Qualler's Episode of the Month: August/September

You guys, this has been a pretty awesome year of TV overall, but, one thing that makes it challenging to write these recaps on a monthly basis is that the two best shows of the year, Louie and Breaking Bad, are just so dominant that I wanted to give the other shows that aren't those two awesome, awesome shows a chance to shine. Luckily, two months worth of TV is gonna do that for you. Here is the best of the best on the TV landscape in August and September.

Oh, and it should go without saying that what follows is full of spoilers, if you are averse to those sorts of things.

Rescue Me has not made this list, or any of my Best Of lists since probably its second season. The show's problems are well-documented - the season three Tommy Gavin rape-but-actually-she-likes-it scene made us all squirm, and eventually give up on finishing that season. I took the entire season four off, before checking in for most of the fifth season which had some remarkably excellent episodes(*) and some remarkably terrible episodes(**). A show like this shouldn't go on as long as it did, which I think is why the seasons after the second feel so wildly up-and-down.

(*) Michael J. Fox's story arc was a twisted good time, Tommy jumping off the wagon again was surprisingly powerful, and the episode "Torch" stands as the show's best.

(**) Of course, the episode after "Torch" was an idiotic episode about kids driving the firetrucks all over the place and Lou doing wacky stuff, and the season finale was a horrible letdown that ended like almost every other season ended, in Misery Porn craziness.

Thankfully, creators/writers Denis Leary and Peter Tolan didn't totally forget what made the show intriguing in the first place: the mixture of dudes-talking-to-each-other (which, still, even in the bad episodes was usually the show's saving grace - the dudes in Ladder 62 always had great chemistry) combined with sudden bursts of firefighting action. And the series finale, "Ashes", was not lacking in either of those qualities. It somehow made Lou's death by fire explosion sad but comic. The perfect vortex that occurred on the way to his ashes pouring ceremony was a perfectly executed comic set piece that felt extremely authentic in the universe of the show(***).

(***)And it featured Stephen Pasquele trying to poop out Lou's ashes that got stuck up there. Priceless.

There were a few things that were remnants of the bad stuff the show has done, like the fake-out intro where the funeral for five firefighters was totally just Tommy's dream (although the dream sequence was a great performance by John Scurti), and Tommy ending back up with Janet doesn't work because, well, that's one of the less interesting things the show does. Part of that, I think, is that Andrea Roth is just kind of there as his ex-wife. Callie Thorne as Sheila was completely fearless on the show, even when Leary and Tolan made her do completely stupid, arguably sexist stuff. All in all, a fine conclusion to a show that had brilliant moments.

Awkward. is one of the few shows that is on that will cause Brigitte to stick her head up from the mess of work that she's got going in her Ph.D program. And while the show as a whole only occasionally rises above the enjoyable romp category of shows, its likable cast and sharp dialogue make it stand out on MTV. It's probably the best scripted show on MTV since Daria. Episode seven, "Over My Dead Body" was the right synthesis of 30 Rock-lite madcap comic setpieces, genuine teen angst (but not too angsty), and straight-up laughs. The ever-suffering Jenna Hamilton gets roped into playing Dead Stacey, a long-standing character in a long-standing school assembly who was played by Jenna's mom in the 90s. In a lot of ways, the show resembles a more madcap version of a late-90s WB dramedy, which means it gets to skip over a lot of the more maudlin stuff that it would inevitably get involved in. All in all, Awkward. is a surprisingly (because of the network it is on) subtle look at life as a teenager while being simultaneously funny, charming, and well-acted.

Archer had a fantastic second season, one which I raved about constantly and even netcasted about. FX is a brilliantly run network that apparently knows when they have a great show, and as a result, has gifted us a hybrid third season opener / special TV movie / miniseries that has aired the last three Thursdays(****) in September titled "Heart of Archness". If the second season was brilliant in how it developed into an ensemble comedy (animated or no) on the level of Arrested Development, then this three-parter is all about showcasing the many ways the show flexes its multiple strengths. H. Jon Benjamin is so, so good as Sterling Archer, and Jessica Walter is the perfect mom / foil for Archer. And now that the show's main cast has such great chemistry, adding Patrick Warburton and David Cross just upped the comedic notches even more. So many quotable moments, so many flashes of why Archer is actually a damn good secret agent, and so many laughs. If you need an entry point to the show and don't want to sit through the also-good-but-slightly-uneven first season, try this.

(****)Premiering a very good three-part episode of the show after the highly popular It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is also a great business strategy. John Landgraf from FX, I want to make TV business love to you(*****).


(*****)And that's even after you had to cancel Terriers and Light's Out. And that's a sign of how well you run the business: I don't even blame you for cancelling them! I totally understand! Wow!


Speaking of great shows on FX, Louie is probably the second best show of the year and had another ridiculously strong season, even stronger than its very good first season. It went to darker places than its first season, not afraid to confront them head on, especially in the very excellent episode "Eddie", and it went to straight-up weird places like the front-half of the "Halloween/Ellie" episode, or the back half of the "Bummer/Blueberries" episode. In my mind, the high point of the back half of the second season was episode eight, "Come On, God". It opened with Louie as a pro-masturbation activist on a Fox News show, with lots of easy but no less hilarious digs on the Conservative Religious Right, and one hilarious point by Louie that, if God wants sex to happen only in monogomous marriages, then He is probably using those marriages to masturbate to. (OK, Louis CK delivers that much, much better than I do, obviously.)

But like the show does so well, it eschews the easy holier-than-thou attitude a lesser show would have taken  when he went out for drinks with his debate partner on the Fox News show. He finds that she is indeed interested in getting to know him and avoids making any kind of judgment on his life choices. Like the show does so, so well, it gets to be simultaneously touching, funny, sad, and most of all, super honest. It is these qualities that help elevate Louie above Really Funny Comedy and into the Great Shows category in my brain.

It seems so unfair, then, that the Episode of the Month award winner goes to what is far and away the best show on TV and, according to Chuck Klosterman, moving into Best Show of All Time territory(******), Breaking Bad. The first half of season four was very good, especially the phenomenal season premiere "Box Cutter". Episodes two through seven were all about the slow burn of plot mechanics, introducing the elements of the fourth season that make their way to the forefront of the show in the back half. And holy hell, what a great back half it has been. As Brigitte & I have caught up on season four, I kept thinking, starting with episode eight, "THIS is definitely the best episode of the season so far." As the season has progressed to its conclusion (which comes next Sunday, October 9), the events have just built upon each other to the point where episode eleven, "Crawl Space", reaches an unbelievable level of dread, one that the show has not yet reached, which is incredible given the dread faced in season two's "ABQ" , or season three's "One Minute", "Half Measures", and "Full Measures.

(******)Personally, I think that kind of debate is problematic in general, which I think is what Klosterman is saying in the actual piece that he wrote. Comparing The Wire to The Sopranos to Breaking Bad to Mad Men is not a true Apples to Apples comparison. 


But according to the rules of this thing that I made up, I have to pick a specific episode. So if you put a gun to my head, I'll choose episode nine, "Bug", if only for its surprising re-introduction to the Skylar-Ted plot, Walt's growing anger and resentment over Jesse's perceived disobedience to him, and the raw, rip-out-your-heart conclusion with Walt and Jesse's brawl that ended with Jesse beating the shit out of Walt and telling him, chillingly, "Get the fuck out of here and never come back." If that's not some serious finality to a relationship that was getting more and more strained, then I don't know what is. Of course, the episode before that had the incredible Gus Fring origin story in "Hermanos", episode ten "Salud" had the badass Scarface-like takeout of THE ENTIRE CARTEL(!!!!!!) by Gus, Mike and Jesse, and "Crawl Space" had the aforementioned culmination of the season's creeping dread with Walt maniacally laughing like a freakin' comic book villain in his cash hideout after coming to the realization that, because Skylar gave Ted the money to make the IRS go away(*******) he can't escape from his and his family's inevitable death by murder while Marie calls Skylar frantically to tell her that the Cartel put a hit out on Hank again and HOLY CRAP THAT WAS INTENSE.

(*******)Which was, in my professional opinion as a CPA, the right move, although I would not endorse the means of acquiring said money.


So, yes. Other shows, you are also great, but Breaking Bad, you are extra great. Again.

Qualler's Episode of the Month: June/July 2011

Wow, the summer has melted away so much that I let a month of best TV episodes also melt by the wayside. And yet, June and July has produced episodes of TV among the best of the year. Granted, a lot of that has to do with some of the best shows on TV airing their seasons throughout these months, but it's been one fantastic summer of television thus far. Hey, it beats the hell out of spending $9.50 on Transformers 3, amiright? With apologies to Treme and Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I have yet to catch up on, these are the best episodes of June and July of 2011.

Louie is back and arguably better than ever in its second season. As Chris pointed out, Louie is not afraid to go even darker than last season. Most specifically, in the season's second episode "Bummer/Blueberries", Louis CK's complicated feelings about mortality and bizarre sexual encounters are laid out for everyone to see. But it was the season's third episode "Moving" that encapsulated why Louie is easily one of the best shows on TV right now. Combining the riotously hilarious standup bits that encumber every episode along with the surreal elements that frequently litter his episodes (see: Louie and Pamela checking out a crazy man's apartment, Louie's impromptu vision of he and his realtor dancing) and the straight-up wonderful, long scenes of dialogue (Louie talking to his accountant), "Moving" is a sensational half-hour of comedy. It also contained an instantly classic line: "What about Obama?", Louie's response to his accountant telling him that he can't afford a house that costs 17. Million. Dollars. Oh, and it was, in the end, touching as ever, with Louie imagining him telling his realtor that he was going to buy that house for his (totally adorable) daughters.

Game of Thrones, as we documented in this week's episode of Blogulator Radio, is more than just a good adaptation of a good book. It has taken off as its own living, breathing HBO series, in the tradition of great HBO series. Although it's more difficult than usual to pick out a specific episode from a show as dependent on the continuing season-long narrative as GoT naturally is (having 10-hour seasons based on 1,000 page books will tend to leave the bottle episodes away, after all), the show's first season, much like the book it was based on, ratcheted up its intensity, to the point where it produced two breathtaking episodes, "Baelor" and "Fire and Blood". In the show's ninth and tenth episodes of its ten-episode first season, the plot machinations brought things to a head incredibly efficiently. The final scene of "Baelor", where Ned Stark shockingly meets his doom, is as spine-chilling as the scene feels on the page, but done in a good TV way. And the final episode, "Fire and Blood", serves as an effective epilogue while setting up season two like gangbusters. It's final scene is equally memorable to the final scene of "Baelor", with Daenerys emerging from the ashes of Khal Drogo's burning with her newly hatched baby dragons. Even knowing how the book ends, that moment was essentially spoiler-proof because of how incredibly well-executed it was (with a hat tip to director Alan Taylor, who has directed numerous episodes of great HBO shows.) If you're gonna have a show with dragons, you might as well set it up in a way that you really earn them, and GoT earned the shit out of those dragons.

In any other month, Breaking Bad, would be the far and away winner of Qualler's Episode of the Month with its ballsy season premiere "Box Cutter". How many ways was "Box Cutter" one of the best season premieres I have ever seen? Start with the opening scene, a flashback with Gail and Gus chatting about the new meth superlab, or the deeply intense mood-setting post-credits scene with the cops chatting with neighbors about Gail's murder. Or, start with Skylar, breaking into her own bad habits by casually lying to the locksmith so she could break into Walt's apartment. Or, most likely, start with the showstopping, completely and utterly shocking (even with the foreshadowing of the title weapon being a prominent object in that opening scene) scene with Walt nervously trying to show his power over Gus until Gus slashed Victor's throat and let him die...right...in...front...of...Walt and Jesse. Or Jesse's total shock and silence in the wake of his murdering of Gail. This season premiere is the work of a show that knows exactly what its strengths are and utilizes the hell out of them. Where the fourth season will go is anyone's guess, but it couldn't have kicked off any better than "Box Cutter".

So, it would take a really special show, with a really special episode, to cause "Box Cutter" not to be the best episode of TV in June and July. And, that is the case with Friday Night Lights, in its gorgeous series finale, "Always". There's a lot to love about the series finale, from its gentle resolution of Coach and Mrs. Coach's biggest fight of their marriage, to Matt and Coach's hilarious interactions about proposing to Julie. Oh, and Riggins and Tyra's understanding of each other: "Maybe some day our lives will merge" says Riggins. And the final state championship scene was, as Chris pointed out, some real Terrance Malick shit. Who said TV can't aspire to be as cinematic as cinema? Here's to hoping that Peter Berg doesn't really get a new movie produced about Coach and Mrs. Coach in Philadelphia, because it would rob us of this perfect ending to this mostly perfect show.

Qualler's Episode of the Month: May 2011

I admit that now that our first 80 degree weather in Minneapolis has passed by, that my brain has started to turn to mush. And when my brain turns to mush, I am less likely to watch good TV shows and more likely to watch sports (like last night's AMAZING STANLEY CUP PLAYOFF GAME ONE FINALS!!!), or, read Twitter about sports (like last night's AMAZING NEWS THAT MY FAVE HOOPS-PLAYING SPANISH TEEN RICKY RUBIO IS FINALLY COMING TO MINNESOTA!!!) or, just watching dumb movies, like Thor. So, forgive me while I dig through the mushy parts of my summer brain to access the best TV show episodes of May 2011.

Game of Thrones started pretty clumsily with its pilot, all exposition and blank faces and no passion. But its third episode "Lord Snow" demonstrated the way the series can get around the inner dialogue issue it faces by being a TV series instead of a book. The final scene with Arya practicing her swordsmanship and Ned getting all distracted-like by his flashbacks of real sword fights and looking all sad-like was a much less wordy way of saying "Ned has ambivalence toward his kids living a rough life like I have so far." Sometimes, brevity can be good, George R.R. Martin.

Treme has always been accused of being "too slow" (personally, I am a fan of its "let's hang out in New Orleans and see what happens" modus operandi) but its second season's third episode "On the Way Down" certainly moved things forward plotwise more than the show ever has. It may have been done with a plot twist that could easily be construed as cheap and exploitative, but fit excruciatingly well with the theme of the episode and the season (theme being: crime brings us all down.) The fact that said plot twist was not at all exploited and/or shown onscreen made it all the more haunting. Meanwhile, the revelations that Sonny's cliams about saving people in New Orleans were indeed true, the continued gross "progress" of new character Nelson Hidalgo, and Janette's continued struggles making it work in New York were spellbinding. Treme is definitely making a play for show of the year in 2011.

Cougar Town is one incredibly weird show to be on network TV, having all but abandoned its "cougar" premises and allowed its characters to pretty much just stand around and do weird stuff and drink wine. And that was in full effect in "Free Fallin'", an episode that featured Children of the Corn-style children who draw rainbows on the sidewalk, alongside Lou Diamond Phillips being brought on to pitch a robotic Penny Can that has blinking lights and moves around. I had to choose between this show and Community for one of the treasured spots on this list, and ultimately went with Cougar Town because its weirdness and delightful set of characters is preferable to me, despite Community also being worthwhile. Too bad ABC decided to premiere season three at midseason instead of next September, cuz I'm gonna miss Busy Phillips. I have a crush on Busy Phillips. DoktorPeace, Hottie Count that ess!

Parks and Recreation had a ridiculously perfect third season, culminating in its ridiculously perfect season finale duo episodes "The Bubble"/"Lil' Sebastian". The intellectual in me appreciates the well-crafted character relationships and witty humor. But the joy centers in my brain go off on Ron Swanson on a swivel chair (and Chris saying "SWIVEL!" extremely enthusiastically), and on Andy singing "5,000 Candles in the Wind" (a song dedicated to the dearly departed Lil' Sebastian), and Detlef Schrempf on retainer in Tom Haverford and Jean Ralphio's 720 Entertainment Company (cuz you travel around the world TWICE!) Booyah, Parks and Recreation.

Friday Night Lights easily had May's episode of the month, "Kingdom". Though its final season started a little slow, the setup definitively started paying off with a classic style episode featuring the East Dillon Lions taking a road trip to Kingdom, TX. Included in this episode was the instantly memorable balcony scene where Coach Eric Taylor listened the floor below as his newest players bonded over their shared experiences and their new relationships. Add to that the instantly classic final scene ("Are we there yet, coach?" "Nope. We're getting there. Slowly but surely, we're getting there.") brought mega tears to my eyes. And even the at-this-point weak link plot of Julie dating the creepy TA started to pay off when the creepy TA's wife screamed at her. If the fifth episode of the season is any indication, I will need kleenex for the series' final six episodes that air on NBC this summer. Thankfully, raw emotions are just the types of things that can easily penetrate my summer brain mush.

Qualler's Episode of the Month: April 2011

April has brought an embarrassment of riches on the boob tube. Some old faves have returned, while new faves have hit series highs. It's also been a ridiculously good month in Minnesota to watch TV, what with the schizophrenic weather patterns, taking us from sunny, totes gorgeous days to snowfall in the course of a few hours. Such is life in Minnesota. The best of television of April took we sun-starved Minnesotans away to magical places, like Pawnee, Indiana, and some made-up place called Westeros.

Friday Night Lights, as Chris pointed out on Blogulator Radio episode three, doesn't start in the most thrilling way possible. And frankly, episode two, "On the Outside Looking In", which aired on NBC on April 22, of the Texas-based gentle drama is not among its most thrilling, heartwrenching, emotional chapters like the best of Dillon, TX has provided to us. But, at the very least, the episode spent a little more quality time with the Taylor family than we had spent in the season premiere, devoting most of the episode to Tami's struggles coexisting with her new co-workers at East Dillon High School and Coach getting his East Dillon Lions to stop fighting and start believing in his program. It all lead up to arguably the first spine-tingling moment of the final season, when Coach wrote "State" on the markerboard before a Lions game, which got his team to stop the in-fighting and listen to his message. It's a trope that FNL has done for many seasons, but the way it's done never ceases to be great.

Parks and Recreation also continued its superb third season with its tenth episode, "Soulmates", which aired on NBC on April 21. There isn't really much else that can be said that hasn't been said before in this space about P&L, except that the show seems to be approaching Seinfeld-level greatness with regard to the number of memorable plotlines packed into one episode. Likewise, I think a few years down the road, we will lovingly quote Tom Haverford's food names and happily recall when Ron Swanson and Chris has a burger cookoff and then realize that the two plot strands happened in the same episode, the same way it's hard to remember how the Junior Mint episode of Seinfeld also had Jerry trying to recall a woman's name whose name rhymed with a female body part ("Mulva?") I suspect that comedy nerds like us will look upon kindly many years from now.

Game of Thrones, HBO's newest entry to its library of ridiculously high-budget and well-produced dramas, started off a bit shaky with its pilot episode "Winter is Coming", but demonstrated how good the show could be in its second episode "The Kingsroad", which aired on April 24. As someone who has read the first book of which the fantasy-ish series is based upon, I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of someone who has not read the books at all on the series thus far (Chris? Doktor? Sean? Eh?) But, the scene that sold me on the series is also the scene that sold me on the book: the incident that occurs between sisters Arya and Sansa with the butcher's boy and Prince Joffrey. (What can I say? Arya's my fave character in the book.) The scene was shot deceptively simply and realistically, demonstrating none of the high-fantasy-type visuals one would expect from a show with roots in (arguably) the most nerdy genre of fiction. Knowing the kind of sheeee-at that goes down in the second half of the book and, likely, the second half of the season, it gives me a very good feeling about the quality of the series going into the future. And, there was enough Skinemax-y kind of stuff in "The Kingsroad" to get Brigitte actually interested in watching more. It's what True Blood would be if True Blood had any clue about how to develop characters: a highly-produced sexy time, but with a story with actual, shall we say, stakes (get it? Cuz vampires don't like stakes? Yeah? No? Okay.)

Justified continued its ridiculously great season two run with possibly its best episode ever, "Brother's Keeper", the ninth episode of the FX series, which aired on April 6. Building on the spellbinding courtroom town hall scene in episode eight "The Spoil", Mags Bennett throws the aforementioned-in-that-scene "Whoop-Dee-Doo" at the Bennett family ranch, inviting the whole town to demonstrate its Harlan County values, which are ostensibly family values, anti-corporate, anti-taking-the-coal-from-their-hills values. Of course, there's an added layer to that, what with the Bennett family, and especially the slippery Mags, trying to get what's hers. That sends Raylan Givens, the fictional man for whom Chris and I are competing for BFF-dom, into a dizzying turn of events that I won't spoil here, except for the fact that the turn of events are remarkably entertaining and cinematic to watch as they unfold. The great thing about this season of Justified, and in particular demonstration in this episode, is how, as well the show has done mixing procedural with serial elements, it is even better in creating a rich environment with multiple colorful characters and a rich sense of place. The entire "whoop-dee-doo" is rich with bluegrass music and hometown values. Justified, as such, has officially transcended from "very good" to "great", and this episode ushers that new era in.

Which makes it a little unfair of me to name Treme's second season premiere "Accentuate the Positive" as Qualler's Episode of the Month, which originally aired on April 24. Like much of the first season, David Simon's newest masterpiece (and yes, it is also a masterpiece, Bill Simmons, so maybe you could make your NBA-as-TV-show analogies with a show like Treme instead of a show that already has a lot of praise attached to it, and is no longer on the air. Oh, and also, your column looks suspiciously like the series Blogulator friend Josh has been writing about on his Kansas City Royals blog "Royalscentricity", "Equating Your Royals To a Character In The Wire") doesn't do a whole lot plot-wise. But then, when did The Wire ever do anything memorable plot-wise until its final few episodes of each season? No, Treme's second season does nothing but bring us back to a wildly rich, absolutely magnificent environment with lovable characters just trying to make it in New Orleans. Okay, I just spent this whole paragraph trying to distance this show from The Wire, yet the scene I am pointing out was the final scene, where the child trumpet player learning the opening measures to "When the Saints Come Marching In" encounters the dead body that the police officer David Morse is investigating is haunting the way the best scenes of The Wire were: so much is said in the look the two citizens of NOLA give to each other. Welcome back, Treme; I missed you.

Qualler's Episode of the Month: March 2011

Geeze, I really should do these posts a month later than I do, since I seem to be perpetually a month behind on watching all my fave television shows. Alas, this means I have now missed out on the official first airing of Friday Night Lights' season five (which, as they are premiering on NBC in just one week from today, I will include episodes as a "Sorry, didn't have DirecTV 101 and/or didn't have the time or inclination to procure those episodes via other means" provision for upcoming months.) Likewise, it also means I missed all of the final season of Big Love, which, allegedly, regains some of the dramatic glory that it once had (though, Big Love's highest heights were still not nearly as high as the best shows on TV.)

Regardless, I think I still saw enough television in March to make some snap judgments. One thing is certain: FX is on a roll. Well, not exactly, actually, because their best new show since, well, their last new show Terriers, was cancelled. An absolute shame, as the show developed into one of TV's finest hours as the season went on. (Oh yeah, there's another show that I'm currently one month behind on.) Hoyt McCallany, may you have a great career and be cast in a new TV show where your brooding, hulking presence can be utilized. Alas, here is March 2011's best.

Parks and Recreation had its work cut out for it in March, having concluded its Harvest Festival plot only seven episodes into the season. Of course, now that P&R has moved from its initial "what are we gonna do about this big hole in Pawnee?" plot, they've pretty much gotten the leeway to just be a friggin' hilarious, heartwarming, wonderful show. The post-Harvest Festival episode "Camping", the eighth of the stellar third season, finds our gang out camping, trying to brainstorm what the next big project will be. Hilarity ensues, what with Jerry and Ron fly-fishing, Tom setting up his SkyMall-happy non-tent tent, Andy and April being the most non-cloying adorable hilarious couple on TV while Andy trips on a bunch of bushes while carrying way too much stuff through the forest (I could watch an entire episode of Andy walking around alone in the forest by himself carrying way too much stuff), Chris with his neon blinking running safety gear, and Leslie banging on a pot with a big stick for inspiration. If you needed more proof that all Parks and Recreation needs to do is stick a bunch of characters together and let them do stuff to make the show work, then this is the episode for you.

The Biggest Loser is a show that Brigitte and I watch every Tuesday night, after we go to our Yoga class together. It's the bridge between Yoga and NBC's great scripted drama Parenthood that lets us both take pride in our hard work of trying to live a healthy, balanced lifestyle and be proud of the contestants on this, the most humane competition reality show on television. (Don't judge.) I don't think I could single out a single episode, because we only get home in time for the hour long weigh-in segment, which is by far the most emo hour on television, all tears and hugs and joy and sadness rolled into one big happy gushing moment where, even when someone loses and has to "go home", they still win because they started toward the journey of overcoming their personal demons and started living a healthier lifestyle. (Seriously, don't judge.) That's the last I'll ever say about The Biggest Loser, thank you very much.

Lights Out, rest in peace, continued its strong run with its eighth episode, "Head Games", in which Patrick "Lights" Leary, upon winning his hastily arranged coming-out-of-retirement fight, dropped his Pops as his trainer and hired the more gutsy trainer Ed Romeo (played by Eamonn Walker of Oz, a Chris favorite Unbreakable, and overall a guy who also should be cast on a new TV series.) When Pops makes a play to get back in the training room with Lights, brought upon by a desperate intervention by Lights' brother Johnny, the result is haunting and heartbreaking. OK, so maybe this show actually would have worked well as a 13-episode miniseries structured to end at episode 13. And maybe other shows should follow that type of model in general. And maybe Warren Leight, like he mentioned in this interview, should have taken this show to Showtime instead of FX. Damn, this would have been a perfect show for Showtime. If only...

Justified, as awesome as it was in its first season, is even stronger than it was a year ago. Perhaps that is because the serialized elements of the show are much more at the forefront, with the procedural material falling into the background a bit. It also helps that the show seems to have evolved from where it left off last season and continued to grow as a swampy, sweaty, humid environment, with all the characters spouting almost Tarantino-esque dialogue (of course, it's actually Elmore Leonard-esque, seeing that he created the characters.) Or, it's Leonard-by-way-of-showrunner-Graham-Yost dialogue. As we re-remembered a month ago watching the Yost-penned Speed, the man has a gift for snappy, self-aware dialogue(*). Anyway, episode five, "Cottonmouth", was where the second season really started taking off, setting off the dominos that were so beautifully put in place in the first four episodes with Boyd Crowder and the new creepy Bennett family as Raylan Givens' biggest nemeses.

"I thought I got that monkey virus, like that movie!" -Dewey Crowe

(*)I could write a separate post on the greatness of Speed, and why I miss action movies of that ilk desperately, but it would just set off another Speed vs. Con Air debate within the Blogulator staff that I don't think any of us can afford to wage one more time.

Archer, though. Archer! Like I mentioned before, FX is on an absolute creative roll right now, with the second season of the animated spy comedy series just absolutely working beautifully. Working with the absurdity that highlighted the occasionally outstanding Adult Swim series Sealab 2021, one of Archer creator Adam Reed's other creations, Archer also has working for it a delightful office humor vibe. The show got its first sorta-taste of a serialized plotline when the unbelievably-full-of-himself-yet-sorta-has-a-heart title character Sterling Archer found out he had breast cancer (hardy-har, a man with breast cancer, hardy-har.) The result was two episodes of Archer vaguely coming to grips with his life, while also delivering amazing one-liners. Writing about a comedy in general and about why it's funny is inherently not funny, so I'll just end this with a high recommendation to watch this show, which had the March episode of the month, "Stage Two", and enjoy the wicked great comedy ensemble of H. Jon Benjamin, Chris Parnell, Judy Greer, Aisha Taylor, and Jessica Walter.

Qualler's Episode of the Month: February 2011

I begin February's TV highlights post with a caveat: I have not yet seen the fifth and final season of Friday Night Lights, which originally aired on DirecTV 101 this Fall and completed its run in February. From what I gathered peripherally from the internet, the series finale, "Always", was an exceptional episode to an exceptional season for an exceptional series. Hell, just having seen a picture of Coach Taylor putting his hand on Vince's shoulder and seeing the title "Always" had me on the verge of tears. Note to self: invest in Kleenex stock when FriNiLi season five comes out on DVD. And there is still no lack of FriNiLi coverage for the past month: three of the five nominees have some serious FriNiLi connections!

Anyway, February brought us the premiere of some new shows, season premieres of new favorites, and episodes of other shows that helped put those respective shows into higher viewership categories for yours truly. Apparently many watched a certain neighboring state's professional football team win some grand prize this February on television, but I'm going to assume that, and the entire NFL season in 2010, were just horrible dreams.

First on the list of potentials was the season premiere of FX's Justified. Titled "The Moonshine War" and written by showrunner Graham Yost, the premiere reminded us all in its extra-long cold open all the things we love about the world of main character Raylan Givens (played by Timothy Olyphant). The slippery, elusive Boyd Crowder (winningly played by Walton Goggins) slips away from Raylan's grasp while we are introduced to a new set of Kentucky-area baddies, the Bennett family, led by the sweet-on-the-outside, purely-evil Mags (Margo Martindale, aka the records woman on Dexter) and her son Dickie (Jeremy Davies, aka Daniel Farraday on Lost). But what we love about this show, besides the sticky, sweaty sense of place we get from watching these folks do their business in Kentucky, is Raylan going tete-a-tete with some dumbass who doesn't realize how awesome he is. This happened at least twice in the premiere, and while unfortunately there are no clips of it, the commercial that ran during the aforementioned Super Bowl is a great example of the awesomeness that is Raylan Givens, and the show's perfect balance between meta-badassery and actual badassery.

Next in consideration is Community's 14th episode of its second season, "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons", written by Andrew Guest. This is the episode that finally converted me from a "m'eh" to "I'll watch it" opinion, which should surely please DoktorPeace and Chris. What was uproariously funny about "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" was the wickedly sharp interplay between the cast of characters and the straight-up nerd touches they added. I have never played myself a game of D&D but now realize the appeal, thanks to this episode. Abed as a dwarf and Britta a human conversing with each other was priceless.



A brand new show premiered after much hype in the aforementioned (twice, now) Super Big Football Game titled The Chicago Code. Its pilot episode (titled "Pilot"), written by creator Shawn Ryan (Terriers, The Shield, Super Good User Of Social Media) strongly introduced some very appealing elements of the cop (while trying to avoid inevitable comparisons to that other cop show from that other pay cable network) show: lightning-quick dialogue (the type that seems completely unlikely to survive long-term on a major network like Fox), gritty action police scenes, and Scorsese/Tarantino-esque directing. Add to it some excellent work by TV vets Jason Clarke (Brotherhood), Matt Lauria (FriNiLi) and Jennifer Beals (The L Word) and some excellent and you've got all the elements of a show that seems miraculously well-formed at birth. Even the only troublesome element of the series, the voice-over narration shortcuts for character development, were put to rest by a wicked, gut-punching twist in that pilot episode. Here's to hoping this is a show that can develop and live up to the promise of the pilot.

Even more miraculous, in some way, is FX's little-watched Lights Out. In its fourth episode "Bolo Punch", written by Carter Harris (a vet of the FriNiLi writing staff), raises the stakes in title character Patrick "Lights" Leary's life considerably. When his wife Theresa donates $50k to her church to support their kids' mission trip to Haiti and then finds out that the money is dried up, the results, like the scene at church where others excitedly pledge to match part of the $50k is gut-wrenching. Patrick's brother Johnny (played by Pablo Schreiber, aka Nick Sobotka of The Wire) gets the crap beat out of him and gets forced to put Lights himself in a Mixed Martial Arts fight with a guy who had a beef with him. This comes after a scene where Lights and his Pops (played by Stacy Keach) spend an evening at a bar, where Pops asks the bartender to "turn it to the fight" -- which, she points out, is on...it's an MMA fight. It's a perfect metaphor for the economic collapse the Leary family starts feeling -- an ex-boxer who continues to tell himself that he's "good for it" money-wise is passed by because his own sport has been made him irrelevant, much like the lavish lifestyle they've been living has been made irrelevant by the collapse of the economy. (Meta-commentary on the inevitability of collapse in our capitalistic society? Perhaps.) At the end, when Lights gives the money to the boxer who is owed cash from his last fight and mentions how they could "climb back up the ladder" after his loss last week, he hauntingly replies, "We both know I could have gotten back up again. I just didn't want to. I'm not a boxer." See, if the show was pitched as a show about the collapse of the economy, set to the backdrop of boxing, even fewer people than are already watching it would have started from the beginning.



But, February's Episode of the Month prize goes to Parenthood, with its episode "Amazing Andy and his Wonderful World of Bugs", written by Kerry Ehrin. Sure, it only took a truly wonderful guest star spot by Michael Emerson (Ben from Lost) to put this show up a notch from "I'll watch it in the background" to "Appointment Television" for me, but this episode, tenderly written by Ehrin (she, also, was a writer on FriNiLi, as is most of the writing staff of Parenthood, also helmed by FriNiLi showrunner Jason Katims) gave the show its first honest, heartfelt appraisal of Max Braverman's Aspbergers Syndrome. Emerson played Amazing Andy, an adult with Aspbergers who performs at Max's birthday party. When dad Adam (Peter Krause, Six Feet Under) gingerly asks Andy, "Are you happy?" after the party, all of the annoying, jerky, self-serving things Adam has done this season get swept aside, and we remember that Adam is just a scared parent who wants what is best for his kid. It also helps that at this point of the season, it seems apparent that the writing staff who was doing double-duty between the final season of FriNiLi and this season of Parenthood are now applying the lessons they've learned from the Texas-based drama that we all love so much. The same naturalistic overlapping-dialogue, at this point of the season, is more fully utlized, and the same humor-combined-with-heartbreak seems to be developing more and more. Sure, Parenthood still has times where it feels slight (like the episode with my all-time favorite TV Guide episode description, "Crosby helps Jabar clean his room") and there are still a few things they need to iron out. But make no mistake: in a post-Friday Night Lights world, Parenthood is now appointment television.

Qualler's Episode of the Month: January 2011

It's a new month in a new year, and one of my new features I am unrolling to y'all today is a simple one. Like the last new feature I debuted, this one is based on the age-old idea of arbitrary awards. Like the obsessive lists I have made since 1993, and the arbitrary award show like the Golden Globes before them, who doesn't love to decide what is the best of the best in every random category available?

The feature: Qualler's Episode of the Month! The focus: television episodes.

For the inaugural month, January 2011, I encountered a month of original programming on networks and cable channels alike. Much of it very good, much of it terrible but terribly entertaining in all the wrong ways (thanks NBC for The Cape and Harry's Law). But thankfully, the five nominees were some low-hanging fruit.

I nominated FX's Lights Out for its Episode 1.01, "Pilot". The show kicked off showcasing what I hope to be a good blend of machismo in crisis and staid, static drama, set to the backdrop of some vicious violence. Showrunner Warren Leight was responsible for the exquisite second season of In Treatment, which is a good sign, and newcomer Hoyt McCallany is very good as the former boxer in denial over the end of his career.



Also nominated was the new IFC Comedy Portlandia, starring SNL's Fred Armison and Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein, for Episode 2.02 "A Song for Portland(*)". Portlandia is a very funny sorta-sketch comedy show in the vein of Kids on the Hall or Mr. Show (with a touch of Tim and Eric, given that some guys from T&E are involved) and the second episode featured a fantastic guest spot by Kyle MacLaughlin as the super-laid-back mayor of Portland, as well as Aubrey Plaza as an exasperated book shop customer. Basically, Portlandia makes me both laugh and feel sad about asking about the source of the chicken I am eating.



(*)Side note: this provides a good opportunity to shout-out our dear friend Laura Knepper. Laura resides in Portland, OR, and was featured on the front page of the Better Portland website today. She runs her awesome LkC Style men's fashion consultant company there. Nice video, Knepzzz!!!

I also nominated NBC's Parenthood, Episode 2.12, "Meet the New Boss". In typical low-stakes drama fashion that we've come to know and love, Crosby has trouble directing Jabar's school play, Haddie gets in trouble for dating the potentially troublesome Alex, and Adam has some troubles at work with his newer, younger boss. But the show goes in interesting, slightly darker dimensions in the beautifully filmed scene with Haddie and Alex on the roof of an apartment building watching movies together, and in the scene with Adam talking to a recruiter, coming to realize that the job market still sucks and he should stick with his job. (Crosby's story still It's all low-stakes, but TV low-stakes is real-life drama.) It's super well done comfort food, and episodes like this one hint at potential greatness.



Yet another pilot nominated was the surprisingly hilarious IFC Onion News Network, Episode 1.01, "Enter the Factzone". ONN does something that fake news shows like The Daily Show have totally forgotten to do: actually satirize the news. Everything about the show is razor sharp satire, from the vicious passive-aggressiveness of Fact Zone host Brook Alvarez (played by former Fox News newsreader Suzanne Sena) and the dopey touchscreen operater Tucker Hope, alongside news stories that fit in with The Onion's general satire. Alvarez (Sena), alongside (fictional) Today Now! hosts brutally roast the hosts of Today here in a story that seems to make no sense as delivered by the Today show, given that the Today show is one of ONN's easiest-to-skewer targets.

But the clear winner for January has to be Parks and Recreation, Episode 3.02, "The Flu". In all honesty, I was going to give the award to Episode 3.01, "Go Big or Go Home", which was the episode that I laughed the hardest at all month long, until "The Flu" dropped. Parks and Rec is firing on so many cylinders right now, this episode drops no less than four plots, all of which deliver laughs. Dropping snoozefest character Mark and adding Rob Lowe and Adam Scott have also helped another snoozefest character Ann Perkins become hilarious with her super-awkward interactions with Lowe's "perfect human man." When Ron Swanson and Andy grilling bacon in Swanson's office is only the third funniest thing of the episode, you know the show is chock full of greatness. It helps that the writing is deceptively tight all the way around, too. But most memorable are Leslie Knope's (Amy Poehler) multiple instant classic lines: "Careful! The floor and the wall just switched!" "My name is Leslie Monster, and you're watching Nightline." "Why is half of your face all swirley?" INSTANT CLASSIC!