I'm going to get a job in the next two weeks. The round trip flight to Iceland will have jumped from $250 to $700. I'll end up going to Coachella instead in April to see a bunch of bands I don't like because it's something to do. Ten years from now I will not remember what song Beyonce closed with on Saturday night but I would have remembered the one night stand with a Shieldmaiden (girl viking) that bought me 20 beers on a wild night out in Reykjavic. It will haunt me the rest of my life.
Alas, I suppose there will be cheap flights to Iceland again some day.
The second mistake I made was forgetting one of the best movies of the year in Everybody Wants Some!! Honestly my list of pretentious bullshit can go eat a bag of dicks. The only movies from 2016 that you need to concern yourself with are La La Land, Sing Street and Everybody Wants Some!! Everything else was melodramatic and depressing. But I won't screw up again. I'm not a movie guy anymore, I'm a TV guy, so I promise you this list will be much much better. Here are my favorite seasons of tv from 2016.
A few things to get out of the way first:
-Outside of The Bachelor franchise, no reality was considered. Reality television is garbage for garbage people. I would rather watch Overwatch porn than the Great British Bake Off. I would rather read 1000 think pieces on Trump and the Russians before submitting myself to an episode of The Voice. I watch the Bachelor because it is a reason to drink wine on Mondays and distract myself from how far away the weekend is.
-I don't watch anything on network TV. I didn't watch This is US. I'm not going to watch it. The twist is that the dude who lost the OJ trial was adopted by white parents? Neat. And Bubbles from The Wire is involved? I seem to hear there is a sub plot about a fat person not wanting to be fat, I'll be sure to put that in my next pilot to really tug at the heart strings. Network tv has been taking some risks lately, especially in the sci fi and fantasy genre and I'm really pulling for it in 2017. I'm going to give Emerald City a shot, I want 24 to be dope again, but in 2016 network tv was atrocious.
-I don't watch Girls or Transparent because they are extremely realistic shows about shitty people and they remind me too much of my real life.
10 (tie)Love - Netflix
10 (tie)Narcos- Netflix
I'll start by saying this. Love is not a good show. It features extremely unlikable characters acting terribly to one another.
But.
It also has a scene in the pilot where a Studio Teacher living in the Oakwood has a threesome with two Ithaca students 'studying abroad' in LA. If you are familiar with the entertainment industry or Los Angeles at all that joke works on about 5 levels for you.
If you are not, it is just an unrealistic scene with some dorky loser scoring with two hot chicks and that is why I both cannot believe this show got made and also can't get enough of it.
I can't wait for season two where a writer's PA demands a story by credit on a back nine script or he will go to the Writer's Guild with the fact that the 'native american' diversity staff writer forged his Tribe Enrollment card.
Narcos is also a bad show. It features more exposition and voice over than a community college student's first 80 page screenplay.
But.
Shows about cocaine are awesome and Wagner Moura is the tits. Check him out in a couple of my favorite Brazilian films Elite Squad and Elite Squad 2. No, they are not quite as good as City of God or City of Men, but they get close and remind me never to visit Rio.
9. You're The Worst -FXX
Another show about shitty people living in Silverlake, but this one does it in an endearing and humanizing way that I think shows like Girls and Transparent have failed in. This show exists one absurdity level removed from real life putting it in between a show like Always Sunny and the hyper-realism of Girls. Furthermore, this show really does great work with fleshing out its secondary and tertiary characters and somehow provides a lot of laughs and heart when addressing issues such as addiction and mental health.
Also I'm in love with Aya Cash
8. Search Party - TBS
Search Party is the result of some fascinating crossbreeding of genres. What if we took the terrible people trope (which is clearly a hot thing right now in television, or at least shows you my tastes) and set it against a back drop of a very earnest mystery?
What we get is some sort of Serial season one meets Arrested Development? Or perhaps I can just only see Alia Shawkat in that role. Tune in for some truly raunchy jokes (There is a sex scene in the pilot that almost gave me a heart attack I laughed so hard) stick around for the strangely compelling story.
7. Flea Bag - Amazon
You've probably read about it at this point, hipster adaptation of Phoebe Waller-Bridge's own one woman show. At 6 episodes and under three hours of total run time, I would say you could easily knock this out in an evening, but there are parts of this show that take an unflinching look at modern life in London, that make me have to walk away for a moment. The show features a young woman (fleabag) navigating her life as a young woman and in this case it features sex scenes that would make Joe Swanberg blush, but the show certainly made me laugh, I really enjoyed its usage of the fourth wall and this is just a bit of a spoiler alert, I'm a sucker for British TV.
6. Westworld- HBO
There isn't much I can say about Westworld that hasn't yet been said. Thandie Newton was a 1:5 favorite at the Golden Globes and lost. That's a bigger upset than the Browns beating the Patriots straight up on a moneyline. So maybe people didn't actually like this show as much as I thought, but I found the set-up and eventual payoff of this show very satisfying.
It would be easy to draw parallels to another Crichton inspired piece of art in Jurassic Park. Cool futuristic idea, exploited for profit, chaos ensues. If you are new to this show, which sets lifelike robots up in a wild west amusement park for the rich and famous, I would urge you to stick through the earlier slower episodes.
When you eventually reach the finale, I believe you will find the last crescendo to be quite cathartic.
5. Game of Thrones - HBO
As Ringer staffer Juliet Litman said on my favorite podcast 'The Watch' this week, 'They make a movie every week.' And it's true comparing Game of Thrones to other tv shows feels unfair, like pitting gods against mere mortals and yet it lost the Golden Globe last week to a low stakes show about Queen Elizabeth called 'The Crown.' That's because we have come to expect greatness from 'Game of Thrones.' Year after year it is the mark of consistency. This year's episode 9 gave us a war movie the likes we haven't seen since Braveheart and in episode 10 showed the rise of a truly perfect villain.
Enjoy these last 13 episodes my friends because it is going to be a long time before we see a fantasy show as strong as the gift that Benioff and Weiss gave us.
4. Love Sick - Netflix
This is a show that only the people that stalk my Facebook timeline will be familiar with so I'll give you a bit of a set-up.
Dylan goes to the doctor and finds out he has chlamydia. As such he has to call every sexual partner he has ever had and urge them to get tested. What follows is a list of self contained episodes told primarily in flashback to the time Dylan met each female while also juxtaposing with Dylan's current struggle to deal with friends, relationships and adulthood.
If you love rom coms, specifically those in the vein of Four Weddings and a Funeral you will love this show. Originally called Scrotal Recall, Netflix wisely renamed it. A bit of a three hander (3 main characters) I'm not sure you can find a more likable cast on TV right now.
3. The Night Of - HBO
2016 really was the year of Riz Ahmed, a star making performance in The Night Of, a blockbuster turn in Rogue One and his rap group even got a verse on the Hamilton mixtape. You can imagine my surprise when ya boi pops up in Britt Morling's The OA as an FBI agent. Riz MC stays busy!
But the show...it's not perfect, but as far as crime based procedurals, it doesn't get much better. All of the performances from the police, Naz's parents and of course Jesus and Omar, my God, they were magnificent. By the end of the season I didn't care if he was guilty or not, I was just sad I would no longer get to see John Torturro do battle with a cat.
2. The People V OJ Simpson - FX
I've long had a love/hate relationship with Ryan Murphy. Love: first season of Glee Hate: All other seasons of Glee Love: The Idea of American Horror Story Hate: Whatever the hell Scream Queens is supposed to be. (Which was based on the cunt punt girl which I too wrote a pilot about)
Say what you will about Mr. Murphy's writing, but he has a preternatural ability to direct and cast talent. When I heard that David Schwimmer would be portraying Robert Kardashian and John Travolta playing Robert Shapiro CUBA AS OJ!?!? I couldn't wait to see how much of a train wreck it would be. What followed was an enchanting re-examination of a case I was barely old enough to remember yet captivated me the entire way. Courtney B Vance should be in everything moving forward.
A quick honorable mention before we move on to a truly great episode of Black Mirror in San Junipero. While the season had ups (San Junipero, Playtest) and downs (Nosedive and to a lesser extent Shut up and Dance) San Junipero was a truly incredible hour of television. For those unfamiliar with Black Mirror it's another British import that imagines life in a not too distant future. San Junipero focuses on...well let's just call it a very very real VR world where you can chose to spend the rest of your life instead of dying. What follows is a fantastic love story that traverses decades of space, time and dimensions. Even if you aren't into Sci-Fi, it's worth checking out.
I'd also like to do a quick honorable mention for Peaky Blinders which continues to be bad ass and also a shout out to Gilmore Girls year in the life. I like the experimentation with format and I hope other tv shows consider it moving forward. But without further ado...
1. Stranger Things - Netflix
When the trailer for Stranger things (fka Montauk) dropped in June, I had a feeling we might be in for something special. Some waved it off as a couple film school nerds doing their best impression of JJ Abrams doing his best impression of Steven Spielberg, what followed was the surprise hit of the year.
Say what you will about Winona Ryder's complete batshittery, but there is just something about little kids in the 80's going on an adventure that will always suck me in. The show features an incredibly talented and incredibly likable young cast that made viewing the show just a real pleasure. (Let's just hope we're not all sick of their overexposure by the time season 2 rolls around.)
And enough cannot be said about filmmakers The Duffer Brothers who are trukly young rising stars trying to do something different in an industry full of reboots and existing IP. I don't think I had a more enjoyable 8 hours this summer than following around the Strangers Things kids and Davod Harbour trying to figure what in the fuck the department of energy was up to.
Oh and Barb sucked and the right boyfriend won.
Looking forward to more great television in 2017, thanks for checking out my picks!
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