Best of the Year
(with fan art because why not?)
1. Marianne
I can be hyperbolic in praise at times but I'm clear eyed as can be when I say
Marianne is the high watermark of horror on television. It is moody and unnerving, perfectly paced, and with a fantastic cast. The acting alone is enough for me to sing its praises, there is a scene with two characters in the back of a car just talking and it is electric. Aurore saying that she had a mohawk, that she was cool, is just a minor blip in the story of the show but it is one of the most indelible moments of the whole thing for me.
And I mentioned this way back when I first watched the show but there is a scene in an early episode where a group of childhood friends with a traumatic past meet again as adults and it is such an achievement. This scene lasts pretty much 10 minutes and despite the fact that we don't know any of these people(this is the first time the audience meets them) and we know absolutely nothing about whatever tragic event impacted their friendship as kids, this perfect scene manages(in 10 minutes!) to outdo however many hours the two
IT movies had trying to do the same thing.
This is a nearly perfect show.
2. The OA
What is there to even say? Brit Marling's
The Dark Tower aka
The OA is an idiosyncratic masterpiece, one that doesn't bend one centimeter in any direction that the creators did not want it to go, and for that alone it should be championed. It is also a font of positivity and warmth in this garbage world we live in, valuing empathy and connection as the greatest of virtues. And, unlike pretty much every other show in existence, it can actually surprise you.
No one saw Old Night coming. No one.
3. Lodge 49
Another show exploding with warmth and humanity in this soul-sucking reality we call home,
Lodge 49 is the laid back, less ostentatious, comedic cousin to
The OA. Smart as a whip, perfectly cast, and with a jaundiced eye that still chooses to see the world as a worthwhile place despite that very same world kicking you in the balls and then kicking you again while you are down.
4. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance
A fantasy epic that is, true to its spiritual origins, as epic as it is intimate,
The Dark Crystal: AOR is the perfect counterpoint to the other fantasy works of the year. It took a well-established original work and did everything in its power to not only do it again and continue it but also to be better than its predecessor, to grow it. It is hard not to look at
TDC: AOR and marvel at the fact that Hup, a puppet who doesn't speak a completely understandable language to the audience, is a better understood, better realized, more human character than anyone in the final season of
Game of Thrones.
5. Black Spot
Black Spot aka
Zone Blanche is a moody French police/mystery/paranormal show that is kind of hard to explain. I once saw an infograph that tried to break it down into percentages of other shows that make up its "DNA" as a sort of shorthand for what it is, but I thought the picks were kind of off but it was a good effort and, at the very least, it was nice to see someone else out there who understood the weird slipstream nature of the show.
If I were to sell it as any one of the things I would describe it as, I don't think people would necessarily be satisfied. It is a cop show and it is a mystery and it has a paranormal element(and small town mafia and ecoterrorism and...and...and...) but if you tuned looking for a cop show, or a mystery, or a paranormal show it would probably fail to satisfy. I am fully aware that none of this is going to sell anyone on it or even makes much sense but it is what it is. It is not a particularly crazy show, it isn't weird or esoteric, but it definitely feels off when you try to distill for someone else.
Fortitude +
Hannibal? Maybe? I don't know.
Regardless, it has a great cast, excellent cinematography, and is dripping in atmosphere, I highly recommend it.
6. In The Dark
The most underwatched show on, so much so that my fan art search was a complete failure,
ITD is a fantastic mystery show that everyone shot give it a shot(it is easily the best show on the CW).
The story of a blind woman trying to solve the murder of her friend, the show works beautifully on multiple fronts. It excels on the mystery front, being well thought out, carefully paced, and with a strong climax. It also works marvelously as a character piece, with some of the best, most well realized characters on TV. Our lead, Murphy, in particular is an amazing character anchored by a great performance from Perry Mattfeld.
Great characters, great story, great acting, one of the best shows of the year.
7. Killing Eve
It is
Killing Eve. It is still excellent. Jodie Comer still gives one of the absolute best performances, on the small or big screen, around. Watch it if you don't already.
8. Evil
Oh,
Evil. Such a wonderful little show, it is like if the Kings did
Millennium. But as I mentioned in the thread for it is a show that is hard to really talk about: "Sadly, I don't have much to say about it though. I like all the characters(literally all of them, I would watch a show just about the four daughters), it is fun and weird(the birth in the field a few episode back!), refreshingly topical(the incel stuff was excellent), and it really excels at making the 'case of the week' feel vital and not like something rote that they have to do because it is a TV show. The Kings might be the best around at doing longform storytelling while still keeping to the procedural/case-of-the-week structure."
9. The Doom Patrol
It is an adaptation of
The Doom Patrol and it is good. Flex Mentallo was taken off the page and it was good. Danny the Street was taken off the page and it was good. This was an impossible task, not because it couldn't be done but because the prevailing wisdom is that the suits in charge would want to iron out all the wrinkles to make it more palatable to audiences, which is a problem for the DP because they are made of nothing but wrinkles. Miraculous.
Cyborg still sucks, though.
10. Insatiable
The saga of the most unfairly maligned show continues! Unfortunately I felt that the second did a little bit too much course-correcting presumably due to the backlash(pre-lash?) so it wasn't quite the same shade of darkly humorous, but it was still a great time and Patty continues to be one of the better anti-heroes to grace our screens in some time.
Fail of the Year
1. Cancelling The OA
Why do this, Netflix? You have actively made the world a bleaker place and that is the last thing we need.
2. Cancelling Lodge 49
Oh come on. Why is everyone allergic to positivity?
3. Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones had been getting worse and worse for some time, the dreadful handling of Dorne and the Sparrows and their whole religious uprising being complete nonsense should've clued everyone onto this fact. So it going out in an unsatisfactory way wasn't necessarily surprising but, my gods, the degree to which they botched it was truly impressive. Not a single satisfactory moment happens and if something even came close it was thrown in the dirt before long.
Marianne fan art -
link
The OA fan art -
link
Lodge 49 fan art, this is by David Ury the actor of the character! -
link
The Dark Crystal fan art -
link
Black Spot fan art, can't believe I found some -
link
In The Dark fan art - :(
Killing Eve fan art -
link
Evil fan art -
link
The Doom Patrol fan art - unknown :(
Insatiable fan art -
link
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