Top 11s of 2011

TELEVISION:
11. Pan Am
10. 2 Broke Girls & New Girl (My 2 new favorite guilty pleasures.)
09. Once Upon a Time & Grimm (or Fables the TV show)
08. Justified
07. Bob's Burgers
06. 30 Rock
05. Archer
04. Community
03. Friday Night Lights
02. Parks & Recreation
01. Louie

VIDEOGAMES:

11. Sonic Generations
10. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (also Halo CE and Gears of War 3)
09. Marvel vs. Capcom 3 & Mortal Kombat
08. Killzone 3
07. L.A. Noire
06. Infamous 2
05. Little Big Planet 2
04. Assasin's Creed: Revelations
03. Portal 2
02. Batman: Arkham City
01. Skyrim

MUSIC:
11. Cut Copy - Zonoscope
10. Feist - Metals or female singer songwriters in general with St. Vincent (Strange Mercy), Florence + The Machine (Ceremonials) and Lykke Li (Wounded Rhymes)
09. Kanye West and Jay-Z - Watch the Throne
08. Foster the People - Torches
07. Red Fang - Murder the Mountains
06. Childish Gambino - Camp
05. Graveyard - Hisingen Blues
04. Radiohead - King of Limbs
03. The Strokes - Angeles
02. Thursday - No Devolucion
01. Black Keys - El Camino

MOVIES:
11. Captain America (Green Hornet, Thor, X-men, Green Lantern)
10. Our Idiot Brother (Cedar Rapids, Hangover 2, Bad Teacher, 30 Minutes or Less)
09. Crazy Stupid Love
08. Harry Potter: Deathly Hallows Part 2
07. Attack the Block
06. Super
05. Young Adult
04. The Guard
03. 50/50
02. Bridesmaids
01. Drive

Top 10 of 2k10: TV

Let me just say this up front, 2010 was a ridiculous year for television. I tuned in to around 25 different shows throughout the year, and most were great, which made it really hard to whittle that list down to a top 10. Let me just take a second to mention a few shows that didn't make it, one sentence each.

Honorable Mentions: Dramas:
House - This is one of my favorite shows on television, and it didn't make it in to the top 10, too bad it only got good late in the season with the arrival of Masters.

Parenthood - Sentimental dramas aren't really my thing, but the characters in this show are so well written and acted it's hard not to watch.

Dexter - I've been reluctant to finish this season because I don't really like Julia Stiles,  not to mention she has to follow John Lithgow's amazing performance last season.

Weeds - It was nice to see the Botwin family on the run, they returned to the family dynamic that made the first few seasons so great.

Honorable Mentions: Comedies:
The League - This show is ridiculous, some of the best jokes of the year have come from The League, and it's not really about football.

Archer - H. Jon Benjamin is one of my favorite voice actors and he's hilarious as a spy, watch this on Netflix.

East Bound & Down - I was kind of late on watching this show, but Danny McBride is brilliant as Kenny F'in Powers.

Like I said, lot of good shows and that's not even the best of the best. Honestly, isn't having honorable mentions a cop-out? At least I kept them to one sentence...lot of commas though...no semi-colons, so there.



Anyway, Top 10:

10. The Office
The last season with Steve Carell as Michael Scott, and what a note to leave on. This has honestly been one of the funniest seasons since the series started, I live for the cold opens. Oddly enough Erin is becoming my favorite thing about the show, I thought she was annoying at first but now nearly everything she says or does is hilarious.
Favorite Episode: Costume Contest

9. It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia
Most people will admit that Sunny hasn't been the same since season 2, but I feel like season 6 is back to form. Generally the episodes are all one shot storylines so it was weird to see some overarching plots through the season but I think it worked well to develop the characters some. Honestly what really made Sunny great was the writing, it's simple enough but I found most of the jokes funny in every episode.
Favorite Episode: The Gang gets stranded in the woods

8. Lost
THE FINAL SEASON, how many times did you have to see that on ABC? Really, season 1 is the best season of lost ever. Although, It was nice to see the story wrap up and finally have most questions answered. Were they? I don't know, Lost was a complicated show and its hard to wrap up a series like it in a way that satisfies everyone but I liked the ending...mostly.
Favorite Episode: Its hard to pick one because of the story so I'm going to go with Favorite Character: Desmond! (Aye, brotha.)

7. The Walking Dead
AMC, the movie channel mind you, is getting really good at making tv shows. I haven't read the comics so I can't compare the two, but I really like the story in Walking Dead. It might not be the most original thing ever, but its good.
Favorite Episode: Vatos

6. 30 Rock
Can I just express alarm at the fact that at one point 30Rock was my favorite show on television and now its number six for the year. Thank you. As Liz Lemon would say, "What the what?' It was actually a pretty good season too, its just that there were so many good shows.
Favorite Episode: Live Show (I know its not the best of the season, but seriously, they did a live show just because. How awesome is that?)

5. Modern Family
Modern Family is like Parenthood but funny, which sucks for Parenthood because MF is really funny. I still don't love all the characters but most have grown on me. I don't care for the goofball humor of Phil and Luke, but Cam and Mitchell (the gay couple) really make the show great.
Favorite Episode: Unplugged

4. Parks and Recreation
That this show has been on hiatus since early 2010 is a crime, the only bright side to which is that season two is on Netflix. I wasn't really sold on Parks&Rec after season one but I stuck with it and boy am I happy I did. This is one of the funniest shows on tv and thats not hard to believe given the cast.
Favorite Episode: (Limiting myself to ones that just came out in 2010) 94 Meetings

3. Community
There's not too much to say other than, COMMUNITY IS THE FUNNIEST SHOW ON TV AND IF YOU'RE NOT WATCHING IT YOU SHOULDN'T BE ALLOWED TO HAVE CABLE. Also: I'm in love with Alison Brie, I'm in lust with Gillian Jacobs. Donald Glover should have been the new Spiderman.
Favorite Episode: Nope,
Top 5 Episodes of Community:
5.Aerodynamics of Gender
4.Mixology Certification
3.Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas
2.Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design
1.Cooperative Calligraphy - "Well tell your disappointment to suck it! WERE DOING A BOTTLE EPISODE!"


2. Louie
I can only call Community the funniest show on tv because Louie is so complicated I sometimes consider it a drama. Just like Louis C.K.'s stand up Louie will make you laugh out loud or look introspectively at what your beliefs, either way it and he are brilliant. Not to mention the show is remarkably well produced.
Favorite Episodes: Poker/Divorce or Pilot for laughs. God for life changing from an FX show.


1. Mad Men
Mad Men really had me going for a minute, it seemed like the plot had no direction. And yet, this season had some of the most interesting character development of the series, which is astonishing for a character driven show this far along in its series. Of course Don's dilemma of what direction to take his life after his divorce is interesting, but I really enjoyed seeing Peggy and Joan rise among the ranks of Sterling Cooper Draper Price.
Favorite Episode: The Beautiful Girls (whoo! Girl Power!)

TV is warning me of the perils of being a parent

A bit preemptively too I might add. NBC's Parenthood has recently joined the ranks of dramedys Modern Family and Cougar Town, or as I like to call them "birth control."  As if reality wasn't enough of a humbling experience as far as my inability to be an adult, these shows illustrate scenarios that I could never imagine tackling as a parent. The important thing is that along with all the drama and touching family moments, they can bring the laughs.

Cougar Town began airing in the fall of 2009 and stars Courtney Cox as a single mother and realty agent, and the show really plays on the idea of needing a village to raise a child, the child is 18 but the point still stands.This show has the most laughs for me because Courtney Cox gets away with being "Jules," the slightly-crazy single mother who is trying to relive the 20's she never had. The supporting characters are pretty well written and believable (if just a bit shallow, though that seems to be filling in with time) and the actors have great chemistry together. The interesting thing is that while the families in Modern Family and Parenthood are huge and have each other to fall back on, you really get the sense that Jules and her son have an intimate relationship and are emblematic of the single-parent families that are becoming more and more prevalent.

Modern Family began airing alongside Cougar Town and features a generic sitcom family, two married gay men and their adopted daughter, and an older man who married younger. Oh and I did I forget to mention that they're all one big family? Cause there's that too. The show gets to feature a few different styles of comedy thanks to the huge cast so there seems to be something for everyone, my favorite is the gay couple. It's not as funny as Cougar Town, but excels in its on way, and unlike CT its multiple perspectives allow it to provide insight and perspective on larger philosophies that parents might deal with. "Fears" was the most recent episode and did this best, If you're questioning this show I definitely recommend this episode and have embedded it at the bottom of this post.

Parenthood just started airing recently and so far has proven itself to be the most like a traditional drama. Like Modern Family, Parenthood is a large ensemble drama that follows one large family with each smaller nuclear family providing a different example of stereotypical families. But while Modern Family focuses on types of family by varying the age and gender of the parents, Parenthood focuses more on the different stages of parenthood. The main story seems to follow Lauren Graham as a single mother who has just moved back home with her adolescent son and daughter. Craig T. Nelson plays her father, who with his wife is seeing his children go through their own parenting experiences, the "end" of being a parent (if it ever really ends). The rest of the families present different times in parenthood but each with their own unique plots, which may be a little melodramatic but allows for some great acting in the more emotional scenes.While it's easy to compare Modern Family and Parenthood, the latter seems to be very different once you get past the size of the cast and similar premise and definitely has been added to my queue of shows to watch. (Also, crazily enough Dax Shepard is kind of good.)

Like I said, my favorite episode of Modern Family so far:


And here's the pilot to Parenthood, or as I like to call it "my new favorite thing with Lauren Graham."

TV this week

Monday:
House was amazing, the episode "Locked In" featured Mos Def as the patient of the week. The idea of using a POV camera with Mos Def voicing over was especially interesting because Mos Def's sold the idea that you were actually inside the character's mind, you also get to see House from the patient's eyes which is different. A few minutes in, I'm worried that the POV might be a gimmick but we're taken to a scene where Mos Def gets and MRI and while being scanned has a dialogue with House in his mind. These scenes that take place in the characters mind are interesting because we see the characters standing together conversing, but the world can change around them since they are in the patient's mind. Maybe this explanation doesn't do the idea justice, definitely watch this episode online if you missed it. This was my favorite episode so far this season; a great mystery, some character drama (but not too much), and none of Cuddy's baby mama drama.

Chuck is one of those shows that is extremely under appreciated, no I don't watch it the night of because its on the same time as House. That being said if you're not, you should be watching it on Hulu; its got a well rounded cast and a great story. This weeks episode was interesting because of Sarah's absence, Agent Forrester seems to be a CIA agent of Casey's dreams and Chuck's nightmares. Forrester easily illustrates why Sarah is good as Chuck's handler and we see that their relationship helps her do her job well, although it seems Chuck is coming along as a spy and has managed to get himself out of some dangerous situations and does so again.

Last week's episode of Heroes saw the return of Bryan Fuller and there was a noticeable difference in the quality of dialogue. This week's episode lacked the witty banter of last weeks but did provide some excellent character development with all the Petrellis. The union between Sylar and Danko has me most excited, I'm curious to see how this will end. Danko knows Sylar can take powers and let him take shapeshifting, so how does Danko think he is going to take down Sylar after helping him become even more powerful?

Wednesday:
ABC is back in my viewing schedule, I've always liked scrubs but at this point don't care enough to tune in regularly, the new show Better of Ted is pretty good. ABC reaired the first two episodes on Tuesday and I enjoyed it, it reminds me a lot of Eureka which seems to be on hiatus.

Thursday:
If Sidereel is correct its all reruns on NBC.

Friday:
I'm debating if I should watch Dollhouse, I've heard some good things and it stars Eliza Dushku with Whedon producing.....we'll see.

Heroes Season 3 Episode 14

So I've finally gotten around to watching this Heroes episode again. I've been meaning to write some of my thoughts on this show for a while so here we go:

On the series in general, its always had great camera work and an interesting style with many subtle details that add to the production quality.

That being said the writing is so inconsistent, I loved the first season despite a few annoyances. Season 2 was all build up and no climax, it ended poorly although there was a clear path the show was supposed to take until the writers strike led to the new ending. And so Season 3, the first half was alright but still lacking, and so far the series still fails to live to its potential.

Maybe its just me, but I really dislike Ali Larter in the series and I wish she would just go away for good, shes one of the most annoying characters in the series along with Mohinder, Claire, and Parkman.
I could understand Mohinder's role as a narrator and when he went through his whole search in the first season, the bug plot was idiotic and aggravating although it did finally get rid of Maya, I just don't see how he is still relevant to the series. Now Mohinder has super strength and I fear he may actually have an actual reason to be included in this season.
Claire just has to go looking for trouble, doesn't she? I loved her last major plot when she finally stopped being a victim and went hunting. I just don't care for all the daddy issues, it was interesting at first but now its just boring. Let HRG be the badass he can be, and let Claire finally move on.
Parkman just bothers me becuase it seems like he is the best at developing his power but is so reluctant to embrace it. I guess its understandable, I just hate the boring "lets be normal" story becuase Parkman could be an awesome hero.
I love hiro and ando but honestly could those two be any worse as heroes? Hiro loses the formula and his powers; Ando takes Hiro's gift, Leaves and ignores him, and then loses him. Okay, Ando's not so bad but these two are like a bad couple, Ando comes back to the computer and finds out that he "is someone close to [Hiro]"...aww how sweet.
Nathan and Peter make for the best drama, I do get tired of Peter's emo angst and the whole "sylar is your brother" thing was annoying, but these are two of my favorite characters on the show.
Sylar is, as always, great; not much more I can say about that.

One last thing, why is peter struggling not to be sucked out of a hole in a plane? A. he can fly B. he has super strength so it shouldn't be a problem for him to hold on to someone or something. C. since when can we see him absorb someones power? D. Can't he heal himself? he has been around Claire twice already in the episode and he knows her power.

Hopefully the series can survive until episode 19 when we finally get some of the episodes Bryan Fuller worked on.