Category Archives: Misfits

The Caruso TV Awards Are Dead; Long Live Another Huge Post About TV

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Once upon a time Shades of Caruso flourished like a beanstalk borne of magic beans, sprouting poorly edited posts on a regular, almost daily basis. It was a simpler age, when I had lots of downtime at work and could futz about there in the company of other people similarly unoccupied. Ah, t’was glorious in that subterranean office, with nothing but lots of frothing about Torchwood and attempts to create running gags about Reed Richards to fill the billions of empty hours. As I’m sure many of you know, blogging can be addictive, and for a while there it grabbed me with greater force even than smoking or pasta. The Publish button was the plunger on a syringe full of opinion-smack, and refreshing the Sitemeter page was the high.

Luckily the love of a good woman and general indifference from the blogosphere persuaded me to scale that shit back a lot, but even so the sense of obligation remained, as if I had to keep something going for the sake of… I don’t know, truth or something? Or maybe to lance the boil of opinion in my head that constantly replenished itself over time? Probably more like that. I had thoughts that needed to be shared, it seemed, but now I so rarely blog the upshot is that the thoughts pile up, and I end up writing epic posts that are just stupidly long. 6,000 words on Prometheus? 9,000 on The Dark Knight Rises? 10,000 in total over three posts about the Lost finale (still one of my least-read blogging projects)? The less I blogged the more I wrote, paradoxically.

The busiest period of the Caruso year is September to December, where I seem to focus most of my energy. First comes the Caruso TV Awards, in which I would choose the best and worst episodes of the year, best and worst characters, and then sundry other observations I had accumulated during that TV season, though the size of those posts meant they would be finished about a month into the new season, rendering them even less relevant. Then comes the two weeks of the London Film Festival, during which time I’ve reviewed every film I’ve seen there for the past three years, leading to either barely any hits (Bernie/The Monk) or big numbers, such as my absurdly glowing review of Black Swan, which got mad hits (like it was Rod Carew). And finally, in December, a blow-out with the Shades of Caruso movie awards, which takes me months to write. I’m not kidding; I started working on this year’s awards in August.

But why? To have a voice? If part of living in the new world is servicing the compulsion to continually scream, “I am alive, in the world, and I opine!” then I have Twitter for that, and Letterboxd if I can be bothered to put up with the worst of the commenters there (the good people make up for it, but being talked to like a 6-year old two weeks ago because I didn’t ejaculate with glee over Rian Johnson’s otherwise very good Looper was enough to put me off for a while). Am I doing this for my loyal readers? I do have some and they mean the world to me, but when I have #TheProject sitting unwritten in the writing study in the cobwebbed west wing of my mind, the thought of doing this in the hope that I might somehow enhance the wider cultural debate even a little seems absurd and quite arrogant.

Of course, I also feel compelled to do it, which explains why I spent weeks building up the courage to write about The Dark Knight Rises, and I feel much better for sliding that out of my head and onto the page like I’m moving Iron Man armour schematics from screen to screen like Tony Stark (quick thank you to everyone who RTd it or commented on it or offered kind words; it’s a huge relief when I get positive feedback). There’s also my standard response when people ask why I do this; watching and dissecting TV shows is how I catalogue how I feel about works of fiction, how they have failed or succeeded, and how I can develop my own writing or understanding of story structure and artistic accomplishment through those studies. That’s the best reason of all, and watching TV has been incredibly educational in that respect.

But sometimes it feels like the lesson is merely, “Be more like the writers of Breaking Bad and The Good Wife, and less like the writers of CSI: Miami and Dexter“. That’s a broad lesson that’s learned already, and picking these things apart to see how they tick (or clunk) isn’t as useful as it once was. Actually, I’m learning more about writing fiction by writing fiction, though I’m glad I spent so long preparing my brain-soil before planting idea-seeds. All those hours watching The Shield / Buffy / Lost and learning about character and pace and timing of revelation really paid off, I can feel it.

And so, to my point. The LFF reviews will probably remain, though I might make them smaller. The end of year awards will remain because they make Daisyhellcakes laugh and I get a shitload of hits for them (I think it’s just image-trawlers but still). The Caruso TV Awards? No can do anymore. They take forever, I get about 12 hits a post, and no one ever mentions them even on Twitter, where no thought is left untranscribed. It’s a waste of time I could spend elsewhere. Agonising over that series of posts, which I dreaded for months, has been one of the most depressing things about this year, when much of the time I wanted to work on #TheProject.

Giving up on that plan has lifted an enormous weight off my shoulders; the weight of having to watch the rest of Revenge, the second season of Boardwalk Empire, or any of Grimm after that risible pilot. I honestly think I would have killed myself if I’d felt obliged to watch the second season of Falling Skies just for the purpose of writing 200 words about it that no one would even have noticed. As for the sitcoms; I will only endure comedies starring Zooey Deschanel or Krysten Ritter if someone pays me megadollah, and, as I have found to my great embarrassment, no one wants to do that, so you can forget it.

And why should I write a huge post about these things even for money? There are more than enough people doing that on a weekly basis anyway. The AV Club alone covers literally every episode of every TV show airing at the moment. Sometimes I wonder if they’re going to start recapping the news. The vast majority of their reviews are so far-and-away better and more insightful than anything I could come up with that the futility of it seems even more overwhelming, and even if that wasn’t the case, do I really want to become an active, visible member of a critical subculture in which writers I like can be pilloried and insulted by fans with the permission of bitter showrunners, as those who have criticised Sons of Anarchy or Community have found? What’s to be gained from participating? It’s just asking for trouble.

But those observations remain in my head, standing between me and #TheProject like an inspiration dam, making a blog purge necessary. So I can get on with my goddamn life, here’s what I thought of TV this year. I wrote a shit-ton; feel free to bail now if you want, I’ll understand:

A million people can tell me that Boardwalk Empire improved in its second season but it would have had to be reset entirely for me to even think about giving it a chance. Plus I know everything that happens at the end because Twitter. A character I didn’t care about killed another character I didn’t care about? Maybe if that suddenly transforms the show into The Chalky and Van Alden Intensity Hour in the third season, then I’d think about it. Perhaps I’d have been more willing to watch Boardwalk Empire if I hadn’t tried to get through the interminable Hell on Wheels. Five episodes in I had to give up. A Western! And I couldn’t get through it! I blame the drama-dampening work from Colm Meaney, who was only slightly less hammy than he was in Get Him To The Greek, which is still a huge Serrano Ham of a performance. Even Common and The Swede couldn’t keep me watching. Sorry AMC.

And sorry for not being more enthusiastic about The Walking Dead aka The Neverending Circular Conversation About Oh The Humanity n’ Ting. A lot of folks hated the fact that it was set on one farm. I understood the need for this; budgetary constraints made it necessary, and to be honest it’s theoretically possible that a show could work from one locale. But if the only thing that happens is that everyone has conversations about the thing that’s on their mind? For several weeks? And all anyone ultimately does is swap philosophical positions with someone else, before swapping back? I don’t care how many main characters you massacre, I stopped caring 8 hours ago. There’s no drama here anymore. There’s just talking and an occasional zombie ZOMBIE THEY’RE CALLED ZOMBIES NOT WALKERS ZOMBIES FOR FUCK’S SAKE ZOMBIESZOMBIESZOMBIES.

This lack of enthusiasm spelled doom for other shows. Revenge seemed like it would be campy fun but it wasn’t compulsive enough or trashy enough to keep me and Daisyhellcakes interested. A lot of folks like it but time is just too precious to use on something I think is okay. Especially when you waste 13 hours on Alcatraz, which seemed like it might have been a grower like Fringe, but was merely a series of narrative dead-ends before the enormous cul-de-sac that is Being Cancelled. They couldn’t even make good use of the excellent chemistry between Jorge Garcia and owner of the Best Hairstyle of the Season Sarah Jones. I don’t know if I’d like more of Alcatraz, but I’d like more of those two. However, watching that meant I never even got around to Person of Interest / Awake / Enlightened / Boss / House of Lies / Magic City etc. At least, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it.

Two fairytale shows arrived and became hits, improbably. The pilot for Grimm so offended me with its dreary sub-Buffy mythology that I dropped it instantly, and even though it’s apparently OMG sooooooooooo good now, again, my priorities have finally shifted, hallelujah. Once Upon a Time, on the other hand, was only really marginally better but for a Lost fan such as myself, that dual-timeline structure was like finding a packet of chocolate in the back of the cupboard that you’ve forgotten about. For all its many faults it was a great bandage on the wound that is the absence of Lost, plus it’s nice to watch less demanding, pleasant shows now and again. Best of all, it featured a fantastic villain in Rumpelstiltskin, one good enough to keep me tuned in even during the longueurs. Hopefully the second season will make good on the first’s promise.

Some of our favourite shows returned and were merely just good. Nothing spectacular, just eminently watchable and occasionally inspired. The Good Wife had its weakest season yet but it was still so sharply written and bouncily performed that even a few malfunctioning plotlines and strangely curtailed arcs couldn’t ruin it. Can anything? The show is a miracle of network TV; a pacy procedural that’s culturally relevant and politically complex without alienating the audience through impenetrable continuity. It’s still the most entertaining show of the week almost every week; nothing else surprises me as often or makes me feel as happy. I hope it runs forever.

Fringe understandably felt a little off because of the wait so many of us had for the timeline in which Peter exists to come back into being. Peter did return, but neither universe had ever known him. Still we waited for a reset but it never came, and maybe fans were disappointed that Olivia regained her memories of him because of love. But the show is about love, more than any other TV show except maybe Once Upon A Time. The wobbles in mid-season settled once the show basically came out and said, “IT’S ABOUT LOVE! CHILL OUT, NERDS!” and looking back it was stronger than it first seemed, and had a surfeit of terrific hours, as Noel Murray found recently. It would be churlish of me to be too critical of a show this entertaining and increasingly emotionally charged, especially if it’s willing to send two characters back to the Big Bang itself, just because it could.

The sitcoms, on the other hand, were a mess. The Office finally broke us, and we stopped watching it, our “Memories Of The Office” switch firmly stuck in the “That was a shit show overall” position. Maybe unfair, but the woeful start to the season was enough to banish many of the good memories. It should’ve ended halfway through season five, I tell you. Parks and Recreation was thankfully better, but the Leslie/Ben relationship annoyed Daisyhellcakes to distraction, the insane and desperately unfunny Tom and Anne coupling infuriated us both, and the promising campaign arc didn’t provide the LOLz we were expecting. A good idea in theory, but one poorly implemented, even with great guest turns by Paul Rudd and Kathryn Hahn (aka the hardest working woman in showbiz). Veep was good but worked better if you thought about it as a drama with jokes. Hopefully it’ll hit its stride soon and find its own voice.

Even Community disappointed this year, with a terrible split between bland formula and crazy concept stuff. The ambition gap between the two was way off; season two seemed perfectly blended in comparison. Which is not to say there were no great episodes; as it wore on it felt like there were good and clever things being done but they were being lost in the shuffle. I’ve spent the whole year trying to figure out what it was that bugged me about this season, and the main candidates were the long set up for arcs that got paid off in baffling haste, the endless, increasingly unfunny references to Inspector Spacetime (the worst running joke in the history of comedy), and that the performances were pitched way too manic and perky compared to previous years, which I attributed to everyone wanting to please the NBC box-tickers. And we all know how that turned out. [Edited to add: FFS]

But holy crap, 30 Rock bounced back with a bang, surprising everyone, and by everyone I mean 100% me and about 80% Daisyhellcakes who didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I did which is no knock on her because seriously I was SO THRILLED by this season you have no idea, guys. About four weeks into this year it kicked in and went from “About to be dropped” (yes, my favourite sitcom, and the previous season had been so bad I honestly nearly gave up) to “highlight of the week”. I want to hug everyone involved for finally fixing the Kenneth problem (i.e. they gave him something to do and cut back on his screentime), revitalising Tracy by pairing him up with Jenna (who had similarly become tiresome), and just doing everything better and funnier and snarkier and smarter and better and betterer and betterest.

Which is more than I can say for The Newsroom, which was so unbelievably, monumentally terrible on almost every conceivable level that I’m amazed even Aaron Sorkin’s most die-hard fans didn’t suddenly realise their Studio 60 boxset was filled with lemons. We tried to tell them to do what we did, and turn those lemons of preachy, repetitious tone-deaf mansplaining into the lemonade of mockery! Oh how we laughed as Sorkin turned his female characters into desperately flailing and shallowly-drawn comic relief! Oh how we marvelled as he filled the screen with Sorkin surrogates (Sorkingates) for everyone to fawn over, listing the person’s achievements and TELLING us they’re great so Sorkin never has to figure out how to SHOW us that greatness! Oh how we despaired whenever he’d get within pissing distance of a good point and then cut to the Maggie-Jim-Don-Lisa-Sloan (Oh lovely Sloan!!!) love pentagon or Neal going on about Cthulhu or some shit.

By the end of ten deliriously awful episodes we thought people would finally see that those of us who are fans (seriously, we are) but who feel obliged to call him out on his worst excesses were right all along but no, his more devoted/blinkered fans doubled down, and as the final episode aired, all of them spontaneously said, “he stuck the landing”. Yes, but he landed on a PILE OF FUCKING LEMONS AND KILLED EVERYONE ON BOARD! HE’S NOT AN ELEGANT GYMNAST! HE’S AN AIRBUS A380 BECAUSE THAT’S THE ONLY PLANE BIG ENOUGH TO CARRY HIS EGO, AND THE PILOT OF SAID METAPHORICAL PLANE WAS DISTRACTED FROM HIS PURPOSE BY A RIDICULOUS CONSPIRACY SUBPLOT ABOUT PHONE-HACKING, AND SO NOW WE’RE ALL DEAD AND COVERED IN PIPS!

Honestly, there were two shows I wanted to write about each week this year, the first being The Newsroom so I could list all of the imbecilities, and the other being Lena Dunham’s Girls, but that would mean I would be adding fuel to the awful fire that has raged across the Internet for months now, only to flare back up again last weekend when a very ill-worded tweet (if I can put it rather mildly) from Caitlin Moran led to many angry followers damning her and Dunham as at worst racists or at best feminists with too narrow a focus on their own issues. I have no wish to risk offending anyone who has any strong opinions either way about this show, so I will direct you to these two superb and insightful posts about the controversy from Sarah Ditum and Bim Adewunmi (and this new, excellent one from Ms. Bim), note that it was easily my favourite new show of the year (sorry), and leave it at that.

Mad Men! It was the season where all the metaphors and messages were really offputtingly obvious! Except that season one did that as badly and no one complained then. Admittedly this season was a retrograde step back from the fine-tuned subtlety of seasons 2-4, but even then it was still elegant, impeccably made, and filled with deliriously pleasurable moments. Yes, the Joan thing was unfortunate, but if Janet Street-Porter is to be believed in this column about that piece of shit Jimmy Savile, women were a commodity in this era and Joan was never going to escape it, and in fact was being used as a prop way back in the first season. The past was a miserable wasteland for a lot of people, and focusing on the mechanics of this plot overlooks the horror of the reality, and the brilliance of the storytelling here (as upsetting as this storyline was, at least Joan is finally an agent in this decision, and wins big as a result). And hey, at least we got Far Away Places, the infinitely clever and bold portmanteau episode that almost rivaled last year’s masterpiece The Suitcase. That more than made up for Don’s absurd throttling hallucination a few weeks earlier.

Fans also turned on Breaking Bad, not long after Matt Zoller Seitz wrote a review saying the train heist was one crazy step too far into the realms of action movies. Considering the MAGNETS, BITCH setpiece just a few weeks earlier, escalating Walt and Jesse’s ambitions and abilities a little bit more is not a dealbreaker, and betrays a dismissive attitude toward the action genre (disclaimer: my favourite movie genre next to superheroics). That episode of BB was easily the highlight of the truncated season, but I guess someone had to be the first to backlash against it. After that there was a tide of complaint about the hurried pace. Yes, it was regrettable. No, it didn’t mean the show was ruined, as will become apparent when it’s over and the plan makes sense. I have faith. Move along. Move along.

Did anyone complain about Game of Thrones? If so I didn’t hear it over the sound of me screaming “OH GOD THIS SHOW IS THE BEST!” This is the only season I watched twice this year and it works much better in one quick go, but even week to week it was remarkable. In one block, though, the War of the Five Kings is propulsive, thrilling and necessarily absurd in equal measure; the politics of the crazy situation are held up as the joke that they truly are without the stakes being diminished. And Brienne! And Jaqen! And Arya and Tywin chilling in the Banquet Hall Of Conveniently Face-Obscuring Shadows! And White Walkers! AND MOTHERFUCKING TYRION AT THE BATTLE OF BLACKWATER BAY! I spent ten weeks pooping myself over this masterful exhibition of imagination and emotion, and I can’t wait to watch it again for the third time. Best show of the year.

Basically HBO had an amazing year, and that’s not even considering the other instant classic show they had and then cancelled in a panic like it was an accidental Amazon double order. Michael Mann and David Milch’s Luck was a fascinating artifact, a labor of love from the writer and a triumphant return to TV for the director, but ultimately a sadly incomplete triumph, the ultimate in coitus interruptus. Watching it after the cancellation was frustrating, especially when it sank its hooks in early. I heard some say they “got” the show during the exquisitely shot horse race in the fourth episode, but some of us fell in love right away, and not just because its confidence and focus quickly erased the memory of John From Cincinatti. And the races? Simply some of the best setpieces in the history of the medium. Every one made me crane forward in my seat and scream at the TV. The last episode shouldn’t have mattered because of the cancellation, but I screamed anyway, and cheered at the results. Just look at the fourth episode race; it’s glorious.

Writing about a show as powerful, ambitious and off-kilter as Luck is one of the reasons why I wanted to blog about TV in the first place, but the downside of that is the obligation to cover other things, to make sure I’m not just watching shows from one country. Consider this another reason for giving up; I couldn’t bring myself to watch Borgen or The Bridge after the disappointment of the original Killing, have yet to try Continuum, and barely watched any UK shows. Missed Blackout, missed The Hour, missed Line of Duty, have never wanted to watch Downton Abbey and never ever will, am almost 100% sick of Doctor Who and the relentless one note smart-arse dialogue, not to mention the Doctor’s current arc as “sulky child man who twirls too much”.

Other than that there was the now-off-the-love-list Misfits which sadly had a really poor third season, what with Rudy basically being Nathan after a Find/Replace script job in the wake of Robert Sheehan’s departure. True, Joe Gilgun managed to make it seem like that wasn’t the case by adding notes of self-doubt, and his performance was the only bright spot of the show’s year, but we could still tell it was meant to be Nathan. By the middle of the season 10 minutes of drama was being dragged out to 45 mins a week, and when three other leads left the show that was it. Stick a fork in us; we’re done. Doubt I’ll stick with Who either, unless I’m wrong about the new companion, aka Sexxy McDalek.

Another bad thing about blogging is seeing people react badly to a show you like and having to deal with the inevitable arguments. If I’d been doing a weekly column about Homeland when it aired in the UK I think I would have entered a mild depression at the reaction to the show’s finale. Many seemed to think that the dramatic choice made by Brody was a cop-out, made necessary by the imminent second season (cue complaints about the US strategy of making more episodes), that he should have blown himself up and be done with it like would have happened in a short-run UK series, which wouldn’t be expected to flog the story to death. At around this point someone will inevitably mention Fawlty Towers.

To say I disagree with this would be to be talking around the fist I have crammed in my mouth so I don’t say anything that would be construed as too hostile (the last thing I’d want to do while talking about something as essentially unimportant as a TV show). But, if Brody set off the bomb then the entire season, with all of the debate about his motives and the extent to which he has turned against the US, would have been for nothing. It would have been ten episodes of watching a clock tick down, Brody would have been reduced to a fuse, and Carrie would have been vindicated but what then for her? This way, yes, there is a possibility that the show will go on too long or lose its momentum, but we also get to see Brody continue to wrestle with his obligations with new, even higher stakes, and Carrie can continue her fight for respect. That’s where the drama of this brilliant show lies, not in waiting for things to just end. It’s not Day of the Jackal, the series. It’s The Manchurian Candidate, and it will run for as long as it needs to. (Edited to add, having seen the second episode of season two, I feel utterly vindicated in this belief.)

Short runs lead to stories with the potential to only do approximately as much as other shows of similar length, with a consequent fall in dramatic and emotional potential as more event possibilities are curtailed. Though I like lots of short-run dramas (Edge of Darkness and The Shadow Line, in recent years, are a perfect length), the rise of longer continuity-heavy dramas has revolutionised TV drama, and despite viewer argument over the padding in Lost (which I didn’t mind) or other disliked network shows, such long-run shows will always win out in my eye just because they can do things you won’t expect (if they’re bold enough). Seeing a key line by Xander at the end of season 2 of Buffy being brought back with three years of subsequent drama in season 5 was like an epiphany for me. See also The Shield; the perfect seven-season show in which everything that happened mattered, cumulatively. Homeland has the potential to match that achievement.

Of course I get that shows run out of steam, as shown by The Vampire Diaries‘ third season. As a soap opera about two families of vampires it was a lot of fun, and Ian Somerhalder, Candice Accola and Joseph Morgan are still good value for money, but this season was entirely composed of moments of necessary détente punctuated by someone saying, “I’ve just found out there’s an ancient spell and/or amulet that will magically kill the thing we previously said was unkillable,” before someone else finds it and double-crosses everyone else by conveniently destroying it. By the halfway mark the repetition got pretty goddamn annoying. Hopefully the finale’s shocking events can reset this, because spending a whole season attempting to generate tension while also going out of its way to maintain the status quo meant what was once vital became as lifeless as about two-thirds of the cast. (P.S. I’m now a Klaroline shipper, just accept it haters.)

One show that has been fallen right into a balance between a short and long run is Spartacus, which has, through awful circumstance, run 6 episodes longer than it might have (the mini-season Gods of the Arena), but is still facing its final season as Steven S. DeKnight probably wisely reckons there isn’t enough story to keep it going beyond the next year. The sad outcome of this is a season that got rid of many of its best characters, leaving behind a stripped cast and a million corpses. That finale was great but if you want more of the show, it’s so horrible to see so many terrific foes or beloved heroes bite the dust that eventually the joy is tainted. Nevertheless, it was another strong year for TV’s most outrageous show, and as with previous seasons, once it got into its stride it was exhilarating. It will be sorely missed.

It would have been nice to watch American Horror Story to see how a show is willing to reinvent itself drastically in order to keep a story going while also providing the closure that people wanted from a short run, especially as this would maybe soften my argument about Homeland, but after giving up so much of my life to Glee (which I finally dropped this year), one episode was enough. I might still go back to it, especially as the idea of it appeals more than the bizarre execution (plus, Connie Britton Connie Britton Connie Britton), but I’ll only do it if someone can promise me I don’t have to see Dylan McDermott frantically jacking his dick in the midst of a nervous breakdown again. It was bad enough watching Damian Lewis do that in front of a horrified Morena Baccarin; like some kind of awful nightmare the night after a Firefly / Band of Brothers marathon. Whoever told TV executives that “the kids these days just love sad wanking” must stop this madness now.

FX was lucky to have AHS there because otherwise I would have ignored it as part of what might be a subconscious war against the network for cancelling Terriers. Still haven’t finished season 3 of Justified; we just don’t have the enthusiasm we once had. And I didn’t watch season 4 of Sons of Anarchy either. That’s how boring the third season was, no matter how well it ended. I’ll get to it eventually but conflicting reports about its quality are not making me want to hurry. As for Louie, it was FX’s finest hour, but even though I loved almost every episode I’m never enthusiastic about watching it. This hesitance mystifies me. If it wasn’t for Daisyhellcakes pushing me into it I would’ve missed that amazing episode with Parker Posey, or that insane Letterman three-parter, which were among the best TV of this year.

But maybe this is the problem. I’ve got so much on my mind lately that I find it hard to switch off enough to even get through a half-hour show that will almost certainly entertain me, and then something that has given me such pleasure like Sons of Anarchy languishes unwatched on the Sky+ box for months. Perhaps this is part of the malaise that has made me get annoyed at every nearly every film I’ve seen this year, or maybe my mind is champing at the bit to stop watching other people’s fiction and just get on with my own. I have to get #TheProject out of my head, you guys. You’re gonna love it, I think.

All I know is, this year I tried to watch TV to generate thoughts to fill out these posts, and even though this is yet another epic, it’s nothing like what I expected. This is surely a sign that I should just watch TV for me, and not bother trying to add to a cultural conversation that is doing just fine without my occasional post. Let’s hope that refocusing my energy means I have time to create something more constructive, while approaching TV shows as entertaining diversions, not homework assignments. I’ll keep you all posted. In the meantime, here are my top ten episodes of the year, for completion’s sake.

10. Spartacus: Vengeance – Libertus

9. Louie – Daddy’s Girlfriend Part 2

8. Fringe – Welcome to Westfield

7. Homeland – The Weekend

6. Girls - Welcome to Bushwick a.k.a. The Crackcident

5. Luck – Episode 4

4. Community – Remedial Chaos Theory

3. Breaking Bad – Dead Freight

2. Mad Men – Far Away Places

1. Game of Thrones – Blackwater

Anyway, thanks to all who have ever commented on the Caruso Awards; your kindness gives me strength. I’ll be back soon enough, hopefully.

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

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A quick reminder of the stupidly complicated rules of the Caruso Awards: only shows whose latest season (or half-season) has finished by the time of publication are eligible, hence the inclusion of an episode of The Venture Brothers from ages ago; and only one episode of each season is allowed. This is to prevent Spartacus: Blood and Sand from dominating the list (just like the gladiator Spartacus dominates the arena!). Apologies for any poor editing here. Much to my eternal shame I’ve discovered that no matter how long I spend picking over these goddamn things some awful mistake (or twelve) will always slip through. It’s like I’ve been cursed by some grammar-witch for all of my shaky writing. Somewhere in this house is a haunted Thesaurus that needs to be exorcised. And with that superstitious outburst, on with the praise, and the SPOILERS…

20: Misfits - Episode 4

Post-Heroes, it’s perfectly understandable that any “metahuman” show introducing a character with the power to travel through time is going to give the viewer pause. The narrative knots created by Hiro Nakamura in that horrid show were so complicated the showrunners could never untangle them, even with some desperate efforts in the final season. You can imagine our pleasure when this Curtis-centric episode managed to adhere to plainly obvious temporal rules, kept things straight and logical, and revealed heaps of new information about our favourite lairy superpowered ruffians. The main thread of the episode is Curtis’ efforts to make amends to his former girlfriend in a Butterfly-Effect-esque sequence of disastrous trips into his own past, but it mostly resembles Firefly‘s excellent backstory-heavy Out of Gas. By giving us more of a sense of just how messed up our heroes were before The Storm transformed them, showrunner Howard Overman humanises even the most annoying of the group. Though Curtis is the central character, it might be Nathan who benefits most. The endless sarcastic asides from the obnoxious little gobshite are given context as we see the antagonistic relationship he has with his father (a perfectly cast Dexter Fletcher). It’s a clever development that gives Robert Sheehan new notes to knock out of the park.

19: Caprica - Ghosts in the Machine

Where once this blog railed against Battlestar Galactica and the way it frayed and fell apart before our eyes, this thought-provoking prequel series did much to repair the damage done to its parent show by nervy Syfy chiefs. Ronald D. Moore, David Eick and Jane “Unappreciated Genius” Espenson replaced the sprawling and ill-tended mythos with greater focus and fewer characters. With a sturdy base and a dependable cast, the showrunners were able to explore sci-fi concepts with the rigour Galactica once did and then add some welcome melodrama. This grounds the speculative fiction in human emotion, the centre of which is the grief felt by two families who lost daughters in a terrorist attack, not realising that those children exist in a new state elsewhere. Here we see Daniel Graystone’s suspicions about the erratic behaviour of his lone Cylon come to a head just as Joseph Adama searches for the incomplete avatar of his daughter in V-World. While the grief-stricken Tauran lawyer approaches his daughter from a position of supplication, Daniel attempts trickery and calculation to try to get Zoe Graystone to reveal her secret existence within the Cylon’s robot shell. The tragedy is that neither father is willing to accept that their children have moved on in more than one sense. For all its speculative ambition, it’s the human truth of this rift that makes this show — and this episode in particular — so memorable.

18: Big Love – Sins of the Father

The oft-derided fourth season of Big Love was actually pretty great for most of its truncated run if you were willing to roll with Bill Henrikson’s decision to run for Senator — merely his latest bad idea in long line of them. A couple of early episodes were blackly comedic mini-classics, amping up the absurdity of the show while not becoming unpalatable. Sins of the Father rose above them all with its Godfather-like depiction of a man losing everything. However, while Michael Corleone loses everything by allowing his dark heart to overwhelm him, Bill loses everything with the revelation of his own hypocrisy, turning his back on son Ben after he admits to having feelings for Margene even though he was once cast out by his own father. Director David Petrarca and writer Seth Greenland do a superb job of making Bill’s ridiculously overwrought internal struggle make sense to an audience who would probably just forgive Ben, couching the drama in terms of Bill’s very specific insecurity: will he be usurped by his own son one day? For a show primarily about religion, Big Love deserves praise for playing these themes and Biblical references so lightly. Add to that a couple of great comic set-pieces involving Bill’s three wives, Bill Paxton’s best performance to date, and a sense of dramatic urgency the show has often lacked, and this episode can be placed next to last year’s Come, Ye Saints as a keeper.

17. The Venture Brothers – Pinstripes and Poltergeists

It’s tempting to hate Pinstripes and Poltergeists for being the final part of the bisected fourth season, just to be petty. The sudden disappearance of The Best Animated Show On TV was especially galling as it was finally picking up a good head of steam. Nevertheless, at least the show left us with something that is, as 21 says, “like Christmas, a first BMX bike, and meeting the cast of Firefly all in one”. Highlights include the long-delayed introduction of evil bureaucrat Monstroso (“Cigar?”), Rusty Venture discovering chatrooms and pop-ups, and the revelation that Brock Samson has been living on the Venture compound all along while working with the shadowy organisation S.P.H.I.N.X. (“Sphinx!”). Perhaps the best thing about this episode is that it can be used as a perfect example of how The Venture Brothers is more than just a snarky pop-culture melange. The characters have evolved so much that Brock’s outburst to Rusty about being close to Dean and Hank, yet not being able to contact them, has an emotional power unheard-of in Adult Swim’s roster: see also 21′s vengeful pursuit of Brock, which is finally resolved with a fight, an understanding, and an alliance against a common enemy. It’s enough to tug the heart-strings. There is also the small matter of 24′s ghostly nature: the revelations about him in this episode have made his continued “existence” as big a mystery as any number of polar bears, Rambaldi devices or parallel universes in the Bad Robot canon.

16: Dollhouse - The Left Hand

It’s easy to miss classic TV episodes when their parent network decides to burn through a condemned series with a burst of two-parters. After the second season of Joss Whedon’s brainwipe thriller started with a series of underwhelming standalone episodes, we were treated to a quick rush of excellent, mythology-heavy dramas that expanded the backstory of our characters and the shadowy Rossum Corporation, along with some of the most head-melting concepts in popular sci-fi drama. This season highlight was the best mix of mythology and standalone episode before the showrunners were regrettably forced to cut their five-season plan short. Our hero Echo and poor manipulated Senator Daniel Perrin are held captive in the Washington DC Dollhouse by slimy Stewart Lipman (a welcome appearance by SoC favourite Ray Wise) and the complicated Dr. Bennett Halverson, who is torturing Echo for a past transgression. The LA Dollhouse attempts to save its Active using two Tophers (both played brilliantly by Fran Kranz and a never better Enver Gjokaj), but the web of double-, triple-, and quadruple- crosses wrecks their plans. It’s a packed-to-bursting hour of action TV, both thrilling and funny. Truly, no other show on TV could dramatise such potentially alienating hard sci-fi ideas about personality-cloning and mind-manipulation with such playfulness.

15. Party Down – “Not On My Wife” Opening Night

My love of Cheers (a deep, deep love) did not migrate to spin-off Frasier, whose tone irked despite the generally excellent cast. The general air of satisfaction generated — possibly because the obvious jokes were interspersed with the odd reference to Mahler — swamped the gags that did work. All was forgiven when the show concentrated on farce, which it did brilliantly. Party Down, on the other hand, has a better episode-to-episode hit:miss ratio, and adding farce pushes Opening Night to the top of the heap. The aspiring actors and writers of the catering team are forced to work through the opening night of a farce performed by a community theatre group they consider beneath them, and end up embroiled in a whirlwind of sexual misadventure, misunderstanding, and escalating panic. It’s a superb example of the genre, with veils, masks, secrets and lies in abundance, but while John Enbom’s expertly judged script (and David Wain’s perfect direction) are to be praised, it’s the little things that stick in the memory: Casey’s inept flirting with the lesbian producer from Warners; Roman’s Bacchanalian behaviour; Kyle’s pitiful attempts at being sexy; and Ron misreading Lydia’s signals and ending up with a faceful of mace. The sight of his puffy, snot-covered face will linger in my memory forever.

14: Justified - Long In The Tooth

Whenever a show makes a big splash with its first episode, there is often a worry that comes with it: will this show keep the quality up? Will it somehow ruin it, go in the wrong direction, abandon everything that made that first hour so good? In a post-Sopranos age, we expect the best shows to be serialised, and the procedurals of network to be less impressive. Would Justified be able to create a serialised drama out of its short story origins? Or would it be little more than a well-shot villain-of-the-week show? The fourth episode of the phenomenal first season went both ways. Alan Ruck plays a crook on the lam from our hero Raylan Givens, forced to give up his career as a dentist after a memorably nasty encounter with an obnoxious patient. The episode works extremely well as a one-off: Ruck is perfectly cast as the impulsive but likeable foil to laidback Raylan, and his character is so well-drawn it’s genuinely upsetting that he can’t become a regular on the show. What makes this our favourite of the consistently stellar first season is the knowledge that even though Justified eventually becomes more serialised (even taking into account the nerve-wracking shoot-out with Miami goons near the end), it could have been a great, unorthodox procedural too. No matter what the showrunners did, we were prepared to love it unconditionally.

13: Sherlock - A Study In Pink

It’s rare that a TV show can come out of nowhere and capture the public’s imagination with the modern publicity machine being what it is. Perhaps because UK TV often has big events that don’t add up to much it was easy to expect little from Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ “reimagining” (forgive me) of Britain’s most beloved fictional character, especially with Rupert Murdoch’s snivelling toadies in the Sun spreading snide rumours about reshoots and disastrous pre-screenings. Thankfully it was just the odious Antipodean arsehole playing shenanigans: the first episode of Sherlock was a supremely confident, exciting 90 minutes of TV, instantly transforming Benedict Cumberbatch from that guy who appeared in the things into a TV icon, all spindly limbs and ghostly face, his lovely coat flapping in the wind as he chased villains around Cardiff London. Paul McGuigan invented a visual palette that was showy but not intrusive, with a brilliant floating-text conceit that allowed us to see Sherlock’s thought processes. Even better, Moffat filled the movie-length pilot with plot and event, moving things along at a clip and never relying on tedious exposition to bloat out a flimsy script. It felt substantial, like the arrival of your new favourite thing. We can only hope this was not a fluke: more on that to come.

12: The Pacific – Okinawa

Saying The Pacific wasn’t as feel-good as Band of Brothers seems crazy: after all, the original HBO mini-series featured the hell of war in startling, miserable detail. Nevertheless, it’s not called Band of Brothers for no reason. The most important point the series made was that in the middle of the carnage and horror, there was someone there who had your back, who would remind you of your humanity and your responsibility to everyone around you. The Pacific has very little of that uplift. The ninth episode of this ten-part mega-downer is possibly the bleakest hour of TV screened since the BBC’s Threads, as the 1st Marine Division find themselves trapped in a purgatorial war of attrition with a ruthless enemy at the base of an almost impassable mountain. Joseph Mazzello does excellent work as Corporal Eugene Sledge, pushed to the edge by relentless rain, despicable and dehumanising Japanese tactics (often involving civilians and children), and the low morale of his companions, most of whom die in agony because of mistakes borne of fatigue. With his humanity seemingly crushed forever, we watch in dread as he finds a dying Japanese civilian – the victim of an artillery strike he was involved with – and brace ourselves for further horror. The choice he makes is revelatory, cathartic, unforgettable. So yes, a gruelling hour of drama, but also an essential one.

11: Spartacus: Blood and Sand – Whore

This indecently entertaining sword-and-sandals epic never stints on surprisingly graphic sex and violence, with boobs, dongs, blood, buttocks and heads flying at the camera with such regularity you’d be forgiven for thinking it was originally meant to be screened in 3D. Neither the sex nor the violence were that important, certainly on a plot level, being there mainly because Starz were happy to let the showrunners go a bit mental. However this season highlight used graphic sex as a way to explore not only the levels to which the slaves of Batiatus’ ludus are expected to lower themselves, but also as a way to further dramatise the antagonism between our hero Spartacus and delightful snake-woman Illythia, wife of his mortal enemy Gaius Claudius Glaber. Most of the episode does a good job of adding new levels of debasement to the proud gladiators, now fully expected to be prostitutes as well as warriors, but it’s Lucretia’s conniving which makes this an instant classic. Playing a trick with masks to teach her former friend Illythia a lesson, the plot to humiliate her spins out of Lucretia’s control in the final moments. TV has arguably never seen a sequence as pornographic, violent, and purely Grand Quignol as this, but it never abandons character or plot for a second, a detail that you might miss as your jaw dislocates from dropping so fast.

The final ten will be here tomorrow. Anyone who has followed my tweets of the past few months will probably find few surprises: many of the episodes that broke the top ten drove me to such paroxysms of joy that I went a bit nuts over there. We’re talking many, many multiples of 140 characters.