With still a little less than two weeks left in the year, I'm going ahead and making out my quick and dirty lists of the best of what I read/watched in 2010. I make little effort to confine this to items actually produced or published in 2010--it's about when I encountered them. Though in the case of the below category, I think it's all 2010 stuff.
First up: Television. I don't watch a lot of TV, aside from college football and English soccer and various political shows. But of the shows I do watch/have watched, here are my views as the year winds down: Best TV Series: Stargate Universe. A dark, serious, cosmic, enigmatic military SF series that couldn't find its audience, either because of the nights it was aired or because old-school Stargate fans didn't warm to it and many who didn't like old-school Stargate (that would be me) didn't want to give it a try. I'm really glad I checked it out, because I absolutely loved it. With a few exceptions, nobody was entirely good or entirely bad, and you never knew exactly who to root for or against. In other words, the characters behaved more like real people. For me it was much of what I wanted Battlestar Galactica to be, without so much of what I didn't like about Galactica. Its cancellation is probably my "entertainment crime of the year." Honorable mentions to: The Avengers animated series. The closest we've ever gotten to seeing those classic Avengers stories and characters actually moving and talking (at least until summer 2012!). Not perfect, but still wonderfully good. Breaking Bad. What made this show so good-- Bryan Cranston's slow decay and his simultaneous "rise" and "fall"-- is way in the rear view mirror now. It has become a show about the adventures of a couple of drug dealers, and that's not nearly as innovative or engrossing. Let's wrap it up. Rescue Me. I love the characters and over the years we've seen some really amazing highs with it. But this series has for years now bounced back and forth between "good season" and "what was that?!" This year's crop of episodes have been mostly the latter. I still haven't even finished watching the finale yet. Every year I think they're surely going to lay it to rest, and every year it comes back. Last year I was glad it did. This year, I think it's time for it to go for good. Big Love. A show my wife and I both really enjoy, though this season has been something of a letdown. As with Breaking Bad, the best thing about it is the setup and the premise, and once that's been well-covered and done to death, it just becomes a show about a family doing stuff. They need to figure out a new angle quickly. Modern Family. With a few historic exceptions, I'm not a sitcom guy, but this is extremely well-written and well-performed and always hilarious. I don't like any of the characters and yet I love all of them. The Tudors. The final season was extremely uneven but they wrapped it all up about as expected. I was hoping it would live up to its title and actually cover the Tudors as a dynasty and not just lock onto Henry VIII so much... but I guess we have Kate Blanchett's movies to carry us forward from there. (Have not yet seen, but have them on my DVR and plan to: Boardwalk Empire, Walking Dead, Rubicon. Am also hearing good things about The Event, unexpectedly.) (Disappointed by: Hawaii Five-O. I like the cast, love the music and the scenery... and find the average episode to be tedious at best. I can watch an entire one in about fifteen minutes by fast-forwarding with the DVR, and not really feel like I missed anything important.) Hopefully next year at this time we'll all be talking about how great A Game of Thrones was! --Van -- Van Allen Plexico www.plexico.net -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Unique Geek" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/theuniquegeek?hl=en.
