Inessentials

There’s been some talk recently about Community‘s “Pierce problem.” (And by “recently” I mean two whole weeks ago, which is basically forever in Internet Time.) Notable critics Jace Lacob, Alan Sepinwall, James Poniewozik have all written about it, as have many others. Emily Nussbaum connected it the show’s (possible) Chevy Chase problem. I don’t know (or care very much) about connections between Pierce’s character on the show and Chevy Chase the actor. But I do find it odd that Community has been singled out for its portrayal of Pierce, when so few shows even bother to have a character over the age of 60.

Community is fundamentally about the difficult necessity of forming and maintaing social groups, how they shape individual identities, and how they force a person to embrace new ideas and abandon old ones. Shirley’s religious convictions are tested, Jeff’s proclaimed moral relativism is shattered, Abed’s social skills are stretched, Britta’s self-righteousness is excoriated, and so on. Fundamentally, the show values human connections over almost any other ideal. Pierce, a generation older than anyone else in the group crystallizes this problem beautifully.

At first it seems that Pierce is simply out of touch with a younger generation, but over the course of a season and a half it has become clear that Pierce has never learned how to be a friend. Perhaps because he came to have his fortune early in life and on his own, he never saw himself as having peers, which may be one of the bases for friendship. (I’m really tempted to analyze all of Community’s relationships based on an Aristotelian taxonomy of friendship, but I’ll spare you. Perhaps just glance at this.)

In any case, Pierce plays a central role in the life of the group. Firstly, he is a “ghost of Christmas future” to prevent Jeff Scrooge from pulling out of all human relationships that are roughly equal. Both Jeff and Pierce entered the show only able to use people for their own advantage. Jeff is consistently caught between that old way and a new way in which he gives of himself for these other people. Jeff can still change, although the logic of the show isn’t settled enough to say whether the creators think he will. Pierce can’t change, without some character-breaking life conversion. (The connections between Jeff and Pierce probably go deeper. For instance, Noel Kirkpatrick of Monsters of Television suggested to me that that there similarities are further shown in their attitudes towards Annie.)

Secondly, Pierce represents the difficulty of people of different generations becoming friends. Perhaps the Pierce character is sometimes too convenient in throwing together stereotypes of a generation (self-made, casually racist) but the show at least attempts to find ways of fleshing out his character, even if some of those have been dead-ends. The character is limited in how much it can be fleshed out, but it is limited for good reason: Pierce has become so ossified in his personality that there is not much possibility for change. That, again, is a (possible) difference between he and Jeff.

Compare this, for a moment, to the portrayal of an older generation on two other very good shows, Parenthood and The Good Wife. In both cases, the shows created a parental figure so despicable that nearly every other character (and, in turn, the viewer) can’t help but despise them: Zeek Braverman (Craig T. Nelson) and Jackie Florick (Mary Beth Piel). These two characters served a single function on the first season of their shows. Zeek is the patriarch and the single largest problem in the lives of each of the now-adult children are how they were formed by his overbearing persona. Jackie is the prim, judgmental mother-in-law who is supposed to draw additional(!) sympathy for the embattered Alicia Florick. Both of these shows had to work extra hard in their second seasons to find some reason for us not to hate these characters, but they had dug themselves a huge hole at the outset.

I point to these other (very good) shows to demonstrate just how hard it is to write interesting older characters, and to point out that Pierce in the first season was a leg up on comparable (albeit dramatic) characters. (Good luck finding a sit-com where an older character isn’t just a horny boss or a dotty aunt or Betty White/Fred Willard in a cameo.) Pierce isn’t just a plot-mover (although like any character he has been used that way at times, notably on “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons”), he’s a legitimate member of the group whose story arcs are as central and important as any other character on the show (with the possibly exception of Jeff, who is the de facto lead in the ensemble).

Put another way, on Community the “Pierce problem” is the same as the Jeff problem and the Annie problem and the Troy problem: how much are they willing to give up to be a part of this group? Some episodes a character like Pierce or Abed or Britta mostly just pushes the story along, but that’s the nature of an ensemble show.

I don’t care if Pierce becomes even angrier, even meaner, even more recalcitrant, because sometimes that happens to people. If Community were ever to have a Pierce problem, it would be that the character is no longer funny, which on a sit-com is the only real problem you can have that doesn’t involve Charlie Sheen.

1. Community

Is it the funniest show on TV? Most weeks, yes. (But it gets some serious competition from #3 at times.) But it’s also a rich, warm, smart, sophisticated, superbly acted, sharply written show. That’s why it’s number one. Unlike Modern Family, which throws some sentimental goop onto the ends of its shows in the least compelling manner possible, Community has built a cast of characters who genuine like each other and who we can care about, so when it goes for sentimental it succeeds beautifully. It seems the greatest divide among the passionate fans of the show is just which episode is the greatest, which says a lot about how many truly excellent episodes of television it has already given us. Funny, smart, sexy – will you marry me, Community? (I’ve previously written about Community here.)

2. Terriers

Oh, Terriers, how we loved you so. You brought us so much humor, so much intrigue, so much Donal Logue. You will go down as one of the all time great one season wonders. You reminded us that great characters can be funny and tragic, and that the best stories are sometimes the least conclusive. We praised you in life, let us praise you in death. And for those of you have yet to experience the charms of Terriers, let me tell you that it even with some unresolved stories, it is well worth your time to watch all 13 episodes.

3. Parks and Recreation

I’m pretty sure I could sit and watch Leslie Knope recount Friends episodes for hours on end. Sadly, we only got about 90 seconds of that in “Telethon,” one of the many hilarious episodes from the show’s second season. Happily, P&R has created one of the strongest ensembles on television, who take their already solid scripts and find ways to ground them in the absurdities of every day life. (I’ve previously written about Parks and Recreation here.)

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On Wednesday, Psych returns for its fifth season on USA, a network that has solidified a place as the most-watched cable network by developing original content branded around a helpfully loose “Characters welcome” theme. (See a good discussion of its branding and the role of genre at In Media Res.) Critical reaction to this show is some mixture of ignoring it and reviling it. And frankly, I’m not sure I disagree with a lot of the criticisms of the show: the writing is too on-the-nose, the acting is too mugging, the humor is too broad, the mysteries are too predictable, the lead character is too irritating (to other characters and to us), and… well, you get the idea. Even the score gets trashed.

Despite all of these (and in some of these cases, because of them), I dearly love Psych. There’s probably no show I enjoy watching more than Psych, none that makes me laugh more, and none that gets watched as quickly after the DVR records it. And it really comes down to one simple thing: Psych is funny.

Funny makes up for a multitude of sins. I’ll watch and rewatch a funny show far more quickly and more regularly than an otherwise superior drama. So when Psych‘s fourth season gets released tomorrow, it will soon make it into the DVD player for a second viewing, and probably a third viewing within a year.

There are some things to be said in favor of Psych. The supporting cast is stronger than Monk, a show that is viewed more positively by critics and Emmy voters. They’re about equal on the quirk-o-meter, for whatever that is worth, and both can attract some solid guest stars. But for me, the show works for one main reason: Dulé Hill.

Critics (and, I suspect, many fans) claim that the show lives or dies by the James Roday’s performance at the center of the show. Shawn Spencer is the fake psychic, after all, and he gets the most lines and the most story arcs. I can’t disagree that the show rests a lots on his shoulders. But what makes Roday’s mugging and irritation to others watchable is Hill’s Burton “Gus” Guster.

Gus fits into a particular subgenre of the bromance that I think of as the Male Black Best Friend. There are Lenny and Carl on The Simpsons, Phil and Lemm on Better Off Ted, Shawn and Gus on Psych, and (the fullest realization of this subgenre) J.D. and Turk on Scrubs. In each case, there is a pair of male best friends, one Caucasian and one African-American, who view each other as equals and are viewed by outsiders as inseparable. (The second half of Community‘s first season saw them pairing Abed with Troy, interestingly putting a twist on the formula by putting a character of Palestinian-Polish descent in the role of the white friend.)

With Phil and Lemm, the idea was that these are codependent coworkers who need each other to be successful. Lenny and Carl began as background figures, drinking buddies to Homer, but The Simpsons has generated a lot of humor out of their pairing. Scrubs pushed the bromance aspect farther than any show or film has yet done, but what interests me the most about it was that it gave Turk more stories and a greater depth of characterization than any other Male Black Best Friend, Guster included. Turk not only supported J.D. through residency and beyond, but he had an interesting and complicated relationship to Carla and had meaningful interactions with the rest of the cast. Gus has far less of that characterization and almost no relationships that aren’t mediated or interrupted by Shawn, and thus he suffers as a character. But he surpasses the others in the central role of the Male Black Best Friend: alleviating the white best friend’s perceived dorkiness by being equally dorky.

The joy of watching Psych for me is watching Hill’s performance as the Male Black Best Friend to a character that is built out of hamming it up and irritating others (including his father and those who sign his paycheck). Hill finds a nice balance between joining in with Roday’s antics and giving a look of sharp displeasure or an annoyed tone of voice that serves as a helpful counterpoint. Psych never passes up a joke, a reference to an ’80s film, an antic, or a farcical conclusion,(except in a handful of darker episodes near the end of the last two seasons). And there is simply too much silliness in the show for one character to carry without the show self-destructing. Many are annoyed at Tony Shaloub being nominated for his portrayal of Monk yet again, but that show is nothing without his performance. Roday’s take on Shawn is too thin to do the work of carrying the show single-handedly. So we have Burton Guster to carry us through, to take the weight off Shawn, to serve as a bridge to the somewhat more realistic characters on the show, and to ground Shawn.

This ancillary nature of the MBFF is disturbing insofar as it suggests that a television show can’t survive with a black lead or further contributes to racial tokenism. And there is probably something significant in the fact that Hill’s most famous role was on The West Wing, where he was a late addition to the cast, forced by NBC to address complaints about its whitewashed primetime lineup. To their benefit, USA has always promoted Psych as a two-lead comedy, but unfortunately that’s not how the show actually works in terms of stories or characterization. Gus is no more than the MBFF.

But I return to Psych because it is funny and because of Hill’s performance. In one of the show’s few (mostly) serious episodes, Shawn is tracking a serial killer and finds he can’t work under the stress, so he asks Gus to be his surrogate and lighten the mood. Rather than aim for mimicry, Hill delivers a performance as Gus that takes Shawn’s levity into absurdly literal territory and thus makes a joke of the very idea that Gus could be funny. But the real joke is that Gus is the funny one. Shawn is the class clown, the big-joke guy who can’t take anything seriously. Gus is the classic straight man who gets more laughs with an exasperated look than the wildly gesticulating man beside him.

Community has a well-earned reputation for mixing in lots of meta-humor into its character humor and one-off jokes. A lot of the humor comes from seeing how the writers play off sit-com clichés. When done properly, it adds a layer of sophistication to the show that I find very compelling. A show won’t survive long just doing that; it still needs characters we are interested in or stories we find compelling. In its first season, Community has done this remarkably well, incorporating nearly every kind of joke you could ever want in a sit-com.

We can appreciate those jokes about television (directed at itself, at other sit-coms, or recently at Glee), and it can lead to us thinking of Community as a smart show, one that it takes attention, background knowledge, and intelligence to watch. But I want to highlight a different way that Community‘s creators express and expect intelligence in their show. Here’s an exchange from last week’s “Modern Warfare,” an extended parody of action films.

The dialogue I want to draw your attention to is not the characters’ awareness of clichés and how they see themselves against those clichés. It’s the following.

Britta: “You’re right, you know. I am a phony. I try to act compassionate because I’m afraid that I’m not.”

Jeff: “Oh, please. I invented phony.You care about people. I accuse you of faking to convince myself that I’m not such a jerk.”

Britta: “Jeff, you help people more than I do and you don’t even want to. You’re not a jerk; you’re fine.”

There is a sophistication to this exchange that I really appreciate. Britta expresses a profound insight about herself: that what looks like compassion is actually rooted in a fear of being uncompassionate rather than a true benevolence. Jeff dismisses her worry because, as a phony, he recognizes what phoniness is and can see it in other people. Those are two really insightful observations for characters to make, and it takes an awareness by the writers of who these characters are and an ability to verbalize it without sounding pompous or distracting from the mood of the show. That is really smart writing.

But then it gets better. Britta recognizes a distinction between a person who has positive character traits (e.g., a compassionate person who wants to do go for others) and a person who produces positive consequences (e.g., a jerk who actually does good for others). Britta recognizes that the character traits, intentions, and desires that make a person a good person are not always correlated with actually doing good. On the other hand, there are people who are able to do a great deal of good that don’t have a great character. For example, Richard Nixon has done more good than most people who lived in the 20th century. It doesn’t follow that he had a morally praiseworthy character; he probably didn’t. It also doesn’t follow that he didn’t do a great deal bad, as well. He certainly did. Jeff, through elements of his personality and his position in the group, is able to do a lot more good for the study group (and the community college) than the person who is dedicating her life to doing good. That doesn’t make Jeff the better person, just the more powerful one.

One thing that Community has done a great job of this season is tracking Jeff’s reluctant immersion into the group. Positioning himself as an outsider who in the pilot claimed that he was a moral relativist who doesn’t care about other people to a group-member willing to make sacrifices (that he doesn’t fully understand) for the sake of others.  This can only be achieved when you create really complex characters, and the writers have a really firm grasp on them and the intelligence to draw out of those characters compelling stories and sensible dialogue. What makes Community the smartest show on television isn’t (just) all the self-referential humor, it’s also the ability to articulate very finely the social interactions of these complex characters while exploiting the backdrop of a community college to draw out interesting ethical and socio-psychological insights.

And it’s funny.

Big spoilers for “Chuck vs. the Honeymooners” (3.14) (Monday, April 27, 2010) and general spoilers for season 6 of The Office

Last night’s Chuck (which is the first of six episodes added after the initial run of 13 episodes in season 3) brought a lot of satisfaction to those who had been waiting, and waiting, and waiting for Chuck and Sarah to get together. Finally, an end to all that UST (Unresolved Sexual Tension, to use Mo Ryan’s acronym). Most critics have focused on the myth that a show takes a nose-dive in quality after the leads finally get together (the Moonlighting myth). “Look at Jim and Pam on The Office,” these critics say. “There are still interesting stories to tell about being in a relationship, not just about leading up to a relationship.” And these critics are right (except that The Office example is ill-timed, since the best part of season six has been the budding romance of Andy-Erin and not the established relationship of Jim-Pam). There is no part in dragging out a relationship of two characters who seem like they should be together simply to avoid dealing with the new problem of writing them as a couple.

Andy and Erin, from The Office (photo from fanpop.com)

Unfortunately, though, critics have been forced to deal with a rift among the devoted viewers of Chuck. Some fans’ major interest in the show is in seeing Chuck and Sarah get together. Known as ‘shippers among critics (as in “relationshippers”), these fans primarily care about casting aside any obstacles to Chuck and Sarah and getting them together as quickly and as happily as possible. Critics are then in the position of needing to distance themselves from these fans while also reaffirming that there is no point in keeping the leads apart for arbitrary reasons or because of the Moonlighting myth. I’ve written before about how this season of Chuck is an example of how shows (often in their third season) push the lead character away from their allies/friends to add new levels of drama. This was partly accomplished by the introduction of Agent Shaw (Brandon Routh) and Hannah (Kristin Kreuk) as romantic possibilities for Sarah and Chuck, respectively.

What I want to focus on is Sarah. But to do that, alas, I must write about Chuck. A lot has been written about Chuck, which is appropriate on a show that bears his name. But Sarah’s story is in many ways the more interesting one. To an underappreciated extent, Chuck is a show by, for, and about fanboys. It’s the now-classic tale of geek-gets-girl. From Sam Raimi’s Spiderman to Josh Schwartz’s The O.C. to beer commercials, the last ten years have seen a new popular narrative established in which the Geek (brown, tousled hair, glasses, shirt untucked, comic book obsession) wins the Girl (blonde, svelte, a little tomboy-ish). This is derivative of some of the college nerd comedies of the 1980s, but one important twist is that the Girl must recognize that what makes the Geek geeky is also what makes him lovable. Also, the Geek may have a Rival, but this is more often the cause of undermining the Geek’s self-confidence than forcing the Rival out of the Girl’s gaze. Because deep down, this narrative says, the Girl really does like the Geek better, and they would be perfect together if only the Geek could gather the courage to be with the Girl.

One of the dangers with this narrative is that it reinforces the focus on the man (the Geek, in this case) even as it redefines manliness. If the story of the Geek getting the Girl is about the Geek overcoming his lack of confidence, then the story will have to follow him getting that confidence. It’s still all about the guy.

We’ve seen that problem pushed to the forefront in this season of Chuck. Sarah was shoved aside this season while the Geeek (Chuck) tried to earn her love (by becoming a spy) while fending off the Rival (Agent Shaw, who, like all Rivals, represents what the Geek is not but thinks that he must be to deserve the Girl). This left the viewer with one episode in which the Girl makes her move, followed by twelve episodes in which she sits idly by watching the Geek become unrecognizable. Since in the Geek Gets Girl narrative, it is the Geek’s geekiness that makes him suitable to the Girl, when he loses that geekiness he becomes too much like the Rival. And then the Girl may as well be with the Rival. Watching this unfold, however, it reinforces an underlying problem with the Geek Gets Girl narrative: the Girl is completely passive. She simply reacts. This is less noticeable in films (such as Spiderman) where one small goal (e.g., breaking into acting) is enough to distract away from the Girl’s passivity. But over the course of 50 episodes of a television show, it is difficult to find a way to make the Girl an agent with a life and decisions that are her own. This season of Chuck‘s greatest failing has not been avoiding a Chuck-Sarah romance, or introducing Agent Shaw, or putting the Intersect in Chuck’s head, it has been giving Sarah nothing to do. This is a problem embedded in the Geek Gets Girl narrative, but it came to the forefront this season.

Remember when we got backstory on how Sarah became a spy (2.10)? Remember when Sarah shot a Fulcrum agent to protect Chuck’s identity (2.11)? These provided ways to make Sarah a person, someone who makes decisions with consequences and has a story of her own, within the loose confines of the Geek Gets Girl narrative. This season Sarah has been reduced to a prop, whose job is to watch with Sad Eyes while the Geek tries to become like a Rival. She is a passive spectator, rather than a worthy partner to the eponymous hero.

What I liked about last night’s episode of Chuck was not that Chuck and Sarah finally got together, but that Chuck and Sarah were treated as equals. Both were trying to be good partners to each other, considering the other’s desires as at least as important as their own. That Sarah is once again Chuck’s equal is nicely captured in the smartly choreographed fight scene from the episode.

There is still a fundamental inequality to the show that I don’t think it will ever overcome. As we saw in the pre-credits sequence of “Chuck vs. The Honeymooners,” Sarah is in an expensive, barely-there neglige while Chuck is in a plain t-shirt and lounge pants. Sarah, no matter how realized the character becomes, will always exist also as eye candy in a way that Chuck does not. (Captain Awesome, who was yet again shirtless, is supposed to roughly even things out I suspect, but it doesn’t approach the level to which Scrubs took the equity, requiring that every episode of a woman in underwear also have a man in underwear).

Sarah may begin to be treated, finally, as an equal to Chuck, but she will still be the Girl.

Small spoiler for Parks and Recreation (2.19) and big spoiler for last year’s The Office (5.23)

There was a really good episode of Parks and Recreation last night, which has been enjoying a really great second season after a mini-first season that saw it finding its feet. (I’ve written about the importance of second seasons previously.) Last night, we got an (unnecessary but still quite funny) insight into why Jerry is the most put-upon member of the Parks Department. As Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) explains, Jerry is both schlemiel and schlimazel. In the following scene, in sympathy to Jerry who has recently dislocated his shoulder, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) declares that no one in the office is to make fun of Jerry. Which turns out to be very, very difficult.

One thing that makes this scene work so well is the conference table. Five people sitting in a room around a table; one standing. In a single shot, we can see four characters (Tom, April, Donna, and Leslie). A second shot gives us Ron and Jerry. A third shows Donna, Leslie, and Ron. And so on. What does this do? Watch April as Tom asks, “Muncie?” or Donna as Leslie declares, “Muncie is a lovely city.” We can see one character’s reaction while another is speaking without the need for a reaction shot. So rather than feel hyper-edited as we jump back and forth from Jerry’s presentation, we get a feel for each character’s attempt to hold back their laughter. It’s an extremely simple yet extremely clever way to set up the scene.

What I’ll call “tabling” is a great way to block an ensemble comedy. The characters are literally facing each other, turned only slightly toward the camera. It invites the viewer into the room, into the meeting, into the world of the Pawnee Parks Department. It creates a natural feel appropriate to a single-camera sit-com. It also provides an excellent opportunity to show off how well the cast plays off each other. Parks and Rec isn’t the only show to do this, or do it well. For instance, we see it at the writers’ table on 30 Rock. (Since both Tracy and Jenna tend to eat up the camera when they’re one screen, we rarely see them together in large groups. Instead, we get all the writers, producers, and staff together around the writers’ table, with Liz standing at the head of the table or walking into/out of her office.)

But we see it most clearly on Community. Many of Community‘s best scenes have been nothing more than the cast sitting around the table in their library study room, playing off one another. The direction on Community is so solid that you rarely feel that seven people sitting at a table in a library is dull. We get a combination of shots that show one, two, three, or more characters. We can get both simple reaction shots and also shots of Annie with Shirley or Troy with Abed or Pierce with Shirley. We can get pans around the table. The characters on the show are so precise and the acting so strong that you actually look forward to watching scenes of them sitting around a table together. That’s quite an achievement for a sit-com in its first year.

One weakness on The Office is that it too often turns into The Michael Scott Comedy Show. And we can see this every time the cast enters the conference room, which is almost always set up with the chairs facing the front of the room. Michael Scott (Steve Carell) is such an over-the-top figure that he tends to dominate the show (like Tracy on 30 Rock). Put him in front of the conference room, and suddenly everyone (the other characters and the viewer) must turn their attention toward Michael. Then Jim is left to shoot “did you see that?” looks at the camera. Stanley sits and does his crossword. And no one can interact with anyone but Michael without awkward craning of the head. We know Jim and Dwight are going to play a role in a conference room scene in The Office when they sit against the wall, which allows them to turn toward Michael, the camera, and the coworkers. It’s a very limited structure and one that The Office relies on too often. (Imagine if Community was always stuck in Senor Chang’s classroom, facing toward the scene-chewing Ken Jeong.) Compare that to the wonderful scene in season 5 of The Office when Michael, Ryan, and Pam negotiate with David Wallace and Charles Miner. Look at the opportunities presented by the format, particularly how we are shown Ryan and Pam’s reaction to Michael’s “No.”

The table not only signifies the combat between Michael-Pam-Ryan and David-Charles, it also signifies the unity of Michael-Pam-Ryan. At the same time, it gives a way to watch how Ryan and Pam respond while Michael seems to throw their opportunity away. It’s a completely different way of watching these characters squirm with Michael.

This season of The Office could take a page from Community and last night’s Parks and Rec and use a lot more tabling.

Spoilers for Angel (Season 5) and House (Season 4)

My official Best Television of the 2000s list will feature only shows that aired at least three seasons in the 2000s. I am making this restriction because one of the marks of a great show is its ability to sustain its stories and characters over a long period, and three seasons seems as good a cut-off as any. Also, since the traditional television season runs from fall to spring, I’ve decided to include seasons that began in the fall of 1999 and I am ending with seasons that concluded before fall of 2009. That means that shows debuting in fall, 2009, are ineligible (Community, Modern Family), and it also means that on-going shows that debuted in spring, 2009, are ineligible unless they had the bad fortune to be cancelled immediately; that means no Glee, Dollhouse, Parks & Recreation, Castle, or Better Off Ted. Those shows got too late a start to be included in the best of this past decade, as I am arbitrarily determining it. Because of these restrictions on my count-down list, I thought it appropriate to say a little bit about a few shows that didn’t make the three season cut-off, but were spectacular nonetheless. I’m also including three shows that I think managed to pull off one truly great season amidst a number of less spectacular ones, and those are included at the end. Below are the highlights, in alphabetical order.

One Season

Andy Barker, P.I.

Andy Richter and Conan O’Brien teamed up for a Thursday night mystery-comedy hybrid that only aired four episodes before being yanked. (Six were filmed.) Featuring a stellar supporting cast around beat-down everyman Richter, the show exhibited remarkable comic timing over its first few episodes. When Andy Barker, CPA, moves into the office formerly held by a private detective, he finds people mistaking him for a P.I.; he may not know how to handle a gun, but he can handle your taxes when it’s over.

For fans of Chuck, Remington Steele, accounting

Firefly

Perhaps the greatest science fiction show to ever air on television, this series brought a legion of new fans to Joss Whedon. Its fans called themselves “Browncoats,” and turned Firefly into the most essential television show of geek culture in the 2000s. But is it any good? Beyond good, this show’s 13 episodes (shown, as jilted fanboys like to point out, out of order by the evil Fox Network) created a fully realized world from the first episode. The pilot is too slow and too long, but beginning in the second episode, this outer-space A-Team demonstrated that stories about vigilantes fighting against an evil centralized power could somehowstrike a chord with viewers during the Bush administration. Like many great shows, the most essential member of the cast was the location, in this case a creaky old spaceship with more smuggler’s holds than the Millenium Falcon. Wonderfully cast, with a sly sense of humor that combined Whedon’s subversive expressivism with Ben Edlund’s comic exaggeration.

For fans of Battlestar Galactica, The Tick, men in tight pants

Freaks and Geeks

Freaks and Geeks is remembered today as the greatest dramedy, the greatest high school show, the show most like your own life, and the show that launched a thousand careers. This brainchild of Judd Apatow and Paul Feig told the story of high school from those least interested in remembering it. Surprisingly, those of us who had successfully blocked our own experiences found glorious catharsis in watching the failures and (very occasionally) successes of the two bands of outsiders (those intentionally existing outside the system and those too nerdy to fit in comfortably). Essential viewing for people who love television.

For fans of Glee, Friday Night Lights, awkwardness

The Middleman

An unrepentant throw-back to a sillier form of science fiction and fantasy shows, The Middleman proved that sharp writing and smart characters can make great television using the flimsiest of CGI. When a smart young artist (Natalie Morales) working a temp job gets nearly eaten by a mutant science experiment, her unflappability catches the eye of The Middleman (Matt Keeslar) who recruits her as his sidekick. There’s perhaps never been a show in the history of television that required so many repeat viewings with a pen and paper handy to unpack its jokes and references. Often times, an episode would pick a theme (Die Hard, sixties rock band The Zombies) and build as many references as it could into its 44 minutes. This show never achieved the critical mass of devotion it deserved.

For fans of Get Smart, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, meta-humor

Chuck

Chuck has found unexpected life, being renewed for a third season that begins this January. This is the only show on this list still on the air, so catch this bandwagon while its still hot. (Wow, now that is a mixed metaphor.) Chuck Bartowski is a hard-working Buy More employee whose brain, due to unexpected help from his college roommate-turned-nemesis, becomes the living computer that stores all of the US government’s information. This is a fun, funny, sexy, silly blend of action and comedy that really found its stride in its second season. The best thing to happen to Mondays since Memorial Day.

For fans of Alias, Eureka, Adam Baldwin

Flight of the Conchords

Immigration. Unemployment. Bureaucracy. Topics for a gritty documentary somehow became occasions for the musical comedy duo to perform their songs. Each episode is a poorly constructed attempt to cram three pre-established songs into 30 minutes of story. Somehow, despite the obvious problems with this plan, the show managed to create moments of sublime comic awkwardness squeezed between occasionally brilliant, occasionally boring musical set pieces. In its way, it was one of the most ambitious television shows of the decade.

For fans of Dead Like Me, The Ben Stiller Show, Michel Gondry

Life

In its strike-addled first season, Life was a gritty cop drama, light-hearted character study, and on-going mystery in absolutely perfect balance. No procedural has ever managed to so perfectly blend those three elements as well as Life did in that first season. Its second season renewal came with strings attached: bigger (and subsequently less plausible) weekly hooks, less of the on-going story arcs, and Donal Logue as the new police captain. The second season fell to merely an above-average cop show, but was fortunately able to tie up many loose ends in its memorable series finale. The show drew out a nice parallel between generic Eastern religion’s emphasis that everything is connected and the basis of good detective work, which is following connections. Unlike most shows that attempt to make a character religious or philosophical, the writers were fully aware that the form of Zen being practiced by Charlie Crews is a watered-down, pop psychology version of Zen, which kept the show from ever falling into self-parody.

For fans of Castle, Burn Notice, staying out of prison

Pushing Daisies

Abandoned by film, television became the home of screwball dialogue in the 2000s, and not even Gilmore Girls or 30 Rock could manage Pushing Daisies‘ speed. More brilliant color and wacky quirkiness than any show should rightfully be able to manage, Barry Sonnenfeld somehow managed to create an engaging dream world in which a pie maker brings people back from the dead and solves crimes along with the love of his life whom he can’t touch, a crabby detective, and Kristin Chenoweth. Death has never been so funny.

For fans of Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, color

UPDATE: Silly me. I left Kings off the list. Great modern fable.

Long-Running Series with One Great Season

Angel (Season 5)

Angel never discovered what it could do well until its final season, by which point fans’ whiplash was so great from its overhauls each season that no one knew what this show was any more. However, by having Angel go to work for the evil law firm Wolfram & Hart, Joss Whedon and Tim Minear wisely guided the show into complex thematic territory: at what point do you stop protesting the system and find a way to work within it? Mirroring Whedon’s own complex relationship with the Fox Network, Angel and his band of merry men try to be constructive from inside a destructive system. And by bringing Spike over from the now-finished Buffy the Vampire Slayer, shooting for darker, more gothic horror, and achieving more sublime humor, the fifth season became by far the series’s best. Watching Angel is worth it simply for the show’s finale, which is perhaps the finest final episode in the history of television.

The Closer (Season 1)

A weaker knock-off of England’s Prime Suspect, The Closer began its run on TNT as a law & order procedural with the added element of watching an unknown, and therefore untrusted, female cop head LAPD’s Major Crimes division. A breadth of capable acting by the supporting cast grounded Kyra Sedgwick’s head-flailing approach to characterization. In later seasons, the show became unbearable in its explorations of Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson’s inexplicable relationship with her boyfriend Fritz, unnecessary relationship with her adopted cat, and unwatchable relationship with her family. But in that first season, The Closer was a smart woman-in-the-workplace drama with workable stories about how only she could wrangle a confession out of the bad guy.

House (Season 4)

Modeled on Sherlock Holmes, Gregory House, M.D., is a jackass to everyone, including his trusty confidant, his busty boss, and his team of diagnosticians. The writers always knew how to write for House (or Hugh Laurie’s indelible performance at least made it seem that way), but he was always surrounded by thin, unnecessary characters led by Cameron, the whiniest female lead this side of Felicity. So when House fired his staff at the end of Season 3 and began Season 4 by whittling down an auditorium full of candidates, new life was breathed into this occasionally stale medical drama. House was allowed to be his devastatingly truthful and hilariously cruel self and a better cast of supporting characters stepped in. The writer’s strike created some story-telling problems for the back half of the season, but it was still an audacious reinvention that amazingly worked, at least until Season 5 became too enamored with the Foreman-13 story.

The situation-comedy is about as old as television itself. It suffered an agonizing near-death experience in the early 2000s with the rise of the news magazine and the explosion of reality television. Mid-decade critical favorites Arrested Development and 30 Rock have never been commercial hits, and The Office and How I Met Your Mother (the other two highly respected sit-coms of the last few years) haven’t fared all that much better in the ratings.

So what a pleasant surprise 2009 has turned out to be. This year’s critical favorites are Modern Family and Community, and both seem to be getting enough viewers to keep them around for a while. Last spring were the pleasant surprises of Parks and Recreation and Better Off Ted. Reaching back to early 2009, we have Party Down on the Starz! network, which was fairly successful comedically and commercially. Some people found love for Nurse Jackie. Amazingly, even the pilot of Cougar Town wasn’t as terrible as its title suggests.

Why is 2009 the year of the sit-com? I really don’t know, but I think there are a few things that have contributed to all of these successes.

1. The ensemble

Each of these shows (I’m excepting Nurse Jackie, which I haven’t seen) chooses to provide, from the outset, at least five or six characters who we can immediately recognize, but get strengthened quickly in the run. Better Off Ted has the fewest at five regular characters, and even the “Lenny and Carl from The Simpsons, only they’re scientists!” pencil sketches become adorably personal through the superior acting of Jonathan Slavin and Malcolm Barrett. The smart writers at Community have paired off different characters each week in what has become the most colorful merry-g0-round on NBC’s killer Thursday nights. Parks and Rec took a while to find its sea legs, but this fall it has turned out some of the best 22-minute runs of any show this year by writing to the diverse strengths of its cast. Being able to immediately present an entire family in all its disfunction, as Modern Family does from episode one, or work mates, as Party Down did consistently, from the earliest stages is a pretty remarkable feat, but it has been done repeatedly in 2009.



2. Single-camera directing

For all its innovation in story telling, How I Met Your Mother is a very traditional sit-com in its friends-as -family format and three-camera direction. A three-camera show, like Friends, Cheers, or The Cosby Show takes a stage, filmed from only one side, with two additional camera for close-ups. You never see how McLaren’s looks from the doorway, or the Cosby house from the stairwell. A single-camera show, on the other hand, follows its characters through a full 360-degree, three-dimensional world. Each of the new shows uses this format. Some have an even more particular mockumentary style, clearly inspired by the two iterations of The Office. Parks and Recreation even takes some of The Office‘s regular writers and their knowledge of the format. Single-camera directing in general, and the mockumentary format in particular (with its talking head cut-aways), are hallmarks of this year’s crop. This contributes to presenting a more fully realized world, and adds to the feeling that these characters are grounded in real life, even if when a show like Better Off Ted goes for the extreme wackiness of 30 Rock.



3. Balance of one-liners, sight gags, character humor

Each of these shows is willing to write toward humor that works because the characters work and willing to leave that aside when there’s a really great throwaway gag to be had. This combination of characters that we can track through multiple seasons and gags that have walked right out of a sketch comedy show makes for some great comedy. Some critics fault 30 Rock and The Office for these rapid changes in tone, but I find that makes them more endearing. And that makes for another part of their legacy. Community best exhibits the throwaway gag mixed in with character humor, but each of these sit-coms has it.

4. Corporate satire

The final legacy of 30 Rock and The Office on the current crop of sit-coms is the satirizing of corporate culture. Party Down chronicles the attempts of disenchanted workers to make their work less dull. Better Off Ted, particularly in its fake Veridian Dynamics commercials and the hilarious “Racial Sensitivity” episode, shows top-down corporate stupidity better than any show ever, including 30 Rock‘s continual body blows to NBC/GE/Universal/Sheinhardt Wig(/Comcast?). Parks and Recreation adds local governance to the workplace formula. Modern Family isn’t interested so far in the working world; it takes on the social institution that is the family, but rather than focus on the familiar foibles of family life (a la Everybody Loves Raymond or King of Queens), it treats the family as an unlikely bonding of mutually incompatible personalities – the same philosophy that underlies workplace sit-coms.

It’s heartening to see so many great sit-coms on television right now. For all the serialized glory of Mad Men and challenging nonsense of Lost, that television still has room for making people laugh without a Jaywalking segment is cause for celebrating.