ACTING! Genius! Thank you!

The year's best TV performances, plus the 'Somebody Somewhere' finale the penultimate 'What We Do in the Shadows,' and more

This week’s What’s Alan Watching? newsletter just as soon as we skip the party to binge United States of Tara…

Master thespians(*)

Another week in December brings with it another superlative list, this time with me picking 10 of my favorite performances from this year. Go read it, and then we’ll talk about it for a minute.

One of my goals with these lists was to avoid duplication as much as possible. If we’re actually talking about what I would consider to be the 10 best performances that I saw this year, there would be three alone from Shōgun, and many of the shows on my overall top 10 would be represented here (including at least one or two people from the series we’ll discuss in our next item). So in this case, I allowed myself two carryovers from the main list, and otherwise tried to shine a light on work from series that didn’t quite make the cut, or from ones where the actors transcended iffy material. I’m generally someone who believes that the easiest way for a TV show to be good is with good writing. Sometimes, though, the scripts aren’t quite there, but the performers are so strong that it almost doesn’t matter. I wanted to pay tribute to some of that kind of work here, in addition to celebrating people who were excellent with excellent material.

(*) Here is the full Master Thespian vs. Baudelaire sketch, if you’re either too young to get the reference or old enough to want to watch it again.

Somebody Somewhere, so long

Somebody Somewhere — aka the top-ranked show on my aforementioned best of 2024 list — debuted its series finale, “AGG,” last weekend. It was not specifically made as a conclusion to the story, as the cancellation news didn’t come until many months after it was shot. But it sure had the feel of one — especially considering how plot-light this show was for all 21 note-perfect episodes.

By Somebody Somewhere standards, several seismic events happen. Joel returns to his old church for the first time since his painful departure from that community he loved. Trish goes with Sam into Holly’s old house for the first time since their sister died. And Sam puts herself out there with Iceland, and is rewarded with him coming to see her slay “The Climb” in front of her friends. The latter is the smallest of these within the context of the series, which was never about Sam finding a man. Rather, Iceland’s presence speaks to her willingness to stop being so afraid of the future and so down on herself, and to put herself out there for whatever life has to offer, whether that’s romance or something else. Earlier, Trish tells her to stop making things so hard for herself, and finally Sam listens.

And besides, by that point, “AGG” had made clear that the two most important people in Sam’s life are Trish and Joel, both of whom get to tell her how much she means to them. When Joel tells Sam that he thinks she’s “my person,” it’s as powerful in its simplicity as anything this show has done. (And the episode also has the grace to let Brad be disappointed at realizing that Joel will still go to Sam first for his emotional needs, but without it torpedoing their own relationship.)

I would have watched Everett and Jeff Hiller play these characters for the rest of their lives, and it would have cost HBO a negligible amount to do so. But at least we got what we got, all the way through this brilliant unintentional finale. Like the gang chanting Sammy’s name after her song, let’s give Somebody Somewhere a nice round of applause, shall we?

50% off

I have a new reason to shamelessly promote the upcoming February 4 release of Saul Goodman v. Jimmy McGill: The Complete Critical Companion to Better Call Saul: my publisher, Abrams Books, is having a sitewide 50% off sale right now, with the code FESTIVE24. So you can get Saul Goodman — or, for that matter, The Sopranos Sessions and Breaking Bad 101— in a deal that Saul Goodman would approve of, even if some of his clients aren’t particularly good at math:

Warrior Guillermo, come out to plaaaaaayyy…

I have a couple of What We Do in the Shadows tribute pieces running between now and when the series finale debuts on Monday night. So we can talk big picture in the next newsletter. For now, I just want to say a few words about the surprisingly tender conclusion to the series’ penultimate episode, “The Promotion.”

Because Shadows is such a relentless joke machine, and because its characters are for the most part such stupid, shallow, horny people, it can be almost startling when the show takes its characters’ emotions seriously. That’s happened most often with Guillermo, for obvious reasons, here with Nandor standing up for his former familiar/bodyguard/protege with Jordan from Cannon Capital. He values Guillermo in a way Jordan never could, and he can finally bring himself to praise Guillermo as a warrior, and to support him in taking down these terrible finance bros. It’s a sweet moment between them, a clever use of the documentary crew as part of the plot, and it sets up a potential new dynamic — or, should I say, dynamic duo — for the finale, with Nandor deciding that he wants to do dispense more vigilante-style justice with Guillermo at his side. If Nandor can become a bat, why can’t he become a Batman?

A terrific next-to-last chapter. What are people hoping for from the finale?

Odds and/or ends

• Dexter Babies — a Dexter prequel which I believe is officially titled Dexter: Original Sin — debuts today on Paramount+ with Showtime. As of this writing on Thursday, there are no screeners available. I suppose I will let that stand as my review. Once upon a time, I really liked Dexter, but everything for this franchise after the Trinity season has been a mess of varying degrees.

• Also new this week is Netflix’s No Good Deed, starring Ray Romano and Lisa Kudrow as a couple trying to sell their beautiful Los Angeles house, and Linda Cardellini, Abbi Jacobson, Teyonah Paris, and Luke Wilson among the people interested in buying it, with everyone hiding deep dark secrets. It was created by Liz Feldman, whose last Netflix show Dead to Me was beloved by many, but didn’t quite click for me. I had a similar response to the two episodes I watched of this new one — like Dead to Me, a frantic dark comedy where people keep having to commit new crimes to cover up evidence of past crimes — so your mileage may vary depending on how you felt about the previous Feldman/Cardellini/Netflix team-up.

• You know how I’ve been venting of late about how TV seasons have become much too short? Well, god bless Apple for actually giving Shrinking two extra episodes for its second season. This week’s 10th episode would have been the finale at the same length as Season One. Instead, we’ve got two more to go, which means more room for every story to stretch out a bit, and for fun interludes like the How I Met Your Mother reunion between Jason Segel and Cobie Smulders. Marshall and Robin were an underrated HIMYM pairing, and those two have excellent chemistry together. And unlike the last time Apple did this with a Bill Lawrence show — aka Ted Lasso Season Two — there was clearly enough advance warning that every episode feels like part of the show, rather than two being awkwardly shoehorned into things. I’m saving my thoughts on the back half of the season for the finale, but in the meantime, I’m just happy to see one show whose seasons are doing the opposite of, well, shrinking. I’ll see myself out.

That’s it for this week! What did everybody else think?