QotD: Top 5 in '06 - Television
What were your top 5 TV shows of 2006?
In no particular order:
Battlestar Galactica:
I almost always give science fiction shows a try (a habit I've retained from my childhood) but I'm almost always disappointed. Battlestar Galactica, far from disappointing me, exceeded my expectations. It is brilliant.
The science fiction is, of course, only a framework which allows it to probe, poke, invert and subvert our most deeply held beliefs. The bad guys wipe out a planet full of people, leaving only 40,000 survivors to flee in a few spaceships...so far, so conventional. But the "good guys" are polytheists; the "bad guys" are the monotheists. The "good guys" leave booby traps to infect the enemy with deadly viruses, steal a baby from its mother (and tell her that it died), rape and beat the enemy, and engage in suicide bombing missions...the show constanly startles you when it makes you realize the horrific acts it has seduced you into supporting.
This is a can't-miss show.
Veronica Mars:
I'm a big fan of film noir but, unlike some purists, I'm happy to see the style updated and transformed. I was delighted to see how well Rob Thomas managed to fit the conventions of noir with the conventions of the California teen-angst show (a genre I would otherwise find unwatchable).
Veronica Mars, formerly a popular high school girl from the wrong side of the socioeconomic divide in her wealthy town, is forced into a more cynical, wisecracking, mode of existence when her sheriff father loses his job for his mishandling of a case. The case happens to be the murder of her rich best friend. Her father becomes a detective and Veronica becomes his assistant when she's not in school (and sometimes when she is). Intrigue ensues.
The writing is great, the performances are top-notch and the direction rarely falters. I don't exactly fit their demographic but they've won me over.
Deadwood:
Every character in Deadwood, EVERY ONE, has a loony eloquence that is usually laced with obscenity, violence and bravado but occasionally studded with baroque circumlocutions. Nobody just talks -- well, maybe the doctor.
This is a town without law and everybody's trying to figure out just exactly what the balance should be between raw self-interest (there's gold in them thar hills) and civility. Violence, poetry, perfidy, politics, honor, gentility, humor, sex, greed and hope are all in plain view, all trying to live together in a community.
There must have been other depictions of communities as vital and complex as Deadwood on television but I can't recall any. IT's a materwork, worthy of scholarly study. I mourn its passing.
The Daily Show
Honest, folks, this is NOT a news show. It IS, however, a lot of things other than just the comedy show Jon Stewart claims it is.
It's a pretty damned good introduction to media criticism, for example. Just about anyone who watches the show for a few weeks should find that they are at least a little bit better at noticing the weaknesses in media coverage; they'll find themselves constantly thinking "I wonder if The Daily Show will do a bit about THAT?"
The same goes, of course, for political rhetoric. Once viewers begin playing the game of wondering what The Daily Show writers might pick up on in any given speech or sound bite they will find themselves performing rhetorical analyses they might not otherwise have done. They'll notice more.
Less humorously, the show gives scores of authors of serious books about current affairs four or five minutes' of exposure to millions of people they might not otherwise have an opportunity to reach. They get a chance to communicate at least the central theme of their book basking in the reflected coolness of Jon Stewart, who urges people to read the book whether he agrees with it or not. This is extraordinary.
None of this would matter much if the show were not funny. It is very, very funny. It is one of the few shows guaranteed to get me laughing violently at least once, usually two or three times, in the course of its twenty-odd minutes.
The Colbert Report
Even after I'd seen and thoroughly enjoyed the first couple of weeks of The Colbert Report I thought that they wouldn't be able to keep it up. I figured the show would have to fold or turn into something closer to a variation of The Daily Show. I'm delighted to say that I badly misunderestimated Colbert and his dyspeptic crew of sour merrymakers. The truthiness hurts but there seems to be no end to the ways he can find to deliver it to us. Sometimes I laugh out loud and sometimes my jaw drops, I am so amazed at what I have just seen happen. In any event I am entertained. Mr. Colbert, you will never be dead to me.
