I was thinking a bit about The Sopranos yesterday, in relation to a question I have for discussion: "Judged solely by its worst episode, what is the best TV series?"
So, The Sopranos, for example, gets judged based on 'Christopher' (the Columbus Day episode), not on say 'Pine Barrens', and The Simpsons gets judged on 'Lisa Goes Gaga', not 'Last Exit to Springfield', etc. My two thoughts for shows that are in the mix are Fawlty Towers, and Bluey, but I'm interested to hear of others' suggestions.
On the one hand, you could say the boring answer to this is The Wire, which has no outright stinkers, and even in that bumpier final season was still extremely consistent. On the other hand, The Wire isn't really a show you judge based on episodes, so it's not that.
This is interesting. I might next be inclined to say Breaking Bad, which is also remarkably consistent and has no overtly bad episodes, even if I don't like some specific choices (like Mike's decision-making in his final appearance). But the question isn't "Which show didn't really have bad epsiodes?" but rather "Which show had the best worst episode?" And... I yield the floor to the group on this, I think.
It's fun thinking about which of my favorite shows had great episodes across the board. (So really I only know how to answer "Which show didn't really have bad epsiodes?", which, as Alan says, isn't really the question.) As has already been said, the series with the low episode counts have an advantage. I came up with:
The Wire
Halt and Catch Fire
Party Down
My So-Called Life
Broad City
Detectorists
Fleabag
Brockmire
NewsRadio is interesting because it's one of my favorite shows, and I think that every episode is a gem. ...Except that two of the episodes are truly terrible. Just so, so awful. So I guess NewsRadio would be my answer to what show had the highest highs and the lowest lows with nothing in between.
The terrible NewsRadio episodes. Well, the first one is terrible. The second one is only pretty bad, which undermines my argument.
S3 E7 Daydream - "A hot day and a broken air conditioner cause the thoughts of every character to drift"
S4 E7 Catherine Moves On - "Catherine announces she is leaving WNYX"
I love this question, and this is probably going to be my whole day now. I feel like most of my answers would be one-hit wonders like Firefly or Wonderfalls, but that kinda feels like cheating, so I think my snap pick in the longish-running category would be BCS.
House of the Dragon S1 was... you know, good. I enjoyed it. Mostly. And those dark scenes you complained of never seemed to bad to me. Yeah. It was... good. It wasn't good enough to justify the phenomenon that it became but it had all that good Westerosi positive associations from GoT.
Will I watch?
Yes.
But mostly because I do enjoy revisiting Westeros, and I like reading/hearing all the talk around it. There really is some pleasure in being part of a communal event and HotD is going to be that for the next while, I guess. (The Acolyte discourse is pretty toxic for the most part....)
So, how excited am I?
Ehhhh, about a 5/10? It'd be a higher if your review had been more enthusiastic but a 5 plus the pleasure of the surrounding commentary will get me there all the same.
Yeah, this is basically how I feel about it. I enjoyed season one even after approaching it with apprehension with the lingering pain of the bungled final two seasons of GoT. I’ve read the GoT books, Fire and Blood, and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, so I’m definitely more likely to enjoy this series than others, but I find it perfectly cromulent. Nothing amazing but very much enjoyable.
I'm moderately excited for HotD S2, but even though I'm a fair bit more positive than you, I kinda agree that it's not a show I'm really ever anxious to talk about.
I do not care one whit about HotD and wish they'd instead do something new and different. With what seems like two mediocre seasons of that, plus the unmitigated disaster that was The Regime, I'm wondering what's up at HBO. Yes, they had Night Country, but for the network that is supposed to be all about quality, the majority of what they've put out recently has been mediocre to bad. Has something changed in the programming strategy there?
I hear you, been a bit disappointed in new HBO series myself. HotD is just HBO trying to cash in on GoT's success and The Regime was HBO trying to ride Winslet's success in Mare of Easttown. I wouldn't read too much into it all yet but yeah, HBO hasn't launched a good new series in a while.
I was a huge GoT fan. I watched the first season of HOTD, but won’t watch anymore. Like most prequels, the stakes are lower when we know the outcome. Lots of people (especially children) get murdered, and the Targaryens get overthrown later no matter who wins. The only GoT prequel I’d be interested in is The Doom
Of Valyria because there are lots of things we don’t know about what happened.
I agree that the stakes just don't seem that high knowing what comes later. This is a somewhat similar problem with The Rings of Power.
These two series along with Wheel of Time show that people still haven't figured out that you need interesting characters to make these stories work. Dragons and other scary monsters aren't sufficient. GoT understood this (at least until the final season).
The problem with Rings of Power for me was that it was simply not interesting and never felt all that engaging. Incredible production value and no expense was spared but its all empty calories and ultra-processed pop culture food. At least HotD has some interesting performances and a bit of nuance to it even if all the time-jumping made much of S1 a mess. I'm not saying one is really better than the other but RoP was a huge letdown and I'm struggling to find any reason to watch a S2. HotD at least left me interested to see where it goes.
I'm moderately excited for season 2 of House of the Dragon, if only because it's felt like this spring has not had any "Big" shows to get excited for! We've been rewatching season 1 and I agree it's far from perfect television. I'll be curious to see how season 2 unfolds. Other folks who've seen the first few episodes have been a bit more positive, so I'm going into it with an open mind.
Also, looks like there isn't a link to the Presumed Innocent review? Did you dislike it that much haha.
I don’t understand all of the HOD hate. I loved GOT (seasons 1-4 at least), but I think HOD is without a doubt at the level of those first 4 GOT seasons if not better. It’s certainly better than the latter half of GOT. I love how different it is from GOT while still achieving the same vibes of its predecessor. As prequels go I’d compare it more to Better Call Saul (i.e. awesome) rather than Rings of Power (i.e. abysmal). To me it’s (almost) vindicated the terrible GOT ending by being so great.
As someone who agrees with your TV opinions let's say 98% of the time, I'm always curious about the remaining 2%. And in this case - what was it about Studio 60 that you disliked?
Also, I AM looking forward to Dragon. At the same breath I admitted to myself this week that if the last books of the Song of Ice and Fire ever come out, I'm not sure I'll read them. I need a recap to do that and I have a feeling a recap would be its own book.
Sopranos was 1999. And the change didn’t happen instantaneously. The movie business focused more and more, while tv began making more complex adult drama series.
I am VERY excited to go back to Westeros. Westeros is my Roman Empire - I love all the ASOIAF books and read them several times and HotD did a very good job getting me excited about the whole Westeros World all over again.
But I also have to say that when I watched S1 I was wondering if people who didn't read the books or didn't even watch GoT would like it because it really assumed that you already know a lot about this world beforehand. I was surprised that it did so well tbh
However, I will not be watching while it airs. I didn't watch S1 while it aired because I first wanted to know how it turns out (after not liking the later seasons of GoT). It was a great decison and I could enjoy HotD S1 without the "discourse". Discussions are already annoying about S2 and it hasn't even started. But I think that's to be expected from every big show.
I think David E. Kelly was an excellent writer/showrunner for old-style TV series (Picket Fences, Boston Legal), but for streaming we expect a little more, and he doesn't quite have the sensibility for it.
Big Little Lies season 1 wasn't that long ago, though an argument certainly could/should be made that it was Jean-Marc Vallée's direction that elevated the usual Kelley scripts. But ever since BLL, Kelley's been practically as hot as he was in the 90s. The demand for him is high.
I was thinking, for example, of the difference between the first few seasons of Bosch, which gave us complex characters in a story told with care, and Kelly's Lincoln Lawyer, based on source material from the same novelist, but told in a much more cartoonish way.
You’ve just reminded me that Lindsay and Kim were together in ER. I kept waiting to see them together and it never happened. I really enjoyed Linda’s time on the show. Pairing her and Stamos didn’t feel like something that should’ve worked as well as it did.
They have, as far as I can recall, two interactions that are both just the two of them and aren't about them working on a patient: one where Hope (Busy's character) tells Sam about her love of wedding planning, and the one pictured above, where Hope and Sam talk about Sam's new hairstyle.
I knew I should’ve looked more into this before posting. Thanks Alan. I don’t recall those but my rewatch hasn’t reached that point yet. I’ll look out for them. Also, I really enjoy listening to the newsletter. Julia does a great job.
Poor much maligned Studio 60 - a secret favourite of mine! Maybe only because everyone hated it so much that I wanted to find the best in it lol.
I was thinking a bit about The Sopranos yesterday, in relation to a question I have for discussion: "Judged solely by its worst episode, what is the best TV series?"
So, The Sopranos, for example, gets judged based on 'Christopher' (the Columbus Day episode), not on say 'Pine Barrens', and The Simpsons gets judged on 'Lisa Goes Gaga', not 'Last Exit to Springfield', etc. My two thoughts for shows that are in the mix are Fawlty Towers, and Bluey, but I'm interested to hear of others' suggestions.
On the one hand, you could say the boring answer to this is The Wire, which has no outright stinkers, and even in that bumpier final season was still extremely consistent. On the other hand, The Wire isn't really a show you judge based on episodes, so it's not that.
This is interesting. I might next be inclined to say Breaking Bad, which is also remarkably consistent and has no overtly bad episodes, even if I don't like some specific choices (like Mike's decision-making in his final appearance). But the question isn't "Which show didn't really have bad epsiodes?" but rather "Which show had the best worst episode?" And... I yield the floor to the group on this, I think.
For me, Breaking Bad would be number one with a bullet if it wasn't for the finale.
It's fun thinking about which of my favorite shows had great episodes across the board. (So really I only know how to answer "Which show didn't really have bad epsiodes?", which, as Alan says, isn't really the question.) As has already been said, the series with the low episode counts have an advantage. I came up with:
The Wire
Halt and Catch Fire
Party Down
My So-Called Life
Broad City
Detectorists
Fleabag
Brockmire
NewsRadio is interesting because it's one of my favorite shows, and I think that every episode is a gem. ...Except that two of the episodes are truly terrible. Just so, so awful. So I guess NewsRadio would be my answer to what show had the highest highs and the lowest lows with nothing in between.
The terrible NewsRadio episodes. Well, the first one is terrible. The second one is only pretty bad, which undermines my argument.
S3 E7 Daydream - "A hot day and a broken air conditioner cause the thoughts of every character to drift"
S4 E7 Catherine Moves On - "Catherine announces she is leaving WNYX"
I love this question, and this is probably going to be my whole day now. I feel like most of my answers would be one-hit wonders like Firefly or Wonderfalls, but that kinda feels like cheating, so I think my snap pick in the longish-running category would be BCS.
I will be in the room while my husband watches HOTD. That's all I can commit to.
House of the Dragon S1 was... you know, good. I enjoyed it. Mostly. And those dark scenes you complained of never seemed to bad to me. Yeah. It was... good. It wasn't good enough to justify the phenomenon that it became but it had all that good Westerosi positive associations from GoT.
Will I watch?
Yes.
But mostly because I do enjoy revisiting Westeros, and I like reading/hearing all the talk around it. There really is some pleasure in being part of a communal event and HotD is going to be that for the next while, I guess. (The Acolyte discourse is pretty toxic for the most part....)
So, how excited am I?
Ehhhh, about a 5/10? It'd be a higher if your review had been more enthusiastic but a 5 plus the pleasure of the surrounding commentary will get me there all the same.
Yeah, this is basically how I feel about it. I enjoyed season one even after approaching it with apprehension with the lingering pain of the bungled final two seasons of GoT. I’ve read the GoT books, Fire and Blood, and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, so I’m definitely more likely to enjoy this series than others, but I find it perfectly cromulent. Nothing amazing but very much enjoyable.
Nice use of cromulent. We don't get that word out there often enough. "House of Cromulent" coming soon to a TV near you....
I'm moderately excited for HotD S2, but even though I'm a fair bit more positive than you, I kinda agree that it's not a show I'm really ever anxious to talk about.
I do not care one whit about HotD and wish they'd instead do something new and different. With what seems like two mediocre seasons of that, plus the unmitigated disaster that was The Regime, I'm wondering what's up at HBO. Yes, they had Night Country, but for the network that is supposed to be all about quality, the majority of what they've put out recently has been mediocre to bad. Has something changed in the programming strategy there?
I hear you, been a bit disappointed in new HBO series myself. HotD is just HBO trying to cash in on GoT's success and The Regime was HBO trying to ride Winslet's success in Mare of Easttown. I wouldn't read too much into it all yet but yeah, HBO hasn't launched a good new series in a while.
Plus they’ve ruined the brand
I was a huge GoT fan. I watched the first season of HOTD, but won’t watch anymore. Like most prequels, the stakes are lower when we know the outcome. Lots of people (especially children) get murdered, and the Targaryens get overthrown later no matter who wins. The only GoT prequel I’d be interested in is The Doom
Of Valyria because there are lots of things we don’t know about what happened.
I agree that the stakes just don't seem that high knowing what comes later. This is a somewhat similar problem with The Rings of Power.
These two series along with Wheel of Time show that people still haven't figured out that you need interesting characters to make these stories work. Dragons and other scary monsters aren't sufficient. GoT understood this (at least until the final season).
The problem with Rings of Power for me was that it was simply not interesting and never felt all that engaging. Incredible production value and no expense was spared but its all empty calories and ultra-processed pop culture food. At least HotD has some interesting performances and a bit of nuance to it even if all the time-jumping made much of S1 a mess. I'm not saying one is really better than the other but RoP was a huge letdown and I'm struggling to find any reason to watch a S2. HotD at least left me interested to see where it goes.
I'm moderately excited for season 2 of House of the Dragon, if only because it's felt like this spring has not had any "Big" shows to get excited for! We've been rewatching season 1 and I agree it's far from perfect television. I'll be curious to see how season 2 unfolds. Other folks who've seen the first few episodes have been a bit more positive, so I'm going into it with an open mind.
Also, looks like there isn't a link to the Presumed Innocent review? Did you dislike it that much haha.
[extremely fake Homer Simpson voice]
D'OH!
And now I have to send out a separate email just for the many subscribers who just read the email rather than going to Substack.
I don’t understand all of the HOD hate. I loved GOT (seasons 1-4 at least), but I think HOD is without a doubt at the level of those first 4 GOT seasons if not better. It’s certainly better than the latter half of GOT. I love how different it is from GOT while still achieving the same vibes of its predecessor. As prequels go I’d compare it more to Better Call Saul (i.e. awesome) rather than Rings of Power (i.e. abysmal). To me it’s (almost) vindicated the terrible GOT ending by being so great.
As someone who agrees with your TV opinions let's say 98% of the time, I'm always curious about the remaining 2%. And in this case - what was it about Studio 60 that you disliked?
Also, I AM looking forward to Dragon. At the same breath I admitted to myself this week that if the last books of the Song of Ice and Fire ever come out, I'm not sure I'll read them. I need a recap to do that and I have a feeling a recap would be its own book.
I feel like there were many mid-budget adult dramas all throughout the 90s (and before), so I’m confused how The Sopranos was the catalyst?
Sopranos was 1999. And the change didn’t happen instantaneously. The movie business focused more and more, while tv began making more complex adult drama series.
As you're a member of Gen-X Alan, I think you'll enjoy Andrew McCarthy's new documentary 'Brats'.
I have never seen St Elmo’s Fire, other than clips. Oddly.
You haven’t missed much…aside from the amusement that many of the same actors were playing high school and college students at the same time.
"thus finally achieving a Pam/Dawn Office US/UK singularity"
Good god man, are you trying to kill us all?!?!?
I am VERY excited to go back to Westeros. Westeros is my Roman Empire - I love all the ASOIAF books and read them several times and HotD did a very good job getting me excited about the whole Westeros World all over again.
But I also have to say that when I watched S1 I was wondering if people who didn't read the books or didn't even watch GoT would like it because it really assumed that you already know a lot about this world beforehand. I was surprised that it did so well tbh
However, I will not be watching while it airs. I didn't watch S1 while it aired because I first wanted to know how it turns out (after not liking the later seasons of GoT). It was a great decison and I could enjoy HotD S1 without the "discourse". Discussions are already annoying about S2 and it hasn't even started. But I think that's to be expected from every big show.
I think David E. Kelly was an excellent writer/showrunner for old-style TV series (Picket Fences, Boston Legal), but for streaming we expect a little more, and he doesn't quite have the sensibility for it.
Big Little Lies season 1 wasn't that long ago, though an argument certainly could/should be made that it was Jean-Marc Vallée's direction that elevated the usual Kelley scripts. But ever since BLL, Kelley's been practically as hot as he was in the 90s. The demand for him is high.
I was thinking, for example, of the difference between the first few seasons of Bosch, which gave us complex characters in a story told with care, and Kelly's Lincoln Lawyer, based on source material from the same novelist, but told in a much more cartoonish way.
Sure, I don't love Lincoln Lawyer (though I also think the lead is miscast). But the audience as a whole is still very clearly into DEK's thing.
You’ve just reminded me that Lindsay and Kim were together in ER. I kept waiting to see them together and it never happened. I really enjoyed Linda’s time on the show. Pairing her and Stamos didn’t feel like something that should’ve worked as well as it did.
They have, as far as I can recall, two interactions that are both just the two of them and aren't about them working on a patient: one where Hope (Busy's character) tells Sam about her love of wedding planning, and the one pictured above, where Hope and Sam talk about Sam's new hairstyle.
I knew I should’ve looked more into this before posting. Thanks Alan. I don’t recall those but my rewatch hasn’t reached that point yet. I’ll look out for them. Also, I really enjoy listening to the newsletter. Julia does a great job.
I've seen every ep of ER, knew where both of them came from, and I have absolutely no memory that Busy was on for entire year, or at all.