The Strange World of Thomas P. Coombe

The Best TV Shows of 2010

It was a pretty good year for TV, but for me, a bad year for TV watching. I spent the second half of 2010 buried in work, which meant I didn't have much time for this blog. But with the year winding down, it's worth remembering the cream of this year's TV crop, whether I wrote about them or not.

1. AMC -- At least one of this network's program's -- Breaking Bad -- was an obvious contender for the top spot before the year was halfway over. Then came Mad Men's fourth -- and best -- season, followed by Rubicon and The Walking Dead, and by the time November arrived, it became clear AMC was TV's new king of quality TV shows.

No network has had a year like this since 2005, when The Wire, The Sopranos and Deadwood (not to mention Rome, Carnivale, Six Feet Under and Curb Your Enthusiasm) were all part of HBO's line-up.

The Walking Dead proved to be the network's biggest hit so far, a comic book-inspired horror/drama that managed to transcend its roots by the time its six-episode season was over. 

 Rubicon's low ratings, slow pace and complicated storyline pretty much doomed it early on, but it was still fascinating to watch, and heartening to see AMC take this kind of risk, even for just a season. In the end, the show's conspiracy plotline wound up being less interesting than its characters -- the fascinating, funny villain Truxton Spangler justly inspired a fake Twitter feed -- and it's those people, rather than the answers we did/didn't get, that makes me sorry Rubicon won't be returning.

I'd been a little underwhelmed by Mad Men's second and third season, but its fourth was brilliant, taking us deeper into the mind and soul of protagonist Don Draper while also giving us a compelling look at an ad agency struggling to keep its head above water. But put all that aside, and Mad Men rises above most of its contemporaries on the strength of "The Suitcase" episode alone.

The king of the AMC mountain this year, however, was Breaking Bad. In three seasons, it's gone from "interesting" to "must-watch" to "comparisons to the Coen Brothers are not unwarranted."  

In the article I linked to above, TIME's James Poniewozik ties Coen movies like No Country For Old Men and Fargo to some of Breaking Bad's larger themes. It's an apt comparison, but I'll take the connection in a different direction: just as the Coens can jump from No Country to Burn After Reading to True Grit, Breaking Bad can be a different kind of show every episode. One week it's the most tense thriller you've ever seen, another it's a tragic-comedic "bottle show." And it does all of those things well, helped along by a brilliant cast and the most beautiful cinematography on TV. The finest show in production now.

As for the rest...

The Emmys: Filled With Glee. (Tom: Somewhat Pleased)

  Some quick thoughts on the Emmy nominations:

•  I'm not at all surprised at Glee's 19 nominations. It's fairly well-liked by critics, brought something unique to TV, and is hugely popular. But one of the best comedies of the year? Actually, I'd put Glee on the list before The Office and 30 Rock, which had really, really weak years. A better list would've left them off and replaced them with Parks & Recreation and Community, so that the Best Comedy nominees would, you know, actually include the best comedies. (Incidentally, Modern Family is a close third to these shows, and I was happy to see so much of its ensemble nominated.)
•  I'll confess: I'm wayyyy behind on my Friday Night Lights viewing (read: I've seen one and a half seasons). But by all accounts, the show has only gotten better over time, and it would've been clear to anyone who saw only the first few handful of episodes how good Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler were in the lead roles. So it's nice to see them finally being honored for their work. 
• Nominations that made me happy: Aaron Paul for Breaking Bad, Terry O'Quinn, Michael Emerson and Matthew Fox for Lost; Amy Poehler for Parks & Recreation.
• Nomination that surprised me, and made me happy: Martin Short for Damages, a great performance in a little-seen show.
• Omissions which really bugged me: John Noble for Fringe, the fact that  no one Sons of Anarchy or Justified made the cut (thinking specifically of Katy Segal from the former and Walton Goggins from the latter.)
• Who I'm pulling for in the main categories: Breaking Bad, Modern Family, Matthew Fox (for making us like Jack again), Connie Britton, Aaron Paul, Christina Hendricks, Larry David, Amy Poehler, Ty Burrell and Sofia Vergara.

 Tom Coombe

The LOST Series Finale: It Only Ends Once

 And here we are, at the end. This is likely the last thing I'll write about Lost for a long, long time. 

 If anything interesting -- theories, videos, interviews, etc. -- pops up, I'll post it here, and on Twitter. But this will likely be my last significant post on Lost, the show that's the reason I started blogging about TV almost four years ago, and the reason I started this blog last May. 

 So here we go, one last time, through the jungle. Spoilers, as always, lurk ahead...

LOST: I Need More Time

 It wouldn't be fair to myself or to anyone who reads this blog to write something about Lost tonight. 

The series finale had too much going on, and ended with a revelation to the "sideways" world storyline that's bound to be controversial, that it's just too much to swallow before bed. I need the night and tomorrow morning to think things over.

 As I've said before, all I wanted out of this finale was for the show to avoid ending in a way that would negate everything that came before. And that's NOT what happened, despite that those final moments may have led you to believe.

 It was an often lovely episode, with just the right mix of action and emotion. There were a lot of great call-backs to past seasons, and my only real complaint -- aside from all those damn commercial breaks -- is that I would've liked to see a bit more closure for some of the characters.

 But for now, I'm a bit too drained and mind-blown to say much more, so I'll be back tomorrow with my final Lost blog post.

 Tom Coombe

LOST: Fireside Chat

  People who write about Lost -- myself included -- tended to use words like "polarizing" and "divisive" when talking about last week's Jacob/Man in Black origin story.

 But this week? Really, really hard not to like, a funny, exciting, shocking and ultimately moving episode that set up major showdowns in both the island and sideways storylines.  

 The penultimate episodes of seasons four and five were basically there to set up cliffhangers for the finale (bomb on the freighter; Jack steals the nuke). 

 That sort of stuff was happening here as well, as Desmond and the Monster hatch their respective plans, but somehow, "What They Died For" felt a whole lot richer than, say, last year's "Follow the Leader."

LOST: More On "Across The Sea"

I really didn't start seeking out other Lost fans on-line until most of the way through season one. (Without   Hurley and those damn numbers, this blog might not even exist. They really are cursed.)

 So I'm not sure how viewers reacted to episodes "Pilot" through "...In Translation." But I'm fairly certain the response wasn't as divisive as it was to the Smoke Monster origin-story "Across the Sea." That picture to the right is actually a pretty fair representation of the two camps. 

 I'm still on the "really liked it" team. As I said Tuesday night -- the link is to a new, better version of my original piece -- it took two important, not-quite-human characters and made them relatable. It complicated what we thought we knew about Jacob and the whole notion of who's good and who's evil. (Both and neither.)

 There were things I didn't like, such as the glowing cave, some clumsy dialogue, and the fact that this episode aired with just three and a half hours of show left to go. It might have been better off earlier in the season, but I still think it works best here, with the horrors of "The Candidate" -- and our hatred of MIB -- fresh in our minds.

LOST: His Brother's Keeper

 "My mother was crazy. A long time ago, before I... looked like this... I had a mother, just like everyone. She was a very disturbed woman. And, as a result of that, I had some growing pains. Problems that I'm still trying to work my way through. Problems that could have been avoided had things been different."

That was the Man in Black, quoted earlier this season in "Recon."

 We've learned over time that he's not to be trusted, yet we find out in "Across the Sea" that on that score at least, he was telling the truth. His mother did to him and Jacob what all Lost parents seem to do: mess their kids up in ways that echo for years, or in this case, centuries.

 That was probably the greatest strength of the episode: helping to humanize two important, but not-exactly-human characters, yet also making us rethink what we knew about their natures. 

 Yeah, some of the dialogue was clunky (places that "make metal act strangely"?), and that scene that introduced the cave seemed like it belonged on a different show. 

 If you were expecting an installment of "Island History 101" then you might have been let down. Judging from comments earlier on Twitter, a lot of you were, and I can see why this would be a divisive episode. 

 But the more I think about it, the stronger it seems. It shows us that many of Lost's key themes and ideas -- destiny vs. free will, faith vs. science, messed up families, stolen children, hidden knowledge, the idea of being "special" -- have been driving this story from the very beginning.

 

LOST: The Big Bad

 OK, do you get it now? I'm talking to the "Maybe JACOB is evil and the Man in Black is actually good" crowd, assuming that theory persists.

 I know Lost traffics in ambiguities, and I'm never comfortable pointing at a character and saying "She's evil" or "He's good," because it's rarely that simple.

 But this time it is. You don't do what the Monster did tonight and get your name in the Good Guys column. 

 I'm still not saying Jacob's an angel. Like I've argued before, he's destroyed countless lives basically just to settle a bet. And next week, we'll apparently learn a lot more about him, and the Man in Black and his motivations. Still, he's our villain, committing a truly heinous act tonight and doing it the way he's pictured here, with a smile on his face.

LOST: Busy, Busy Worlds

  There's only five hours left for Lost to tell the rest of it story, and one of them is apparently going to focus on Jacob and the Man in Black.

 That meant "The Last Recruit" was a busy, busy episode, with a lot going on in both the island and sideways world.

 It was the first episode this season not to have a POV character -- unless you want to count Jack -- which meant it gave pretty much everyone something to do. (Between the two worlds, everyone was present, except for Richard.)

 And, like the Monster said to the group, "It's so nice to have everybody back together again."

LOST: They Hear Dead People

  The conventional Lost wisdom states that Desmond & Penny = best TV romance ever. Therefore, last week's episode, showing the two lovers finding each other again in a totally new universe should have trumped all others, right?

 No, not when we had the chance to see Hugo and Libby finally go on their first date. Desmond might turn out to be the show's hero, but Hurley is Lost's soul, the character who's least corrupted and most affected by the island, and to see him take center stage the way he did tonight was beautiful.

 Don't get me wrong, I was very happy with "Happily Ever After."  But I loved "Everybody Loves Hugo," even if its final 10 minutes elicited a "Huh?" from me like nothing else this season.