Noel: A lot. But first, can I make one minor complaint about The Office? It's starting to range a little too far into the wacky, and lose that "painfully true" quality that it used to have (and that the British version practically patented). I still treasure it, though. And yes, Prison Mike couldn't have been much funnier.
Similarly, My Name Is Earl has been getting sillier and losing a little of the heart it showed in season one. But it's still very funny too. And Scrubs is, as it always has been, very hit-and-miss, though when it hits, it's ridiculously funny. (Please don't tell our resident Zach Braff-hater, The Hater, I said that.)
So the new Must See TV Thursday isn't exactly seamless, but it's more consistent than the old one (propped up by the likes of Veronica's Closet and Suddenly Susan), and it features my favorite new show of the 2006 season, 30 Rock. Tina Fey's behind-the-scenes-of-sketch-comedy sitcom was merely amusing at first—thanks in large part to Alec Baldwin's sweetly sinister performance as an in-the-wrong-place NBC executive—but over the past couple of episodes, it's been exhibiting all the hallmarks of classic TV comedy. There are recurring jokes (The Beeper King, The Rural Juror), quirky minor characters (Kenny The Page), and a sustainable but not too stressful central conflict between the business-minded Baldwin and the comedy-minded Fey. I predict that by the end of this season, 30 Rock will be giving The Office a run for its money as the funniest show on Thursday night, and Arrested Development a battle for "best single-camera sitcom of the '00s." At least I hope that's what happens. I confess I've kind of got a critic-crush on this show and all the people involved with it.
As for the 30 Rock versus Studio 60 imbroglio, they're such vastly different shows that I can let them comfortably co-exist. Yes, I'm still watching Studio 60. Yes, Aaron Sorkin's not-as-cool-as-he-thinks-he-is preachiness is still annoying. But his show's been less topical and more showbiz-focused lately, and it's been much better for it. Not best-of-the-year better, but better.
Let's leave the networks for a little while, though, and talk cable. Any underhyped cable shows you want to stand up for?
Scott: I've talked it up in these parts before, but High Stakes Poker on Game Show Network is the best poker show around. I often wonder what motivates the average person to watch poker on TV: Are they trying to pick up pointers for their home games? Do they like the drama of hotly contested hands? Or, to paraphrase a cynical executive in Quiz Show, do they just want to watch the money? High Stakes Poker doesn't have the circus atmosphere of World Series Of Poker, but it certainly has all the other bases covered. Unlike other poker shows, HSP follows a no-limit cash game, not a tournament—and though the rules are the same, it plays as differently as checkers and chess, especially when the world's finest poker minds are going at it. All-in confrontations are rare, though when they happen, the pots can grow to hundreds of thousands of dollars in real cash. The table banter is lively and occasionally caustic, Gabe Kaplan's terrific commentary gets right inside the players' next-level thinking, and there are hands that are legendary among poker junkies like myself. (The GSN-deprived can find a few of them on YouTube, including Negreanu/Hanson (ouch) and Negreanu/Hellmuth (ha-haw!).
Just this week, NBC started a nightly show called Poker After Dark, which is a little like a cross between HSP and the poker that people are accustomed to seeing: six pros, each putting up $20,000 of their own money, and vying for a weekly winner-takes-all $120,000 prize. So each week is a mini-tournament from start to finish, and most of the hands make the broadcast, which is really unusual. Like HSP, it relies on the players themselves to provide much of the verbal entertainment, but it goes way too far in this respect; other than a brief introduction from erstwhile World Poker Tour babe Shana Hiatt, and minimal voiceover from a disembodied play-by-play announcer, there's no context to any of the action. (Who knows what they're going to do during a week when they don't have blabbermouths like Phil Hellmuth and Shawn Sheikhan in the game?) And that's ultimately what gives High Stakes Poker an edge: It works as entertainment, not just C-SPAN with hole-cams. And it also provides definitive evidence that the best players in the world are total sickos.
But I'm often lost in the netherworld of expanded basic. Anything I should be TiVo-ing?
Noel: I'm going to keep pushing you toward The Soup, E!'s roundup of each week's TV lows. VH1 has given these kinds of giggly stuff-we-hate-to-love compendiums a bad name, but The Soup handles its business right, zipping through the worst of reality shows and viral videos in a tidy half-hour, with a couple of not-too-painful sketches sprinkled throughout, and some genuinely funny commentary delivered by host Joel McHale. I don't want to go overboard in praising McHale, who as far as I know doesn't write his own lines, and for all I know may be the kind of Hollywood sleaze-in-waiting who'll turn his back on this dumpy cable show as soon as a better offer comes along. But for the 30 minutes a week (minus commercials) that he's standing in front of a green screen in some cruddy E! studio, McHale is the ideal guide through the pop crap that we tell ourselves we don't want to know about, but can't help craning our necks to see. Want to know who took a dump on the floor in Flavor Of Love? Or who Rosie bitched at on The View? Or what Britney's not wearing? McHale will tell you, with a mixture of shameful glee and genuine disgust. (My favorite McHale line of last year, in response to Katie Couric's nationwide tour to find out what people want to see her do on CBS: "I don't know… How about the news?") But the real beauty of The Soup is that while it initially seems like just another sucking-off-the-bloated-pop-teat comedy show, it has a much smarter take, and a sensibility reflected in the at-first-ridiculous/later-sublime segment intros. You'll have to see the "What Your Boyfriend Is Watching" intro a few times to get what I mean.
Speaking of recurring jokes and distinct sensibilities, the cable comedy show of the year is clearly The Colbert Report, which seemed to have a quickly exhausted single-joke premise when it first aired, but has become essential viewing as the host has expanded his "Colbert-verse." No longer just making fun of the bullshit jus'-folks certitude of political pundits, Colbert has increasingly begun mocking his actual self: the Tolkien-loving theater nerd who really does wish he could write a phonebook-thick science-fiction novel, or work in George Lucas' special-effects department, or jam with an alternative rock band. Have you ever noticed the way Colbert's eyes light up and his façade slips a little when he has an actual Nobel Prize-winner or master mathematician on the show? I don't think I've ever seen a comedian happier to have the job he has.
I'm not one of those knocking The Daily Show, which is still relevant even at its most predictable. But when I watch The Colbert Report, I never know what the hell's going to happen. And that's why I'm almost afraid to miss it.
Scott: After The Colbert Report's first week, I started worrying. There were laughs to be sure, and Colbert's Bill O'Reilly-esque gasbag character seemed well-conceived, but I just didn't see how he could sustain it for four nights a week. And how many guests, I wondered, would submit to being questioned by this Colbert character, anyway? Now that the show has found its legs—and boy, has it—I'm convinced that Colbert is capable of doing anything on any night for as long as he likes. Not only has the character expanded, with those hilarious Tek Jansen Adventures and sharp recurring segments (will that "Shout Out" graphic ever stop being funny?), but Colbert has revealed himself to be a true entertainer, capable of stealing "I Write The Songs" from under Barry Manilow's feet. The year-end finale, in which "all-yearist" Colbert (and Peter Frampton) took on The Decemberists' lead guitarist, was the perfect topper, too. (Of course Henry Kissinger would make an appearance. Who else?) And the show itself didn't even capture Colbert's finest moment of the year, which was his now-infamous appearance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Say what you will about Sacha Baron Cohen, but for Colbert to eviscerate the President's policies within 10 feet of the man was more courageous than anything in Borat.
My other big cable obsession are those Project Runway/Top Chef shows on Bravo, which easily outclass all other reality shows for me. Why? Two reasons. The first is that skill transcends treachery. No matter how honorable or noxious a contestant's personality, what ultimately counts are the dresses on the runway or the food on the plate. Rarely are reality shows such a meritocracy. The second reason is that artists tend to be colorful, intense characters, which naturally leads to strong bonds and equally powerful rancor when the chemistry isn't right. Yet villains like Santino from Project Runway 2 or Stephen from Top Chef 1 remain compelling for their persistent visions, no matter how ill-conceived (I'd submit Santino's jumper for Kara as the single most hideous garment in the show's history), and the wit that redeems their less-fortunate moments. I'm embarrassed to admit how often I've walked around the house mimicking Santino mimicking Tim Gunn, or repeating Stephen's boast about being "in the top-three percentile of everything I do."
The knock on Top Chef is that it's a cooking competition, and thus we viewers are deprived of that necessary sense (you know, taste) to play along with the judges. But I don't buy it. The way the food looks on the plate, the descriptions of the "flavor profiles" (love that chef lingo), the level of inventiveness in response to a given challenge—all of these things give us plenty to, um, chew on. The personalities on the current season haven't resonated with me quite as strongly as the first one, though you can't help but root for poor Michael, whose total lack of refinement was best described by Anthony Bourdain as "Flintstone-ian." There's a little more suspense in the outcome, however, since no clear Harold-like favorite has emerged from the pack, and a good four or five chefs can come out on top any given day. Heck, even Michael with a pulled wisdom tooth had his day in the sun.
So why are these shows so addictive? And more important, who do you like to take down Top Chef 2?
Noel: I'll go with Sam, who up until his anti-Marcel blow-up this week, has been Harold-like in his decency and his culinary imagination. (He does more with fruit and vegetables than any chef I've ever seen.)
I actually came to Project Runway via Top Chef, which I only watched in the first place because I was looking for a Hell's Kitchen-like buzz—though I quickly found out that Top Chef was infinitely superior to Hell's Kitchen, for all those reasons you mention. Obviously, I see now that Top Chef was only following the pattern of Project Runway, which holds the distinction of being one of the few competitive reality shows where talent matters more than cutthroat scheming. Project Runway had another great season, full of flamboyant personalities and good guys to root for. (Oh Michael, why did you fail us so?) And Top Chef has followed up its stellar inaugural offering with another great season, with the perfect TC/PR-type villain, Marcel: a guy who's not "bad" so much as arrogant and insensitive, and divorced from the spirit of camaraderie and collegiality that makes both these shows such a pleasure.
But if I'm handing out an award for the best reality series of 2006, I'd have to give it to the "race war" edition of Survivor, which featured some of the most likeable players in the show's history, and ended with a string of twists and brilliant maneuvers that left the outcome genuinely in doubt. I hadn't watched Survivor in a while before this season, and I'm glad the race hook brought me back in (even though I thought the producers abandoned it too soon). Next up: Rich vs. poor. I can't wait.
For best comedy of 2006, as much as I love The Office and 30 Rock, I've got to hand the prize to How I Met Your Mother, which showed how to instill a conventional three-camera/studio-audience sitcom with the wildness and invention of a single-camera show. The problem with a lot of sitcoms today is that they prize jokes over character development, which works in the short-term, but makes them hard to care about for long. And when I say "character development," I don't necessarily mean twisty Friends-like storylines and sentiment—though How I Met Your Mother certainly has those—but an understanding of who these people really are, how they live, how and why they interrelate, and how to squeeze a joke out of the way they behave as much as the witty things they say. The How I Met Your Mother writers really got into a groove toward the end of the show's first year, and on into the second so far, and now they're comfortable enough with the characters to build whole lines of comedy out of, say, Barney being sick and still trying to act suave, or Marshall and Lily being stuck in a bathroom together and discovering that their intimacy only extends so far. But this show tops the list for one reason and one reason only: "Slap Bet," the funniest half-hour of TV I saw all year, from the introduction of the "slap-bet commissioner" to the final "Let's Go To The Mall" music video. Better than porn… (wait for it) …ography. ("Yeah, we didn't really need to wait for that.")
Finally, my favorite drama of '06 is another show finding its purpose: The Shield. Always a top-flight, complex policier, The Shield kicked into a higher gear this year by gathering up nearly every dangling subplot of the first four seasons and putting them all on the table when Forest Whitaker appeared as an internal-affairs investigator. Abandoning all pretense of case-a-week storytelling and making the serial story paramount, Shield creator Shawn Ryan gave the show an almost sickening pull from week to week, as circumstances worsened for our heroes (who aren't all that heroic, as eternally conflicted fans well know). Then a cruel, cut-the-Gordian-knot logic emerged in the brilliant, unsettling final episode. Originally, the rest of the story was going to unfold this spring, but this season was so well-received that The Shield has been renewed for 2008 as well. Frankly, that worries me. It was the threat of finality that made the show really start moving. I hope the momentum doesn't stall too much when the story continues in March.
So that's a look at what I watched compulsively in '06. Of course, I don't have HBO, so I missed Deadwood and… what's that other show called again? The one people seem to think is the best ever?
Scott: First off, I'm with you all the way on The Shield, but haven't yet caught up with the '06 Forest Whitaker season, which I trust is as riveting as you say it is. But you're right in guessing that HBO's The Wire, the show everyone thinks is the best ever, did in fact live up to that impossibly lofty billing in its fourth and perhaps strongest season. The show's universe has been expanding steadily from the first season, building into a complete and pitiless (though nonetheless empathetic and heartbreaking) portrait of how a city's institutions affect its people. And none were as cruelly affected as the four middle-school chums introduced this year, whose fates are determined by the streets and the system more than any act of will. In this season especially, the show reveals the lie of the less fortunate somehow pulling themselves up "by the bootstraps"; more often than not, good intentions and nobility are rewarded with further setbacks and hardships, which is why those determined to do good work (like Freamon, the quiet soul of Major Crimes) are viewed as almost comically quixotic. I could go on and on about The Wire—and did a few months ago in a blog post—but suffice to say, there's a reason why many otherwise cool-headed TV critics bust out the superlatives when talking about this show. There's just nothing like it.
Here's to another great year ahead. If 2007 is any better than 2006, I'll need some help getting off the couch.
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