Television Review - 2018

Because I made an effort to review every show that I watched in 2018, I'm going to be able to structure this year's TV review post a little differently and cram it all into one. In the past, I've broken out reviews of my five favorite viewing experiences of the year into separate installments, but since I don't have all that much new to say, I'll simply rank them and link those reviews here.

Here are all the shows that I've watched during 2018. I completed the most recently concluded season of the show (and only the most recent season of the show) unless otherwise indicated. The crop is a little thinner this year because Cheers and The Americans both took a very long time.

• Everything Sucks! 
• Cheers (Seasons 5-11)
• The Good Place (Seasons 1-2)
• Atypical (Seasons 1-2)
• Barry 
• Ozark (Season One)
• The Americans (Full series, Seasons 1-6)
• The Big Bang Theory
• Jersey Shore Family Vacation (Seasons 1-2)
• BoJack Horseman
• Better Call Saul
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
• South Park
• Top Chef (Okay, I forgot to review this)

Here are the shows I watched last year that have dropped off the list due to no new episodes:

• You're the Worst (returns in January)
• The Sopranos
• Master of None
• High Maintenance
• Rick and Morty

Here are the shows that fell out of the rotation since last year, or that I am 100% sure I will not be continuing, with an explanation:

1. Silicon Valley - We watched an episode or two of this, but rumors of its decline in quality along with the departure of T.J. Miller's Erlich Bachman character from the show stunted our enthusiasm, and we've just sort of stopped watching it.

2. Billions - I can't actually say we stopped watching it -- in fact, we watched the third episode of Season Three after a long hiatus last night. We might complete Season Three next year if that momentum sticks, but I think it's just decent, and the repeated power plays and backstabbing make it feel a little too much like House of Cards and Suits at times. The characters on Billions lie somewhere on the spectrum between the boring, 1-dimensional ones found on House of Cards and the highly entertaining but caricature-like ones on Suits, so it's walking a tight rope.

3. Ozark - I can't stress or repeat myself enough on this point, and it's actually cathartic to say it out loud every so often. The Season One finale episode of Ozark was so unbelievably terrible that I'm dropping the show out of principle, even if it definitely had its moments along the way. There's only a handful of TV episodes I've ever seen that I'd slap an "F" grade on, and adjusting for expectations (Ozark was otherwise decent-to-good), it might be the most disappointing (not to mention repulsive) single installment of a show I've ever seen. It's close between that and the How I Met Your Mother finale.

Finally, here were my Top Five Viewing Experiences of the Year:

5. Barry (Season One) - I'm giving this the slight edge over Season Four of Better Call Saul in a year in which I just happened to watch a lot of great TV. In the end, it's probably because Barry was a completely new experience and toed the line between comedy and drama perfectly.

4. Atypical (Seasons 1-2)- The second season wasn't quite as strong as the first, but overall, but Atypical is rife with strong characters and presents an interesting look at a family whose son (and series main character) is on the autism spectrum.

3. BoJack Horseman (Season Five) - BoJack Horseman might be the best actively-running series on TV and delivered another consistently stellar slate of episodes in 2018. It was something of a bounce-back from Season Four, in which there were a few amazing episodes scattered among weaker (for BoJack) installments.

2. Cheers (Seasons 5-11) - This is the best live-action sitcom I've ever seen and it delivered consistent laughs all the way up until the finale, which is one of the greatest episodes of television of all time.

1. The Americans (Full series, Seasons 1-6) - What a ride. FX's period drama is firmly in the "best of all-time" discussion. When I finished watching the show, my reaction was, "Well, I know The Wire is better, but what else?" As far as other completed dramas are concerned, I know there's Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Deadwood, and Mad Men (which I don't love but is critically acclaimed) to reckon with. I'd certainly put The Americans somewhere in that group.

Cheers (Full Series)

I started watching Cheers sometime in November and have finished it with about a week to go before White Sox opening day, so it was a pretty effective way to nuke the offseason. Cheers is 11 seasons and 275 episodes long. Not counting re-watches (which would make The Wire king), I have now spent more time watching Cheers than any other show in history. At about 105 hours, that's going to be a difficult record to top.

And oh, what a journey it has been. I reviewed the first four seasons of Cheers here, as part of my year-end 2017 television review. The most remarkable thing about Cheers is how consistent the show really was. I largely expected a drop-off in the later seasons, but it never came. There were clunky episodes scattered throughout the series (for instance, I would not recommend the Season Ten episode "Madame LaCarla", in which Carla takes over for her psychic), but they were isolated problems. The comedy stayed fresh. It was funny even when it was predictable. You could anticipate many of Carla's disparaging one-liners or minor plot developments and they'd still be great because of how the actors delivered them.

Ted Danson (portraying Sam Malone) is particularly outstanding in that regard, especially the way that he reacts so resigned and calm when dealing with difficult and/or offensive people*. When Rebecca's father comes to town to try to bring her back to San Diego in Season 11, he reprimands Sam upon meeting him for trying to have a baby with Rebecca even though they aren't married. Later, Sam tries to convince him to let Rebecca stay...

Sam: (approaching Rebecca's father) "Excuse me for a minute, sir. You know, if you don't mind me saying so, I-I don't think you're being fair. You can't ask her to pack up and go just 'cause you don't think she made it." 

Rebecca's father: "Was it that kind of persuasive arguing that got my daughter into trying to conceive your bastard child?" 

Sam: (turning away, accepting defeat) "Boy, you-you really just can't see your way past that, can you?"

*The exception is John Hill, the late-seasons' owner of Melville's, the restaurant upstairs, who seems to be the one person who can get under Sam's skin and drive him insane. Over time, John Hill's introductory trademark "Saaaaaaammmmm" became just as entertaining a gimmick as the bar yelling "Norm!" upon the barfly's entry. Final comment: John Hill getting left out of the finale is a damn crime.

The later seasons of Cheers are packed with tons of excellent moments. The annual "Bar Wars" episodes, which pitted Cheers against Gary's Olde Town Tavern in a never-ending prank war, were consistent highlights. The final episode of that subseries featured the return of con-artist Harry the Hat, my favorite (okay, maybe second to old Al) minor character from the early seasons. Then there's know-it-all blowhard mailman Cliff going on Jeopardy! and almost winning due to an assortment of favorable categories, then screwing it up on Final Jeopardy due to some combination of a poorly-worded question and his own incompetence. The two-part Season 10 finale featuring Woody's wedding was a blitz of fast-and-furious gags as the gang desperately tried to fix the many calamities (both self-induced and not) that all aligned perfectly with Carla's superstitious premonition that the day would be a disaster. I don't know that I've ever laughed harder at a sitcom episode.

At its best, Cheers could be more than just a comedy. The Season Five finale, in which Diane leaves Cheers (allegedly for six months) to pursue a writing career was punctuated by Sam saying aloud to himself with an air of acceptance, "Have a nice life." That's a moment that hits home after watching their relationship progress for five years. Despite Carla's repeated jabs at the other members at the bar, she has a lot of genuinely tender moments with Sam that make for one of the greatest platonic opposite-sex friendships ever seen on television.

And then there's the series finale, which is one of the greatest episodes of TV I've ever watched, and certainly a contender for best finale of all time. There's been mild spoilers in this post to this point, but I really don't want to ruin the finale for anyone who hasn't seen it, so I'm typing out my comments on the finale in black text below, so highlight it if you want to read it.

CHEERS FINALE:

Sam had been struggling with his place in the world for some time, even going to a sex addiction therapy session to try to get past his obsession with chasing women that, in his mind, has been inhibiting  his ability to find true happiness. He thinks he needs a wife and considers Rebecca as something of a backup, but his words show that this isn't what he truly wants.

And then, Diane returns to Cheers. Sam, confronted by his own loneliness, decides to reboot that relationship and leave Cheers forever to be with Diane. When the bar's patrons (in part fearing the loss of their ringleader) point out that this is an awful idea, he calls them all out for their own stagnation, their dependence on the bar and himself, and how they never progress forward in life.

"You know, you should need more than this! I am not your mother! This is not your home! This is ridiculous."

Sam eventually comes to his senses and returns to Cheers, wanting to smoke a celebratory Cuban cigar with his friends. However, one by one, his friends leave him, citing an excuse ("it's getting late", "gotta get home to Vera", "I have kids", etc.) that never seems to otherwise be enough to get these people to leave the bar. As Sam stands there, dejected, all of them open the door and come back, joking that they were tipped off by Diane and decided to have some fun with Sam.

The group sits around in a circle, discussing the meaning of life and appreciating the little family they've created for themselves over the years at Sam's humble bar. The phone rings and each of them worries that the caller is one of their family members. Frasier somewhat profoundly says,

"Say, you know what, wait, don't answer it. Just let whoever it is think that we're on our way."

The group leaves the bar, but perpetual barfly Norm stays behind to deliver one of his rare-but-powerful serious moments in the series. 

Norm: Sammy, I didn't want to say this in front of the others, but you know what I think the most important thing in life is? It's love. You want to know what I love?  

Sam: Beer, Norm?  

Norm: Yeah, I'll have a quick one. 

... 

Norm: I don't think it matters what you love, Sammy. Could be a person, could be a thing. As long as you love it totally, completely, without judgment.

.... 

Norm: Well, I'm off. But, um, Sammy, can I let you in on a little secret? 

Sam: Sure. 

Norm: I knew you'd come back. 

Sam: You did?  

Norm: You can never be unfaithful to your one true love. You always come back to her. 

Sam: Who is that?  

Norm: Think about it, Sam. (::taps on the door, and leaves::)

Sam is left alone to look around his bar. He smiles and chuckles to himself.

"Boy, I'll tell you I'm the luckiest son of a bitch on Earth."

Then, Sam runs his hand along the bar and taps on it, casually walking around, much like he did in the pilot episode. A prospective customer knocks on the door, and Sam utters the last line of the series:

"Sorry, we're closed."

He walks over to the picture of Geronimo on the wall and straightens it (in a sign of respect for the late Nicholas Colasanto), and walks down the back hall, going full circle back to the pilot's opening scene before the cut to black.

Cheers is very clearly divided into the Diane years and the Rebecca years. I'm asked a lot which I prefer. I think that the quality of the show is about even through its two "halves" (sort of a misnomer, as there's a lot more Rebecca episodes), but that Rebecca is a better character than Diane. I sort of have issues with both, though. Diane often felt as jarring to me as she must have to the folks at Cheers and she was arguably downright evil in the later stages of Season Five. Rebecca didn't have a consistent personality throughout the years (compare strong-willed and composed Season Six Rebecca to the mess that she was at the end of the series) and whose flaws could be difficult to watch, but she was ultimately more interesting. That being said, Shelley Long was a much better actress than Kirstie Alley. Long was written as an irritating character, but she could sell emotion and comedy much better than Alley. For most of the second half of the series, I had to cringe whenever Rebecca "cried", because Alley was horrible at cry-acting and she was asked to do it a LOT. Still, Alley's voice had a good amount of bite to it and she was better for sarcastic humor.

Ultimately, Cheers is a show about several running themes. One of them is aging. Some of the strongest episodes of the series focus on Sam's acceptance that he's no longer the ladies' man he was in his early thirties and how his perspective continues to change over the course of the series as he gets older. Second, there's family. We get snippets of the core cast's family lives (most notably with Frasier, Lilith, and their son, Frederick, but also with Carla's kids, Cliff's mom, and Norm's nonexistent relationship with Vera), but it's clear based on where these characters choose to spend their time (particularly on the holidays) that they consider each other to be their true family.

Third, and most debatably, the show deals with self-acceptance. This is by and large a group of losers. Sam's an alcoholic who washed out of baseball and isn't notably good at anything besides attracting cheap women (and even that fades). Diane's so out of touch with non-intellectuals and normalcy that her presence is obnoxious and grating. Norm's a beer-swilling slacker who bounces from job to job and is perpetually content with the thought that his life is going nowhere. Cliff has no sense of self-awareness, is too unappealing to attract women, lives with his mother, and repeatedly over-inflates the importance of his humdrum career with the postal service. Carla is raising eight (mostly) degenerate kids as a (mostly) single mother on a waitress' salary due to a series of failed relationships. Woody's a farm kid in the big city whose slow wit puts him on a different wavelength than everyone else. Coach is an older version of Woody. Frasier's a pompous ass whose credentials don't translate to effective psychiatric work and whose sense of superiority over the other Cheers patrons is very clearly rooted in nothing. Rebecca fails at basically everything she does (which, as Carla is quick to remind you, is very little).

These people are content to never change year-in and year-out. You get the sense that they're no worse for the wear. Carla's content with being a mean-spirited person who doesn't let her considerable fertility affect her behavior with men. Norm's happy never doing anything productive or being a worthwhile spouse to Vera. Cliff won't cut the cord with his mom or accept criticisms about his irritating personality. Frasier won't get off his high horse, and so forth. Yet, we wind up loving them all exactly the way they are. Their stagnation isn't frustrating to watch; it's practically endearing. It's all part of the sense of the comfort the show creates. Both our world and that of the characters of Cheers keep changing, but this band of misfits and rejects stays the same. 

In that sense, watching Cheers becomes a lot like what being at Cheers must feel like to Sam and the gang; it's retreating to a place that's familiar, pleasant, and filled with people you feel like you've known forever. That's basically what the famous Cheers opening theme is all about, and all it takes are those few opening piano notes to slip into that wonderful state of mind. I'm going to miss my almost-daily trips to this fictional place, and the only thing that isn't sad about this journey being over is the knowledge that I've now fully experienced the greatest live-action sitcom of all time.

Series Grade: A

Television Review - 2017 (Part 4): #3 Viewing Experience of 2017, Cheers, Season 1-4+

When I picked up Alan Sepinwall's TV book, in which he ranked the top 100 shows of all time, I expected to see The Wire, Breaking Bad, The Simpsons, and The Sopranos in the top five.

I did not expect to see Cheers.

I was born in the mid-80s, and as a friend of mine put it, Cheers is that show that you had to wait for to end so you could watch Full House or whatever else was going to come on afterwards. It's a show that has been regarded as a classic, along the lines of stuff like All in the Family, The Cosby Show, Happy Days, etc. In other words, it has always felt to me like pure Nick at Nite fodder, the kind of show that you might expect to enjoy somewhat if you watch it, but nothing over-the-top great.

Then, I read that damn book.

If two reputable TV critics are going to throw Cheers up there with four of the very best shows I've ever had the pleasure of watching, then I simply had to check it out. As of this writing, I'm in the middle of Season Five of Cheers, and intend to continue to plow through until the end. I was a skeptic because it was set in the 80's, and ugh, old TV must be bad! I was a skeptic because it was a sitcom. I was a skeptic because of the main Season One cast, I had never heard of any of them except Rhea Perlman, whom I actually mistook for Frau from the Austin Powers series. That's right, I've seriously never heard of Ted Danson before late 2017.

And well, yeah, it's sort of an imperfect show. There's occasional episodes where the plot is actually pretty uninteresting. There's total flops that distort the characters into ridiculous caricatures of themselves. In particular, the Halloween episode in which Cliff extremely awkwardly courts a similarly extremely awkward woman was hard to watch, because people that bad at speaking to people of the opposite sex legitimately don't exist. Many of the plots can be of low emotional stakes, Diane is occasionally written to be unrealistically (and annoyingly) weird/artsy, and sometimes the dialogue can be so mean-spirited without redemption that it's fair to wonder whether the show even likes some of its own characters. Specifically, I've wondered that quite a bit about Cliff, until the Season Five episode ""House of Horrors with Formal Dining and Used Brick", which presents what is by my count as the first positive interaction between Cliff and Carla after years of nothing but one-sided verbal abuse.

That's about where the negatives end. I'm only halfway through, but I'm acutely aware that I'm watching what is one of the best sitcoms of all time -- possibly the best.

As a sitcom, the discussion begins with the quality of the comedy, and even though it's been off the air for 25 years, the wit is still extremely sharp. A running gag like Carla picking on Diane has the potential to become tired fast. Instead, thanks to the writing and the acting, I find myself eagerly anticipating those lines when they're set up. The humor is simple, but executed far better than what you'd remember from any of the beloved 90's sitcoms. Cheers is similar to any show that goes for this form of comedy, but it takes the formula to perfection.

Since I've consumed more than four seasons of this show, there's almost too much to talk about. I was a big fan of Harry "The Hat", the con artist that kept returning to screw the Cheers gang out of their cash and possessions. The old guy who sits at the rear of the bar and delivers one-liners a couple times per season is a nice repeat gag. Carla's ex-husband Nick always provides great material for an episode here or there as well.

Norm Peterson, the accountant barfly, is one of the best sitcom characters I've ever seen. Every time he enters the bar, the staff and customers greet him with a resounding, "NORM!" (while Diane says a more polished "Norman").  There were a few moments in the middle of Season Three in which I thought the gag was waning, and they would say his name less enthusiastically. When the "NORM!" was less fervent, I actually got a little sad watching the show, because I love that gimmick. Cheers is all about a place where one feels happy, comfortable, and among friends. That Cheers was actually able to make me feel a little down when they wouldn't yell a sitcom character's name all that loud is a testament to the sense of community that they've created in that bar. The viewer feels it too.

Back on Norm, one of the strongest episodes was in Season Four, when Norm is up for a promotion against a co-worker, whose wife has been sleeping with the boss (who must make the decision as to who will be promoted). Norm becomes very tempted to use the information, even more so after it's revealed that he doesn't get the job and that the reason is because the executives' wives don't get along with his wife, Vera. Still, despite being a noticeably flawed man, Norm passes the trial of character and keeps the rumor to himself. It's one of several times that he's tested during the first four seasons and he usually finds himself on the right side of morality. Norm can be gruff, insulting, rude, and something of an absent husband, but Cheers makes him one of the two most likable characters anyway because of great writing and George Wendt's outstanding performance.

The other of the show's most likable characters? That'd be the lead, Sam Malone (Danson). The character is drawn and played perfectly by Danson. He's a total ladies man who, despite his many relations with beautiful women, is fighting himself over his attraction to the brainy, often grating Diane. Sam is often portrayed as unintelligent, but it's clear he has a good heart and that he's there for his friends. It's obvious how much he loves his bar without him ever having to come out and say it. His charisma and wit often carries the show, and the will-they-won't-they relationship he has with Diane is often at its heart (and inspires many subsequent TV shows). Sam is treated like a hero by the bar's patrons and Carla. Despite Diane's highlighting of his issues, he sort of feels like one to the viewer, too (albeit for different reasons).

Cheers had to deal with a tragedy early on in its run, as Nicholas Colasanto's (the actor portraying Sam's bartender, "Coach") health began to fade during Season Three and the actor sadly passed away. On screen, Colasanto was very endearing as Coach Ernie Pantusso, and even though most of the comedy was in the form of him misunderstanding things, Cheers was often able to elevate that somewhat mundane comedic formula to something consistently entertaining. Even better, when the show turned to Woody Harrelson's Woody Boyd to take Coach's place in Season Four, they didn't miss a beat, as Woody's rural-kid-in-the-big-city act has provided a natural replacement as the resident character who doesn't quite get what everyone else is saying.

There are a ton of episodes of Cheers and picking this up shortly after having my second daughter has ensured that this project won't end anytime soon, but I can't wait to see what the show's back half has to offer. It's a truly wonderful show that is rightfully considered a timeless classic.

Seasons One Through Four Grade: A