KILL YR TELEVISION - A Summary of 2007

Before I get to the first of my annual year end pop culture lists, just a quick note about the declining quality of life in America these days. I jsut saw a note on CNN that half of full time American workers don't get paid sick time. What?! Are you f***ing kidding me?! Whoever runs for president in the 2008 election should put quality of life issues near the top of their platform. We work more and take home less money, we spend more time in the office and have fewer benefits and then when all is said and done we can't even count on social security and most people no longer work long enough for one company to build up a sizable 401k. These are the issues that will define the domestic political agenda over the next 20 years, mark my words. Now, on to the fun stuff...

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Dr. R's Best Shows of the 2007 Calendar Year



Has it already been a year since I did this? Scary. I won't waste a lot of your time - you've got work and Christmas shopping to do and so do I. Besides, the best way to see if I'm on to something with these "Best of" lists is to check out my choices for yourself. As always, if you strongly disagree with anything on this list, feel free to drop me a line--I'm a blogger, not a critic and these are my choices and mine alone.

My Top Ten TV Shows from 2007

1. WEEDS (Showtime) - Creator: Jenji Kohan. There's a sublime genius to this show that can't be matched. To describe it as just a show about a suburban mom who sells pot doesn't do it justice. It's the satire that Desperate Housewives wishes it was. It's got criminal drama that would do The Sopranos proud. And every character is perfectly cast and played, lead by Mary Louise-Parker (pictured above) as Nancy Botwin, Agrestic's unlikely pot kingpin. If you don't have Showtime, it's worth checking out on DVD or ponying up for a subscription.

2. THE WIRE (HBO) - Creator: David Simon. Season Four was the best season yet of this critically-hailed but generally overlooked urban drama. Part police procedural, part urban docudrama, THE WIRE was the most consistently heartbreaking and affecting hour of weekly television this year. (The only reason I didn't rank it first is because it's so realistic and searing it can actually be hard to watch at times.)

3. THE OFFICE (NBC) - Creators: Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant & Greg Daniels. We all know about this Americanized-version of the darkly hilarious British series. Both versions might not have been possible without Mike Judge's cult classic film, Office Space. Steve Carrell and Rainn Wilson stand out in this absurdist pseudodocumentary about daily life at Dunder-Mifflin paper, but the start of Season 3 in September saw the bit players in this show start to come into sharper relief and that has made all the difference.

4. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (Sci Fi) - Creators: David Eick and Ronald Moore. This show could move up or down a notch or two based on how things shake out after this Friday's "half season finale", but for now this is the second best drama on television. I've written about it before, so for now all I'll say is that GALACTICA has not only reimagined what sci-fi can be, it is also doing a way smarter at portraying "ripped from the headlines" material than Dick Wolf's aging Law & Order franchise. And somebody had better remember to nominate Katie Sackhoff (Kara "Starbuck" Thrace) over at Emmy land, or I'll have to break off my foot in someone's a**.

5. 24 (Fox) - Created by Joel Surnow and Howard Gordon. A movie thriller, broken down into little bits and spread out over 24 tightly wound episodes, 24 is arguably (along with The Sopranos) the most stylistically influential serialized drama of the new millenium. Is it hard to suspend disbelief? Sometimes...but it's harder to stop watching. (Returns for Season 6 in 2007).

6. ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT (Fox/G4) - Creator: Mitchell Hurwitz. The best episodes of this woefully underviewed satire's last season probably aired in 2005, but the show ended on a bizarrely high note and is still one of the funniest and most distinctive sitcoms to ever grace the network airwaves. Get them on DVD or catch all the reruns on cable network G4.

7. DEADWOOD (HBO) - Creator: David Milch. Television's boldest and most intricately constructed dialogue melded with some of its most clearly drawn characters. Where it fell down a little this year was in advancing it's myriand plots...some episodes marked too much time. Still, DEADWOOD will only return as a miniseries sometime next year, so this is another one that will be sorely missed. (Wow, if you can't afford to get HBO, TV's kind of pointless, isn't it? Get used to it...it's the wave of the future.)

8. HEROES (NBC) - Creator: Tim Kring. I wouldn't have expected a show so rich and complex from the creator of the lightweight Crossing Jordan, but that shows what I know. This colorful and not at all pulpy ode to comic books and graphic novels is justifiably the number one new show of 2006-07. (One minor quibble: let's advance that Ali Larter split personality/dysfunctional superhero family subplot more quickly or dispense with it altogether, okay?)

9. GREY'S ANATOMY (ABC) - Creator: Shonda Rhimes. Tales of on-set fisticuffs and inter-office jealousy and ego shouldn't distract from enjoying this near-perfect blend of romantic soap opera, intense medical drama and smart, cheeky (often funny) dialogue. Then again, if the backstage tales are true, then its only a matter of time before Grey's Anatomy includes a shark fin to jump over.

10. THE SOPRANOS (HBO) - Creator: David Chase. A gangbuster (or perhaps I should say gutbusting?) opening episode built an anticipation and interest in this "mini-season" that the show could not quite sustain this year once Tony Soprano recovered from his coma. Here's hoping the show goes out on a high Soprano note in its 2007 finale.

Honorable Mentions: Lost (ABC),The Shield (FX), 30 Rock (NBC), Entourage (HBO), Dexter (Showtime), How I Met Your Mother (CBS), It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia (FX), The Amazing Race (CBS), 30 Days (FX).

Five Possibly Overlooked TV Performances to Look For:
Katie Sackhoff as Starbuck (see above) in BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.
Andre Royo as Bubbles in THE WIRE.
Masi Oka as Hiro in HEROES.
Neil Patrick Harris as Barney in HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER.
Justin Kirk as Andy Botwin in WEEDS.

In the next two weeks I will lay out my favorite music and movies of the past year and share my essay which looks back at the year in toto. Then, I will be on vacation from this blog from Christmas Eve until sometime after the New Year. For now...

Peace.