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

Season Finale Wrap-Up: Community, Parks & Recreation, The Office, 30 Rock and Chuck

 There was too much going with in the non-TV blogging part of my life last week to find the time to write about the season finales of NBC's Thursday night sitcoms after they had aired.

 Let's take a look at how they all ended their seasons, plus I'll talk a bit about the action-comedy Chuck, which had a really super finale earlier this week.

 Community

 "I give this year a D...for delightful."

 So says Troy, speaking on Abed's video yearbook. I concur with his grade, and only wish Community's actual finale had been the episode that aired the week before. That one actually felt like a finale, with the study group dealing with a -- by their standards -- crisis that threatened their existence. 

Parks and Recreation: The Boy Who Would Be Mayor

 Just like Ron Swanson, I think I might have a man-crush on Adam Scott.

 Of course, Ron's dealing Scott's character, Ben, and he's enamored with Ben's scorched earth budgeting practices. Me, I'm just in awe of how good the guy is on TV's two best comedies: the critically acclaimed but little watched Party Down on Starz (which you can see for free each Friday if you have Netflix), and now Parks & Recreation.

 This overlap won't last forever. Parks & Recreation's second season ends next week. When it comes back next year, Scott's tenure with Party Down ends with this season, mainly because he's expected to join Parks & Recreation full time next year. (Whether Party Down even gets a third season is still in limbo.)

 At any rate, he's a great addition to the cast: someone whose as civic minded as Leslie Knope, but far more realistic about how government works. He should know: we learn towards the end of the episode that Ben had once been the boy mayor of a small town in Minnesota, but quickly got in over his head and ran the community into the ground. Now, he's trying to make up for his disastrous tenure with his no nonsense auditing. (Which is so tough that Ron wants to watch him do it "while eating pork.")

 Scott's done broader comedy before -- he was Will Ferrell's obnoxious younger brother in Step Brothers -- but he's great as a straight man, both on Party Down and here. He was able to make me laugh just by the tired, pained expression on his face when his colleague (Rob Lowe, who's also good here) does his ultra-sincere act when meeting Ron and Leslie. It's the kind of look that says "how many times do I need to see this song and dance?" It's a good cop/bad cop act. Lowe's character charms the community; Ben tells them to cut half their budget.

 And here's how amazing Parks & Recreation is: I've just spent all this space talking about this great new character, and he's not even the best thing about this episode.

 That would be the extended sequence in which our established characters -- reeling from the state audit and other personal crises --  gather at Pawnee's "sexiest, most dangerous nightclub" (or maybe just most dangerous) to celebrate April's 21st birthday. We get the return of the hilariously sleazy Jean Ralphio, Tom's lame attempts to hit on 43 different women, and more of Andy and April's sweet almost-romance.

 The aftermath of the party had some nice stuff too: Tom's flirtation with the bartender, in which he displayed a self-deprecating sense of humor and behaved like a human being for once; Ron sort-of comforting April; Anne trying to remember her post-break-up drunken night out, and the great line from Leslie, setting up next week's finale as she learns the auditors have shut down the city government.

 "I just started hearing really loud circus music in my head."

 Such a joy. 

  Tom Coombe 

Parks & Recreation: No Place for a Sleepfighting Man

 For a few weeks back in February and March, I was watching all four of NBC's Thursday sitcoms in one sitting and then writing one blog entry to rank them. Now that Fringe is back on the air, I've stopped doing that, but if the rankings were still in practice, Parks and Recreation would win. Everything just worked tonight: crazy, sleep-deprived Leslie, some classic Ron Swanson insanity, Jerry's continual tortures, Tom's night on the town with former NBA player Detlef Schrempf, plus semi-serious relationship stuff involving the show's two couples.

 Community was enjoyable tonight, and I'm less enchanted with 30 Rock and The Office than I used to be, to the point that watching them tomorrow feels a bit like a chore. I doubt any of them will have anything that made me laugh as much as:

•  Ann explaining to the camera that the energy bars Leslie has been chowing down to stay awake are basically a "block of sugar," and then Leslie screeching into the frame behind her like a 28 Days Later zombie.
• The borderline hostile celebrity hosts.
• Learning that Ron suffers from a condition called "sleepfighting," which only bothers him when he loses.
• The sad sack guests Leslie rounded up in place of Schrempf, including the tax guy from the "Leslie's House" episode -- telling the same horrible jokes -- and Ron's woodworking lesson (which actually causes the telethon to lose money.)
• The even worse things Leslie herself does to keep the money: flipping a coin to see how many times she gets heads and tails, and pledging to drink 8 glasses of milk in three minutes. (Until Ann steps in and stops her with "No...you will die.")
• "There's two types of diabetes. But only one type of caring."
• "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Don't teach a man to fish, and you feed yourself."

 And that's just off the top of my head. There's plenty more. This is just such a good show, and this was the funniest thing they've done yet.

Tom Coombe

The Thursday Night Comedies: Buddy Cops, Old Men, Date Nights

This is the last time -- at least this year -- that I'll lump all the NBC Thursday comedies into one post. Fringe returns next week, and I'll go back to watching that at 9 PM and writing about it soon after.   

  Once again, we'll go in order.

 COMMUNITY

 What I liked best about this April Fool's themed episode was the way it tied pretty much all the characters together: Britta wants to prove she's not the group's buzz-kill, and her lame, harmless prank ends up causing a major act of campus vandalism...which is the investigated by Annie and Shirley, neither of whom can agree on who plays what role in the buy-the-book/loose cannon police equation. Abed watches it all unfold, directing his own personal buddy cop movie. And Jeff and Troy convince Pierce to wear an outfit that makes him look like "the Cookie Crisp wizard."

  Of course, it all goes horribly, bizarrely wrong, and that's one of the reasons this show has grown on me so much recently: it can take an April Fools episode and have it end in tears. Hilarious tears.

 PARKS AND RECREATION

 Does it surprise anyone that Leslie Knope sees lunch with all the former park directors as a gathering on the same level as a summit of the ex-presidents?

 Or that the ex-park directors would instead offer up not wisdom, but ignorance, cynicism and their own petty agendas? 

 It didn't surprise me, but that didn't keep me from enjoying the episode, even though it wasn't on the same level as some of the season's earlier hours. I like anything that allows Leslie and Ron to be friends -- as in their breakfast for dinner scene, or them playing darts with a picture of the former parks directors as their target.

 And the episode contained at least one laugh out loud moment for me: Leslie saying "We really made love to the pooch" after the disastrous meeting, then -- after Ron pointing out that the expression is "screwed the pooch" -- arguing that the regular version is "too vulgar."

 THE OFFICE

 At first, this felt like The Office I know and love, from the silly opening scene to the way Dwight seemed less like a cartoon. Nice move, giving him a love interest who's as odd as he is. Bad move, giving Michael a (potential) love interest without ever explaining why she'd be interested in him when she -- and we -- were seeing him at his most obnoxious. 

 For him to overcompensate after thinking he was on a date* would've been fine; that's what we expect from the character, just as we almost expect him to have his own separate character for this sort of situation. (Dating Mike, a transformation symbolized by him donning one of those hats Samuel L. Jackson always wears.) For him to abandon his "date" after embarrassing her -- and himself -- was unforgivable.

 (*Strange how both this and 30 Rock had Steve Carrell and Tina Fey out on "dates" on a night when ads were promoing their Date Night movie, which looks pretty unfunny.)

 It's too bad, really, because everything else in that episode was pretty charming, or at least amusing: Daryl telling Oscar "You can be gay for Mack, just be straight with me"; Phyllis and Bob Vance's (Vance Refrigeration) weird bar game; Andy and Erin; Creed being a master of Dance Dance Revolution.

 (The only character who bothered me was Kevin, who I really go back and forth on. Sometimes he's funny, other times, wayyy to juvenile. Tonight was the latter.)

 Watching all these different couples have their night out was kind of enjoyable, and in the end, I found myself wishing, like Jim and Pam probably did, that Michael had just stayed home.

 30 ROCK

This was probably my favorite 30 Rock in some time. No high profile guest stars, nothing too over-the-top. For once, Liz Lemon had a romantic problem we could actually relate to (as opposed to say, meeting someone when whacked out on anesthesia, or dating a sex offender.) 

 It hurts to learn an ex-girlfriend/boyfriend in a happy new relationship, and hurts even more to have reminders of that relationship thrown in your face, or in Liz's case, happening outside your window.

 Floyd (Jason Sudekis) had always been Liz's most likable romantic partner -- even Jon Hamm revealed a cruel side when Liz burst his handsomeness "bubble" -- but here, he got to play sort of mean as well, accidentally getting drunk on alcohol-based sauce and comparing his new girlfriend (a deer) to Liz (a badger): "Why are you still single? There's plenty of guys out there for you to poison and yell at."

 Even if Liz did make things right, it was kind of heavy...at least by 30 Rock standards. Fortunately, you had Frank, Twofer and Lutz around to keep things light, getting into a prank war with Jack and Danny. (Jack clearly had the edge here, convincing the three "Pranksmen" that a "Cloverfield" type monster had attacked New York, then sending Frank a video from his mother's bedroom).

 The Tracy/Jenna plotline didn't work for me other than seeing their reactions (from under the plaster) to Kenneth's endless stories, but I welcome anything that gives Pete screentime.

 Other thoughts/questions/lines I liked:

•  Shirley: "Tell that to whatever our equivalent of a judge is."
• Loved the coonskin cap gag that opened Parks & Rec, as well as Tom's lame pick up lines while wearing it: "Animal on the head...manimal in the bed."
• Another good Tom moment: trying to act Mad Mennish while showing off his photos for the catalogue.
• Was that Michael Gross as the pro-pot parks director?
• Oscar, talking about Stanley doing 26 push-ups so he could go home early: "Essentially what we have here is the story where the mother lifts her car to save her baby."
• Pam's friend, amazed at how laid back Michael is: "He doesn't act like a boss. If I had a boss like that we'd never get anything done."
• Dwight got good at "Whack-a-Mole"...by actually whacking moles. Notice that the "Scranton Strangler" -- referenced on the unfortunate "Day You Were Born" newspaper Andy gave to Jim and Pam -- makes another appearance.
• As much as I didn't like Tracy and Jenna's Elm Street story, I like how Tracy started calling his dreams "Kenmares."
• Where's Dot-Com been? I know Grizz has health issues, but does the show want them to appear together? And for that matter, where's Cerie been?

 Tom Coombe

The Thursday Night Comedies: Sailing, Mugging, Searching, Settling

 Wow, much better. Last week, only some of the four NBC sitcoms really hit the mark. This week...well, they weren't perfect, but they got a lot of things right. Let's take them in order.

 Community

 In college, my roommate and I needed a physical education course in order to graduate, so we took badminton. "How hard could it be?" we argued. "It's badminton! People play it in their backyards at family reunions."

 Plenty hard, as it turned out. And I sucked at badminton, the way I suck at all sports that aren't bowling or miniature golf.

 I'm telling this story because I sort of identified with Jeff's plight tonight on Community, a show that's growing on me every week.  

 Maybe the badminton class didn't have a cool lady-killer guy, but I know what it's like to take a class that seems like it'll be easy, only to find out how bad you are at it. (And we weren't graded on participation. We actually had to write a paper. A paper on badminton.)

 We also didn't have Tony Hale as our teacher. He shows up tonight as the latest addition to Greendale's menagerie of bizarre instructors, with his quirk being that no one in the pottery class can reenact the famous scene from Ghost.

 But as weird as that was, it didn't compare to the rest of the crew turning into, well, an actual crew, taking a sailing course on a ship that never left the school parking lot. Chevy Chase had a lot of good moments with this stuff, including his attempts to "christen" the ship, and his assertion that he once captained "a jet ski through an electrical storm, and only lost one person." (The joke would've worked better without Troy pointing out the obvious flaw in Pierce's argument.)

 Really weird, really funny stuff, and as shows like The Office and 30 Rock show their age, it's nice to have it around.

 For more on those shows, and Parks and Recreation, read on.

The Thursday Night Comedies: Rabbi Chang, Fairway Frank, Megadesk and Kabletown

 Watching all four of NBC's Thursday comedies in one block sort of compels me to mentally pit them against each other.

 This week, it's hard to pick a clear winner, but easier to decide who came in last. 30 Rock, once the best half-hour of comedy on TV, has been really lackluster this season. 

 It came back from a month-long hiatus with an episode that started off well-enough -- loved the joke about a doped-up Liz putting a toaster waffle in her DVD player and watching it -- but just didn't go anywhere. 

 It's a bad sign when a commercial featuring one of the show's recurring characters -- Dr. Spaceman shilling for Dr. Pepper -- makes you laugh more than the show itself.

 Of all of Jack's love interests, Elizabeth Banks -- an actress I normally find pretty engaging -- has been the least interesting, and Liz's awkward courtship of Wesley felt too much like her relationship with the Wayne Brady character in season one. (The whole idea of "I really don't like you, but I'm sticking with this" was a lot funnier when it was based around Liz's fear of seeming racist, rather than her buying into Kenneth's "everything turns out for the best" philosophy.)

The Thursday Night Comedies: Pool, Ladies, and a New Baby

  Until Fringe returns next month, I'll be watching -- and then writing about -- NBC's Thursday night comedies in one big blog. 

 From then on, I'll do separate entries each week for The Office and Parks & Recreation, the former because it's been on my list since I've been blogging, the latter because it's the best comedy on TV right now. Community and 30 Rock just aren't consistent enough to make the cut. Frankly, if The Office didn't have so many seasons of quality behind it, it probably wouldn't be here either, the way this season's been going.

 Sometimes, the show can do a good hour-long episode ("Benihaha Christmas," for example) but other times, they're a real chore: funny in the first half, kind of dull in the second.

 "The Delivery" was one of the latter kind of hour long episodes. Its best moments came in the first half-hour, in the frantic rush to get Pam to the hospital. Seeing the normally low-key Jim was very entertaining, even if we were subjected to some more-stupid-than-usual behavior from people like Kevin and more-cartoonish-than-usual antics from Dwight*. And the silly premise like Pam trying to avoid going to the hospital had some depth, as we learned she was actually afraid of having the baby.

 * He may have been over-the-top, but for some reason, the moment when Dwight slammed on his brakes to point out the spot where he "saw that deer" made me laugh more than anything else. Likewise, Kevin's stupidity might've grated, but he did get a great scene earlier in the episode, talking about cooking his way through Julia Child's cookbook, then moving on to the Twilight cookbook. Also, I loved how he and Pam had developed Hobbit-like eating habits.