My Favorite Television Shows of 2012

The greats continued to be the greats this year. Only two of the ten shows I mention in this post are new shows (and one of them isn't even coming back for another season). So it's basically an opportunity to continue to shower praise on the shows I've already praised so much already. As always, I haven't seen every show, though one particular show I feel that I may have liked quite a bit had I gotten to it is Treme. Maybe next year.

Louie: Season Three (2012)

Creator: Louis CK

 Last season, Louis CK gave us what I saw as of the best seasons of TV I had ever seen. It was completely atypical of any show that had ever aired in not only form, but also content. The show encapsulated the human condition better than any show that year. So it's pretty high praise when I say that the third season completely met my very high expectations. At the most basic level, it's a show about a man in a mid-life crisis, but that description really doesn't do the show justice. Louie is a man who takes care of his kids half the week, but he is searching for something to focus his attention in that other half of the week. This season he looks at many things to fill the void he has in his life. He comes across many women who he attempts to court, he finds a new career goal to strive towards, and even tries to make a new Cuban best friend.

In typical Louie fashion, he's not too successful with those endeavors, but it's the journey that is so touching and so affecting. As a director and writer, Louis CK is able to capture the most complicated of human emotions and feelings. He has a talent that outshines most Hollywood filmmakers. A great example of this is when Louie goes to meet his father for the first time in many years. This is a show about what Louie is feeling, so appropriately the audience views reality through Louie's eyes, and so when he is in on his way to meet his dad there is tug-of-war going on his head and Louie actualizes that brilliantly on screen through surreal moments that bend reality for the sake of Louie's inner feelings. The ultimate highlight of the season is most certainly the "Late Night" arc, when Louie gets the chance to replace David Letterman. Those episodes (which are really one big movie) not only provide a commentary on the vicious way show business makes enemies out of friends, but also give us as a "Rocky"-like arc for Louie that should have been cliche, but somehow managed to be genuinely triumphant while still keeping the downer tone and ideology of the show intact.

There were moments of the season that were certainly not as creative and ambitious as Louis CK's best work, but any show with the vignette structure will have its low points. Louie counterbalances those low points with some extraordinary high points, all capped by the amazing transcendental season finale in which Louie literally gets away from it all and goes to China. What did he do there? Nothing really. But it felt completely right, and that's what Louie is about: feeling right.

Grade: A

My Favorite Television Shows of 2011

Everyone knows by now that television is now a completely serious and important art form. While many desire to compare film and television, I think that television has now reached a point where it no longer needs to be compared to film because it is now a distinct art form that has its own advantages, and this was well displayed in this years crop of television.

My list of my five favorite television shows (with the next five in unranked order) represents the diversity of styles that television now offers. Not only did we get smart versions of familiar genres, but we also got a show that delivers some of that incredible tension that only television can induce, and also a show that highlights perfectly a singular point-of-view of an auteur.

Because I believe that season by season judgement is the best way to judge television shows, I only counted the shows that had seasons that ended in 2011, which also means I tried my best not to consider the ongoing seasons of shows like Parks & Recreation when judging the season that ended in 2011. There also a couple of shows that I did watch that I feel I may have had merited serious considerations if I had watched them. The most notable of those are Treme and Justified (currently catching up with that one). I've also included links to the original reviews of the shows if they have been written about previously. For the shows without links, reviews are probably forthcoming.

Filmcap: The week of Sept 4-11

Fish Tank, Grand Illusion, Funny Games, and recently completed season of Louie are highlights from this abnormally great and lengthy week. Minimal amount of schoolwork, a realization that this is my last year of school and thus last chance to really go all out with my movie watching, and also the ending of two television show seasons all culminated in a lot of entries for this week. In this post you'll find discussions on how the differences between a great miserabilist film and a bad one, the benefits of personal filmmaking, and the lack of intellectual provocation in the movies.