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The 20 Best TV Shows Of The 2013/2014 Season
by The Playlist Staff
六月 24, 2014 3:09 下午
Bad news if you’re a member of the Television Academy: balloting for this year’s Emmys closed on June 20th, with the nominees to be announced a few weeks from now, on July 10th. That officially brings to an end the 2013/2014 TV season, and if anyone was worried that the string of quality TV was starting to come to an end as some of the most famous dramas and comedies of recent years wrapped up their runs, they were sorely mistaken: the medium is in as remarkably healthy a state as ever.
Every year, at about this time, we put together our list of the best television of the previous season, and for 2013/2014, there was such a wealth of goodness that we felt compelled to extend our line-up from fifteen to twenty for the first time. It’s not surprising: quality television now has more outlets than ever, from mainstream broadcast networks to basic cable and premium channels to online-only services like Netflix and Amazon. But from comedy to drama, it’s truly a remarkable time to be a TV watcher.
You can find our (entirely subjective, much argued-over) ranking below. Who'll succeed previous victors "Parks & Recreation," "Mad Men" and "Top Of The Lake" in the top slot? Debate the winners and losers in the comments section below. And note, some spoilers are ahead, but they're clearly marked.
20. “Penny Dreadful” There are a number of things wrong with “Penny Dreadful,” if we’re being honest. The
19. "Bob's Burgers" Occupying territory so well covered by the all-conquering pop culture juggernaut that is “The Simpsons” it’s remarkable that Loren Bouchard’s “Bob’s Burgers,” over the course of just four seasons, has managed to carve out such a distinctive identity. The sweet, loopy, often surreal tone springs from a deep love for its characters, the Belcher family, their customers, neighbors, friends and nemeses, and perhaps what makes it so compelling is just how active an interior life every single one of our principals can display in tiny, slider-sized 22-minute mouthfuls. In fact, it seems to be a characterizing element of the show; that everyone comes to it via their own connection to one specific character—for this writer the show is all about Linda, the perpetually good-humored matriarch who is refreshingly herself, as opposed to merely a foil for the wacky hijinks of her husband or children, from her tippling to her sudden enthusiasms (deciding she’s psychic because she predicted a telesales call) to her tendency to break into (often hysterical) musical numbers at the drop of a hat. The family derives so much of their manic energy from her, and yet the warmth and genuineness of her love for them, and their love for each other, renders them totally impervious to outside judgements, which allows “Bob’s Burgers” to venture to places of awkwardness that other shows might fear to tread, always knowing there’s a safety net of affection into which these beloved screw-ups can fall without harm. Season 4 has seen the show grow in confidence and characterization, mining musical moments more frequently, experimenting a little with format (the finale was an epic double episode; the closing credits are getting more surreal and brilliant, as in the spot-on Bond song parody) and generally joyously expanding the microcosmic universe of this New Jersey seaside town with seemingly limitless invention and affection. Best Episode: The finale double episode is probably the season’s biggest gamble, and it pays off, but as a single standout our (tough) choice is either “Uncle Teddy” in which restaurant regular Teddy gets his moment as a babysitter to the kids while Bob and Linda attend a burger convention or “The Equestranauts” which takes aim at the soft target of “Brony” culture and yet ends up again showing the foibles of others in a sympathetic light: everyone, after all, is just striving for the kind of unconditional love and acceptance that comes as naturally to the Belchers as breathing.
18. “Review” Comedy Central are on a hell of a roll at the moment: the network was for so long the house that “South Park” and “The Daily Show” built, but in the last few years, they’ve built up a slate of original programming that’s among the most exciting around right now. “Key & Peele,” “Kroll Show,” “Nathan For You,” “Inside Amy Schumer” and “Drunk History” are all stuffed with laughs (if sometimes being as hit-and-miss as the sketch show format tends to be), but the gem of the line-up is a show that aired with much less fanfare, and after being in a vault for almost a year: “Review,” or to give it its full title, “Review With Forrest MacNeil.” Created by and starring longtime comedy scene-stealer Andy Daly (“Eastbound & Down”), and directed by “Spellbound” and “Rocket Science” helmer Jeffrey Blitz, the show is a loose remake of an Australian show that keeps up the same central conceit: Forrest (Daly) is a reviewer, who reviews life experiences suggested by his viewers, from the seemingly innocuous likes of ‘Having A Best Friend’ and ‘Hunting’ to ‘Divorce,’ ‘Revenge’ and ‘Space.’ The first episode is gloriously funny, as Forrest, as always in his deadpan, slightly harassed manner, gets hooked on coke and tries to take a teenager to prom, but you wonder how much mileage there can possibly be in the premise. But the show escalates beautifully week after week, finding more and more humiliating and disastrous ways for the review to go, but crucially, there’s a cumulative effect, the series turning into a bleakly funny character study as Forrest is pushed closer and closer to breaking point by the show, and his malevolent producer (James Urbaniak, doing stellar work). The show seemed to burn itself down in its final episode, but despite lowish ratings, a second season has happily been commissioned. Best Episode: The third, “Pancakes, Divorce, Pancakes,” which gloriously sandwiches, as the title might suggest, Forrest being forced to ask his beloved wife for a divorce, with a challenge to eat first fifteen pancakes, and then thirty. Not just the high watermark of the show, but one of the funniest half-hours of the whole year.
17. "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" This year wasn't the finest as far as network sitcoms went: most fell flat, strong new arrivals like "Trophy Wife" were short-lived, one-time favorites like "New Girl" took a down turn, and long-running greats like “Parks & Recreation” and “Community” returned to form to some degree, without quite brushing against their former heights. But the undoubted standout among the debuting shows was “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” which came straight out of the gate with a remarkable degree of confidence. Co-created by “Parks & Recreation”’s Michael Schur and Dan Goor, and with a pilot directed by “Lego Movie” duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller (continuing their remarkable recent run of success), it essentially takes that “Parks & Rec”/”The Office” workplace comedy and sets it inside the titular NYC police station. It’s hardly a new concept (“Barney Miller,” et al.), but Schur and Goor brought across the easy likability, gag density and strong world-building from Pawnee to Brooklyn, with the new show being consistently funny and eventually, even a little heartwarming too. It wasn’t totally firing on all cylinders from the first, we’ll concede: early episodes depend on your tolerance for Andy Samberg, the “SNL” veteran’s man-child detective, as the biggest name on the show, being more central than most in the early run. But the series showed a fine capacity for course-correction, and gradually became more and more of an ensemble piece. And few series around have a better ensemble, with Andre Braugher, Terry Crews, Melissa Fumero, Stephanie Beatriz, Chelsea Peretti and Joe LoTruglio all doing stellar work, and maybe more importantly, gelling beautifully together, their enthusiasm for each other, and for the show in general, palpably coming off the screen. It’s not as furiously, gut-bustingly funny as some of the shows further up this list, but there’s such a warmth and generosity to the series that hanging out with the detectives became one of our greatest pleasures of the season just gone. Best Episode: “Old School,” the eighth of the season, was where things really started to take off: pairing Samberg’s good-old-days-idolizing detective with Stacy Keach’s hardboiled crime reporter, who turns out to be a pretty unpleasant human being, Peralta’s reaction perhaps serving as the first real demonstration of the show’s great big heart.
16. “Silicon Valley” Perhaps what’s most endearing about HBO’s new comedy “Silicon Valley” is just how traditional a sitcom it is really, featuring a small, enclosed community of people, sparsely populated at least initially, trapped in a “situation”: in this case a tiny tech startup in a town defined by the IT industry and dominated by Google surrogate Hooli. But the success of the show is down to two main factors: the sharp satirical eye for the excesses of that industry, with its flash-in-the-pan successes and delusions of grandeur (like the checkout guy convinced that his app for finding your car in the parking lot has a big future) and the surprising warmth of the characterization of even the show’s most self-unaware characters. From Thomas Middleditch’s archetypal geek/newly minted CEO, to TJ Miller’s self-styled would-be guru in a bathrobe, to the wonderful Zach Woods as baby-faced naif Jared, the show has constantly surprised us with how the relationships between these misfits develop so satisfyingly. But special MVP mention must go to Christopher Evan Welch, whose tragically early death just five episodes in was a real shock to discover just as we were starting to enjoy the show, and whose portrait of venture capitalist guru Peter Gregory is so indelible it’s hard to see how the show will reach its same heights next season. Though we are very glad that series creators Mike Judge, John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky made the decision not to recast and reshoot, and instead let us enjoy Welch’s contribution, as sadly curtailed as it was. So we are a little worried that without him to spice things up the show could stray a little close to the middle of the road, but this first season has certainly earned our goodwill, so we’re rooting for it come next season. Best Episode: “Articles of Incorporation” (episode 3) had a terrific balance between A and B storyline in which Richard has to buy the name “Pied Piper” from an aging farmer who represents the apotheosis of old-school masculinity as contrasted with Richard’s fey nerdishness, all while Peter Gregory gets his finest moment: seemingly distracted from a conversation with some desperate supplicants begging for a bridging loan or layoffs will ensue, he is transfixed by the sesame seeds on a Burger King burger that pays off in clever and surprising ways. It’s an episode that points to everything we hope the show will become, and to everything about the Gregory character that we will miss.
15. “Broad City” You could make an argument that we still haven’t had the breakout web series that has made the kind of pop culture impact as the kind of TV series on this list (assuming we’re qualifying Netflix and Amazon’s output as more traditional television shows), but “Broad City” might be the next best thing, the web series that graduated to more traditional broadcast airwaves, and proved itself to be entirely worthy of the transition. Created by and starring Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson, “Broad City” debuted on YouTube back in 2009, and eventually came to the attention of Amy Poehler, who shepherded a TV version, which was initially passed on by FX, before finally landing a home on Comedy Central, and proving the high point of their output this year. On paper, it’s another show in the “Girls”/”2 Broke Girls” mold—young twentysomething women in NYC, dealing with the sort of thing that young twentysomethings deal with. But “Broad City” is a very different show: looser, rawer, with an improv-y spirit that places it more in the mold of Tina Fey than Lena Dunham. Separated from the voice-of-her-generation hype that the latter had to deal with, “Broad City” manages to feel just as revolutionary, with two protagonists (Glazer and Jacobson, who are both hysterical) who smoke weed, chase the opposite sex, and do the sort of thing that would go unremarked if this was a male stoner-com, but feels like something very different here, in part thanks to their frank, don’t-give-a-shit approach to sexuality, which obsesses the pair, but will still always come second to their friendship. It’s not quite totally consistent, but at it’s best, it’s uproariously funny, and if nothing else, serves as a handy flip of the coin to “Girls,” with a more racially diverse, scraping-to-get-by approach to twentysomething life that’s equally as rewarding as Dunham’s show, in a very different way. Best Episode: We were especially fond of episode eight, “Destination Wedding,” which sets the pair’s relationship into a new kind of context as they head to everyone’s worst nightmare, the out-of-town wedding.
14. “Girls” No longer the new kid on the block (indeed, with fresh competition on the horizon in the form of the aforementioned “Broad City”), “Girls” moved into its (expanded, twelve-episode) third season no longer quite being on the tip of everyone’s pop culture tongues in the way that it did over the first couple of seasons. But for the most part, that was for the better: rather than being a figurehead for millennial angst, or lightning rod debates between the show’s defenders and people who don’t like Lena Dunham because they don’t find her attractive, the series could just quietly get on with the blend of sharp comedy and unexpectedly bruising drama that made its name, and proved to do so as well as ever. It wasn’t as stellar and unexpected as the first season, but the longer run somehow made it much more even and cohesive than the second (which was written before the first had aired), even if it didn’t entirely do all the characters justice—Shoshanna got rather short shrift this time around, and was much missed as a result. For the most part, though, it continued to dig further into its protagonists, making them as selfish and unappealing and yet strangely empathetic as ever. From the unexpected affair between Marnie (Alison Williams) and Ray (Alex Karpovsky) to Hannah's (Dunham) flirtation with the corporate world and GQ, there wasn’t a duff storyline in the bunch, and as with last season, the show really begins to excel when it breaks into little stand-alone mini-movies or odd digressions (the addition of Gaby Hoffman as the unstable sister of Adam Driver’s character was an unexpected boon, as was her romance with Jon Glaser’s odd downstairs neighbor). Those aside, the show’s settled into a kind of rock-solid consistency, but that consistency certainly shouldn’t be taken for granted. Best Episode: “Beach House” was a beautifully savage little away-day, but it was the season’s other major formula-breaker, “Flo,” which sees Hannah meet up with the other women in her extended family to visit her dying grandmother (“Nebraska” Oscar-nominee June Squibb) that lingers in the memory. Squibb, Becky Ann Baker, Dierdre Lovejoy and Amy Morton were all so good together that it actually made you long for a spin-off of sorts.
13. “Veep” The runaway winner of this year’s "most improved" trophy, “Veep” had, over its first two seasons, been a show that was always worth a watch, but still felt like it was finding its feet, and rarely made a case for being appointment viewing. But season three was something else: creator Armando Iannucci and his team had raised their game exponentially this time around for a run of episodes that felt as tight, purposeful and gloriously sweary as his great “The Thick Of It,” rather than a slightly watered down imitator as it had sometimes felt before. Given new drive by a focused plotline that saw Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ frustrated, semi-incompetent Vice President running for President (and *SPOILER* eventually attaining, though only after the Commander-In-Chief resigns while she’s still third in the polls *END SPOILER*), the series proved faster and funnier than ever before, the fuck-ups and colorful insults flying at a lightning pace where early seasons had sometimes felt a bit turgid. And with real plot to get their teeth into, the cast excelled like never before: Anna Chlumsky, Reid Scott, Matt Walsh, Gary Cole, Kevin Dunn, Sufe Bradshaw, Tony Hale and especially Timothy Simons all finding new notes to play in their support team, and Dreyfus building on her exceptional work in “Enough Said” last year to give what may be seen in years to come as her most defining performance, one in which she’s capable of being borderline monstrous, then redeeming herself a few moments later. In places, you feel the show start to threaten the suspension of disbelief somewhat, and then you realize the ridiculous reality of politics and remember that the show has a long way to go before it tips over the edge. Plus, like “The Thick Of It” before it, it’s by some way the most quotable show on television, you unstable piece of human scaffolding. Best Episode: Local bias might tip this U.K. resident towards episode seven, “Special Relationship,” which sees Selina on a state trip to the U.K., complete with tabloid skulduggery, breaking the Queen’s china, a scene-stealing turn from Christopher Meloni as a dim-witted personal trainer, the always-welcome Darren Boyd as an acerbic Deputy Prime Minister, and campaign manager Dan having an absolute melt down.
12. “Louie” After an extended sabbatical (nearly two years passed between the third and fourth season), Louis C.K. returned with the latest batch of his much-acclaimed auteurist semi-sitcom. True to form, it was more distinctive, idiosyncratic and experimental than ever: after increasing experiments away from formula and towards a kind of serialization in the last batch of episodes, the new season was something else entirely: three-to-four feature length movies all adding up to a sort of predominant theme about masculinity, romance, fatherhood, childhood, and relationships between men and women. Ultimately, it added up to a season that courted controversy in a way that the show hadn’t before: Louie’s encounter with Yvonne Strahovski’s model, with Sarah Baker’s self-described fat girl, and his non-consensual grappling with Pamela Adlon, seemed to be planned directly with the intention of instigating the dozens of think pieces that followed in their wake; as some have suggested, C.K essentially trolling his viewers and the press. It also added up to something more uneven: structurally wonky, dominated by the 6-part “Elevator” run, less concerned with making you laugh (even by comparison to what came before), and a little more sentimental even (the ending to the “Pamela” three-parter never quite sat right with us). But a bold and playful season of “Louie” that doesn’t work 100% of the time is still going to be more interesting, thought-provoking, and better made than most of what’s on television. And every episode had something beautiful, unexpected or hilarious in it, from the refuse collectors invading Louie’s apartment in the season opener, to Ellen Burstyn’s performance and the extended motel-room flashback to Louie’s near-collapse of his marriage, to Pamela throwing out all of Louie’s furniture and the glorious, glorious return of Charles Grodin. Problematic? Yes. Uneven? Certainly. Like nothing else? Of course. One gets the instinct that C.K. is itching to head back to the big screen sooner rather than later, but as long as FX are giving him carte blanche, we’ll be tuning in to “Louie.” Best Episode: It divided Playlisters, but we mostly adored the “In The Woods” two-parter, a “Freaks & Geeks”-ish coming-of-age flashback about young Louie’s flirtation with pot, and his betrayal of a beloved science teacher in favor of a skeezy drug dealer (Jeremy Renner, giving his best performance since “The Hurt Locker.” (YOU ARE INSANE THESE WERE THE WORST - ed.) Told you it was divisive...
11. “Game Of Thrones” Near the end of season three, “Game Of Thrones” unveiled The Red Wedding, a brutal shocker that killed off a number of the show’s most prominent character, and instantly stepped into the annals of TV history. It seemed like a moment that the series would find difficult to top, even after shocking from the pilot, and one wondered if season four would just end up a long series of comedowns after that event. But instead, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss didn’t miss a beat, with a (mostly) eventful collection of ten episodes that shook up the status quo on the series in a big way, and, inevitably, left some of the most, and least, beloved characters dead by the end. On the one hand, giving a verdict on “Game Of Thrones” each season is a fool’s errand: the show’s reached a remarkable level of consistency, with Benioff and Weiss continuing to doing a remarkable job of adapting George R.R. Martin’s texts to screen while often improving on them, production values that can’t be beaten on TV (the fight for the wall in the penultimate episode had as much spectacle as most blockbusters this year), and a phenomenal cast who continue to be hugely pleasurable to watch, particularly with such fine writing. The series continues to serve some characters better than others—we’re yet to find much about Jon Snow interesting beyond the battle scenes, and Daenerys didn’t have much to do all season. And the show made its first major, major misstep in *SPOILER* the deeply problematic sex/rape scene between Cersei and Jaimie *END SPOILER*, something clearly botched on both the writing and filmmaking level, if the baffled response by the people behind it was anything to go by. But while misfired, it did also illustrate something that’s become one of the show’s greatest strengths: an unwillingness to let a character become entirely sympathetic or entirely villainous, testing your love for your favorites and reminding you of the humanity of the most hissable. It’s in this moral grey area that the show swims, and it’s that that makes it transcend pure genre and become what’s sure to be, by the time it’s done, one of TV’s most monumental achievements. Best Episode: Finale “The Children” was a stunner, the most satisfying, thrilling and even moving season-ender that the show’s had to date.
10. “Fargo” One of the dicier propositions on paper, the Coen Brothers’ involvement (as Executive Producers) with the TV show version of their beloved, peerless 1996 film meant that we were always going to hope for the best with “Fargo.” Certainly more so than with the Edie Falco-starring version that the Coens did not endorse back in 1997 that never made it beyond pilot stage. But “Fargo” exceeded our cautious expectations, and after a rather tentative first few episodes which we mostly spent getting a bead on how much/how little relation to the story of the film this storyline had (answer: none really, bar some recurring motifs), it settled into its own thing, with a whole new slew of characters to fall for almost as hard as we fell for Frances McDormand’s Marge Gunderson. Featuring a breakout performance from Allison Tolman, and the best showcase that either Colin Hanks or Billy Bob Thornton have had in ages, it has the same recognizable affable noir tone of the film, and makes the brave and correct decision to round off the story by the end of the season, making season one feel like a self-contained entity. But we must say a lot of our joy, as “Fargo”-the-movie junkies, came from picking up on the sly ways the show referred to the film. From buried money, to pregnant policewomen, to DLR plates it nodded frequently to its precursor, but in Thornton’s implacable shapeshifting bogeyman hitman, and in Martin Freeman’s despicable, self-justifying protagonist, even more craven than William H Macy’s character in the film, the show also brought totally new elements that allowed it go both darker and broader when it needed. Best Episode: All the latter episodes are pretty solid, but we’ll go with the one that really turned us on to the show properly: episode 4, “Eating the Blame” which tells the story of how Stavros Milos (and we love us some Oliver Platt) got his fortune: sheer dumb luck (or divine intervention, as he believes) saw him dig up a case of money buried by a fence in the snow with only a certain red ice-scraper for a marker…
9. “Rick & Morty” Probably much to his relief at this point, Dan Harmon had a pretty great year. The iconoclastic and outspoken writer/producer’s “Harmontown” live show and podcast went from strength to strength, even spawning an acclaimed documentary, while he returned to “Community,” the show that made his name, and oversaw a creative comeback after the mediocre Harmon-free season four (the show looks to have come to an end after NBC cancelled it, but at least it was on the creator’s own terms). But his greatest triumph came with his latest show, “Rick & Morty,” which proved to be a legitimate hit, outperforming not just “Community,” but most of what the mainstream networks had to air against it, despite airing on the relatively small Adult Swim. It was also, when all’s said and done, our favorite comedy of the entire season. Co-created with Justin Roiland (based on a series of shorts by the latter), the show seems like it’s going to be something of a one-joke concept: essentially, what if Doc Brown from “Back To The Future” was an amoral son-of-a-bitch who used and abused his awkward, sex-obsessed Marty-ish grandson on a series of adventures across space and time. But the result was just tremendous: an endlessly inventive, gut-busting series of sci-fi comedy adventures that brushed with jaw-dropping wrongness in places (an exploding giant alcoholic Santa, Marty being
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