If I can do these for movies, why not TV seasons? We'll see how long this schtick lasts. Here are some seasons of some television shows that I've watched since 2015 began. Most of them, of course, aired sometime during 2015. Some didn't. Intrigued? Read on!
Parks and Recreation: Season 7
NBC had no idea what to do with the final season of Parks and Recreation, electing to burn off the entire thirteen-episode run over a span of six weeks and expediting the process of retiring its last great comedy. Airing two episodes a night, the show had to bring everyone up to speed with its three-year time jump and then wrap everything up neatly in just a month and a half. It mostly succeeded. I won't pretend that the show went out on top, or even that it never struggled toward the end; one episode in particular, the fourth-to-last, focused on Andy's brief career as the creator and host of a local children's show, and it may have been my least favorite episode in the entire series run. But Parks and Recreation was - and always will be - one of my favorite comedies of all time. It will be sorely missed going forward.
Downton Abbey: Season 5
It's almost hard to remember how much of a pop culture sensation this show used to be. Years ago, we were collectively obsessed with the melodramatic class struggle, the Edwardian Era fashion, the quick wit of Dame Maggie Smith, and the will-they-or-won't-they tension between Mary and Matthew, Bates and Anna, and Daisy and being-anywhere-but-here. Somewhere around the third season, the luster was gone. Maybe it was Bates being on trial. Maybe it was the Great War being over. Maybe it was Mary and Matthew finally settling down. Regardless, Downton Abbey is an empty shell of what it once was, and it's almost a relief to hear that the upcoming sixth season will be the show's last.
Togetherness: Season 1
I thought that last year's FX comedy, Married, was a dark and honest look at what it is to be married in your late thirties and not necessarily happy. But then HBO doubled down on that concept with Togetherness, which is almost straight-up depressing in its portrayal of two people in the same situation, making Married look light-hearted and low stakes by comparison. ED and a lack of communication lead to terrible sex taking place front and center, and it's almost hard not to root for both husband and wife to find some happiness outside of their failing marriage. The show would be unwatchable if not for Amanda Peet and Steve Zissis developing their own little relationship with unlikely chemistry. I'm curious to see where this all goes in Season 2.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Season 1
Also known as the Tina Fey Netflix project, this was simple and fun and easy to binge watch. Kimmy Schmidt has been held in an underground bunker for ten or fifteen years or so by a ridiculous cult led by Jon Hamm. When she's rescued, she decides to make a new life for herself in New York. It's more or less the same New York from 30 Rock, full of vibrant characters and opportunities for a young woman stuck fifteen years in the past. Anyway, it all works. It's got Tina Fey's fingerprints all over it, and if you like her stuff like I do, you'd like this show.
Broad City: Season 2
Broad City on the other hand takes place in an entirely different New York. It's still vibrant and full of characters and opportunities for two young women to do things, but it's also much deeper and often shadier and weirder than Fey's New York. This is a New York with an elaborate underground knock-off purse black market, and with gay dog weddings, and where you can meet Kelly Ripa after a coat check mix-up or have a sudden impulsive lesbian experience with your own doppelgänger. Anyway, it's a cliche, but New York itself is indeed one of the most important "characters" in Broad City, a show that feels a lot like a sketch comedy version of Workaholics.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Season 10
Ten seasons? Ten seasons. Wow. Not much has changed for Always Sunny over the past decade, which feels like a strange accomplishment of sorts. The characters have many more layers of definition at this point, but they're still the same shallow people who bring misfortune upon everyone else they encounter. Season 10 was another mixed bag highlighted by an episode where the gang went on Family Feud and an episode that detailed through a series of elaborately choreographed long shots how Charlie keeps the bar running. Always Sunny has been renewed through at least its twelfth season, which would tie it with Two and a Half Men and My Three Sons as the longest-running non-animated sitcom in the history of American television. That's crazy!
Girls: Season 4
Are the four girls in Girls still largely detestable self-centered people? Yes, absolutely. But are they also all a little more mature and self-aware than they were when the series began four years ago? Yes, undeniably. So if this is a show about shitty twenty-somethings turning into slightly less-shitty twenty-somethings - a show about growing up, basically - then it's succeeding at advancing the various character arcs for these various young women. Your mileage may vary, but I still find it pretty funny fairly often. Most shows are grasping or struggling four years into their lifespans, but Girls has been admirably consistent from day one.
The Walking Dead: Season 5
I'd be hard pressed not to call the fifth season of The Walking Dead its greatest year yet. There was urgency and momentum, for one thing, and most of the major character deaths really hit home - a huge improvement from the days where I would openly root for half of Rick's crew to get killed by zombies. The season still dragged at times, and I'm sure they can tell these stories in twelve or thirteen episodes instead of sixteen, but, shit, if The Walking Dead is finally a good show on the whole, who am I to complain about a few dud episodes here and there?
Archer: Season 6
It'd be tough to call Archer stale, but after six seasons and a full circle premise reboot, it isn't exactly fresh, either. If witty banter, crisp animation, and insane characters are your thing, you'd likely find very little to dislike about Archer. The show continues to work and remains a consistently entertaining half hour that I often head for first during any given DVR backlog clean-out. There's little else to say, really, but Archer still has it.
Better Call Saul: Season 1
The long-awaited Breaking Bad spin-off was about as good as I could have hoped it'd be in its first season. It was slow at times, but then again, so was Breaking Bad. More than anything else, it was just nice to see the origin story of Saul Goodman, from his humble and largely pathetic beginnings as Jimmy McGill. And to a lesser extent, it was nice to learn more about Mike's background. This show will be hard-pressed to live up to Breaking Bad, but I don't think anybody really expects it to do so.
Workaholics: Season 5
On the one hand, Workaholics has kind of run out of things for its characters to say and do at this point. On the other, the fact that the sixth season hasn't yet been confirmed leaves me oddly worried about a possible lack of closure. Here's hoping for one last go-round with Blake, Adam, and Anders, even if it's totally unnecessary.
The Affair: Season 1
How's this for a concept? The Affair is about an extra-martial affair and its aftermath, told separately from the standpoints of the man and woman involved. It's a Rashomon-style TV show where the truth is unknowable. When viewers are asked to choose between his side and hers, it's unclear whether either one better represents what really happened. For the first half of its first season, The Affair moved very slowly but felt very deep and intelligent. Groundwork was laid for each of the two central characters, exploring their vices and their demons and their issues and circumstances. And then in the second half of the season, grace and subtlety flew out the window as all kinds of zany over-the-top plot points were introduced. I liked the show The Affair was at first, and I liked the show it became, but they were two very different shows.
Justified: Season 6
Justified called it quits after a pretty solid six-year run, a year earlier than most successful-enough shows would have. It enjoyed a very good final season that ended quietly and without a ton of tragedy or irony, the way a good novel does, which is a rarity in today's anti-hero-laden TV landscape. It was the ending the show deserved. Where Justified ranks among the best dramas of the decade is debatable, but even if this wasn't transcendent or revolutionary television, it was consistent and entertaining and, despite a dud season or two, it never jumped the shark and became a parody of itself. It was, in many ways, the exact opposite of its long-time FX counterpart Sons of Anarchy.
Silicon Valley: Season 1
I avoided this one for too long, as I'm not particularly familiar with much of the California tech bubble culture and I figured this show would be full of jokes I neither understood nor appreciated. My mistake! Silicon Valley is more a satire than a celebration of that very community, and one that anyone can get into. I should have trusted Mike Judge from the get-go! This is a good show. Not an uproariously funny show, but a great little HBO sitcom all the same.
The Americans: Season 3
Lastly, we come to The Americans, a show many have hailed the best thing currently on television. I'm a little hesitant to go that far, but, yes, this is a very good show. The third season upped the stakes for the Russian spies quite a bit, and also may or may not have left their identities exposed to some sensitive parties. The only problem with the season was that it didn't really end in any meaningful or satisfying way. There was a big cliffhanger, but none of the many individual threads from the season were wrapped up, instead left to dangle between now and Season 4. Come on, man!
That was lengthier and more difficult than I imagined it would be. Yeesh.
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