Friday, December 16, 2016

Dean's Best Shows of 2016


Welcome to Dean’s Best TV of 2016 Spectacular. Here are I will tell you the best 10 shows of the year. This list is definitive and all other lists are false. I’m sure David will insert editorial comments but I must assure you not to pay attention to them because this is the only information you need.

Honorable Mentions: Every year I cheat and list more than 10 shows because I watch too much TV and I want to call out the very good shows that did not quite make the cut. This year’s honorees are: Galavant, Pitch, Mozart in the Jungle, Orange is the New Black, Venture Brothers, Silicon Valley, and The Chris Gethard Show (There is an episode where the audience just tries to guess what is in a dumpster. It was amazing.) Congratulations shows, you made a list!

[Re. this list . . . I am trying to record Pitch and will see if I like it at some later point. Galavant is a stupid premise and you have made a bad recommendation.--David]

10. The Good Place
Who wouldn’t want to live in a heaven run by Ted Danson? Also I’m clearly destined for the Good Place as a faithful Brown’s fan. I should also note for the record that Fake Eleanor is clearly the better Eleanor.

9. You, Me and the Apocalypse
I’m going to be completely honest. The only reason this show is ranked so high is because its intro is so good. Every time I heard Johnny Nash start singing “I can see clearly now the rain has gone” I got excited to watch this show. I wish other people had been as excited as me as no one watched it and now this show is gone forever. 



[Not true that no one watched it. I watched it all summer. And then promptly and completely forgot about it and looking back I'm not so sad about that. I think that I was driven to watch because I had just finished binging Parks and Recreation and I was sad and missing Ron and Tammy.--David]

8. Gravity Falls

This is a show for kids but also a show for people who are amateur cryptographers. Here is a page from the wiki for this show for children:
I solved zero of these cryptograms. This show only lasted two seasons and although it makes me sad (because it was good!), I’m also happy about the current trend of shows going out when the creators want it to rather than dragging them out until they’re no longer profitable to make and I’m actively hate-watching something that used to fill me with joy (looking at you Sleepy Hollow).

[Gravity Falls was good. I enjoyed it. But Season 1 was so much better. But the same could have been said for Sleepy Hollow as well, I guess.--David]

7. iZombie
This show is written by Rob Thomas (no . . . NOT that one) and in the last episodes Rob Thomas (yes that one) was eaten by zombies and then the zombies sang "Unwell" because they took on his personality. This is comedy gold. Gold! 
Anyway, if you only watch one zombie-themed show this year make it iZombie because The Walking Dead is bad. You can also watch Ash vs. the Evil Dead if you have Starz. I do not have Starz.

[I also like iZombie--as I've said in this space before. But I admit that I surf my phone while it is on as much as I am actively engaged in the experience of watching the show. I also strongly agree with your opinion that The Walking Dead is bad. My theory? It started getting bad when Rick's group left Georgia. And the it got really bad when the creators and writers screwed over the viewing audience by violating whatever "rules" they had in place by idiotically NOT killing a major character when it was the only reasonable outcome.--David]

6. Baskets
Louie Anderson plays Zach Galifinakuses’s (I was going to look up the spelling but no. This is fine. I am a professional.) mom and he plays it perfectly straight. Louie Anderson should be typecast from this point forward as a mom. Look at this photo of him. I have met this mom before.

5. Better Call Saul
Does Jimmy have to become Saul Goodman? Really? Couldn’t this be an alternate timeline where everything works out for good old Jimmy? No? That is a shame. Oh I guess also watch this show or whatever. It’s really good. Also Jimmy’s brother is the worst.

[Why did I leave this show off of my list completely? Bad job by me.--David]

4. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Look, I like musicals. My favorite episodes of TV are musical episodes. If you don’t like people singing their feelings you are a) possibly a robot and b) reading the wrong end of the year list. This is a good show and it will win a bunch of awards so I don’t need to defend myself to you people.

[You SHOULD have to defend yourself. That is why I give you a platform on my highly valuable blogging platform. And while we got like CE-G, you like it more strenuously than I and I must call you out on that. Poor ranking choice.--David]

3. Rectify
I’m not really sure how to convince people to watch this show because every description ends up being “Well, there’s not really a lot of plot, it’s more about tone and sense of place” and man, does that sound boring. But it’s not! It is perfect. It is the perfect show which is why it is the third best show of the year.

[Your tonal description of this show you won't ever quit matches some of the weaker episodes of Westworld. Maybe it's the cowboy hats?--David]

2. The Americans
I don’t know many shows that could kill a beloved character off and come out stronger for it, but The Americans did it. RIP Nina Sergeevna Krilova. You will be missed.

[First, HOW DARE YOU try to turn Nina into Barb? And also, you are not going to sit there and type at me that Nina is more of a loss than the dearly exiled Martha!??! What will be next? Trying to convince me that the brutal dissection of Mail Robot was less shocking than the fenestration of Agent Gaad?
The Americans is the show that is going to tear us apart.--David]

1. One Mississippi
Every episode of this show made it extremely dusty in my house and it is also very funny and not in the independent comedy way where you sort of smile at a wry “joke”, but actually laugh out loud funny. I also need to note that John Rothman put on my favorite performance of the year (narrowly edging out Louie Anderson). Please watch it so I can talk to someone about it? Please? I’ll even come to your house to watch it with you. You should have Amazon Prime anyway now that Amazon runs the planet.

[Are you making up television? Is this a sickness of Peak TV? Does this show even exist? What a sad way to end your Best of . . . list. But its okay viewers. Move your eyes up a bit and reread that previous parenthetical I wrote about The Americans.. That was really funny and well crafted. Go read that again and we can all pretend that Dean's list ended with The Americans. Which would have been a fine choice.--David]

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If you liked this, go check out MY version of this year's best TV shows. Maybe Dean will have some biting comments to say about my opinions and rankings.

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