Top 10 Favorite TV Shows of 2019
2019 was the most I’ve ever felt like a grumpy old man watching television.
I didn’t watch a lot of the more critically beloved shows of the year, and a lot of the ones I did see didn’t hit me as hard as they did for a lot of people. I seem to be the lone person on the planet who didn’t like Chernobyl and I have some incredibly mixed feelings about When They See Us. (In summary, I felt that the first two episodes spent too much time emphasizing everyone except the Five, episodes three is great, and episode four is on the best individual episodes of television this year.)
As far as returning shows, a lot of them didn’t live up to my expectations. Or they were great, but were released in ways that bummed me out. For the first time ever, BoJack Horseman isn’t on this list, not because it wasn’t fantastic as usual, but because it felt too much like the first half of a story. Rick and Morty didn’t make it because there were only five episodes. Fuckery with show releases is happening, and I don’t know why.
On top of all this, I spent more in 2019 being angry about various aspects of TV than I did in years past. While the internet raged about the end of Game of Thrones, I raged at Game of Thrones fans for their inability to let it go. (Not that I loved the ending or anything. I thought it was fine. This is for another day.) When it wasn’t toxic fandoms, it was something else. Streaming services. Cancellations. The Cartoon Network app being the fucking worst.
But hey, despite that app, I got to Adventure Time and Steven Universe this year! And you know what? There was a lot to love this year. Specifically, 2019, for me, was the year of the small scale indie comedy. Usually there’s a mix stakes, both high and low. But this year, it was about watching young people trying to get their shit together. I wonder why. Sidenote: I’m a jobless twenty eight year old.
But that’s not to say there isn’t bigger shit on this list. Two of the three shows in my top slots are huge as far as scope is concerned. However, this was a year about taking a step back and reflecting. A lowkey year. The kind of year I needed.
HEAVY SPOILERS BELOW!!!!!!
Runners-up: All the shows I never got to write about in the context of a top ten article that are no longer airing.
Russian Doll should’ve been in this slot. I had this whole thing ready to go about how incredible the show is when you watch it the first time, but then I watched it again and even though it’s still amazing, I lost a certain amount of enthusiasm.
Then I looked at all the shows that ended in 2019. I’m assuming there’s business reasons why so many beloved shows ended with the decade. Or maybe it’s just coincidence. But I lost a lot of shows that provided me comfort, even if I never included them in my top ten lists.
So let’s say some farewells.
Farewell Broad City. In a lot of ways, you were my last unabashed fandom. After season two, I bought a Bingo Bronson t-shirt, and it was the last bit of television or movie merchandise I ever purchased. My relationship with fandom has changed since, but there were certainly worse shows to see off the end of that era of my life. On top of that, your last season was fantastic and your ending was perfect.
Farewell Catastrophe. I watched your first three seasons on a Christmas trip home. It had been a while since I did a binging that quickly. You were funny, you were insightful, you introduced me to Rob Delaney and Sharon Hogan, which I’ll always be grateful for, and though the conflict you ended on was a little forced, the execution of your finale was so perfect that it almost didn’t matter.
Farewell Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. You had a habit of splitting up your seasons between years. You’d air the first half in one year and the second half the next. If I weren’t pointlessly stringent on seeing the end of a show before I include it on a list, you probably would’ve been on every one I’ve written so far. I was following Rachel Bloom before you existed (shout out to those early Cracked videos), and you were the best possible vehicle for her. You’re probably the show in this section I’ll miss the most.
Farewell Silicon Valley. I wanted you to evolve a little more than you ultimately did, specifically in your character dynamics, and thus I was never as emotionally invested in you as I wanted to be. But goddamn, were you always funny. Of the Sunday night shows, you were always the comforting one I’d end the night with. And you also ended pretty damn well.
Farewell Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Of all the shows on this list, you’re the one that probably stumbled the most. Your creators waded into some subject matter you weren’t equipped to handle, your laissez faire attitude about serialized storytelling was frustrating, and to be perfectly honest, you never handled the full half hour as well as twenty minutes. But like Silicon Valley, you were always really funny. You know, when you weren’t tripping over race issues.
Farewell Veep. You became harder to watch for me when our political reality started crumbling. But you were always great, and I’m so happy that people know who Armando Ianucci is now because of you. I’m equally glad that those in his circle are going on to create great things. (I hear that Succession is pretty good.) And hey, maybe you took a bit of a quality dip here and there. But I’m so happy you got to exist.
Farewell You’re the Worst. Granted, you made my list once. But your ending should’ve had more of an impact on the TV world. Your second season may be one of my favorites of the decade, and I found you shockingly touching when you wanted to be. You weren’t afraid to experiment, you were always funny, and you produced some of the best individual episodes of television maybe ever, and I loved you dearly.
There’s probably some shows I’m leaving off, and some of these shows are on the main list. But I can’t watch everything.
10. The Deuce
It was never going to end well, was it?
Sure, that was pretty obvious from the jump-off. The Deuce is rather explicitly about the end of an era in Times Square, and in order for that shift to happen, things would have to change. Change, of course, means some of the people we’ve grown to love over these last three seasons of television would have to go. The only real hope was that the definition of “have to go” would be merciful. That most would find a parachute and a safe place to land.
Boy did that not happen for anyone.
Okay, maybe it did for Abby. But even in that case, the assumption is that she had to leave The Deuce in order to achieve her now (presumably) successful law career. One could argue that Vince survived as well. But he’s far from unscathed. There’s only so much comfort one can take when everyone around you is long long gone. And sure, Black Frankie (now just Frank) leaves New York for Baltimore. But for those of you who’ve seen David Simon’s previous show, The Wire, you can guess how that probably turned out.
Other than that, the list of the dead is longer than the list of the living. Eileen makes her movie, but died with only a fraction of the recognition she deserved. Paul, presumably, succumbs to AIDS, as well as Big Mike, who dies of it alone in a cabin in the woods. Rudy Pipilo is murdered in his car by Tommy Longo, one of his closest associates. Frankie is shot by a different disgruntled associate and dies in the arms of his twin brother in his nightclub.
And then, of course, there’s the tragedy of Lori Madison. Lori enters the show agreeing to prostitute for C.C., one of the most despicable human beings to have ever been in a David Simon show. He spends the rest of his life terrorizing Lori, even after she becomes a successful porn actress. But she can’t sustain her fame, her drug habit gets the worst of her, and after going back to sex work in NY, she winds up killing herself in a motel room after finishing up with a john. The list of the dead goes on, and the living still bear the scars.
David Simon shows typically don’t end on happy notes. But they usually don’t go this bleak either. Or at the very least, the ratio of tragedy to not-tragedy usually tips closer towards the latter. (Okay, given the stakes, Generation Kill was probably worse.) There’s usually something more than just “These people were here, and now they’re not,” and while that’s an oversimplification of The Deuce, it’s not by much.
One may wonder what the point of it was. Surely, it can’t have been just to drag us through the misery, right? Based on my description, it does sound like a whole lot of suffering for very little reason.
To that, I’d say that endless suffering isn’t really the tone. Sure, there was plenty of misery to go around. But there were always people fighting for a better future. Fighting for art. Fighting for a safe space. Fighting to end the misery of those being subjugated by their pimps or the city itself. The Deuce looks nothing like it once did, and many lives were lost so that Times Square can be, for better or for worse, what it is now. But there are still people who give a shit, and there are still people willing to fight.
Favorite Episodes: “You Only Get One,” “This Trust Thing,” “Finish It”
9. Barry
(Hopefully you won’t notice this poster’s a bit narrower…………..)
I remember watching “The Long Night” at my friend’s apartment, the third episode of the final season of Game of Thrones where a great number of our heroes battled the army of the dead. Like a lot of people, I was kind of annoyed at the episode’s lighting and some of the pacing. But mostly, I was indifferent. Then I went home and watched “ronny/lily.”
“ronny/lily” is one of the best episodes of television in 2019, and it’s all I wanted to talk about the next day. The only thing anyone else wanted to talk about was the lighting in “The Long Night.” I couldn’t help but be disheartened. Granted, it was the biggest show on the planet’s final season, and oh boy did that comment by the cinematographer not make things any better. I get it, but still. “ronny/lily” deserved better.
Here’s the rub: It was always a foregone conclusion that Barry would be on my end of the year list. But if you told me that night that Barry would only be in the number nine slot, I would’ve told you that you were crazy.
Truth be told, of all the lists I wrote this year, this TV list has gone through the most change. At one point, Barry was at number eight. At one point, it was at number six. At one point, it was in just about every slot before number five.
The reason for all the moving around ended up being fairly simple: I felt a need to champion newer stuff, and it’s easier to move what’s already familiar around. But make no mistake, season two of Barry was incredible from start to finish.
I remember seeing a lot of concern about this season. It’s not an unreasonable impulse. After all, where the hell do you go after the way season one ended? I’ll even admit to sharing some of that concern, though granted, no more than I worry about any second season after a great first.
But as long as there is unwanted conflict in Barry’s life, there will always be a show, and as long as Barry doesn’t own up to the consequences of his actions and be honest with himself and others, there will always be unwanted conflict. There will always be Chechens, and if not them, then somebody else. Bolivians. The Burmese. It doesn’t really matter. There will always be secrets to keep from Sally. There are always more innocent people to hurt along the way.
In the 2018 list, I said Barry can only truly find some sort of peace if he takes responsibility for his actions. Confess, in one way or another. In a sense, he does so, finally letting another soul besides Fuchs know about his actions in the Korengal Valley. And in doing so, things do get better for him in a certain sense, at least on an emotional level. All Barry wants is to no longer be a monster, and finally, someone tells him he isn’t one. Someone with nothing to gain from Barry’s skills.
But of course, as we learn at the end of the season, this was all a delusion. Despite of all the work, he lets it all go for one whiff of vengeance. I said what he needed to do was confess to his crimes if he wants any shot at redemption. At the end of season two, I’m wondering if there really is any hope for Barry after all.
Favorite Episodes: “The Show Must Go On, Probably?,” “ronny/lily,” “berkman > block”
8. Fleabag
Speaking of being worried about season two…
It’s easy to be concerned about the future of a show that’s designed to go on after one season. The longer a show goes, the higher the probability of the “it” factor dying, and most shows have a down season or two even if the final product is near perfection. It’s natural to worry.
But then there are shows that seem to be designed to last one season, and all of the sudden, they get a second. I outright thought that Fleabag should not have a second season.
Don’t get me wrong. I love season one of Fleabag and the vast majority of what Phoebe Waller-Bridge has done since it aired. Killing Eve is fantastic, I’m more excited for the next Bond movie than I’ve been for one in quite some time thanks to her writing credit, and Solo: A Star Wars Story was… not her fault. Still, the first season of Fleabag was such a beautiful self-contained story that I had a hard time believing she could think of any way of elevating it further.
Turns out I had no reason to worry.
Fleabag has topped the vast majority of top ten lists I’ve seen, and for good reason. To be honest, I don’t have a lot to add to the conversation. Everything that there is to be said about this show has been said by much better writers than I, and the only reason I didn’t put it higher was, again, I found myself wanting to champion newer shows.
That’s it. Fleabag is incredible. You’ve probably already been told that before.
Favorite Episodes: “Episode 1,” “Episode 3,” “Episode 6”
7. Brockmire
Holy shit. I finally get to talk about Brockmire.
The premise of Brockmire seems like something out of sketch comedy. A baseball announcer with an incredible old time-y baseball announcer voice has a breakdown on air after catching his wife cheating on him. Hell, it was a sketch.
A friend of mine showed me that sketch a year or two before the first season aired, and when I found out it was going to be a TV show, I was a little indifferent. How does that show sustain itself for one season, let alone anything more than that? After he has the breakdown, what comes next, and why should we care?
Turns out the answer is substance abuse and redemption. But mostly substance abuse. A lot of substance abuse.
Seasons one and two were a mixed bag for me. It was always funny, it has some of the best dialogue on TV, and it established a show about a damaged person trying to find some sort of happiness and sense of peace. But it was never a show that really earned my emotions. It kept getting distracted with telling dirty jokes and thinking of new debaucherous situations to put Brockmire through rather than telling a substantive story. But it showed signs.
Season two ended with Brockmire getting sober. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a comedy about alcoholics. I’ve been down this road with Californication and a few others. The question wasn’t if Brockmire was going to relapse. It was when. What horrible act would he commit that would send him back to the bar or back to snorting coke off of some sex worker’s ass?
Somehow, it didn’t happen.
As show creator Joel Church-Cooper has been saying for a while now, Brockmire is a show about “an asshole who gets better as a country gets worse.” Indeed, season three is about Brockmire trying and mostly succeeding at being a better person. He befriends a former enemy in his dying days. He helps the man who’s started seeing the love of his life. He sacrifices his relationship with his sister in order to do the right thing by her. He offers counsel to old friends. He takes his new partner Gabby under his wings in one of the most genuinely moving friendships I saw evolve on television this year.
Rarely is he rewarded for not being a selfish prick, and he’s reminded of this over and over again. But at the end of the season, he seems genuinely happier, to the point where I’ll be actively angry at the writing staff for going backwards if they decide to finally have his big relapse in the final season.
A lot of terrible lead characters say they’re going to change. Most shows don’t actually have them put in the work, and those that do usually don’t pull it off this well. I can’t help but love it.
Also, I don’t give a shit about baseball.
Favorite Episodes: “Placed on Waivers,” “Disabled List,” “Opening Day”
6. PEN15
Welcome to the awkward teenage block of the list. Can’t you feel it? Your voice cracking? The hair growing under your armpits? The embarrassment of being around your first crush and not being able to handle it? God, I love being an adult.
Though I was slightly younger than Maya and Anna were in 2000, with a particular emphasis on “slightly,” I remember just about every reference in this show. Specifically, I actually remember falling for the “pen15 club” joke. In my case, I wrote it on one of my binders with a sharpie. My friends and I laughed pretty hard at my stupidity, but then I forgot to blot it out or find some way of covering it. My nanny later saw it, and though I was mortified, she found it pretty funny.
Everyone has stories like this about their middle school years. Some are more severe than others, and that’s before you even introduce such variables as gender and race into the balance. But everyone has some cringe inducing middle school tale in their back pocket.
PEN15 is a show largely about this exact kind of ritual humiliation. I’d go so far as to say it’s one of the most painful examinations of it I’ve seen in a very long time. However, it’s not just the embarrassing incidents in and of themselves, although that’s certainly a huge part of it. It’s also about the non-public humiliations. The ones that you don’t even know were that bad until you reflect on them later when you know better. How they fester.
A few shows have tackled adolescent discovery of masturbation before. Sally Draper in Mad Men is certainly one that comes to mind. But I’ve never seen a show that not only addresses getting so into it that it starts to affect other relationships, but also adds a cultural layer on top of it when Maya starts seeing the apparition of her grandfather every time she seeks pleasure.
A few shows have addressed kids wanting to change their style before. In fact, the “dress cooler” trope is a fairly well-worn one. But PEN15’s version of this trope is a thong, and it’s not about acceptance, but how it makes the wearer feel more desirable. Or more accurately, what an adolescent thinks feels more “desirable” because they don’t know what that means yet.
A few shows have dealt with first periods before. Again, Sally Draper in Mad Men. But rarely do they tie first periods with feelings of abandonment, and rarely are they the subconscious cause of a fractured friendship, and rarely are they tied in with a story about the lack of built empathy skills in children.
On top of all this, PEN15 is one of the best portrayals of middle school friendship I’ve seen in quite a while. That feeling of “it’s us vs. everyone,” and the specific consequences that come with that mentality. PEN15 is a brutal and, at times, heartbreaking show. But, like adolescence, you have to experience it because there’s also warmth and wisdom to be found. Also, I just realized I went this whole write-up without bringing up the “thirty year olds playing middle schoolers” concept.
Favorite Episodes: “Ojichan,” “Community Service,” “Anna Ishii-Peters”
5. Sex Education
Sex Education was the first, well… anything I had any affection for in 2019, having been released on January 11th. In a weird way, it set the tone fairly well for my TV year. Kids getting their shit together and all that. The thing is that I thought I’d hate this show.
In the first episode, apart from the premise of a kid starting secret in-school sex therapy sessions, his knowledge passed down from his overbearing sex therapist mother, the show had very little originality going for it. At least on the surface. Otis, the precocious awkward protagonist. Eric, his proudly out gay best friend. Maeve, a “bad girl” outcast with too much on her plate dealing with things she’s too young and ill-equipped to handle. Jackson, the popular over-pressured jock. Adam, the bully. The mean girls. The status obsessed popular kids. The teachers. Everything else.
And, of course, all the ‘80s pastiche, the element that turned me off the most.
The general rule is that we as a culture celebrate the pop culture of twenty years ago. All the ‘50s worship in the ‘70s. American Graffiti and all that. But there are, of course, exceptions to the rule. In the 2010s, we spent plenty of time worshipping the ‘90s as the rule would have us do, but PEN15 jumped early on worshipping the 2000s, and it feels like we’ve been worshipping the ‘80s for an extra decade. Call it the Stranger Things effect. I’ve been over the novelty of the ‘80s since 2009.
So the moment I saw all the ‘80s fashion and the ‘80s movie clichés, I was ready to quit. Luckily I didn’t, because it turns out the only reason Sex Education set up these tropes in the first place was to spend the rest of the season knocking them down.
Otis is, indeed, our smarter-beyond-his-years protagonist. But he’s also unusually repressed when it comes to his sexuality (for reasons the show explores rather deftly) and he can be incredibly selfish. As a direct result of Otis’s selfishness, Eric has one of the most traumatic nights of his life, and the show spends a good deal of its back half exploring how said trauma manifests in his life as a gay man. Maeve is the outcast rebel, but for any Freaks and Geeks fans reading, it’s like Kim Kelly but worse. Jackson, our seemingly perfect jock, takes anxiety medication and is prone to panic attacks, and the show uses him, among other things, to explore therapy in a non-stigmatizing way. Adam, the bully, has his own baggage. Of course he does. He’s a bully.
Not only is Sex Education a deliberate deconstruction of ‘80s movie high school characters, but a giant middle finger to ‘80s values in general. The 1980s was the era of Thatcher and Reagan. The era of abstinence. (It’s still the era of abstinence in the US.) The era of misinformation and miseducation when it comes to sex. Here, then, is a show about kids learning to think about it in a healthy and meaningful way that makes their lives better.
Fuck the ‘80s.
Favorite Episodes: “Episode 3,” “Episode 5,” “Episode 8”
4. Tuca & Bertie
I like to believe I’m mature enough to write something about the merits of Tuca & Bertie and not talk about how infinitely angry I am at Netflix for cancelling the show after one season. But I’m not. So let me get my positives out of the way. I haven’t seen a show do visual comedy this well in a really long time, I love the way it’s edited, I love the style, I love the characters, it’s one of the few shows this year I binged in one day, its portrayal of sexuality is refreshingly nuanced, and “The Jelly Lakes” is one of the most quietly moving episodes of television I saw in 2019.
Now, onto pettiness.
I was pretty mad at Netflix for cancelling American Vandal. Well, I’m angry at Netflix for a lot of things, but there was a period where the grievance at the top of that list was American Vandal. But I made my peace. As much as I love that show, I realize that there was only so much gas left in that tank, and though I would’ve happily watched a few more seasons, I get it.
But there was nowhere for Tuca & Bertie to go but up, and the news of its cancellation broke my heart. Usually, the sting wears off. But every time I watch something new on Netflix that I hate, my first thought is usually along the lines of, “Oh, you have the budget for this horse shit, but you cancelled Tuca & Bertie!?”
I took one look at the Messiah trailer and I guessed that the titular “messiah” is the antichrist. I haven’t looked up whether or not I’m right because I don’t care. Tuca & Bertie is still cancelled.
Tuca & Bertie deserves more than I’m giving it. Every time I try to think of something new to say for it, I dovetail into more irrational anger, and who needs more of that? So let me say one last thing: With the exception of BoJack Horseman, I’d be willing to sacrifice every show Netflix has to get one more season of Tuca & Bertie. Each and every one. Even the good ones.
Weird that one of the most positive shows of 2019 only inspires anger in me now. Fuck you for that one too, Netflix.
Favorite Episodes: “The Deli Guy,” “Plumage,” “The Jelly Lakes”
3. Mr. Robot
(Hopefully you won’t notice this poster’s a bit wider…………..)
For the life of me, I will never understand why so many people turned their backs on Mr. Robot, or why it lost the cultural momentum it had during its first season.
Okay, on some level I get it. Season two took a track that not everyone was down with, what with plot taking a back seat to character work, and I get that the twist was a little unnecessary. But was it that bad? Really?
Even at its worst, Mr. Robot was always a cut or two above most of its competition, especially in season three, where the octane plotting some viewers missed so much in season two came roaring back with a vengeance. And even by those standards, season four of Mr. Robot was something to behold.
The season begins with the immediate murder of Angela Moss, one of the key characters on the show, and the one who has seen the most amount of growth since her debut in the pilot. Nothing in the end of season three really hinted that her death would come this quickly, and from her murder, we’re immediately whisked off to a few months later where Elliot, no longer talking to us, and Mr. Robot are pulling off a blackmail scam on a lawyer. It’s a breakneck sequence, one with new camera tricks and a dire tone.
Maybe it was the knowledge that this was the last season, but from this sequence on, the show felt different in a way I’ve had trouble summarizing to people. For those of you who’ve seen the final season of The Sopranos, it felt a little bit like that. Like something terrible is lingering on the horizon, it’s coming in slow, and you don’t quite know what it is.
The pace and the tone go back and forth throughout the season, but that apocalyptic feeling never really goes away. Even in the final few episodes where the show loses its damn mind.
Of course, I mean that in the best way possible. And it’s territory I won’t go into to avoid even more spoilers than the ones I’ve already revealed. Suffice it to say that I thought the ending was perfect.
But though that suffocating feeling never went away, that shouldn’t suggest that the final season wasn’t a blast, or at least this show’s version of “a blast.” The final season does so much finale moves before the actual finale that it was hard to see what was coming. Character deaths, plot movements, power shifts. You name it. The usual Mr. Robot experiments also panned out stunningly as well. “405 Method Not Allowed,” a dialogue free episode, is one of the most tense hours of television produced in 2019. The ending of “eXit” had me thinking that show outright switched genres. And, of course, there’s “407 Proxy Authentication Required,” the episode that recontextualizes everything we’ve seen, and what is, by far, the best individual episode of the show.
Every year Mr. Robot has been on the air, it’s been on my top ten list. Of all the shows leaving television in 2019, Mr. Robot is the one I’ll miss the most.
Favorite Episodes: “405 Method Not Allowed,” “407 Proxy Authentication Required,” “whoami/Hello, Elliot” (The final two episodes aired as one. It counts.)
2. Ramy
I mentioned in the Sex Education part that I’m sick of ‘80s pastiche. I’m equally sick of shows about millennials “figuring it out.”
I haven’t put my finger on what to call this kind of story. Maybe it’s all in my head. But I can’t help but feel that there’s been a spike this decade of stories about directionless millennials working gig economy jobs, stumbling their way through sexual encounters and relationships, getting into arguments with their parents over political or religious values, worrying about money, and so on and so forth.
It’s not that these shows are “bad.” Broad City is incredible, Search Party is vastly underrated, and The Other Two is one of the better examples of millennial ennui I’ve seen so far in the medium. But we also have some lesser examples. Girls and 2 Broke Girls. (The fact that they’re both about “girls” is interesting.) Besides, it’s not about the relative quality of the shows. It’s about the tired nature of the tropes.
On the surface, Ramy looked like another one of those shows. The Muslim angle was novel, but it still looked like another “millennial” show, and I assumed it was going to come down to, “My strict Muslim parents just don’t understand me!”
Still, I started the show, and in the very first scene, Ramy literally says, “I’m just trying to figure it out” to his mom. The signs weren’t looking good. However, the episode ends with Ramy in a place of crisis. He turns to a man who earlier chastised him at the mosque for not washing between his toes. He tells him about how he doesn’t feel like he’ll ever be a good Muslim, and he feels like a hypocrite every time he tries. The man tells him that he jerks off too much and that he should wash between his toes. From that moment on, I was in love with the show.
Ramy isn’t a show about religion complicating modern millennial life. It’s a show about modern millennial life complicating religion. Or at the very least, it’s about trying to find a genuine balance.
Ramy is a show about the struggle with religious faith, and how this struggle has seeped into every aspect of his life. We watch it break-up his early friendships and radically alter his sexual awakening. We watch it change his career trajectory and throw him in with people whose values he finds abhorrent. We watch him navigate relationships and sex. We watch… the entirety of “Saving Mikaela.” We watch him struggle and struggle and struggle.
And it’s not just him. “Refugees” finds Ramy’s sister Dena dealing with the intense emotional and religious baggage of her virginity, as well as the alienating feeling of being eroticized for her ethnicity. “Ne Me Quitte Pas” is the story of Ramy’s mother Maysa searching for companionship after being continuously ignored by her community and her family. It’s one of the most heartbreaking episodes of television this year.
However, though Ramy struggles, there are moments of bliss. A lifelong friendship with someone who always calls him out on his shit. (This might not seem like a blessing, but trust me, it is.) A woman, or someone, that fully understands his pain. A trip to Egypt. Of course, Ramy fucks most of these things up. But he always manages to bounce back, even if its only temporary.
Favorite Episodes: “Strawberries,” “Ne Me Quitte Pas,” “Saving Mikaela”
1a. Steven Universe
We’ve already talked about Steven Universe, and I said most of what I wanted to say about it there. So now I have a weird dilemma.
In the span of 2019, we got the final two episodes of Steven Universe proper, Steven Universe: The Movie, and the beginning of the epilogue series Steven Universe Future. I think the finale of the show is fantastic, but I have mixed feelings on the movie and the sequel series. Mostly positive. But mixed.
Ultimately, I wasn’t sure where that left me as far as list making was concerned. However, Steven Universe is one of the most impactful pop culture experiences I had in 2019, and I felt the need for this list to reflect that somehow. So here we are.
Favorite Episodes: “Escapism (season five)” “Change Your Mind (season five)” “Little Graduation (Steven Universe Future)”
1. Watchmen
Watchmen was the first graphic novel I ever read, and it formed my relationship with the medium. So even though The Leftovers is one of my favorite shows of all time, I was worried about how Damon Lindelof was going to adapt it to television.
Watchmen, the TV show, starts with the Black Wall Street Massacre. Three episodes later, we see a man dressed in a silver wetsuit spray himself with lube (it was revealed later in the Peteypedia thing that it was actually canola oil, but I prefer to live with the delusion that it was lube) and slide into a storm drain. Two episodes later, we watch Angela live through her grandfather’s memories as he becomes Hooded Justice and fights racist cops. In another two episodes, we see Angela live out her relationship with a being who experiences non-linear time.
It’s completely insane, and all of it works.
It’s Watchmen filtered through the psychosis of The Leftovers.
It was, from the very first scene, my show of the year.
Also, my friend caught this pun, and whether or not it was intentional… fuck, I love this show.
Favorite Episodes: “She Was Killed by Space Junk,” “This Extraordinary Being,” “A God Walks into Abar”
Honorable Mentions
Back to Life
Better Things
The Boys
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Documentary Now!
Good Eats
The Good Place
Lorena
Orange is the New Black
The Other Two
Pose
Russian Doll
Stranger Things
Undone
When They See Us
Would’ve Been on the List if it Didn’t Feel Too Much Like the First Half of a Story or Had More Episodes
BoJack Horseman
Rick & Morty
Will Watch Someday
Fosse/Verdon
Lodge 49
The Mandalorian
On Becoming a God in Central Florida
The Righteous Gemstones
Succession
Unbelievable
