The Televerse #17- Best of 2011
This week, Simon and I ditch the regular format to spend time talking about our picks for the Best of TV in 2011. We cover our top 10 series with a smattering of additional categories thrown in along the way. I’ll leave the shows a surprise, though regular listeners won’t have a hard time guessing many of our picks.
The categories we cover are: Best Discovery, Biggest Disappointment, Most Gruesome, Most Underrated, Most Promising, Most Improved, Best Badass, the Pleasantville Award, Best Chemistry, Best Production Values, the RIP Award, Best WTF Moment, Most Frustrating, Best Quote, and Best Non-Top 10 Episode.
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Kate is a violinist by day, TV-aholic by night, and film geek by somewhere around dawn. While attending UIUC, she earned a Masters Degree in Violin Performance and a Schrute Buck in a Pop Culture Trivia Contest; of the two, so far only the latter has hung on her wall. Her favorite movies are The Princess Bride, Casablanca, and The Third Man and her favorite TV shows are Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Wire, and Arrested Development. 
Thamks Kate for standing up for the Doctor.
lol, Ken. So, you’re with me on Parks and Rec, but with Simon on TV before books. (The reason I finally got around to reading Song of Ice and Fire was so I wouldn’t have the TV show determining my view of the books. I’m always a fan of reading/seeing the source material first, so you can see what the original author/creator’s vision was before seeing someone else’s interpretation of it.) Fair ’nuff. Thanks for the Ben/Leslie support!
As for Top 5 First Seasons, that’d require a little more thought, but I’m sure it’ll come up on the site here once I start my weekly articles/lists up again in January.
I have to go leave soon but 35 minutes in and I have to say:
–Kate’s right.
–Simon’s wrong.
First, no, this is not a Chicago homer thing, supporting a fellow Chicagoan, it’s just Kate’s been right and Simon’s been wrong.
Second, okay, I know, granted, reviews are subjective opinions, and everyone has a right to their own. That said, Simon’s opinions have been wrong. Yeah, I’m going there. I’ll comment later with details why, later.
Now, while it would be totally funny to leave it at that, in a totally jerk-move kinda way and because I’m not a total jerk, I will cite a small example for illustration, consideration, and demonstration of the wrongness of Simon’s opinion:
Simon’s review of PARKS & REC that Scott Adams’ “Ben” doesn’t have good chemistry with Amy Poehler’s “Leslie Knope” and that he just seems to be the straight man of the group reacting to all of the other stuff everyone else does is demonstrably wrong:
1) We haven’t the chemistry overtly because the show wasn’t overt about it when building it up (because she didn’t like Ben, or Chris, and what they were doing with Pawnee’s budget) so it built up gradually, more naturally as they became … gasp … friends BEFORE they fell in love (shocker in today’s romcoms and sitcoms). This season it’s been on suppressed because of Chris’ rule against staff “fraternizing” and Leslie’s impending campaign.
2) Ben and Leslie’s chemistry was demonstrated toward the end of last season more overtly and this season in their version of the model UN (not to be confused with COMMUNITY’s version of the model UN–altho I would love to see the cross-over UN-off between those two shows).
And speaking of COMMUNITY, Simon’s complaint last week about it was that it tries too hard to be conceptual instead of just being funny, yet this week, his complaint about PARKS & RECREATION this season is that “only” tries to be funny and cute. Wow, a sitcom trying to be funny and cute. How DARE it? More to the point, why the two opinions, the two CONTRADICTING opinions, Simon? I want to know! I want the truth! Cuz I CAN handle it.
Oh, um, well, that got a little out of control, um, wait, what was I saying, oh, yeah, Kate’s right. Simon’s wrong. Oh, and NEVER read the book BEFORE the tv / movie adaptation. It’s the rare tv / movie that’s as good as the book. Instead the book works to provide backstory to the adaptation while the adaptation works to illustrate the book.
Reading the book first is far more likely to lead to disappointment. Why? Simple reason. Something can be a good tv show or a movie but a bad or so-so adaptation. It’s an extra hurdle and avoidable *if* you know about the adaptation before reading the book.
– Ken from Chicago
P.S. Kate, hold on a sec, you can’t just drop that the highly critically-acclaimed by tv critics in droves of the 1st season of HOMELAND is NOT in your top 5 of 1st seasons and then NOT list five 1st seasons that were better. C’mon, spill the beans.
And so my legacy of wrongness finally catches up to me in the TV realm. I knew this day would come.