Television Review - 2017 (Part 1)

Welcome to my annual review of television shows I've watched during the year.

For reference, here's a list of shows I've watched this year, in no particular order. Unless otherwise indicated, I'm only considering the episodes released during 2017 (or the most recent season).

Suits (almost all of the most recently-completed season)

BoJack Horseman

Silicon Valley

Top Chef

The Big Bang Theory

Catastrophe (a few Season Three episodes)

You're the Worst

Archer

The Sopranos (Seasons Two through Six)

South Park

Better Call Saul

Master of None

This Is Us (Season One, half of Season Two)

Billions (Seasons One and Two)

High Maintenance (all webisodes and full-length HBO episodes)

Cheers (Seasons One through part of Season Four or so, still in progress)

Ozark (two episodes)

Rick and Morty (Season Three, various Seasons One & Two episodes)

Shows That I've Dropped, and Why

I was particularly aggressive about dropping shows this year. With my first daughter staying up later and my second daughter arriving in the fall, the amount of time I've had to watch TV decreased steadily this year, and as a result, my standards have increased for what shows justify me spending that precious amount of time. So here's a list of all the shows that were on the list last year and no longer appear, or some others that do appear and I have decided to stop watching.

1) Suits. This show was once outstanding, but it's just been on too long and they no longer have an interesting story to tell. Meghan Markle leaving the show to become the Queen of England or whatever probably will only exacerbate that problem

2) Modern Family. Reasons were described last year.

3) Mr. Robot. Ditto

4) Catastrophe. My wife really likes this show and I tried to get into Season Three but I just wound up falling asleep a lot. This is probably the show of highest quality (currently, at least) that I've dropped. I don't know why, but I'm just not that stoked on it.

5) The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Explained last year, but it bears re-mentioning: Lillian is probably one of my least-favorite TV characters of all time.

6) Ballers. The review explains it pretty well. It's just not very good.

7) Archer. This one's been on thin ice with me before and I didn't care for the Dreamland concept. It's time to say good-bye to what was one of my favorite shows a half-decade ago. I haven't actively stopped watching it yet, as I've seen all of the most recent season, but I won't pick it back up in the spring.

8) This Is Us. This one has been a victim of my waning attention span. I don't think the show got that much worse from Season One (though it has been a slight downgrade). Kate and (to a lesser extent) Kevin are still very weak characters and Sterling K. Brown can't carry the present-day portion of the show all by himself. I might jump into it again at some point, but for the time being, I've told my wife to carry on by herself with this one.

9) Ozark. I may pick this up again. I was very interested in the only two episodes that I watched, but this was around when we had our baby. We didn't keep plowing through.

Shows That Didn't Release New Episodes or Are Complete

1) It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia 

2) Louie

I'm spacing this out a little more than I have in past years. Over the course of the next few weeks, I'm going to be rolling out reviews of my favorite five TV viewing experiences of the year. Stay tuned...as a change of pace we'll have some actual content around here in the month to come.