May seem low, and maybe if I ever rewatch Saul years from now I may kick myself for this. But all said, I have one main question with the season that slightly hurts it in my eyes: the ending of three straight episodes on "Gene Takovic" world in gray. Certainly we ew we were going to get the resolution to that particular story at some point, and the show cleaned up all other business in excellent, and beautiful ways - capped with the stunning shot of Lalo and Howard staring face to face, dead in a dug grave in the basement of what would become the superlab. If the show ended in that instant, it is probably higher. In a way it did, as from the next episode we went to Gene world, and some of that was beautiful, as well as unexpected, such as the return of Marie. But in the end, it became just a bit too jarring. It's great that Kim didn't die, but her neutered and Gene/Saul/Jimmy taking the fall was a slight letdown. In the end, Better Call Saul never for me reached the heights that Breaking Bad did, but that is as little an insult as humanly possible. The show did so much else so well, even in this season, showing with painstaking detail the beauty in people acting, thinking and executing in painstaking detail over and over again against an ever bueatiful vista of Mexico and New Mexico. I have no idea what Vince Gilligan will do next, but I believe him that he's leaving Albuquerque behind, and doing os in stly.e
4.) Only Murders in the Building (Season 2, Hulu)
This was my #1 show last year, and to be honest it remained more or less as good. I think this is to fairly say I do think TV was slgihtly better in 2022 as it was in 2021, but in the end they were always going to have a hard act to follow and did a damn good job. The side plots this year felt a bit more weird than normal, particularly everything to do with Martin Short's character realizing Teddy was the real father of the person he thought was his son. But the actual plot was amazing, it weaved people like Tina Fey's character excellently, and as always our various sojourns to view the world through other people in the Arconia's eyes were great as always. At the end of the day, the fact that Steve Martin and Martin Short, in their golden years, are slaving away putting together one of the sharpest, funniest, best constructed shows on TV is amazing enough, but the fact that they've simultaneously revived Selena Gomez's career, and seem to be a magnet for great guest stars (Amy Schumer being this year's Sting) makes it all the greater. More than anything, I don't want this magical pearl of a show to end. It still amazes me it was made at all, but every moment, every episode is just a pure joy in the Arconia.
3.) Winning Time (Season 1, HBO)
As a basketball fan, yes there were some odd inaccuracies, such as key games that they somewhat changed the ending for, and them messing up the cutting of Spencer Haywood, but I'll give them some artistic license. Winning Time had to do arguably the toughest job of any show since maybe People v. OJ Simpson, portray not only real world people, but people who are supe rfamous. If anything, it was even tougher in this version because they had to get people to play basketball reasonably well. Somehow they nailed it, casting incredible talents and people that strikingly resembled, if not acted like, Magic Johnson and Kareem. Even the most stunt-casty of them in Adrien Brody started morphing into Pat Riley the second he slicked back his hair. I'm so curious how long this show plans to go for, but for a first season, and one that truly was dramatic from Jerry Buss buying the team despite being close to broke, and him sexing up the Lakers, to everything to do with Jerry West, they made the thing work. Some of this high ranking may be me admittedly givint them a bit of extra credit for just how challenging a task the show was to pull off, but by God did they pull it off with something that was incredibly heartfeft, funnyEleven , bombastic, sleazy-in-the-right-way, and so much else.
2.) The Dropout (Hulu)
I'm a sucker for a well told story of failure, of hubris, of all the stuff we want to wish would be bestowed upon the thousands that have thought of, led and profited off of get rich quick schemes, and while some may have prefered the shows this year about Uber or WeWork, for me, the one on Theranos was perfect, mostly because of how good a show it was. It told the stoy fairly, it told the story honestly. It casted excellently, with Amanda Seyfried doing an amazing job protraying Elizabeth Holmes, and the actor who played Sunny being every bit as frenzied and conniving as you would want. More than anything though, the show explained so well how so many people can be led astray beleiveing what they wanted to hope was true.
It was such a frustrating watch, in a good way. How many times did I just yell at the screen "Make her test the damn thing for you". The fact that this show came out the same year that she was convicted to 10+ years in jail made it even more poignant. It may seem a bit trite to hyper-focus on one person's fall from grace, but as the show so beautifully exposed, she knowingly built a house of cards and never could find a way to pull the plug. I hope we get more of these types of shows in the year to come. And I hope if and when we do, they are made as emotionally-charged and nauseatingly true as The Dropout.
1.) Stranger Things (Season 4, NETFLIX)
Look, I get that this would get some blowback. There's enough people that consider Stranger Things a bit too fluff and bombast, and I get it. Yes, there was a lot of hand-wringing, some deserved, about the ridiculous run times of the last few "episodes". But what I say is I don't care. Nothing I watched was better, made me more intensely caught up in it all, made me "feel" more, than Stranger Things. The show somehow was able to pivot away from kid-focused stories in perfect way, doing a season that was straight up horror, and doijng it very well.
Yes, the disconnected plots were rough at times, particularly everything with Hopper in Russia - but the payoff, with him killing the Demogorgon at the same time Robin, Nancy and Steve were killing the last vestiges of Vecna, with Running Up That Hill playing. I don't think any show has used music this well since The Young Pope. They just crafted and mined the hell out of the season's storyline, from the painstakingly slow reveal that Vecna was Henry Creel and more than that the "One" to Eleven's "Eleven". That was perfect.
The long run times in the end don't bother me, just pretend they were two 45-minute episodes instead of a 90-minute episode and you are fine. The show earned all of that anyway. It was able to showcase a considerable amount of acting talent, using the now teenage actors, aside from maybe Will, really well. I was a lover of Stranger Things from its first season, and stayed with it through a largely uneven third season, for a perfect payoff here, and I can't wait for its finale in 2024.
