Best of the best so far (2024 edition)

The top shows at mid-year, plus 'The Bear,' Emmy confusion, and more

This week’s What’s Alan Watching? newsletter coming up just as soon as I use dystopian butter…

So what’s good?

We’ve entered the second half of 2024, which means it’s time to look back on the shows I most enjoyed from the first half. As I usually do at this time of year, I picked 15 shows, and you can see the full alphabetical list over at Rolling Stone.

When I write lists, I usually save the introduction for last, in part because so few people even bother to read introductions to online lists, in part because I often struggle to come up with a unifying theme beyond, “There sure were a lot of good shows this year, huh?” But I realized as I was writing blurb after blurb using the words “adaptation,” “remake,” or “reboot” that these past six months were just about the best case scenario for the current IP-obsessed version of Hollywood. I still get most excited about purely original concepts, and there are several of those on this list. But Shōgun, Ripley, and several other series were reminders that originality doesn’t have to be the be-all, end-all regarding quality.

Odds and/or ends

• The return of The Bear, which we’ll talk about more in a bit, prompted a new round of grousing, from both people I know in the TV business and people who just watch TV, about how in the world this intensely dark drama keeps being nominated for and winning comedy awards. Since The Bear is only going to be the tip of the confusing iceberg when this year’s Emmy nominations are announced in a few weeks, I wrote a column trying to figure out if there’s any solution in a world where that show can be submitted as a comedy, The Curse is somehow a drama, and Shōgun is, at least for the moment, not a limited series.

• I finished my oft-discussed ER treadmill binge earlier this week. I’m still stalling on the next series for that time of the day, and for the moment have shifted to watching action movies when it’s time to get myself moving. The show’s final years were really rough at times, with so many forgettable storylines that I was later surprised to find I’d written recaps of several episodes that I had zero memory of having seen before. But the concluding season — which brought back nearly every classic character, including an extended stint for Noah Wyle as John Carter — was a nice return to form. The last episode in particular is a great example of one of my favorite kinds of series finales, where life simply goes on, and it feels like there could be another new episode the following week if everybody changed their mind and decided to keep going. Here’s the closing scene, which simply ends in the middle of the staff working on yet another mass casualty, followed by our first ever, CGI-enhanced look at the entire hospital building:

The Bear spoilers

Finally, let’s talk some more about The Bear Season Three. Last week, I shared my review of the season as a whole, both with and without spoilers, plus a column breaking down exactly where and when various scenes took place in the episode-length montage of the season premiere. My third and final piece on the season dove into my single favorite scene from it, the very long conversation from the end of the Tina-focused sixth episode.

As I said at the end of the review, I was mixed-to-positive on the season, even as I had a lot of complaints that seem to be shared by those who liked it less than I did:

1. Christopher Storer and the rest of the creative team began to believe their own press clippings a bit too much, and seemed determined to make every episode An Important Artistic Statement in some way, particularly where the subject of the necessity of restaurants themselves came into play.

2. Too Many Faks (not to be confused with Too Many Cooks), where, again, the show dropped all pretense of being a comedy except whenever various Fak brothers, cousins, uncles, etc, were on screen. In particular, the casting of John Cena as Sammy Fak seemed to be a stunt-casting bridge too far, even for this show.

3. Speaking of stunt-casting, there were literally Too Many Cooks (or chefs, if you prefer), particularly in the finale.

4. Turning this into the first half of a two-part season meant we didn’t get the same kinds of clear character arcs that, say, Richie had in both of the previous seasons. Lots of ideas were introduced and left wholly unresolved.

5. The first two years did an impressive job of subverting the usual Difficult Man tropes, where Carmy was presented as a damaged genius, but the great majority of the time turned his pain inward. It was genuinely shocking when he blew up at Sydney and Marcus during all the fiascos of Season One’s “Review,” for instance, and it was so rare that you understood why everyone developed such fierce loyalty to him. The shift this year to him being much more frequently at odds with everyone — and with Sydney in particular — was disappointing. Especially since so much of that conflict was inspired by the break-up with Claire, who exists not as a person, but as a symbol of the happiness that will forever elude our hero.

And having listed all of that, it’s easy to see why some of the critical/fan consensus has turned on the series. This is a much messier season than the previous ones. But it also had the premiere, which I loved. It had “Napkins,” and that final scene at the Beef in particular, which is a highlight of the entire series so far. And it had some of the better moments in the Natalie/Didi episode, even if other parts of that one left me checking how much time was left. When it’s great, it’s still on another level from almost anything else on television, which is why (spoiler) it’s on my list of this year’s best shows so far. But its reach exceeded its grasp a lot more often than it did in the first two seasons.

So that’s me. Now it’s your turn. How do people feel about the season in general, and did any parts of it make you particularly happy or annoyed? And do you agree with my pal Linda Holmes’ theory about what the Chicago Tribune review of the restaurant says?

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