!). Lost had a huge cast, and the show was able to fly off in directions no one could have predicted (especially as it wasn’t Purgatory at the end it was a Tibetan Bardo SHUT UP HATERS you just don’t understand Lost on the same deep level I do).

With a barely-serialised action show like Human Target, a huge cast wasn’t the point, but even though the first season was fun enough, three main characters (and no women) was a problem. Even at its best, it was a bit mundane, with not enough variety from week to week. Sadly, the introduction of two new (female) characters didn’t go the way I had hoped, not helped that showrunner Jonathan E. Steinberg was replaced by Chuck producer Mark Miller. As longtime readers will know, SoC is not fond of Chuck. It is the TV equivalent of mercury in the water table. It’s telling that Steinberg wrote some of the best episodes of the second season, proving he knows the show very well. Who knows why he was moved aside, but it didn’t work out.

Sadly the chemistry of Mark Valley, Jackie Earle Haley and SoC favourite Chi McBride was damaged by the introduction of Indira Varma and Janet Montgomery. Not because the actresses were bad; far from it. What was wrong was their effect on the spiky leads. Grouchy, mysterious Guerrero became an increasingly sentimental father figure for Montgomery’s Ames (an inevitable but unfortunate “arc” for a mean loner, I guess), Winston became superfluous as his position as “tetchy fusspot” was taken over by Varma’s new boss character Ilsa Pucci, and charming gadabout Christopher Chance fell for his new boss in a Moonlighting stylee.

All of those plot threads make perfect sense. They follow from what the characters were at the end of the first season and resolve their issues, more or less. Great if you only want one more season, but ruinous for a show that could have stayed on the air for a while, if it had ever learned to offer something, ANYTHING, that differentiated it from any number of crunching action shows on the air. The first season had a touch of quirk; it looked like it could go places. The second season made every character less compelling and added nothing else to make up for it. With its odd touches of character gone, the show dribbled to an ignominious end. A real shame.

So I guess the lesson I learned here is, if your show isn’t awesome enough at the end of the first season, make it more awesome, and not less awesome. I guess I’d like to see shows capitalise on the things that make them unique instead of excising them and aiming for the middle, but I think all of us already knew that. ::shrugs::

On a procedural show, a rigid format is a bonus. On a serialised show, it’s death

This is another way of saying “if you can’t break it, you’re gonna wear it out instead”. In the latest season of Dexter, our anti-hero improbably fell for Lumen, the victim of a gang of rapist murderers (::sigh:: What a delightful show) after accidentally saving her. Coming so soon after the death of his wife Rita, this plotline was introduced with the intention of bringing Dexter back from the grief he felt, though that grief was listlessly dramatised after the first episode, in which he snapped and finally killed an innocent guy (though he was a REALLY REALLY NASTY innocent guy, so it’s not like this guy mattered at all, right?).

The possibilities of this were promising, as was the show’s greater interest in using the secondary cast, especially weaselly tough guy Quinn. Could the show finally break new ground, stopping the endless loop of Serial Killer/Family Man dramatics? Sadly, no. While this season did a better job of weaving the secondary character arcs with Dexter’s, the usual flaws were abundant. In the season finale, Dexter is once more on the verge of being discovered by the police — this time his sister — but gets away with it because of her decision to just look the other way, which is conveniently made in such a way as to protect his identity. Once more Dexter has no agency in these matters, because acting to protect himself would put him in a format-ruining situation.

Even worse, his new love Lumen bolts almost immediately after the big finale due to contractual obligations and the necessity of resetting the show for next year, leaving Dexter bereft, just as he was at the start of the season. This season could have given Dexter an interesting arc, showing how his grief transforms him, curing his serial killer tendencies and turning him into a normal human being. But there’s money to be made in churning out years more of this crap, so Dexter has to walk on the spot for two more seasons (unless Showtime falls out with Michael C. Hall), thus rendering a promising idea about grief and loss into an underwhelming metaphor for how sucky it is to have a rebound relationship fall apart after a couple of months.

Part of the problem comes when a show is so wedded to its format that it cannot escape it. Dexter must remain a forensic expert working for the police, so he must never be caught and no one close to him can ever find out. He must also stay sympathetic so he can never kill an innocent (unless they’re REALLY REALLY POINTLESSLY ILLOGICALLY NASTY). Nevertheless, there has to be tension, so his secret identity is threatened until he is forced to do something that breaks his code and ooops! Someone else makes a decision that lets him off the hook. Every season ends like this. It taints every accomplishment of the show with a thick sticky veneer of pointlessness.

Look at Glee. The showrunners can add as many George Gershwin tunes and shots of the Lincoln Centre to their season finale, but it doesn’t make the tired formula any easier to digest. Even if the show didn’t have a writing staff of three, Glee has become far too reliant on a season arc that seemingly cannot change. Everything boils down to the club winning the regionals to get to the national championships, with each episode mixing up the relationships between the characters into a finite series of patterns. Who cares about Rachel and Finn? Do even Glee fans care? No one on the show has ever seemed to, so why should we?

Glee‘s three showrunners would do well to look at how Friday Night Lights transcended its similar school-year-based formula to provide seasons that felt individual. Not only did that break its formula at the end of season three — with Coach Taylor transferred to a new school – but each season felt distinct from the others either by making the Panthers lose early (season two, if the truncated arc went in the direction I think it was going), by introducing a new team with no hope of winning (season four), or taking them all the way to the top either as beloved heroes or despised underdogs (seasons one and five respectively). Glee has no interest in that. It has one story to tell, and apparently its fans are just fine with that. The rest of us crave more, though.

Avoid comedy episodes in a show that already wears its comedic moments lightly

One of the great joys of the last year has been discovering a real gem. Even with the huge amount of criticial praise thrown as The Good Wife, it still seemed like a soapy trifle, thanks to that premise and many of the trails shown on More4. How to describe the thrill of watching the show and realising it’s the most perceptive, adult, and well-constructed political dramas of our time, a West Wing without Sorkin’s blither clogging up the ethical debates and weighty interpersonal strife? With Friday Night Lights gone, The Good Wife is easily the best thing on network TV.

But it’s not all plain sailing. The show is often slyly funny, with jokes coming from character more than situation. Though Eli Gold is sometimes played for laughs, the show never goes all-out for cheap giggles, except for once. The late-season episode Foreign Affairs featured a cringe-inducing comedy sub-plot with a faceless “Hugo Chavez” appearing via teleconference, “hilariously” ranting about Courtney Love, with Fred Dalton Thompson – as himself – acting as Chavez’ lawyer in front of a star-struck Ana Gasteyer.

The effect is excruciating to watch. Maybe someone thought this would be a nice treat for the audience, or a break from the show’s usual heavy subject matter. Whoever that person is, they were wrong. The Good Wife is exactly as funny – and good-natured – as it needs to be. If you’ve mastered the tone of your show, any meddling will stick out like a sore thumb, especially as the episode ends on one of the most dramatic reveals of the season. Coming after the earlier hijinks, the big emotional scene at the end is muted.

Game of Thrones got the tone problem exactly right; by keeping the jokes to a minimum and localised mostly to Tyrion Lannister, who was then thrown into terrible situations where the contrast between his demeanour and the seriousness of his predicament gave insight into his character. The trial in the Eyrie, which sees him arrogantly acting like he has control of the situation when in fact he only prevails through good fortune and the kindness of Bronn — partially earned because of his humour — is a perfect example of the tension between humour and drama. And, just for good measure, the showrunners cut down heavily on the screentime for “comedy relief” Hodor. A very shrewd move.

Okay, there’s more to come. I know! It’s too much! Something broke in my head while I was writing this and now I can’t stop.

The 2009-2010 Caruso Awards: The Worst New Characters of the Year

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Even the best show can be hamstrung by the introduction of a poorly realised character. Most showrunners will realise the folly of their ways and kill them off as quickly as possible: look at how speedily Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof got rid of Nikki and Paolo in Lost. Some characters can improve over time as they become more shaded: last year we railed against Dollhouse‘s Topher Brink, who was at first an unwatchably annoying creep who tried so hard to be cute and funny while just setting our teeth on edge. This year he became our favourite character on the show, just by dialling down the eccentricity and playing up his loneliness and fear. Kudos to Fran Kranz and the Dollhouse team for fixing what had been the most annoying thing about an otherwise exemplary show.

Other characters can be a puzzling mixture of good and bad. Damon from The Vampire Diaries is, at his worst, a smug prick who wishes he was Spike from Buffy, not helped by Ian Somerhalder’s questionable performance and habit of pulling in his chin whenever he’s trying to deliver a “witty” bon-mot. However, at his best he’s almost complicated. The late season revelation that he was once a more honourable man than his Angel-Puppet-lookalike brother Stefan makes him far more interesting, and when Somerhalder plays up his vulnerability and sad rage he becomes the best thing about the show by far. It’s enough to make me glad I hung around long enough to see his transformation into a compelling character, though he still fails to be funny whenever he tries.

Nevertheless, some characters are just wretched in conception and execution, and nothing can fix them. Here are the worst characters of the season, and if the defensive creator of the most heinous character doesn’t like my decision, he can kiss my arse.

10. Merritt Grieves – Happy Town

ABC’s feeble Twin Peaks pastiche had one thing going for it: an interesting cast. M.C. Gainey, Frances Conroy, Steven Weber, Amy Acker and Stephen McHattie showed up from time to time, usually struggling to make something of the strained dialogue. No one suffered more than Sam Neill, a capable actor here transformed into a sleazy English shop owner with a TERRIBLY MYSTERIOUS history. Watching him attempt to breathe life into the bag of “weird” characteristics that was Grieves — sadly with only a wispy fraction of his usual twinkly-eyed charm — was a depressing and distracting experience. He needn’t have bothered. As with all of the other loosely sketched townsfolk, there was no meat to the character: he was just a collection of quirky character elements that were shuffled together in a writers room that must have stunk of desperation, and only becomes interesting in the final episode of the truncated series. Nevertheless, even the shocking last minute revelations that OMG he actually wears a leather jacket in his spare time! don’t make him any more compelling. Some questions really don’t need to be answered.

9. Jim Moriarty – Sherlock

Running through the mini-series was the knowledge that this new, terrifically entertaining Sherlock was going to face off against a re-envisioned Moriarty, the archetypal supervillain dolled up for the new age with the same care and thought that Moffat, Gatiss and McGuigan had lavished on Holmes and Watson. The final five minutes of the series were charged with even more expectation than the rest of the series, and so what do we get? Heath Ledger’s Joker? Terence Stamp’s Zod? Hell, did we even get Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor, a villain who is largely played for laughs but has a cold, cold heart underneath? No. We got Jim Carrey’s Riddler who sings half of his dialogue as if he were the lovechild of Bruno and Dame Edna. While the concept of “Jim” Moriarty remains solid (a villain for hire: nice idea), the execution was appalling. Hammier than John Simm’s Master, this Moriarty did the deadliest thing imaginable: in five minutes he stole from the best new BBC drama in years all the tension it had worked hard to generate. Maybe it can be salvaged in the next series, but for now, our enthusiasm has been put back to Defcon One.

8. Maddux Donner – Defying Gravity

Though showrunner James Parriott denies creating Defying Gravity as a Grey’s Anatomy analogue, Maddux Donner still feels like a McDreamy substitute, with his will-they-won’t-they relationship with Zoe and his friends-with-benefits partnership with Nadia. At some point in the development of the series it must have seemed like there was potential for a longrunning love triangle plot, enhanced by Donner’s tragic past and the complications of his previous dalliance with Zoe — which of course led to her having the abortion that defines her personality as a woman who regrets that decision to the exclusion of all other emotions or motivations. How sad, then, that instead of Patrick “Oilslick” Dempsey the showrunners cast Ron “Doughball” Livingstone, possibly the least alluring and mysterious actor on the planet. What might have been intense and sexy was instead petulant and grumpy, a sour centre for this sugary show. His pouty affect and grouchy demeanour is so potent no one else on the show has enough charisma to contend with it. There’s a lot wrong with this show, but Donner is the puffy millstone around its neck.

7. D.S. Ben Holt – Paradox

The highpoint of BBC’s dour sci-fi procedural came during the second episode, as the unexplained image-downloading force from the nether realms of the multiverse (or maybe it was GOD ZOMG) sent our dreary heroes another set of puzzle pieces which would help them prevent a tragedy of some kind. The last image, one held back from the depressed band of detectives, showed D.S. Ben Holt dead on the ground, with one eye pointing off in the wrong direction. To anyone who was as sick of his relentless, aimless fury as SoC was, we could only assume it was because a rage embolism had made his brain pop as if it contained a bomb like in Mission Impossible 3. The answer was more mundane (fate intended for him to be electrocuted), but worse was that the character survived, which meant three more episodes with him being inexplicably VERY ANGRY about everything. And that’s all. How do you write about someone that one-dimensional? He’s an angry cop. He has kids, I think. He shags Tamzin Outhwaite twice. But mostly he’s just very, very, VERY angry. It barely even qualifies as screenwriting.

6. Tyler Evans – V

Major network shows, the potential tentpoles, are bound to have all of their edges smoothed down in order to appeal to the most viewers, and the big-budget remake of V was no exception. None of the characters showed any hint of life, something that even the not-that-great original managed. Of all the poorly realised mannequins in the main cast, the most awful has to be Tyler Evans, another pouty teenager in a season that had already tortured us with whiny Jeremy Gilbert from The Vampire Diaries. Tyler is entitled and belligerent, but his worst crime is to restrict Elizabeth Mitchell’s range to little more than repetitious motherly concern. His histrionic bitching and one-note obsession with the V’s are extreme enough that he comes off as more unhinged than passionate, which might account for the hints that he might have a more complicated parentage than originally thought – anything to make him more interesting. The show would be more fun if the showrunners just killed the little creep off, but sadly there seems to be some kind of arc playing out here. All we can do is stick our fingers in our ears and wait it out.

5. Steve Fleming MP - The Thick Of It

A hero needs a good villain, and a great anti-hero/villain needs a great monster. Malcolm Tucker has butted heads with some repellent arseholes before, but it’s telling that his greatest threat prior to the third season of The Thick of It was himself, as seen in the specials. Maybe Armando Iannucci and his writers should be commended for inventing someone who is able to stop Tucker in his tracks, but to do so they had to inflict upon the viewer someone so repellent that it’s almost impossible to watch without cringing. Fleming is an unhinged bag of tics, unpredictable and ruthless enough to finally ruin Tucker’s career and terrify the assorted chumps of DoSAC, but pitched at such a weird level of energy that he no longer resembles a human being. The main cast might be heightened to a level of hysteria, but they’re recognisably human. Fleming’s stylised mania represents the first failure of the Thick Of It team. The casting of cuddly sitcom favourite David Haig doesn’t help. Luckily, in the final moments of the season we’re introduced to Tom Hollander’s Cal Richards, a Satanically evil, non-irritating antagonist. More please!

4. Every character that isn’t Sue Sylvester, Principal Figgins, or Kurt – Glee

Sue Sylvester’s hatred of the Glee club is entertaining enough that it’s worth keeping them around simply so she has something to bellow at. Other than that? There is no reason for any of them, except for the hilarious Principal Figgins, Kurt (when he’s not being a sociopath), and maybe Brittany when she doesn’t garble her lines. Everyone else cannot even be considered a character: they’re more like plot-enablers, or song delivery systems. No one else has a consistent personality, sometimes changing in the middle of an episode for no reason than that there is another song coming along that they need to be able to sing as if it conveys their inner thoughts. As the showrunners only bothered to come up with three plotlines for the show — oh no, Glee club is in trouble: I love you but you don’t love me: no one really understands me — these get swapped between the characters to make the show seem more versatile. Don’t be fooled. They’re hollow shells. The disdainful laziness of the showrunners is even more of an insult than the distressing number of harridan women and victimised men polluting the show.

3. Amy Pond – Doctor Who

Sometimes you can see the kernel of a good idea in a bad character, which makes it all the more heartbreaking when they quickly become intolerable and wreck every scene they are in because of that good thing gone bad. Amy Pond was designed to be an alternative to the doe-eyed simpering groupies that had previously accompanied the Doctor, but while the concept of “Strong-willed Independent Woman” sounds fantastic on the page, in execution we just got a sulky teenager bellowing her charming catchphrase, “SHUT UP!” every few minutes. Lacking a sense of wonder for the most part, you have to wonder why the Doctor bothered with her. That question looms over the entire season. Is there something more to Amy? Is there a secret even she doesn’t know she’s keeping? The major arc of the season seems to be leading to a big reveal, but no, she’s just someone who lost her memory and can magic the Doctor back from oblivion by shrieking “SHUT UP DOCKTORRRR!” at the cosmos. For all the hints and nudges, she turns out to be little more than the Time Traveller’s Fishwife, making her the least interesting companion in years.

2. Claire Dunphy – Modern Family

Of all the grotesque caricatures infesting this rancid comedic corpse, Julie Bowen’s Claire Dunphy is perhaps the worst of them all. A joy-vacuum that sits and snipes at all around her, her role as the nagging, sensible wife of dopey Phil would already make her eligible for this list, just for being a particularly unpleasant stereotype before we even get to the fact that she’s not that funny and Bowen’s comic timing is non-existent. Maybe that’s not her fault: it’s not like there are any really memorable jokes to work with here anyway, other than to stare at her silly husband with what often appears to be genuine loathing. No, the worst thing about Claire Dunphy is a simple one. Just as you don’t give the same name to two characters in a narrative, you shouldn’t give two characters the same nervous, disapproving, square personality when they don’t illuminate different aspects of that personality. Her brother Mitchell has exactly the same role in the broad canvas of the show, and the same role in his relationship with Cam: to be a huge downer. Jesse Tyler Ferguson is better at keeping the energy up during his scenes, and so avoids my wrath, which I instead aim at Claire with both barrels.

1. Sonny – Treme

Perhaps the most unsurprising inclusion on this list, feckless wastrel Sonny (performed with excellent self-absorbed petulance by Michiel Huisman) is universally despised by Treme fans. In this interview with Alan Sepinwall, David Simon gets defensive about the criticism of Sonny, maintaining that he’s not interested in making all of his characters likeable. Here’s some news for the great creator: audiences aren’t interested in that either. There’s room for awful characters in all fiction, but Sonny is a particularly wretched example, a whiny jerk who wrecks lives with no sense of having hidden depths that would explain why he is the way he is. What’s the worst thing about him? Not his paranoid narcissism, or his pathological self-destructiveness, or his mojo-absorbing treatment of poor blameless Annie, which reduces her to a needy loser who eventually finds her inner strength more for plot convenience than any sense of character revelation. It’s in the finale flashback, where we see him walking down the pre-hurricane streets of New Orleans wearing FUCKING CAPRI PANTS! Truly unforgivable. Let’s hope he either finds his inner-Thelonious in season two, or falls into a pothole, never to be seen or heard from again.

I’d like to say I’m finished, but I’m still not done. In the next post, best new show and pilot! Worst new show and pilot! And maybe some other stuff if the Internet will let me.

The 2009-2010 Caruso Awards: The Best New Characters of the Year

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Yes yes, I’m still not done. Traditionally Shades of Caruso feels obliged to praise showrunners for creating new characters that embody all that is great about a show, draw attention to aspects of the show that we hadn’t spotted before, or make us want to watch something that otherwise we wouldn’t be that bothered about. Previous years have seen us hurl garlands at Walter Bishop from Fringe and Dr. Amber Volakis from House like we were throwing love-frisbees. Who will win this year? Will it be Amy Pond? (Clue: no.) Will it be a sexy new vampire on True Blood? (Clue: No, because we haven’t watched it, despite all of the sexiness.) I’d like to think our choice is utterly uncontroversial. We’ll save the controversy for the following post, which will be about the worst new characters of the year. Rules apply: only characters introduced in seasons completed by the time the awards started are eligible, and only one character per show can be included, except for the two exceptions seen below, who made it onto the list because I think the relevant shows have two important, likeable characters that share a lot of traits and also show how issues of race can send two similar people down completely different roads.

10. Dan Stark – The Good Guys

Matt Nix’s endearing cop show sadly doesn’t have the consistency to become a regular watch, but whenever it comes on, your attention will inevitably be held by Bradley Whitford’s full-powered performance as retro-cop Dan Stark. He’s more than just a mustache-delivery system. Due to his time on Sorkin-Shows — where the amount of dialogue exceeds molecules in the universe — it’s forgivable to think that verbal humour is all Whitford can bring to a role, but much of the pleasure of his turn as the American Gene Hunt depends on his bizarre physical comedy. It’s worth tuning in each week to catch his weird stiff-armed high-kicking combat stance, let alone his clueless pronouncements and hysterical technophobia (as shown above). It’s a joke that’s been done elsewhere, but Whitford’s lively energy is infectious. Colin Hanks is a good foil, and RonReaco Lee is funny as a Huggy-Bear-esque snitch, but they don’t even need to be there for The Good Guys to work. It’s Whitford’s show: everyone else is just visiting.

9. Dr. Bennet Halverson – Dollhouse

Adding a character to this list of awesomeness should be a happy moment, but there is a twinge of sadness here. Though Dr. Bennett Halverson is introduced with a flourish and allowed at least one classic episode almost to herself, we don’t get a chance to see just how great this character could have been. The sense that there was a 500-page story-bible written about her various exploits is there in every scene. Halverson’s unpredictability, impishness and ruthlessness shine through Summer Glau’s most winning performance yet, so much so that we can go from being charmed by her to hating her guts in an instant. Other than Echo, she’s the most complicated character on the show, something made very clear even though her character is disposed of in a hurry, just like the show. You just know her final moment was meant to be a fourth season shocker, something that would have built to an amazing emotional crescendo. Unfortunately, we just a fraction of the ultimate plan. It’s enough to create a strong negative emotion, but still only a ghost of that all-too-familiar Whedon-pain.

8. Vince Howard / Luke Cafferty - Friday Night Lights

Sometimes all it takes for a character to win over an audience is just being a good guy. Not a Nice Guy, but someone who is shy and dopey and overly polite and too sincere for his own good. Luke Cafferty is a slave to his manners, his own worst enemy, a guy who makes a series of stupid mistakes and suffers terribly for them all while trying to do the right thing. Vince Howard is on the knife-edge of taking a wrong turn in his life that he can never return from, all the while knowing what the right choices are. Luckily for them, they’re in a show that has at its core a simple message: you can be better, and you can transcend this. Maybe I instantly loved both characters because they were just regular good guys who refuse to let misfortune grind them down, but I also wonder if I loved them because they enable Coach Taylor to do what he does best: change lives, save young men from the hell of their mistakes, and inspire them to be better people. After all, at its best Friday Night Lights is like uplift-porn.

7. Lucretia – Spartacus: Blood and Sand

In the new age of TV, we demand bad guys who are nuanced and not just evil. Spartacus starts off with a hissable villain in the form of Gaius Claudius Glaber, the legatus who ruins the life of “Spartacus” after our hero dares to question his orders. It’s telling that Glaber then disappears for the majority of the season, to be replaced with the glorious duo of Batiatus and his wife Lucretia. While SoC has long considered John Hannah to be a not-great actor, his work here has prompted a rethink. Nevertheless, as entertaining as the spluttering lanista was, he’s nothing without Lucretia. She works less as a Lady Macbeth and more as an equal, independently following her own plans to aid their political ambitions. What’s best about her — other than Lucy Lawless’ fine work — is that her plans don’t work out as well as she hoped: her “friend” Ilithyia eventually escapes her web of blackmail, and her inevitably doomed love of Gladiator Crixus proves to be just one part of her downfall. It’s that vulnerability and fallibility that makes Lucretia one of the most entertaining bad guys of the year.

6. Troy Barnes – Community

I agonised over which character on Best New Sitcom Community would make the grade here. Someone had to. Creator Dan Harmon did a fantastic job of populating the show with a central cast of memorable characters, and carried that good work through the season by altering relationships and focus to take advantage of growing chemistry and hidden acting strengths. All of the main characters (and secondary characters such as Star-Burns and Dean Pelton) are brilliantly realised, but the most consistently funny member of the core group has to be Troy Barnes, the dopey but good-natured former quarterback who loves Robin Williams, thrives on best friend Abed’s pop-culture savantism (even when he doesn’t quite understand it), has a notable way with words, and can harmonise even while scared of rats. Most importantly, Troy is a great showcase for the amazing Donald Glover, the Spider-Man who sadly never was. His ascent to immense super-stardom begins here.

5. Zoe Graystone – Caprica

Caveats naturally apply here, as of course the character of Zoe Graystone only exists in Caprica for a few minutes before being blasted into smithereens by crazed monotheist terrorists. The “Zoe Graystone” that captured my imagination is a computer extrapolation of metadata turned into a virtual avatar, hooked up to a robot, and then magically transformed into the first Cylon. Perhaps it’s this berserk origin story that makes her so fascinating, as she acts as a futuristic techno-Trinity of Mother, Daughter, and Holy Robot. Perhaps it’s seeing her grow — in the few episodes we got before Syfy maddeningly took the show from our screens — from a clueless, hostile teenager into a confident woman grieving for her own life and desperately trying to escape her physical prison. Mostly it’s because the most complex character in the Caprica-verse is played with such quirky energy by Alessandra Torresani, who drops into the nerd-culture consciousness with a splash and makes a meal of it. If she hadn’t been right for the part, the show would’ve been doomed. Thankfully, she’s perfect.

4. Davis McAlary / Antoine Batiste - Treme

Treme is about a number of things: it’s a critique of the Bush administration’s abandonment of a devastated city; a celebration of American culture and history; an organic musical that lacks the intentional artificiality of Glee; a thesis on the differences between commercial culture and “authentic” artistic endeavour. Most of all, it’s an attempt to document the “feel” of New Orleans, and though Albert Lambreaux’s furious Mardi Gras Indian chief might be the most detailed character in terms of introducing a slice of history that is unfamiliar to mainstream audiences, it’s lovable chancers Antoine and Davis that provide most of the laughs. Their lackadaisical personal lives are contrasted with their loyalty to local history, as Davis battles to preserve something of the town he loves and Antoine just gets on with being an essential part of Jazz culture. They’re also unreliable and shifty, with Antoine’s lovelife and Davis’ questionable appropriation of African-American language and culture being the salt in their sugary personas. They also serve as a subtle comment on race in America: while Antoine struggles, Davis coasts.

3. Raylan Givens – Justified

Shades of Caruso has many criteria for selecting the best and worst characters of the year, but there are some criteria we don’t often mention. One is Outrageous Hottness. I will admit to some weakness on occasion, but only one character made both myself and co-blogger Daisyhellcakes sit up in our chairs and say, “Hello!” Super-cool gunslinger Raylan Givens could turn even an unturnable head with his handsomeness, his pulse-quickening height, his lovely hair, his odd-but-sexy walk, and his excellent hat. Even better, the character is created by Elmore Leonard and is therefore rounded, funny, dark, and mysterious. Timothy Olyphant eschews the glumness of his previous TV character — Deadwood‘s terrifying Sheriff Seth Bullock — but keeps the Western elements. Raylan is a sharp-shooting, quick-witted, no-bullshit hero with terrible arch-enemies, compromised friends, a bad temper, a bit of a problem with drink, and two beautiful women who love him as much as he loves them. Basically, he is AWESOME and everyone who has yet to watch Justified needs to so they can contract Raylan Fever.

2. Lane Pryce – Mad Men

Ah Lane Pryce, let me count the ways that I love thee! SoC was already in the bag for Lane in the third season: his ups and downs in season four confirm the wisdom of our decision. In his first season as a secondary character, Lane is introduced as a stiff British dope who makes his American colleagues uncomfortable. As the season progresses, we see how he becomes won over by the American way of thinking, to the detriment of his marriage. It says a lot about Jared Harris’ wonderful performance that when it seemed he will be transferred from New York to India by his masters in London, we were mortified. Thankfully he is saved by THAT lawnmower, and stays long enough to see his exciting new life in New York jeopardised by PPL’s plans to sell off Sterling Cooper. There’s much to love in the stupendous season finale Sit Down And Have A Seat, but the greatest moment might be Lane turning on his bosses, saving the day and hanging up on them with a cheery “Very good. Happy Christmas!” like a puppet who just cut his strings. It’s an uplifting, delightful scene, and his emerging joie de vivre is infectious.

1. Sue Sylvester – Glee

It’s tempting to forgive all of Glee‘s flaws just because of Jane Lynch, though that would entail a boatload of forgiving. In a regular episode of Fox’s outrageously successful musical, there’s probably about five minutes of Sue Sylvester screentime, on average, and many weeks that five minutes can be enough to make watching the rest of the featherlight chaos worthwhile. Her florid dialogue, abuse of students, and quips about Will Schuester’s hair are comedy gold, but casting the magnificent Jane Lynch was the instant masterstroke. Party Down‘s loss is Ryan Murphy’s gain. Would Glee have any worth without her?  She’s the only reason Shades of Caruso has not yet given up on it. That’s how good she is: she utterly counteracts the considerable suck of the rest of the show. She’s the funniest thing on TV that isn’t in an NBC sitcom, and a source of unending joy. Don’t thank Murphy for it, though. His decision to make her a secret softy — her sister has Downs syndrome, and her interactions with her display a lighter side that no one else ever sees — could have ruined her. The only reason it doesn’t is because Jane Lynch is a comedy master worth approximately 58 Lily Tomlins (I say this as a fan of Lily Tomlin). We’re lucky we get to see her at the top of her game.

Coming up: the worst new characters of the year.

The 2009-2010 Caruso Awards: The Worst Episodes of the Year (10-1)

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The bottom ten episodes of the year have a few things in common, usually revolving around some pretty unevolved views on women or by treating IRL issues as some kind of ghoulish entertainment. Guess I’m becoming even more of a prude as I get older, but I really cannot stand stories about rapists or serial killers, with the exception of Hannibal Lecter, who is very refined and loves opera: the Frasier Crane of cannibals, you might say. In recent years TV has been great at exploring the human condition to a greater degree than it has ever tried to before, but even with shows like Dexter — which attempt to make darkly humorous light from an unpleasant subject — it’s too damn hard to create drama from the subject without crossing lines.

Perhaps this is why I prefer shows like The Shield or Breaking Bad: we see people who might have been good end up making the wrong decisions. Though Dexter fans will argue that the show does a good job of showing a bad man try to do good, the characterisation doesn’t really move on from that initial point. Can a serial killer be a good person, or will his urges win out? After four seasons you’d think they’d find something new to say, or give us at least some insight, but instead we just get that persistent expository voiceover. Oh man, just thinking about that show is depressing me…

The other theme here is the bad state of UK drama, as evidenced by the sad presence of so many UK shows on this list. Interesting chats on Twitter over the past few months have illuminated the current state of UK drama, that the vast amount of superfluous executives clogging the system have made it impossible to make a show that doesn’t talk down to the audience. I only managed one episode of The Deep before giving up, knowing that I would end up having to watch an hour of drama dragged out to five hours through all the exposition and pointless shots of people moving from one place to the other. I’m a fan of clear geography in an action show or film, but I can figure out that someone’s gone from one room to another without seeing them do it.

Filmmakers are coming out to complain more regularly now: Michael Caton-Jones memorably complained about script problems on Spooks just this week, complaining about interference. From a comment piece in The Herald:

“There are lots of layers of people who don’t do very much, most of whom couldn’t get arrested in film,” he said. “There are committees of people who work on scripts, to no real end. In fact, they’re known to directors as The Programme Prevention Unit.”

Mr Caton-Jones said he often finds himself shaking his head at some of the simplistic dialogue and the storylines. “Some of the set-ups are so predictable it’s like watching an episode of Charlie’s Angels,” he said.

“In Spooks, for example, one actress had all these lines to reveal what it meant for her to meet someone after years, and they were all so trite. I took a pencil through them and said, ‘Show me what you’re feeling’ and she did. And she felt a lot better for it. The actors are so good on that series they manage to make it work.”

It’s enough to make you hope things will change if enough creative folk speak up, but I doubt it. I want it too, though. I know the UK is filled with magnificent and talented writers and directors who could easily make shows to challenge the current US dominance. Unfortunately they’re blocked from doing this by ranks of people who have no idea what a creative artist needs to do his job. It’s heartbreaking.

Anyway, enough of that. On with the horror show.

10. Heroes - Thanksgiving

Congratulations, Heroes! Your third season was so utterly, unforgivably dire that SoC couldn’t pick a loser, but this year only about half of your episodes were worthy of this list, while the rest were merely forgettable. This counts as progress: not that this matters what with your cancellation, several years too late. The bad episodes were mostly just perfect examples of how the fourth season was trying hard to take a handful of story-dough and make a vast plot-pizza: perhaps if the show had only had eight episodes we might have had something more coherent. Instead we got hour after hour of ShinyWaxClaire falling out with her dad and/or audience-baiting chaste bi-sexual Gretchen, a laughably over-extended arc for “Nathan”, way too much of Gregg Grunberg looking panicky and yelling at everything in his line of sight, and Sylar, Sylar, Sylar. Though Heroes was improved by an episode-to-episode focus on single themes, it remained tedious and unintentionally funny. Thanksgiving has to be the most risible episode: it’s little more than an hour of families arguing over dinner. It’s as static as you can imagine, with a lot of bad acting being shot across the rubber turkeys and plastic pumpkin pies, and only Robert Knepper making an effort. Will Claire drop out of school? Will Noah get laid? Will “Nathan” turn back into Sylar, or is Adrian Pasdar contracted for another episode or two? Is anyone truly sad this thrill-ride got closed down for health and safety violations?

9. The Prisoner – Darling

Much as I love Lost, the terrible legacy it has given us is a rash of TERRIBLY MYSTERIOUS sci-fi shows that do their best to hide their secrets behind a veil of unusual events and cryptic clues. Almost all of these shows are at least comprehensible on a surface level, but not AMC/ITV’s remake of Patrick McGoohan’s classic 60s paranoia series. On every level the show is visual, aural, and narrative gibberish, but then the secret at the heart of the show is that it’s technically all a kind of dream anyway. The showrunners take this as a cue to throw out the rulebook and just film whatever they feel like, which means non-sequitur editing, ciphers instead of characters, a soundscape that makes it impossible to follow what is going on, etc. In this disastrous episode, we see Hayley “Rather Pretty” Atwell pass out for no reason in the real world, then appear as a blind woman in the Village because why not? She’s in love with 6 and he’s in love with her, which puts Ruth “Eyebrows” Wilson’s 313 right out. But in the end these ciphers are only in love with each other because dastardly Number 2 (who is dastardly because of Reason X, it turns out) has made them fall in love using some scientific potion involving DNA. Brilliant! Except they’re in a dreamworld and therefore technically have no DNA. Is it a metaphor? A satire on modern dating techniques? Or is it another mildly interesting idea thrown at the screen with no exploration or insight or reason, just to add more TERRIBLY MYSTERIOUS MYSTERIOUSNESS to the proceedings? One thing’s for sure: these non-characters are suddenly robbed of even that little bit of personality, reducing them to game pieces in a game with no rulebook. The atmospherics might be interesting, but with no real narrative, who cares?

8. Glee - Theatricality

Yes, this was featured in the Best of the Year poll. No, this is not a typing error. While Theatricality shows the best of Glee, it is also heavily encumbered with the worst as well. Much as I loved the confrontation scene with Kurt’s father and Finn, to get to that point we had to put up with yet more of the excruciating plot with Kurt pining for the lunk-headed football player and trying everything he can to seduce him. In trying to dramatise the confused feelings of a young gay man, they also made him look semi-psychotic: almost certainly unintentional, but still hard to swallow, especially when the showrunners pull their usual trick of selectively forgetting this aspect of Kurt’s personality whenever the “plot” requires. Nevertheless, this was nothing compared to the episode’s most egregious sins: removing Sue Sylvester from the episode in order to fit in a bunch of guff about Lady Gaga; closing the episode with a PSA-style speech from Will that bangs the audience over the head with this week’s themes in a way that is even less subtle than usual, and bringing the hastily-introduced Rachel/Shelby plot to a close with a catastrophically ill-considered piano version of Gaga’s Poker Face. It’s not the first time Glee ruins a moment by using a song that only matches the onscreen events because of a single line in a chorus, but this goes beyond even that. Lea Michele and Idina Menzel are both fine performers and incredible singers, but are here suddenly rendered robotic by overuse of Autotune, and then forced to bring some kind of emotional truth to this moment using a song that simply does not fit with what is going on, and has only been chosen because this episode is meant to pay tribute to a ubiquitous Europop mannequin. Truly the lowpoint of the series.

7. Paradox - Episode 3

As this post progresses, you’ll see a trend developing regarding thriller plots involving super-creepy male predators chasing women. The difference is that while an American show like Dexter will give us nuanced performances from heavy hitters like Michael C. Hall or John Lithgow (who deserved all the praise he got over the last year), we get creepy creepy men in creepy creepy clothes being as obviously evil as possible. We also get no insight into their pathology. While this means at least we don’t hover over the grisly details, it also means there is no context or reason to tell the story. It’s just women-in-peril nonsense, trying to make a too-real concern into the stuff of frivolous entertainment. Not that Paradox counts as entertainment. The BBC’s “homage” to Quantum Leap, Early Edition and Deja Vu shows a bunch of ill-defined and very tense cops who team up with some needlessly bureaucratic government types and a dour and eccentric scientist to decode images from God’s brain (or another universe) and stop catastrophes hours before they occur. The ever-so-slightly more bearable hours of this show play with that format a bit: this one tries to con the audience by introducing three potential rapists (and one handsy “nice guy”) and then having our “heroes” bicker about which is the one to arrest. Cue lots of shouting and running back and forth across Manchester in a desperate attempt to make it seem like something is going on. The director of this abomination — Simon Cellan-Jones — has directed many great hours of TV, including Treme‘s Smoke My Peace Pipe, which was one of my favourites of the year. The existence of this bullshit can be used as proof that right now the BBC doesn’t even know how to utilise its talent anymore. Stay in the States, Simon!

6. Outnumbered - Episode 7

As with many shows, the moment a secret keeper – ignored by critics and audiences – is finally recognised as something worth watching is when the wheels come off. The third season had wonderful moments, but the seventh episode was unforgivable. Angela returns to pester her sister Sue once more, this time with a boorish American husband, improbably named Brick and played with galumphing broad strokes by the usually dependable Douglas Hodge. Poking fun at Angela’s New Age dribblings had provided some amusing moments in the past, especially when her original middle-class programming comes crashing unexpectedly to the forefront, but all we have here are tired “jokes” about how Americans are all so confident and brash and stupid. With the kids sidelined, much of the show’s trademark improvisation is removed in favour of unconvincing histrionics and the snobbery of this offensive stereotypical depiction sucking the energy from everything around it, and when we do get some input from the kids, it’s awfully vanilla. Only the bleak final scene with Sue and Pete lying to their son Jake about the state of their marriage saves it from being a total failure, and even that achievement is dimmed by the fact that the main arc of the season (Pete’s “infidelity”) is so trivial compared to previous ones (domestic violence, Alzheimers) that the torrent of drama it unleashes stretches credibility.

5. V – John May

Mid-season fixes are a normal consequence of showrunners realising there are elements in their new shows that just don’t work. Vampire Diaries got rid of a cast member in memorable style after only a few episodes, killing one of the leads off and then wiping the memory of the one person who cared about her so it wouldn’t get in the way until later. FlashForward tinkered with tone and made slight improvements, but nothing too drastic. If you had hoped that V, which had opened with one of the worst and stupidest pilots in recent years, would make big changes, you were mistaken. The only real differences between early and late episodes were the removal of GeorgiePorgy, who had seemed terribly out of place from the first time he had burst onto set like a slightly more butch Bert Viola, and the introduction of action man and anti-hero Kyle Hobbes, who is approximately 0.0003523% as cool as Michael Ironside’s iconic Übermensch Ham Tyler from the original series. Neither change mattered: it was, from beginning to end, a truly catastrophic show, the worst sci-fi TV series since the Sci-Fi Channel’s Flash Gordon, except even more unimaginative. This episode saw the death of GeorgiePorgy after being tortured with robot insects or something equally complicated (just shut his hand in a door! God!), and the first sighting of resistance leader John May, who was, years before, hunted by Ryan Nichols, member of the elite cadre of badass resistance fighters whose fighting tactic is to stand in a circle and yell at each other. We also see Ryan’s conversion to the Fifth Column by John May, who seems to win him over by boring him into submission. Luckily, the viewer is made of stronger stuff, and can utilise the option of rebelling against the stupidity with the use of channel-changing technology.

4. Defying Gravity – Threshold

I’ll be honest. One of the main reasons I took against Defying Gravity was that even if it ended up cancelled after one short season, it at least managed to hang on longer than potential classic Virtuality, which wasn’t even picked up for a second episode. Even with that bitterness in mind, the third episode of ABC’s cross between Mission To Mars and Grey’s Anatomy was excruciating to watch. With a soundtrack of plinky-plonky “It’s Comedy!” music setting the tone, we flashback to the Antares crew’s training years at the time they are given their “HALO” libido-suppressing tech. This leads to a reverse of Seinfeld’s “Master-of-my-Domain” plot, with the stupid men betting against the giggling women who reckon they can’t get an erection despite all the boner-killing juice flowing through their bodies. This leads them to a stripclub where there is much chatter about gender equality, exploitation of women, manipulation of potential partners, etc. That’s on the female astronauts’ side of the room. The men are, of course, whooping and hollering about the boob-parade. Throughout this we also get to hear lots of agonising from Zoe about the abortion she had to have in order to qualify as an astronaut, because of course she’s just a baby-crazy woman and choosing her career couldn’t possibly fulfill her like that baby could have. What else can you expect from a show that introduces a happy promiscuous woman with the intention of revealing she was born intersexed, was male-dominant but made female by her parents, and would have been turned into a man by an alien deus-ex-machina in later episodes? Get in those gender boxes, ladies and gents, that’s what they’re there for!

3. Luther - Episode Three

Oh how I laughed at Luther. Oh how I obsessed about Luther! I’ll happily admit that once it revealed that it was actually one big crazy story in five parts instead of an episodic tale of combustible Loofah catchin’ crims an’ killahs on the mean streets of Lahhndan, I fell in love with it a little bit more. The last two episodes of this short season weren’t good TV, but by Jove they were fun. The finale out-NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO’d Revenge of the Sith ten times over. No mean feat. Nevertheless, as I stressed in this post earlier this year, it doesn’t excuse this unpalatable hour. The usual showy but ugly compositions were in full effect, as was Ruth “Yes, She Still Has Amazing Eyebrows” Wilson hamming it up as the anti-Loofah, the introduction of DSU Martin Schenk (who appears to have been possessed by the ghost of late-career Donald Pleasance), and the great man himself, DJ Big Driis, goin’ all maverick in order to collah the hysterically overwrought and demonic serial killah — Paul Rhys, showing off all of the tricks he learned at the Sir Anthony Hopkins School of Serial Killer Tics. All very amusing, except that it also featured a victim who is generously given one or two lines of normal dialogue right at the start of the episode before spending the next 40 minutes whimpering in terror and then dying offscreen. After that? Her corpse just a prop for Loofah to nail ‘is man by bendin’ the law. So I suppose her last few hours, filmed in extreme lascivious close-up, served some purpose, other than to be very gritty indeed. A thoroughly nasty episode, one that does the BBC’s drama department no favours. Being edgy only really works when it serves a purpose other than titillation, and the feeble, surface-level exploration of “morality” here is not reason enough.

2: Dexter - Blinded By The Light

Speaking of “edgy” shows “exploring” humanity’s darker nature, four seasons in, Dexter is still asking the same questions about its protagonist: can an emotionally compromised “good” serial killer find a way to reconcile his urge to kill and his growing need to connect with society? Whether this internal battle is worth dramatising at such length is something only the viewer can answer. Fans are transfixed as Michael C. Hall does his usual great work in making a murderer seem charming, while skeptics writhe in eternal agony as the show crawls towards a point over what feels like a million episodes loaded with clunky voiceovers, time-filling sub-plots involving ineptly sketched and poorly performed characters, and lascivious “adult” content including gratuitous boob shots or gore. Of course, we mustn’t forget the moral quandaries that don’t make any sense — either emotionally or logically — but are provided to give the illusion of depth to the tawdry proceedings. It’s CSI: Miami with a light dusting of faux-complexity and dollops of “adult content”. Whenever the Caruso Awards has to pick a worst episode, the problem is that the show exists as a continuum of overrated fail, so which one to choose? Blinded By The Light wins out for the sub-plot with a guy, recently laid-off and grieving for his dead wife, going around Dexter’s neighbourhood vandalising the property of the rich folk. Because that’s what people do when they’re unemployed: go off the rails and spout angry speeches about “making them pay”. That extra layer of insulting “topical” ignorance pushes this episode below the rest. God, I really hate serial killer stories.

1. Modern Family – Come Fly With Me

As mentioned before, Shades of Caruso will stick with shows long after they have annoyed, and so it was that we ignored our instant dislike of the pilot and watched this excruciating half-hour of weak punchlines and oleaginous sentimentality. Buffoonish omega-male Phil attempts to bond with macho father-in-law Jay, who is obsessing over the model plane he bought for his step-son Manny. The accident that occurs is sign-posted so heavily it goes past obviousness, past comedically-obvious obviousness, into anti-comedic clanging predictability. Even worse, the upshot of it all is the resolution — a difference-healing group hug between the dopey guys while the sensible ladies look on with simpering grins. Even worse than that is the sub-plot with Cameron teaching Mitchell the joys of Costco’s low prices and wide range of products. A bit of product placement is one thing: e.g. 30 Rock has skated close to the fire but makes sure to wink at the camera: it doesn’t excuse it, but it makes it palatable, at least. Here we get a laugh-free series of shots of Mitchell expressing shock at the INCREDIBLE BARGAINS. If it were a smarter show I’d think it was satirising product placement, but there’s no flip to the joke. We find out that Costco has a lot of bargains, and Mitchell loves it. End of sub-plot.

EVEN WORSE THAN EVEN THAT EVEN is Alex’s plot. She’s a young brainy girl who resists wearing dresses — a conflict that looks like it might be resolved in an interesting manner — before her hot and sexy step-aunt convinces her to love dresses because that’s how you make the boys like you. Somewhere Betty Friedan — who gets name-checked at one point, seemingly only to make a point that this show is post-stupid-old-feminism — is spinning in her grave. The difference in awfulness between this episode and the episode of Dexter at number two is an exponential curve on top of another exponential curve on top of a turd souffle. Nth power awfulness. No earthly measurement system can chart its evil. Someone drive a stake through its bastard heart and save our souls!

I intend to hand out more awards — both good and bad — though my initial plans to be done by the end of the week might not happen now. It’s taken longer to get done than I had feared, as you can tell from the gargantuan nature of all this ranting. Bear with me: I’ll shout for regular readers on Twitter and Facebook, and brace myself for accidental pagehits from Dexter and Modern Family fans, who may want to stab me for my heresy.

The 2009-2010 Caruso Awards: The Worst Episodes of the Year (20-11)

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Shades of Caruso apologises in advance for the following posts. They’re filled with complaints and bitching and all sorts of unpleasant negativity, but they’re something that needed to be written even if just to exorcise some very complicated feelings that arose during this past year of watching a lot of TV. Just as watching good TV allows you to appreciate the craft and intelligence of numerous talented people, watching bad TV… well, it allows you to do exactly the same thing. The difference is that you get to see this effort compromised by factors as big as the interference of executives who want to be “creative” but don’t understand anything about the process, or as small as one bad decision made and then followed through to unavoidable disaster (e.g. Evil Sandy in the third season of The O.C.).

Some of the shows here are shows I love, but went momentarily bad, either with ambition that ran away from them, or by adding some awful element that derails the narrative or tone. Some of the shows are probably just not my bag anyway, but were not distinct enough to convince me of their charms (e.g. Friday Night Lights is not a show I would normally watch, but it is exceptional on every level, and is therefore one of my all-time favourites). Some of them are just bone-headed and half-arsed and need a kicking. Unless specified, I’m not bitching at anyone in particular: it’s a collaborative process, and sometimes these things go awry without anyone realising. It’s just the way it is.

Except for my number one pick. That fucking bullshit needs to be called out. (Warning: There will be impotent rage.)

That’s for tomorrow. Today, bad episodes 20-11. In the interest of seeming 33% less bitter and mean-spirited than I could, I’m not listing 30 episodes, though I easily could have. Lucky for The Vampire Diaries, I guess. Normal rules about complete seasons and one candidate per season apply. If you see a show you love on this list, bear in mind I might only be complaining about one episode, not the whole thing. Even my favourite show ever — Lost — had a couple of clunkers this year, and there was even one episode of critical darling Mad Men that nearly made the fail grade. It’s nothing personal (though neither ended up on the list after I got rid of the 30-21 candidates). But if you wanna flame me, I understand. Go ahead. If you make good enough points, I’ll be gentle. And now, un-joy.

20. Dollhouse - The Hollow Men

Many of the episodes listed here are included for crimes against plotting, against pace, against acting. Some represent the moment a show made a transition from mostly-good episodes to mostly-bad, while others were the final proof that a show was broken from conception and would never be any good. This episode – the penultimate one in Joss Whedon’s cancelled SF series – is here for being awesome and terrible at the same time. Yes, it contained as many great ideas as previous episodes, some terrific performances, thrilling plot twists and shocking character deaths. It was also shakily shot and edited, sketchily written, and laden with bad effects and incongruities. A final shot of Echo running from an explosion that does zero damage to the building it happens in — followed by a shot of our heroes aimlessly wandering off into the “sunset” — might stand as the worst moment in all of Mutant Enemy history. Let me be VERY CLEAR: I’m not saying that this is the fault of anyone who worked on the show, and it would be cruel to suggest otherwise. In fact, everyone who worked on it has my eternal gratitude for going the extra mile to take the few episodes and dollars they had left and finish the story that Whedon started. Nevertheless, The Hollow Men stands as a monument to the show’s failure to catch on, either because of lacklustre promotion by Fox or by the unwillingness of the public to give a chance to a show as cerebral as this one. Gratitude is due to all concerned, but the frustration of seeing a potentially incredible story get short-changed remains.

19. Big Love – Blood Atonement

While watching the fourth season of Big Love (several months after its initial airing), the many complaints of fans and former fans rang through my ears, most of them revolving around the Jumping of the Shark. For six episodes I scoffed. From where I was sitting the show was its normal funny and unpredictable self. In fact, it was arguably even more macabre and eccentric than previous years. Other than complaints about the central arc with Bill attempting to become a senator in order to reveal his polygamy to the world, it was still superb, underrated TV. And then this episode leapt out from hiding, like some inept monster in the closet, stumbling towards us with coathangers around its feet and a bandanna over its eyes. With only three episodes left in the series, the showrunners and writing team appeared to be up against the wall in terms of not having time to pay things off in time for the finale, and thus began packing absurd amounts of plot into the show, overburdening it with event, rushing things to silly conclusions, and fatally misjudging the tone. The last three episodes of the season featured numerous terrible choices — the bizarre mad scientist plot featuring Zeljko Ivanek was particularly irritating, as he had been an interesting antagonist before turning into an insane eugenicist — but the booby prize goes to Blood Atonement for ushering in the miserable trilogy, and for including a lumpen hostage rescue plot of such boneheadedness that it boggles the mind. Let’s hope season five gets this gem of a show back on track.

18. FlashForward - Believe

It’s a great premise — everyone on the planet blacks out and sees four minutes of their future — but a great idea is doomed if you go in the wrong direction. The novel FlashForward wisely focused on the scientists who were investigating the worldwide phenomenon, while the show follows a bunch of FBI agents and their friends and family. The show might seem more dramatic, but it’s also liable to fall into tedious action cliche — which it does — and all other sub-plots are likely to seem trivial in comparison to the conspiracies, gunfights, explosions, and shots of Joseph Fiennes emoting with all the force of a billion Olivier-strength Thespian-Bombs. The show’s low-point is probably the least fighty, oddly enough. Believe features two sub-plots about recovering alcoholics (as if one wasn’t boring enough), one of which is solely about Agent Benford asking people if they texted some bad news to his wife. Not exactly riveting, but made accidentally amusing when the two people he asks (his be-whiskered sponsor Aaron and velvet-voiced boss Stanford Wedeck) react as if he accused them of molesting his daughter (chairs thrown, growls of “Get. Out. Of. My. Office!”, etc.). However the main focus of the show is the deathly tedium that is Bryce Varley’s search for his Japanese future-lover. It’s feather-light, leads to hours of pointless soul-searching in later episodes, and relies on horrible cliches about Japanese corporate culture. Imagine a Kate-centric episode of Lost mixed with the worst cultural drama of the Sun/Jin episodes, but without the sensitivity. It’s enough to make you pine for Hiro’s appearances in the first season of Heroes.

17. Fringe - Brown Betty

Glee was everywhere this year, like a virulent strain of some terribly overrated plague. It infected everything, including Fringe. As Fox brought its breakout hit back from slumber with a patience-sapping back-nine, it figured it would be a great idea to celebrate with a Glee-themed week of programming, including a musical episode of the mostly humourless and dry sci-fi show. Not that you could really tell. Though we got a minor moment of song from Lance “Intensity” Reddick, and a nicely underplayed rendition of “For Once In My Life” by Anna Torv — both of whom have lovely voices, especially Ms. Torv — it still seems like a stretch to call it a musical. Shockingly, Broadway star Michael Cerveris — The Watcher known as September — is featured in the episode but doesn’t sing a note. Imagine if Hinton Battle had not sung or danced in Buffy‘s Once More With Feeling: it’s a horrible, horrible waste of an opportunity. There have been arguments that it’s unfair to criticise it for being a musical when it obviously has no real interest in being one, but the episode has plenty of other damaging flaws: the clangingly obvious metaphors in Walter’s drug-induced hallucination; the look of discomfort on most of the cast’s faces as they struggled with the dopey film noir theme and the dreadful jokes (even John Noble looks lost); the complete lack of new or pertinent information, meaning this episode can be happily excised from the show’s run. The worst crime, however, is that it disrupts one of the most impressive late-season runs in recent TV history. At this point Fringe had finally become essential viewing: Brown Betty was a miserable, ill-judged mood-reset button that came at the worst moment. The season rallied and ended on a memorable high, but nevertheless this car-crash still irks.

16. The Mentalist – His Red Right Hand

SoC was quite happy to stick with this average-but-entertaining procedural last year simply because Simon Baker was so lovable as trickster Patrick Jane that even the most humdrum of episodes was lifted by his mischievous smile and funny mind-games. This year the show’s level of quality dipped ever-so-slightly, enough to make us question our decision. Our attentions wandered while airtime was wasted on the Rigsby-Van Pelt flirtation (which turned into a romance much quicker than expected, so kudos for that, at least), and Jane’s playfulness seemed a little less interesting, maybe a little more sour. Only the introduction of Bosco — Lisbon’s former partner and antagonist for our mentalist hero — brightened the show, mostly because it was nice to see that the horrors of The Unusuals didn’t put dependable Terry Kinney off being on TV. His Red Right Hand promised to bring the show out of its rut, as it heralded the return of Jane’s arch-enemy Red John in a sweeps-tastic display of drama. Sadly the episode rested on the innocence of new character Rebecca, whose ultimate evil was signposted by a bunch of distracting swivel-eyed tics introduced early on. The suspense and twist was wrecked by this out-of-place performance, and suddenly the episode was in trouble. Then Bosco died, and Minelli (Gregory Itzin) quit, meaning the two best supporting characters left within minutes of each other. If a Red John episode could be so poor, what’s was the point in sticking with it? With that, SoC dropped the show, albeit with a heavy heart.

15. Persons Unknown – The Truth

Cracks began to form in Persons Unknown‘s veneer at a shockingly early stage, but the intriguing central premise and atmospheric direction of the season opener lulled the viewer into a false sense of security. The sixth episode was where the wheels flew off. The introduction of Erika the week before was bad enough, but this episode showed everyone’s least favourite crazed lesbian gangbanger poisoning duplicitous Joe with anti-freeze. We know this because the episode ends with a shot of her pouring the contents of an enormous can into a sink — a can that has the words “ANTI-FREEZE” written on the side (presumably in much larger letters than the brand name, Acme). As if this wasn’t ridiculous enough, the season’s most superfluous B-plot (with obnoxiously hairy journalist Mark Renbe and his underwritten fuck-buddy Kat Damatto in search of something something in Rome) went into madness overdrive. It should be written in stone that no one can disguise themselves as clergy without the tone of the story immediately becoming comedic. Watching them dress as priest and nun to find some ultimately pointless MacGuffin was the mortal blow. The show limped on for several episodes after this, but the game was up: it became obvious that those early promising episodes were a fluke, and Persons Unknown was actually a brain-dead failure, as well as a source of much derisory fun — the hysterical deaths in the penultimate episode, the personality flip-flops, and poor, inexplicably blind Robert Picardo wearing David Bowie’s cast-off wig from Labyrinth.

14. Human Target - Victoria

When a show pulls a plot from the headlines, it’s usually something fairly recent. In Victoria Human Target went back to the 90s, and retold the story of Diana’s divorce from Prince Charles as a sub-direct-to-DVD actioner, complete with hissable villains and stiff-upper-lipped British princesses turned into real humans by the love of a good Yank. Our hero Christopher Chance is called in to protect Victoria, Princess of Wales, after the men responsible for protecting the Crown attempt to assassinate her and the New York EMT guy she falls for on a blood drive. Wait, wait! It gets better! Chance is forced to call in a favour from a former IRA enforcer, one who once put a bounty on Victoria’s head. For the benefit of US readers, imagine a British show featuring an English cop helping the First Lady elope with a British ambulance driver and getting assistance from a member of al Qaida. After much “Top of the morning!” humour, Chance reunites the Princess with the Queen, and the EMT guy punches feckless bastard Prince Walter in the chops for being such a girly worm or something. It could only have been more insulting to the British people if Chance had decided to protect her by staging her death in a car accident. So yeah, it was a very bad hour of TV, but it’s on here because the usual humour and pace of the series are absent, replaced by cliche and bone-headed predictability. The unbelievable insults to our Royal Family? Hilarious! It’s worth watching just for that. Whoever signed off on this wrongheadedness should stay away from the UK forever, but if I ever meet this person in the US, the drinks are on me.

13. The Office – New Leads

Perhaps it was residual annoyance at the shoddy use of the faux-documentary format in ABC’s monstrous Modern Family that tipped me over the edge, but suddenly the shenanigans at Dunder Mifflin didn’t seem so funny anymore. Much of this was an unavoidable (and — at times — forgivable) problem with the amount of time the show has been on the air. Jim and Pam are obviously growing up and away from the rest of the gang, and Michael has had the first stirrings of depression trigger some fight or flight reflex. Nevertheless, while they grow, the rest of the office have nowhere to go but sideways. This episode represented the lowpoint of the show to date, the moment a Fonz lookalike leapt over a pile of toner in the warehouse in my head. For no reason except plot convenience, the episode starts with the sales staff of the Scranton office siddenly transformed into a bunch of thoughtless jerks that boss everyone else around, instantly rendering them unlikeable. When new owners Sabre hand down some Mitch-&-Murray-esque sales leads, Michael rebels, rendering him unlikeable too. Then the non-sales staff join in, bitching about their colleagues and turning the room into a vortex of hatred. If anything was going to save this episode it would be the blooming love of Erin and Andy, but if you cannot stand them (::points thumb at self::), their cutesy flirting and eventual kiss in front of a crappy green screen effect is the straw that broke the camel’s back. The camel in this metaphor being my previous love of the show.

12. Happy Town – Questions and Antlers

For a start, that title is unforgivable, even though a reindeer features in the episode in bookending scenes. Worse than even that is that for once, there is an actual point to an episode of Happy Town (after five episodes featuring almost no progression in any of its dreary plots), but the denouement is so overbaked as to be merely unintentionally funny instead of tragic. Sheriff Tommy Conroy is forced to finally apprehend his murderous best friend Big Dave, but as Abraham Benrubi appears to have been cast as an unhinged and unsympathetic simpleton, the face-off between him and the inept lawmaker turns into an interminable screaming contest. A bad end to a bad episode, but the reason for its inclusion in this list is not a single moment, but a flaw that runs through every scene like the word “terrible” through a stick of Brighton rock. Indulgent dialogue taints every scene, desperately trying to add a layer of quirk to what was already dreadfully self-conscious. None of the characters speaks like a human being, or even as individuals. All you can hear is the same pretentious voice coming out of everyone, with references to Chinese proverbs, crepes (in the longest and most obnoxious scene of the year), and Bon Jovi songs littering their speech with all the distracting insistence of a sugar-loaded child pointing at the crayon graffiti on your new wallpaper and screaming, “Look at me! I done made the clever words!” Simply unbearable.

11. Doctor Who – The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood

The arrival of Steven Moffat on Doctor Who was a relief after Russell T. Davies’ run on the show began to offer up more rough episodes per season than highlights, not to mention the back-patting Cringemas special with its Return-of-the-King-esque finale. Nevertheless, even though Moffat’s first season had some very strong episodes, its ratio of good to bad was about 50:50, and it was Moffat himself who wrote most of the best ones. The other half of the equation had aquatic space vampires, Churchill and Daleks, and this dispiriting two-parter from SoC arch-nemesis Chris Chibnall.  Never able to let escapist sci-fi just be escapist sci-fi, he uses the return of new, humanised Silurians to beat us about the head and body with the same faux-profound Statements of Great Importance about humanity’s flaws that make the worst of Who and Torchwood (e.g. Countrycide) such a joyless bore. The Silurians and the humans — sworn enemies for decades now —  almost reach a detente (three minutes after new hostilities begin), but our suspicions get the better of us and the peace talks fail oh foolish hubristic humans and their hubristic foolishness! So yeah, pretty much the same plot as in their other appearances. On top of that, we see Amy sulking like a bored teenager during the peace talks (she’s useless throughout), much lifeless and overlong speechifying by the Doctor, Rory being absorbed by the mysterious crack in the universe just as he was proving to be a more entertaining companion than his fiancee, and a hilarious 15-minute sequence with the Doctor breathlessly helping the humans prepare traps and surveillance prior to a fight with Silurian soldiers that never happens. Still, at least that running around padded the episode out to the right length. That’s something, I guess.

More mean-spirited carping from me tomorrow, fingers crossed.

The 2009-2010 Caruso Awards: The Best Episodes of the Year (30-21)

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The Caruso Awards traditionally occur at the beginning of the new US TV season, which lands a few days into September. I say traditionally, but as ever these awards are being announced a couple of weeks late. Partly this was due to the late finish of the second season of Hung (Shades of Caruso prides itself on being one of the nine or ten internet venues that still cares about that show now that it’s obvious Ray Drecker’s mega-wang isn’t going to be displayed). Mostly it’s because time is tight, and this year —  in which SoC has been on lengthy breaks for long periods — there has been more to write about in order to catch up. Bear in mind, to judge the state of TV more fairly, SoC has seen over thirty shows in their entirety this year. That’s not easy, though thankfully it’s mostly been a blast, despite the best efforts of ABC.

Some of the awards given might seem a little odd, and so clarification is necessary. To qualify for these awards, shows must have finished their current run by the time we publish. This means the fourth season of Mad Men, the second half of the fourth season of The Venture Brothers, and the first season of Rubicon are sadly not eligible for awards, though Mad Men 3 and the first half of Venture Brothers 4 are. Though this means you will have to cast your minds back to last year to remember how great SoC’s pick of Mad Men‘s exceptional third season was, it keeps things in line with previous years. Regrettably — and much to the frustration of SoC co-founder Daisyhellcakes — this means the list will not feature the recently aired episode The Suitcase (aka Elisabeth Moss and Jon Hamm’s award reel), which might represent the pinnacle of Matthew Weiner’s career so far. I’m tempted to add it to the list anyway, but instead will adhere to the other main rule of the Caruso Awards: only one episode from the most recently completed season is eligible.

This might seem arbitrary, but this is to prevent this top thirty from being dominated by most of Mad Men 3, half of Sons of Anarchy 2, and all thirteen episodes of the third season of Breaking Bad — a season of such humbling perfection that the only logical response is genuflection and obnoxious hyperbole, of which this is an example. It’s only fair to give all the shows I’ve watched a chance, meaning even flawed shows like The Vampire Diaries and Glee get a chance at a placing. We aims t’be fair. If I get time I might give some props to other highlights from my favourite shows (God knows I agonised over what were the best episodes from the aforementioned instant classic seasons), though the already ridiculous length of these posts tend to suggest there will be a competition between myself and you, dear reader, for who gets bored first.

And so, with no further ado, here are the episodes ranked 30-21 in SoC’s top thirty of the season. The next two posts will come before the end of the week. Remember, there WILL be spoilers. SPOILERS! Okay? If you see a show listed here that you intend to watch at some point, I’ve tried to be kinda vague but let’s be honest, you shouldn’t know ANYTHING about them. You have been warned. WARNED IN ALL-CAPS!

30: The Vampire Diaries – Founder’s Day

Like an undead O.C., The Vampire Diaries burned through a lot of plot in its first season, which is easy when you happily grab story elements from so many other sources. Though SoC found much of this teenage angstiness rather dreary — not helped by the stultifying blandness of the protagonist — showrunners Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson did an okay job of throwing up cliffhangers strong enough to keep even sceptics tuning in. It’s tempting to criticise the season finale for having the same flaws as the previous episodes, but the various plot strands came together better than expected, and featured a couple of genuine shocks and some unexpected gore. It also deftly set up some intriguing plot threads for next season, including the return of A FACE FROM THE PAST and WEREWOLVES and so on and so forth. It might have been chapter-end-by-numbers, but it rose above its usual level of dull professionalism for a moment, achieving everything you could hope for from a season finale. SoC would be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge that pleasant surprise, and praise the showrunners for spinning out a potentially boring Twilight cash-in into something that will keep us watching for at least another year (especially now ace writers Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain have signed on).

29: Glee - Theatricality

The zeitgeist-hogging breakout hit of the year came, went, and then came again as Fox extended its original run of thirteen episodes with a further nine, meaning the showrunners were forced to undo all of the closure of the original season finale and put the characters through the same old dramas all over again (except this time sans Jessalyn Gilsig, for the most part). The redundancy of much of the show to this point (with the same plots cropping up again and again) dogged this final stretch even more than usual, but one revisit was worthwhile. While the main character conflicts ran in ever-decreasing circles, the side story of Kurt’s attempts to connect with his father hit big here, with a devastatingly performed scene in which Kurt’s father destroys Finn for insulting his son and mocking his sexuality. Even if this arc had seemed to have reached a satisfying conclusion earlier in the season, the showrunners are to be commended for returning to the well if it gives us a moment as cathartic and unexpected as this. Also this episode: the Glee club perform Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance with great verve, and Brittany wears some lobster claws in one of the best sight gags of the year.

28: Persons Unknown – The Way Through

Shades of Caruso attempts to give every show a chance, even when the first few episodes turn out to be underwhelming. A lot of the time our initial bad impressions are correct, but the times we’re proved wrong justify our patience. Then there are the other shows, that intrigue us from the get-go and then turn out to have been a terrible, terrible, oh my so terrible mistake. As much as it seems right to exclude from our list all shows that eventually turn bad, that would be dishonest. This third episode of the NBC mini-series seemed to hit a nice groove of mystery show and political commentary. Our seven captives — trapped in a weird small town by a mysterious antagonist — are beginning to get desperate, resorting to tunneling under the invisible barrier keeping them trapped. When this fails, they end up fighting over three gas-masks, and the true nature of some of the “inmates” comes to light. Not much is given away, but weird sci-fi touches like underground metal barriers and smoke traps mix with unnerving contemporary symbolism — prison motifs and subtle references to Abu Ghraib and torture — to generate a powerful mystery that eventually comes to naught. A shame, but credit where credit is due — up to this point, Persons Unknown captured my imagination.

27. Check It Out with Dr. Steve Brule – Food

For those of us who consider John C. Reilly to be one of the greatest actors of his generation, a performer possessed of astonishing timing that allows him to deliver both normal comedy and grating anti-comedy with perfect judgement — and a fantastic singer into the bargain — this has to be included. Perhaps its greatest achievement is to avoid the hit and miss nature of Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job by focusing on just one character, expanding our understanding of the good “Doctor” by showing his interactions with others and placing him in new settings. Anything that gives Reilly more material to work with should be applauded. While later episodes could get bogged down with a single joke stretched beyond humour into the realm of the experimental, this season opener just concentrated on letting Dr. Steve Brule do his thing, which include a humiliating attempt at flirting with a woman who turns out to be his cousin, falling face-first into a cake, and getting territorial with “Dr. Jimmy Brungus”.

26: Human Target – Lockdown

For five episodes Fox’s Human Target provided mild diversion, with DC Comics hero Christopher Chance and his squabbling associates Winston and Guerrero protecting various non-player characters from uninspiring antagonists in a variety of familiar settings. For the sixth episode, with the template of the show established, Human Target began to flex its muscles a little. Ostensibly a hostage rescue plot bolted onto a Die Hard framework, viewers were treated to a slick and exciting forty-five minutes of pure action-movie drama directed with confidence by 24 veteran Jon Cassar, and plotted smartly enough to finally match the plot mechanics with some believable human stakes. Filling the cast out with dependables such as Kevin Weisman, Mitch Pileggi and Autumn Reeser was a great move, but nothing made this episode stand out as much as the imaginative showdown set piece in an elevator, with Mark Valley excelling as a Bourne-style fighting machine. It’s just a really thrilling hour of adventure TV, something that is deceptively hard to do as well as it was done here.

25. Louie - Bully

How odd it feels to praise a sitcom for not being funny. Most episodes of Louie contain at least a few belly laughs (usually during Louis C.K.’s excellent stand-up routines) and quietly amusing “sketch” sequences, but Bully contains almost no jokes, instead spending almost its entire length depicting a single experience, its unexpected aftermath, and then exploring the backstory. Like some weird cross of A History of Violence and James Watkins’ Eden Lake, Bully picks at a modern variation on an age-old fear in fine detail, with Louie — on what seems to be a successful date — unwisely confronting a group of rowdy teenagers, resulting in total humiliation. His date ruined, Louis is inspired to follow his tormentor home. What follows is a long, almost wordless sequence that builds on the horrible, miserable tension of the preceding scene, and culminates in a showdown that ends in an unexpected way. Though the neat answers of the final scenes might be a little trite, it is still an unexpectedly troubling journey into the male psyche, paced with skill by Louis C.K. and beautifully shot by Paul Koestner.

24. Hung - The Middle East is Complicated

The second season of HBO’s likeable comedy was criticised for being unfocused or underpowered, but for this viewer it remained a funny, unpredictable half an hour featuring enough lovable characters that a lack of urgency was not a deal-breaker. This episode appeared to be more chaotic than most, with some highly entertaining work from Anne Heche, Lennie James and Gregg Henry, but under all the comic setpieces and drama there was a very simple through-line: while everything explodes around male prostitute Ray Drecker, he finds the way to endure. At this point in the show’s run Tanya and Lenore’s battle for Ray’s soul (i.e. power over his magical cock) appears to be going in circles, but Ray is given perspective on this when dealing with the differing points of view of his Israeli neighbour and a Lebanese client, who both express disgust over his ignorance of Middle Eastern politics and the origin of hummus. Surrounded by furious mania and cyclical conflict, Ray retreats to a safe position, and thus finds a way to make his prostitution work: removing his prejudices and loyalties from the equation in order to satisfy the person he is with: the prostitutional equivalent of Switzerland, a safe haven for those who need him. Thomas Jane’s final scene, with him reassuring guest star Merrin Dungey that he was on her side, was well-earned, well-played, and particularly satisfying.

23: Doctor Who – The Beast Below

It was all change on Doctor Who this year. The busy but entertaining season premiere did a terrific job of introducing super-likeable new Doctor Matt Smith. It also gave us Amy Pond, who — as an entirely new character — had more to prove. This episode gave us the best example of her pluck, evading mysterious Smilers and saving the day despite the Doctor having a hissy-fit about how crap humans are. Considering how rarely he did that during Russell T. Davies’ tenure as showrunner, this return to curmudgeonliness was more than welcome, as was Amy’s heroic act. Partially because she saves the day, saves the space whale (no news if it is related to Spacey the Space Whale from Torchwood‘s execrable Meat), and earns a Golden Ticket to Doctor Wonka’s Adventure Factory, but mostly because she actually terminates the monarchy on Starship UK. An anti-monarchy message in a children’s TV show? Add to that the nifty political satire earlier in the episode, where Amy blindly votes at random and has no recollection of her decision-making process — bold of Steven Moffat to suggest the British people are being bamboozled by political messages that cloud their judgement — and you get an unusually acidic episode of Who. It was also the last time we would like Amy Pond. More on that later.

22. The IT Crowd – Italian For Beginners

The latest season of The IT Crowd was arguably the best yet, possibly a consequence of Matt Berry getting more screentime as Douglas Reynholm. It’s also great that the show seems more confident about keeping the characters apart in their own plots, with only the slightest hint that they might coalesce at the end. Linehan’s love of the absurd is tonally different enough from Larry David’s approach (rooted more in uncomfortable truths in the real world) that his love of Seinfeld is only occasionally obvious, but here he gets to show off his understanding of Seinfeldian-structure with several joyous flourishes, especially the way he sets up Moss’s fear of childbirth and the IT-Crowd-niverse’s iPhone fixation with sly jokes in the first act before paying them off with a wonderful unifying set-piece in Namco. However, the episode’s crowning glory might be his brilliant fusing of Linehanian madness and LarryDavidian* observational cringe-humour in the sub-plot featuring Roy’s girlfriend, orphaned when her parents died in an inexplicable and surreal accident that possesses him in the same way a UFO sighting drove poor Roy Neary crazy in Close Encounters. It’s a sub-plot fit to sit alongside those of Linehan’s comedy idols.

*I’ll stop that now.

21. The Office – Niagara

I was dreading it. One of my least favourite episodes of The Office was Phyllis’ Wedding, but only because Michael Scott crossed so many lines in his desperate need to be the centre of attention that he became utterly unlikeable. Of course that was the point, but the rage his solipsism induced is no less vivid. For a few episodes after it was hard to see him as a silly oaf and not as a spoilt and spiteful child prone to unforgivable tantrums. The Office is not in the habit of retconning this behaviour, so there was no chance Michael wouldn’t attempt to hijack Jim and Pam’s wedding. Thankfully everyone got to have their cake and eat it. Even though Michael and the rest of the Dunder Mifflin team do indeed take over the ceremony by doing an imitation of the JK Wedding Entrance Dance video that colonised the Internet last year, the showrunners knew to give Jim possibly his finest moment yet — anticipating this display and organising a different marriage ceremony for him and Pam on the Maid of the Mists. It’s a funny episode all round, and has some clever plot developments (not least Dwight and Michael’s romantic successes), but it’s the glorious shot of the newly-betrothed couple – in full wedding gear - on the deck of that boat that sets this episode miles (and miles and miles and miles) apart from the rest of the season.

More unsettling enthusiasm to come…