HOURLONGS:
1) MAD MEN (AMC) Season four gave us the perfect storm – combining Don’s inability to secure a security clearance, Roger’s failure to retain Lucky Strikes and Lane’s family distractions (recall Robert Pryce’s umbrella attack!) – that threatened to ruin their new firm. Don dealt with Anna, introduced himself as Dick and explained to the readers of the New York Times that he did not care for the addictive quality of cigarettes. The Japanese came to town. Henry smooshed some boxes in the garage. Duck lost his temper. Pete wondered if Ken could do as told. With her husband stationed elsewhere, Joan again grew closer to Roger. Peggy got naked, befriended a hot arty lesbian, lost a boyfriend and fired a guy. Sally fell hard for “NCIS” icon David McCallum, ran away and made French toast. The Rolling Stones’ doubtlessly expensive “Satisfaction” (released June 6, 1965), a very popular rock & roll song about advertising, was featured prominently. The season was also a guessing game: which hot girl in Don's life would win his post-Betty heart? Jane Sterling's pal Bethany Van Nuys? Don's first SCDP secretary Allison? Anna's niece Stephanie? New consumer expert Dr. Faye Miller? Copywriter Peggy Olsen? Office manager Joan Harris? Heroin aficionado Midge Daniels? And then it turned out to be a girl Don seemed to barely notice until Miss Blankenship left the firm. “Mad Men” won its third best-drama Emmy in a row last year; next fall I expect it will snag a fourth. Series mastermind Matthew Weiner is reportedly contracted for a fifth season; it should hit AMC next July or August.
2) JUSTIFIED (FX) A dark, funny western expertly disguised as a contemporary cop show, “Justified” is crazy great, up there with “Get Shorty,” “Jackie Brown” and “Out of Sight” as one of the best Elmore Leonard adaptations ever (which is saying something.) Flying bullets and car chases and sudden violent death complement its dry wit and platoon of embraceable characters. Its protagonist, deputy U.S. marshal Raylan Givens (“Deadwood” vet Tim Olyphant), turned out to be one of television’s most entertaining presences and one of its all-time biggest badasses, one surrounded by a wealth of equally amusing players, a lot of them highly likeable, all of them highly watchable. Season two launches Feb. 9.
3) LOST (ABC) Not nearly as great a series as I thought it was a year ago, but still a great series. I thought the two-track reality introduced in season six both bold and fascinating. I hated that the alternate track ultimately turned out to be essentially a crib of the “Sixth Sense” ending (surely one of the most famous twists in the history of screen entertainment), but found the “sideways” journey for the most part more compelling than all the silliness with Jacob back on the island. And yes, I believe the finale did not “stick” the series’ landing. There was too much “We’ll figure it out later” and too much ultimately figured out in an unsatisfactory manner. (Especially disappointing to me were the sideways-free season-six flashback episodes dealing with Richard and Jacob’s arrivals on the island; it was certainly a smart move not saving those stories for the finale.) But I found the finale entertaining. It was fun seeing Jin and Sun get their English back. And James and Juliet get their memories back. And Jack deal his final beatdown to Fake Locke. And Jack getting one last hug from Christian Shephard. And Jack getting his final kiss on Kate. I miss it but I’m glad it’s done.
4) BREAKING BAD (AMC) Vince Gilligan’s daring, dark drug dramedy improved in season two by adding Bob Odenkirk as shady lawyer “Better Call” Saul Goodman – and improved again in season three with the addition of Jonathan Banks as Saul’s gun-toting world-weary counterpart, the ex-cop Mike. (Mike should get his own series, if anybody’s asking me.) Season three also introduced lab assistant Gale and Tuco’s belly-crawling cousins. Jesse decided he was evil, Skylar partnered with Walter and Walter’s narc brother-in-law Hank got a one-minute warning. Both Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul won Emmy for season three. Season four arrives next summer.
5) BOARDWALK EMPIRE (HBO) Just as Vader’s true face should have looked a lot more like Dr. Phibes’ true face, the singing Phantom of the Opera’s true face should have looked a lot more like that of World War I casualty Richard Harrow, who came to bolster “Boardwalk Empire” as Nucky Thompson’s mid-season marksman from Chicago. A hugely entertaining look at Prohibition-era gangsters and politics, “Boardwalk,” masterminded by former “Sopranos” writer-producer Terrence Winter, turns out to be one of the best original series ever to emerge from the channel that already gave us one great series about New Jersey criminals. Steve Buscemi, a major component of “The Sopranos’” fifth season who also directed four episodes of the series, does a tremendous job balancing wit and menace as Nucky, the enterprise’s central character. The series gets a lot of milage also out of its four great Michaels – Stuhlberg (“A Serious Man”) as rival gangster Arnold Rothstein, Shannon (“Revolutionary Road”) as IRS agent Nelson Van Alden, Williams (“The Wire”) as longtime Thompson associate Chalky White, and Pitt (“The Village”) as Princeton-educated thug Jimmy Darmody. Oh, and the opening titles rock. Look for season two next autumn.
6) THE WALKING DEAD (AMC) This series demands its flashbacks; I want to learn where all these above-ground dead people came from and how they came to outnumber the living so quickly. Did virus-riddled asteroids riddle the Earth at some point, creating seed corpses? A riveting new sci-fi action adventure series from writer-director-producer Frank Darabont (of “Shawshank Redemption,” “Green Mile” and “The Mist” fame), “Walking Dead” goes a long way toward filling the weekly post-apocalyptic drama hole in my heart left by the cancellation of “Battlestar Galactica.” “Walking” started strong, and kept getting better. Things get gory and scary, more than one expects from a basic cable series, even if it does air after 10 p.m. I was plenty hooked by the third episode, which shifts the focus to the social dynamic shared by a tiny community of survivors who have found a tenuous refuge in the woods outside Atlanta. Things get very agreeably complex. This is the biggest thing AMC has ever aired and a 13-episode second season greets us next autumn.
7) FRINGE (Fox) No longer merely Bad Robot’s better-written, better-acted reimagining of “The X-Files,” “Fringe” is now firmly a tale of mirror universes, and Earth 2 turns out to be one fun place to visit. We learned in 2010 that William Bell turned a Jacksonville tot named Olivia Dunham into a firestarter. Dec. 2’s episode, “Entrada,” scripted by showrunners Jeff Pinkner and J.H. Wyman, put a spotlight on Col. Broyles, swapped Olivias and demonstrated that Olivia, Peter and Walter were still characters worth caring about. Sadly, Fox is moving this to Fox’s Friday Death Slot starting Jan. 21, when it deserves to air after “House” or “Glee” or “American Idol.”
8) CAPRICA (Syfy) This should prove my most controversial choice but may seem less controversial after everyone sees the series’ eye-opening final episodes (Syfy runs them in a five-hour block Tuesday night). I found the final two episodes, written or co-written by “Star Trek”/“Galactica” vets Michael Taylor (“Virtuality”) and Jane Espenson (“Buffy,” “Angel,” “Firefly”) thrilling and redemptive of the series as whole. (Expect to fall hard in these final episodes for Bill Adama’s kitchen-happy grandmamma.) I did come to care about the plights of Lacy Rand and the Greystones and the Adamas. SPOILERS: The final act of the final episode telescopes five years forward, and makes Syfy’s decision to redlight a second season all that much more saddening. (The DVD issued two weeks ago contains a finale commentary by writer-producer Kevin Murphy, who indicates the Vancouver Olympics prevented a first-season episode in which Zoe communed in virtual reality with a member of “Galactica’s” Final Five Cylons. Could have been Saul Tigh! Heartbreaking!) END SPOILERS. If you haven’t heard, Syfy has already greenlit the pilot for “Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome,” which will follow a twentysomething Bill Adama during his Cylon War I adventures.
9) DAMAGES (FX) Like “Mad Men,” “Boardwalk Empire” and (huh?) CBS’ “Blue Bloods,” this engrossing legal soap is masterminded by a “Sopranos” alumnus, in this case one Todd Kessler. The resurgent third season, which revolved around the family of a Bernie Madoff-like Wall Street swindler, was great fun – and made excellent use of Martin Short as the family’s tough little lawyer – was not enough to keep FX from calling for a permanent adjournment. The best news is DirecTV picked up “Damages” for two more new seasons and is about to begin repeating the first three seasons. (“The Good Wife” made a lot of top-ten lists this year but I no longer watch it; it is really better than “Damages” now?)
10) (TIE) PARENTHOOD/FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS (NBC) Two dramedies that have the decency to actually bring some serious funny on a regular basis. Both are NBC hourlongs and both are masterminded by Jason Katims the “My So-Called Life” writer who went on to create “Relativity” and the TV version of “Roswell.” The two even share actors (and will probably come to share more now that FNL has wrapped production). This Katims fellow has long favored agreeably textured dialogue that seems to carry an improvisational flavor. In any event, I can’t stop watching his TV shows. Happily “Parenthood” is performing much better than “Lights,” so it may stick around more than five seasons. “Lights” is in the middle of its final season on DirecTV, a season that will be repeated on NBC early this year.
HALF-HOURS:
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1) FUTURAMA (Comedy Central) I’m not sure what happened, but the 2010 (3010?) adventures of Zoidberg, Bender and Kif may have manifested the series’ funniest season ever. A huge comeback following the uneven quality of the straight-to-DVD movies.
2) SOUTH PARK (Comedy Central) The 2010 season contained the Tom Cruise fudge-packing two-parter, a three-part Coon adventure that revealed Kenny knew all along, and the image of a shark anally raping a preteen camper.
3) THE SARAH SILVERMAN PROGRAM (Comedy Central) The best half-hour series that ended last year continued to give plenty of work to veterans of HBO’s “Mr. Show.” Too few seem to understand the hard-wired genius of this innovative sitcom.
4) COMMUNITY (NBC) Dan Harmon, co-creator of “The Sarah Silverman Program,” created “Community,” and it takes a lot of the sting out of the loss of his Comedy Central staple. You’d never know from its ratings that it’s now the funniest thing in broadcast primetime. Danny Pudi’s Abed keeps stealing the show.
5) PARKS AND RECREATION (NBC) If you go by the critics’ lists provided below, it becomes obvious that “Parks” is now widely regarded as a good deal funnier than last year’s critical darling, “Modern Family.” Justifiably so. Paul Schneider will be missed, but Adam Scott and Rob Lowe have proven terrific additions. Season three gets off to a hilarious start (poor Jerry!) and inherits the coveted post-“Office” timeslot on Jan. 20.
6) LOUIE (FX) The man’s a comedy god and he’s never been better utilized. Hands down the funniest new half-hour of the year belongs to Louis CK, who not only writes, directs and stars in every absurd episode, but something serves as editor too. Extra points for bringing Nick DiPaolo, Pamela Adlon and Todd Barry in on the fun.
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7) IMPORTANT THINGS WITH DEMETRI MARTIN (Comedy Central) Demetri Martin in my eyes is one of the sharpest, strangest stand-ups of all time, and teaming him with genius improviser H. Jon Benjamin (“Dr. Katz,” “Archer,” “Bob’s Burgers”) proved an inspired teaming. But not inspired enough to attract an audience. I rate this abysmally-rated enterprise the best original sketch show Comedy Central has aired yet.
8) THE VENTURE BROS. (Cartoon Network) Still one of the best things on TV ever, the series seems now to struggle to find fresh comedic themes to explore. One thing is certain: Sgt. Hatred is nowhere near as funny as Brock Samson. The finale gets extra points for revealing what happened to Triana’s pal Kim – who didn’t end up pursuing supervillainy after all.
9) WEEDS (Showtime) The jarring mallet-murder that capped season five re-energized the series by turning the Botwins out onto the open road. Mary Louise Parker and Justin Kirk still know how to sell Jenji Kohan’s unusually sharp dialog, and there’s something quite moving to be found in the Nancy-Andy co-dependency. Also? College-girl nudity! Much as I admire Elizabeth Perkins, the Hodeses were not missed.
10) THE OFFICE (NBC) 2010 was easily one of this series’ least-accomplished in years, but it still gets more laughs out of me than any non-NBC broadcast sitcom. (Remember Dwight advising members of his spinning class that they’d all been captured and raped?) And as NBC’s highest-rated scripted series, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
Other critics’ top-10s of 2010:
Onion AV Club:
1. Breaking Bad
2. Community
3. Parks and Recreation
4. Louie
5. Mad Men
6. Party Down
7. Terriers
8. Lost
9. The Good Wife
10. Cougar Town
Salon:
1. Community
2. Boardwalk Empire
3. 30 Rock
4. Men of a Certain Age
5. Louie
6. Parks and Recreation
7. Mad Men
8. Bored To Death
9. The Walking Dead
10. Modern Family
Entertainment Weekly:
1. Breaking Bad
2. Fringe
3. The Good Wife
4. Parks and Recreation/30 Rock/Community
5. Mad Men
6. Justified
7. Friday Night Lights
8. Modern Family
9. Men of a Certain Age
10. Work of Art: The Next Great Artist
TV Guide:
1. Mad Men
2. Modern Family
3. Lost
4. The Good Wife
5. Temple Grandin/The Pacific
6. Breaking Bad/The Walking Dead
7. Glee/The Choir
8. Boardwalk Empire
9. Sherlock
10. Justified/Terriers/Louie/Damages
Time:
1. Breaking Bad
2. Mad Men
3. Parks and Recreation
4. Louie
5. Boardwalk Empire
6. Party Down
7. The Pacific
8. The Good Wife
9. Rubicon
10. Terriers
HitFix:
RETURNING:
1. Breaking Bad
2. Mad Men
3. Parks and Recreation
4. Community
5. 30 For 30
6. Men Of A Certain Age
7. Friday Night Lights
8. Lost
9. Cougar Town
10. Party Down
NEW:
1. Terriers
2. The Pacific
3. Louie
4. Boardwalk Empire
5. Treme
6. Rubicon
7. Justified
8. Sherlock
9. Archer
10. Parenthood
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
1. The Good Wife
2. Mad Men
3. Community
4. Modern Family
5. The Middle
6. Breaking Bad
7. Spartacus
8. The Walking Dead
9. Terriers
10. Glee
The New York Times:
American Experience: My Lai
The Boondocks
Carlos
Friday Night Lights
Fringe
Gavin and Stacey
The Good Wife
Huge
Louie
Spectacle: Elvis Costello With …
Happy New Year!
The Best Superman Story In Decades Comes To Blu-ray!!
