In Treatment Season One

Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Blair Underwood, Dianne Wiest, Josh Charles, Embeth Davidtz, Melissa George, Mia Wasikowska, Michelle Forbes

Series Creator: Hagai Levi, developed by Rodrigo García
( The review...  )

Numbers 25 through 11 can be found here.
A note on spoilers: because I know not everyone is caught up on all five seasons of this show, but I still want as many people to read this as possible (I'm vain that way), this list will be as spoiler-free as possible. I will have to reference some events in order to talk about the characters, but no major events will be discussed (especially the ultimate fate of any character). Also, since characters move up and down their career fields throughout the series, I'll avoid referring to character by title as much as possible. When it is needed to refer to a character by their job title (i.e., Lieutenant, Judge, Mayor, etc), I'll only refer to the job title the character holds when we are first introduced to them. That said, if anyone wants to get into spoilers, I'll gladly do so via comments (with spoiler warnings).
( On to the list... )

I already had a lot to say about this series earlier, but didn't get into the terrific cast of characters both because my post was already long, and I had this post in mind. If you've never watched the show, you may think a list of 25 characters is a touch of overkill. However, if you have watched it, you're probably thinking to yourself: only 25?

There's never been an ensemble as deep as that of The Wire, which completely eschewed stars and delved into the lives of dozens of characters and how they affect, and are affected by, the city of Baltimore. The cast grew exponentially as the seasons went on, with the show introducing several new characters at once in an attempt to expand the scope of the show and the picture of Baltimore. Managing all these characters was a Herculean task, one that the show managed on an incomparable level. All the characters mattered, and each fit into the puzzle perfectly. When you consider that other shows have difficulties managing casts of less than ten, you start to get an appreciation of what The Wire did with five times that amount. When putting together this list, I came up with a list of over 50 names of characters I enjoyed that were vital to the show, so that should give you an idea of why a list of 25 top characters is a perfectly acceptable number.

By "top 25", I'm taking a few things into consideration. "Best" is too abstract an idea to apply to any type of standard, but I did try and decide which characters were the most unique, which actors performed the best in their roles, which characters were most significant for the show, who was the most memorable, etc. Then my personal tastes and favourites were factored in, and viola, a "Top 25" is made.

A note on spoilers: because I know not everyone is caught up on all five seasons of this show, but I still want as many people to read this as possible (I'm vain that way), this list will be as spoiler-free as possible. I will have to reference some events in order to talk about the characters, but no major events will be discussed (especially the ultimate fate of any character). Also, since characters move up and down their career fields throughout the series, I'll avoid referring to character by title as much as possible. When it is needed to refer to a character by their job title (i.e., Lieutenant, Judge, Mayor, etc), I'll only refer to the job title the character holds when we are first introduced to them. That said, if anyone wants to get into spoilers, I'll gladly do so via comments (with spoiler warnings).
( On to the list... )

The Wire The Complete Series

Starring: Dominic West, John Doman, Idris Elba, Frankie R. Faison, Wood Harris, Deirdre Lovejoy, Wendell Pierce, Lance Reddick, Clarke Peters, Andre Royo, Sonja Sohn, Seth Gilliam, Larry Gilliard Jr, Domenick Lombardozzi, Michael K. Williams, Jim True-Frost, Delaney Williams, Corey Parker Robinson, J.D. Williams, Aidan Gillen, Jamie Hector, Robert Wisdom, Anwan Glover, Chad Coleman, Jermaine Crawford, Tristan Wilds, Maestro Harrell, Julito McCullum, Reg E. Cathey, Isiah Whitlock Jr, Robert F. Chew, Amy Ryan, Glynn Turman, Paul Ben-Victor, Pablo Schreiber, Chris Bauer, James Ransone, Clark Johnson, Thomas McCarthy, Michelle Paress, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Neal Huff, Michael Kostroff

Series Creator: David Simon

I've already reviewed the excellent first season of this series, hoping to turn more people on to this criminally-overlooked series. Since then, I've bought it for others as a gift on two occasions and lent it out on another two in the hopes of spreading the message, but I think I only managed to convert two people to the show as a result. I declined to review subsequent seasons under the idea that people who have never seen the show wouldn't be particularly interested in reading a review on later seasons, but now that the show has finished its fifth and final season, I figured I'd take one more crack at convincing people to give the show a chance with this spoiler-free overview of the entire series, starting with this statement: at five seasons and 60 episodes long, The Wire is the absolute greatest televised drama I have ever seen.
( The spoiler-free review... )

Year-end TV lists are difficult things, as network TV follows a different schedule than January-December. Some writers go ahead and try to cram TV in the January-December calendar, judging two half seasons put together, but that's just silly. Instead, this list judges seasons that ended in 2007, including portions that began in 2006. If a season began in 2007, but is slated to return in 2008 (whenever that may be), then it is not under consideration for this list. Make sense?

Acclaimed shows that I don't watch, and thus won't be appearing on this list include The Sopranos, Battlestar Galactica, The Shield, Ugly Betty, Rescue Me, Brothers & Sisters, Mad Men, Flight of the Conchords, and House. On with the list...
( It's possible that I won't be doing this list next year... )

30 Rock Season One

Starring: Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan, Jane Krakowski, Jack McBrayer, Scott Adsit, Judah Friedlander, Alec Baldwin

Series Creators: Tina Fey
( The review...  )

TV Talk: The New Fall TV Season - New Show Overview Part Two (2007)

I'm a little late with this, meaning that all the shows I will be writing about have already aired at least two episodes, and thus this is less useful to help turn people on to new shows. But, I don't really think I have that much influence that people would start watching something based on my say so anyway. But if you are intrigued by what I say here, I do believe there's some kind of series of tubes where one can access episodes that have already aired. Each series will be listed in the order in which its pilot debuted, along with the network and time slot it occupies.

Read Part One HERE.
( Thoughts on more new TV shows... )

TV Talk: The New Fall TV Season - New Show Overview (2007)

Instead of doing reviews for every new pilot I watched over the past couple of weeks (which I really didn't have time for), I figured I'd just combine them all into mini-reviews in one post, judging each on whether or not I would continue watching the series. Each series will be listed in the order in which its pilot debuted, along with the network and time slot it occupies.
( Thoughts on the new TV shows... )

The Office Season Three

Starring: Steve Carell, Rainn Wilson, John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer, B.J. Novak

Series Creators: Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, developed by Greg Daniels
( The review, with spoilers from earlier seasons...  )

K-Ville Pilot Episode

Starring: Anthony Anderson, Cole Hauser, Blake Shields, Tawny Cypress, John Carroll Lynch

Series Creators: Jonathan Lisco
( The review... )

Friday Night Lights Season One

Starring: Kyle Chandler, Connie Britton, Gaius Charles, Zach Gilford, Minka Kelly, Taylor Kitsch, Adrianne Palicki, Jesse Plemons, Scott Porter, Aimee Teegarden

Series Creators: Peter Berg, Brian Grazer, David Nevins
( The review... )

The Wire Season One

Starring: Dominic West, John Doman, Idris Elba, Frankie R. Faison, Wood Harris, Deirdre Lovejoy, Wendell Pierce, Lance Reddick, Andre Royo, Sonja Sohn, Seth Gilliam, Larry Gilliard Jr

Series Creator: David Simon
( The review... )

Extras Season One

Starring: Ricky Gervais, Ashley Jensen, Stephen Merchant

Series Creator: Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant
( The review... )

Six Feet Under Season Five

Starring: Peter Krause, Michael C. Hall, Frances Conroy, Lauren Ambrose, Mathew St. Patrick, Freddy Rodríguez, James Cromwell, Rachel Griffiths

Series Creator: Alan Ball
( The review, with major spoilers... )

The Tudors Season One

Starring: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Sam Neill, Henry Cavill, Henry Czerny, Natalie Dormer, Nick Dunning, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Callum Blue, Jeremy Northam

Series Creator: Michael Hirst

I've done a lot of gushing lately over HBO's programming, but Showtime has proven recentlu that there's more than one premium cable network intent on putting out some quality television. They already caught my attention with Weeds and Dexter, so the decision to check out their new original series The Tudors was pretty easy.

Based on the early life of King Henry VIII around the beginning of the English Reformation and his meeting of Anne Boleyn, The Tudors was promised to be a sexy version of the Tudor history, with a rock star version of King Henry VIII, instead of the fat, bald one we see in all the paintings. To that end, they cast hot young star Jonathan Rhys Meyers to play the young king and the comely Natalie Dormer to play the target of his affections, Anne Boleyn. Oh, and they put in a lot of sex. A lot.

Obviously, this is Showtime's answer to HBO's Rome, delving into history for action and sex appeal, replete with expensive period garb and sets. From a production standpoint, it holds up well against Rome, if not quite as expansive. From every other standpoint, The Tudors is a very poor man's Rome, and is unable to hold a candle to HBO's series. The actor's are game, but the material just isn't that interesting. No matter how they try to sex it up, the political intrigue of one guy trying to get a divorce just can't match the battles over the republic. While The Tudors tries to rouse excitement out of jousting tournaments, Rome raised the blood with gladiatorial battles, with the two not comparing favourably for the Brits.

One of the major complaints of Rome was how their time compression skipped large swaths of history and battles. After watching Henry yell at Cardinal Wolsey (Sam Neill) for about 7 episodes to get him a divorce, I was wishing that they'd skipped ahead to his marriage around mid-season, because I was bored as fuck with all the useless posturing and problems with the church. Worse, after he became infatuated with Anne, the sex all stopped, as she kept him on the leash by refusing to have a physical affair until marriage. Sure, Henry's best friend Charles Brandon (Henry Cavill) still chased a lot of tail, but that wasn't the same. He doesn't get that much screen time, and some of those scenes are with the near-skeletal Gabrielle Anwar, so that wasn't all that hot.

I'm not trying to be all pervy when I keep harping on the sex scenes of the show, but basically, they were the only reason to watch. Once they started to slow down, you begin to realise how painfully slow the proceedings are. Honestly, the sex scenes still don't provide a good reason to watch the series, but at least they were distracting enough. I'm sure the show really pushed them in the early going to try and hook viewers, thinking we'd get attached enough to the characters to care about their goings on to carry us through as the show became less sensational. And they were wrong.

Ultimately, it's a hard sell to get me to care about a monster like Henry VIII, which is why the show needed to be more plot-driven. But soon after a pretty good episode focusing on an epidemic of sweating sickness that killed a large portion of England, the show got too bogged down in details and atmosphere, and became a real chore to watch. A show that promised to be a hipper telling of the Tudors ended up turning into a slightly more interesting version of Masterpiece Theatre. I stuck it out to hopefully get some level of closure by the season's end, and didn't even get that. They won't get me again for season two.

2/5

Related:
Dexter - Season One
Marie Antoinette (2006)
TV Talk: Weeds

Six Feet Under Season Four

Starring: Peter Krause, Michael C. Hall, Frances Conroy, Lauren Ambrose, Mathew St. Patrick, Freddy Rodríguez, James Cromwell, Rachel Griffiths

Series Creator: Alan Ball
( The review, with spoilers from earlier seasons... )

Six Feet Under Season Three

Starring: Peter Krause, Michael C. Hall, Frances Conroy, Lauren Ambrose, Mathew St. Patrick, Freddy Rodríguez, Rachel Griffiths

Series Creator: Alan Ball
( The review, with spoilers from earlier seasons... )

Dexter Season One

Starring: Michael C. Hall, Julie Benz, Jennifer Carpenter, Erik King, Lauren Velez, David Zayas, James Remar

Series Creator: James Manos Jr.
( The review... )

Six Feet Under Season Two

Starring: Peter Krause, Michael C. Hall, Frances Conroy, Lauren Ambrose, Mathew St. Patrick, Freddy Rodríguez, Rachel Griffiths

Series Creator: Alan Ball
( The review... )

How I Met Your Mother Season One

Starring: Alyson Hannigan, Neil Patrick Harris, Josh Radnor, Cobie Smulders, Jason Segel

Series Creators: Carter Bays and Craig Thomas
( The review... )

Six Feet Under Season One

Starring: Peter Krause, Michael C. Hall, Frances Conroy, Lauren Ambrose, Mathew St. Patrick, Freddy Rodríguez, Rachel Griffiths

Series Creator: Alan Ball
( The review... )

Big Love Season One

Starring: Bill Paxton, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloë Sevigny, Ginnifer Goodwin, Harry Dean Stanton, Bruce Dern, Grace Zabriskie, Amanda Seyfried, Douglas Smith

Series Creators: Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer
( The review... )

The Amazing Race Season One

Starring: Phil Keoghan, 11 two-person teams of contestants

Series Creators: Elise Doganieri and Bertram van Munster
( The review... )

Hey, I wasn't kidding when I said I love year-end lists. Thus, I shall leave no stone unturned in my attempt to quantify the year in pop culture. Unlike my Top 10 TV Shows of 2006 list, this list only judges episodes that aired in the calendar year, January-December. So some might be from current seasons, while others will be from previous seasons.

To put the list together, I went through episode listings and summaries from the shows I watch on various web sites like TV.com, IMDb, Wikipedia, and Television Without Pity, picking out episodes that stand out in my memory. Then I worked from that list to make my ten. I didn't do anything crazy like re-watch every episode or anything, cause if an episode wasn't memorable enough for me to decide on it now, then it wouldn't be top ten, now would it? As a result, this list is heavy with event programming, be it season finales or sweeps week episodes that send the show into hiatus. But, hey, they usually save their best stuff for then anyway, so I'm sure this list is solid.

NOTE: Since I'll be talking about specific episodes, the write-ups will be necessarily spoilerish. For people who want to skim but remain unspoiled, the pictures are fairly unspoilery.
( Tonight, on a very special T5R... )

Like last year, this list will be for shows whose season ended in 2006. It's too awkward to try and judge the second half of one season from January-May, then the first half of the next season from September-December. Seasons should be judged by themselves, as a whole. Thus, this list will include seasons that began in 2005, but ended in 2006, or shows that had their entire season within 2006. Seasons that began in 2006 but have yet to finish do not qualify for this list.

Shows I don't watch, and thus will not make this list include all procedurals and cop shows, Battlestar Galactica, Deadwood, The Wire, 24 (which I do watch, but am behind on the DVDs), and Gilmore Girls. Also, I didn't catch all of the first season of How I Met Your Mother, so I'm leaving it off the list. Consider that an honourable mention.
( Put down the remote, and click... )