If I watched a lot of television last year, I probably watched more this year. The pandemic will do that to you. Some of the pandemic viewing just blurs together. I remember rewatching the Simpsons, but didn’t realize it extended through the new year into this year. I mostly remember everything I watched, but the beginning of 2021 doesn’t necessarily extend to the end of 2021. I tend to think seasonally these days. Also, we bought and moved into a house, so I think of that as a major dividing line. One trend I noticed is we tended toward animation in TV shows, less in film. Given the various stressful/dour news of the world, we tried to keep our television viewing light. I read about some folks re-watching the Sopranos, or Mad Men, or something. That seems stressful! I think the darkest thing on our television is Justified, Atlanta, or Infinity Train (season 3 gets pretty dark!). We tended towards comedies, and tried to finish things, rather than let them linger unfinished. We experimented a little with a few shows like M.O.D.O.K or Tales of the House Husband, but if we started it, for the most part we finished it (barring a few shows currently on holiday break).
Favorites:
Schitt’s Creek, Seasons 1-6. The balm of 2021’s winter and spring seasons. This incredibly nice Canadian TV show deserves all of its plaudits. Funny, touching, slow-moving character development, not-cringey humor. Amazingly well done.
Harley Quinn, Season 2. Probably my favorite animated series. It’s basically a Venture Bros style take on the DC universe with an amazing voice cast. I cannot recommend it enough if you like a sorta raunchy fast-paced anarchic show.
Infinity Train, Seasons 1 – 3. Each season starts relatively whimsical, but then becomes progressively darker until the end of season 3 gets really, morbidly dark. I know there’s a season 4, but we’ve not taken the plunge. Each episode is 11 minutes long. Everything packs a punch.
Ted Lasso, Season 1. Kind, charming, touching, and realistic.
Mythic Quest, Seasons 1 and 2. Consistently funny and occasionally surprisingly moving show that is a workplace comedy in a video game company. The specials in particular pack a moving punch. Apple puts out pretty good shows.
Ducktales 2018, Seasons 1 – 3. It’s disappointing this got cancelled, but what we got was all pretty great! Good voice performances, lovely new takes on the material, handsome animation. Consistently laugh-out-loud funny. I would show this to kids.
What We Do in The Shadows, Season 3. Consistently one of the funniest things I see on TV with excellent characterization, silliness, and stakes.
Reservation Dogs, Season 1. We had to ration this gem of a show. Singular in its vision. Moving, funny, singular.
The Owl House, Season 2. Probably my second favorite animated show. Animation continues to be top notch, continues to world build but doesn’t ignore its characters, and continues to ground everyone. The original reason I got Disney+ was for this show.
The Only Murders in the Building. Just really solid front to back. Selena Gomez was a surprising revelation in this (I’m only aware of her as a pop icon). It’s good to see Steve Martin and Martin Short back on screen again.
The Venture Bros, Season 7. I never saw the final season of Venture Bros, and it continued to grow in heart. Glad we’ll be getting a formal end cap on these characters.
Crime Scene Kitchen. Just an amazingly silly, inventive reality series with great hosting from Joel McHale.
Rewatched and Enjoyed:
The Venture Bros (Seasons 3 – 6). I used to recommend Season 2 as the real starting point for folks who wanted to start the Venture Bros, as I thought that’s where the series really gels. But in re-watching, it’s now Season 3. There’s a lot of plot and character set up in the first two seasons, but the humor has aged poorly from those seasons. There’s a surprisingly large number of gay panic jokes, and while there are a few good ones in there, Season 3 is when the humor catches up with concept, eschewing some of the in-group nerd and shock jokes to really develop solid character humor chops. After that, it’s pretty gravy. Season 4 has fewer Sgt. Hatred pedophile jokes than I remember.
Futurama (Seasons 1 – 4). Those first four seasons (technically 5 according to way TV is cut together) are really great. Many of the jokes still hold up. I forgot just how dumb Fry is. For all intents and purposes, the series ends after The Devil’s Hands. After that, while the series has a few killer episodes, I think it becomes more about re-hashing many of the same character dynamics.
Simpsons (Seasons 7 – 9). For me, Season 7 and 8 are probably my favorite, with hardly a clunky episode. Seasons 4 – 6 are fabulous, but nearly all of my favorites are in those two seasons. After Season 8, many of the writers left for Futurama, and the joke quality slides for the first part of Season 9, before recovering. I understand that Season 10 – 12 have some defenders, but we noticed enough of a drop in quality to call it after season 9.
Justified (Seasons 1 – 2). I’d seen these before, but Staehli hadn’t. She was interested in discovering more of Timothy Olyphant’s work after seeing him in the second season of the Mandalorian. Season 1 has so much more violence than I remember, they tone it down in Season 2, which remains my favorite of the two. We’re still working our way through Season 3, but enjoying it so far.
Enjoyed:
The Queen’s Gambit. Pretty good! I like Anya-Taylor Joy. A little pat, but ultimately good.
Kipo and the Wonderbeasts, Seasons 1 – 3. Inventive animation, fun story and characters. Aimed at a younger audience, but I still had a great deal of fun with this.
Atlanta, Seasons 1 and 2. Some truly strange, funny, poignant, and specific material. You never know quite what you’re going to get in this show. Zazie Beetz is doing great work in this and I wish she got better caliber work overall. It’s also amazing to see Brian Tyree Henry be so compelling and so mean in this, when I think of him as so cuddly and warm.
Cardcaptor Sakura, Season 2. I like this show, but I liked Season 1 more. The lack of a central mystery for the audience, less Kuro-chan, and more creepy kid didn’t quite make me love it as much as the first season, which was a balm to my anxiety brain.
Revolutionary Girl Utena. One of Staehli’s favorite shows. I think this show rewards re-watching because there’s so much going on in subtext early on that comes to the fore in the last handful of episodes. It can be repetitive, but that repetition means something, and the small deviations can also be meaningful. It’s operating as allegory and critique at the same time.
The Great North, Season 1. From some of the Bob’s Burger creators, this quickly finds a similar groove with a strange family in Alaska. I like the low stakes hijinks in this small town full of weirdos. We tried Central Park, but quickly found this was more our speed.
Taskmaster, Season 1 – 11. Two very different friends recommended Taskmaster, so we went for it on Youtube and it quickly became a favorite show to watch that also made for good background noise when we wanted to scroll our phones. Some of the tasks are hilarious, some incredibly British. Ultimately a good bit of fun.
Ted Lasso, Season 2. The show takes a darker turn, and it somehow became the subject of much internet conversation. I still liked it (I’m a Roy/Keely stan), and I’m curious where Season 3 will go.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch. The Dad Batch.
The Santa Clarita Diet, Seasons 1 – 3. Initially we started watching this because Staehli wanted to see more Timothy Olyphant, but I found myself falling a bit in love with this silly show. I loved that this didn’t quite take the traditional Zombie approach. I think if I knew it was from the creators of Better Off Ted, I would have jumped on. More Zingy 30 minute comedies please. I came to really enjoy the wackiness of this show and its central family.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Season 1. I’ve heard many critics sing the praises of this show, and was curious. Staehli seemed on board, and we quickly grew to appreciate this weird musical show that somehow went 4 Seasons. It’s so niche, so heightened, and can be so frank and funny. It can also be horrifically cringey. Your mileage may vary.
Star Wars Rebels, Season 3. We never finished Stars Wars Rebels, and in looking for something not too dark, we dipped into this, and liked Season 3. You can see the DNA for other Dave Filoni Star Wars in here, but also it’s creating its own thing.
Meh:
Wandavision (didn’t finish) I stopped caring when the show premise stopped and it became a battle between Wanda and Shield. I wanted this to breathe as its own thing, similar to the Netflix Marvel shows, but they insisted in dragging it back into the overall Marvel World. I don’t need that! I just wanted this interesting combo of mystery, sitcom send ups, and exploration of grief.
Bridgerton (didn’t finish) The Duke was great, I just did not buy our central ingenue. I think that actress just wasn’t set up for period drama. She looks great in modern clothing and affects.
Nadiya Bakes and Nadiya Cooks We finished this, but many of these recipes look….bad. Glad she has her own show.
Loki, Season 1 See above about the show getting Marvel-ified. I was excited about the central premise, and signed on for the surprisingly delightful pairing between Owen Wilson and Tom Hiddleston, but then the show wanted us to be invested in Tom Hiddleston and Sophia Di Martino, and I didn’t have enough time to adjust. I just wanted a serialized show where Owen Wilson and Tom Hiddleston solve dumb time crimes! I didn’t need all the rest.
Essentially background noise:
Forged in Fire (Seasons 3 – 6). People make knives, and it’s perfect background noise. Staehli and I now have opinions about forging and knife craft. I have forged one knife, as part of a bachelor party activity. It is very difficult. It’s also interesting to see the various depictions of masculine tinkerer, from the mildly eccentric guy-in-his-shop to hi-tech nerd to can-do redneck to honest craftsman to masculine manly man to tough lady.
The Great Christmas Light Fight (Seasons 5, 9) Surprisingly repetitive, but an okay holiday time. I’ve learned I have opinions about Christmas Decorations.
Conclusion
Sometimes I miss truly episodic television with satisfying episodes as actual episodes. We’ve been watching the second season of The Witcher, and I miss the episodes defined by finding and dealing with a creature. When I’m scouting for new TV, that’s something I try to pay attention to: does it have an episodic take? Other new shows that we’ve seen have had less and less episode structure (looking at you Netflix shows…) designed to focus on the binge, which has been more detrimental to even remembering what happens when. A solid TV episode can be a thing to remember, an event. I also do sort of like the weekly show for Ted Lasso, etc., as Staehli and I can better ration our viewing, abandon shows as needed, and talk and discuss our feelings about the shows.
We’ll continue with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (in the middle of Season 2 now), our Fox animated TV shows, and probably explore some other things. Our current list looks like:
- Thrilling Adventures of Sabrina – Netflix (this show’s visuals look great, I’m made to understand the plot is incredibly dumb).
- Good Place, Season 4 (we never finished this!)
- Masters of the Universe – Netflix (Interesting conceit)
- Dark Crystal – Netflix (I like puppets)
- Devs – Hulu (Serious Sci-Fi)
- Terriers – Hulu (Noir)
- Twin Peaks, Season 3 – Showtime
- Fargo – Hulu
- On Becoming a God in Central Florida – Showtime
- The Book of Boba Fett – Disney+
- The Flight Attendant – HBO Max
- Foundation – AppleTV
- Dickenson – AppleTV
- The Great – Hulu
- YellowJackets – Showtime
Word Choice 