This is the third and final post in this series on my favorite pop culture of 2022. To be sure, I need to hurry it up, as we’re already well into the second month of 2023! Still, for what it’s worth, here are my favorite television shows of the past year.
My Ten Favorite TV Shows of 2022
Andor (Season 1): Remember when you understood exactly where everything “fit” in the Star Wars universe? There was this kid Luke Skywalker, who, despite growing up in the remote outpost of Tatooine (remember that “nutty Star Wars bar”?), became a key member of the Rebel Alliance (Star Wars, 1977). But the oppressive Galactic Empire, led by the cutthroat yet tragic Darth Vader, proved all too formidable, forcing Luke into hiding (The Empire Strikes Back, 1980). Yet, Luke returned stronger than before and ultimately led the Rebels to an apparently decisive victory (Return of the Jedi, 1983). Easy peasy! And so it was for almost two decades. And then, in 1999, franchise creator George Lucas opened the floodgates—first with a prequel trilogy, then a sequel trilogy, not to mention various cinematic and television spin-offs. Most of this later material is mediocre at best, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Yet, the new TV series Andor is certainly better than that. Set five years before the 1977 Star Wars film, Andor stars Diego Luna as Cassian Andor—a cynical, small-time thief who, through a series of misfortunes and difficult choices, emerges as a Rebel leader. Yet, if Andor’s overarching plot whiffs of redundancy, series creator Tony Gilroy exchanges typical Star Wars melodrama for hard-bitten political realism. Indeed, at times, you almost forget that Andor belongs to the Star Wars universe. Whether or not that’s a good thing is another question.
Dark Winds (Season 1): Based on Tony Hillerman’s crime fiction book Listening Woman (1978)—the third novel in Hillerman’s “Leaphorn and Chee” series—Dark Winds feels like a throwback in many ways. It is, at bottom, a murder mystery, featuring the always excellent Zahn McClarnon as Joe Leaphorn—a lieutenant in the Navajo tribal police, whose investigation into a double homicide leads him into a tangled web of criminality and betrayal, centering on a rogue FBI agent and a militant tribal group. There is some discernible, if underdeveloped, political messaging in this aspect of the plot, though Dark Winds really excels when it focuses on Leaphorn’s character. He is a man of integrity, who is wrestling with both personal tragedy (the loss of his son) and communal responsibility. Further, in the figure of young detective Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon), Leaphorn is given an opportunity at redemption, if only Chee will listen.
Evil (Season 1): Yes, I know Evil’s first season premiered in September 2019, while the series’ third season came out in June 2022. However, I have only just recently started the show, and I’m now playing catch up. The basic setup is this: a Catholic seminarian (Mike Colter) has been tasked by church officials to investigate supernatural occurrences, typically demonic possessions. In order to help distinguish between psychiatric episodes and spiritual ones, he hires an atheistic forensic psychologist (Katja Herbers) to help investigate. Many of the episodes function almost like police procedurals, with the two leads working to solve a case. In that vain, Evil is compelling and often frightening, but it’s not formally exceptional. However, where Evil really shines is in its willingness to tackle issues that other shows, even putatively “edgier” ones, won’t touch. For example, the intersection of religion and science is consistently explored—and not in stereotypical fashion. On Evil, in other words, “science is real,” but so is faith. And both are needed to combat life’s most vexing mysteries.
House of the Dragon (Season 1): There are two ways to evaluate House of the Dragon. On the one hand, and as I have written about before, the show represents our contemporary fetishization of politics. Even more than its predecessor, the immensely popular Game of Thrones (2011-19), House of the Dragon treats political might as the primus motor of human life. Thus its plot is driven by a single question: who gets to wield power? That the show’s storyline is basically a fictional version of “political Twitter” means that House of the Dragon is neither original nor thought-provoking. And yet, the show is first-class in almost every other way—the Learesque ethos, the acting, the set design, the CGI dragons. Hence, despite my better instincts, I found myself looking forward to each episode. I guess there is a reason why Twitter continues to grow.
1923 (Season 1): Here’s my theory about the Yellowstone franchise. While Yellowstone (2018-) is currently the “most popular show on television,” it’s not the series that writer/showrunner Taylor Sheridan actually cares about. That’s not to say that Yellowstone is “bad TV.” It’s a beautifully-shot, well-acted drama that, like or not, has filled a void in the television landscape. And yet, complaints that the show is declining, and possibly on the verge of cancellation, are not unfounded. The plot has thinned out, and episodes increasingly rely on extended montages of the “cowboy lifestyle” (as if advertisements to buy the “Dutton ranch belt buckle” left any doubt!). What this amounts to is, in my opinion, something of a “bait and switch.” Just as musical artists release popular singles to drive interest in a larger, more complex album or oeuvre, so is Sheridan using Yellowstone to pay for and to promote the kind of Western-themed content he prefers. Sheridan’s new series 1923 exemplifies this point. Technically, the show is a prequel to Yellowstone, but the two are remarkably different in tone. Yellowstone is essentially a well-made soap opera, prioritizing melodrama and sentimentality over nuance and irony. However, at least until this point, 1923 has tempered Yellowstone’s excesses. Starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren, who opt for veristic, understated performances, 1923 is more like Lawrence of Arabia (1962) than Dallas (1978-91). Deeply romantic, albeit with a critical eye to the sweeping historical changes of the interwar period, it gives you Yellowstone’s epic scale without the histrionics.
Barry (Season 3): Barry might be the most unusual series on television. It began in 2018 largely as a comedy, but a shocking decision at the end of the first season changed its trajectory. Its second season (2019) played out mostly as a crime drama, though a “bottle episode” (“ronny/lily”) midway through the season gave it an absurdist, nightmarish air. This trend has continued into the third season, which has put emphasis on the “dark” in “dark comedy.” Perhaps this timbre was inevitable for a series built around a hitman-turned-actor—a premise that works precisely because co-creators Alec Berg and Bill Hader (who plays the title character) realize that it can’t be taken too literally. Indeed, Barry works best when it explores how the theater, not to mention art in general, serves as a vehicle for the expression (and suppression!) of real-life trauma. To put it in Kierkegaardian terms, the show seems to realize that the aesthetic, while temporarily gratifying, cannot provide the healing and reconciliation that people ultimately want. In that sense, it also seems to inchoately gesture at the religious. After all, the poster for Season 3 pictures Barry propped against a tree, eating an apple, his face curled into a frown.
Euphoria (Season 2): I wrote about Euphoria twice in 2022. First, I highlighted how the show’s notorious portrayals of teen debauchery indicate, but fail to interrogate, the sway that digital media has over our lives. Second, I argued that, while most commentators describe Euphoria as a show about drug addiction, it is actually a show about Internet addiction—a form of behavioral compulsion that was explored in Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked (2017). Hence, while I occasionally found myself rolling my eyes at Euphoria’s glorification of teen culture, its glossy, frenetic direction does reflect how that culture is experienced on the inside. If it were possible to take thousands of adolescent iPhones and to dramatize their collective browsing histories, social-media interactions, and YouTube playlists, Euphoria is probably what you’d wind up with—and that is no joke.
We Own This City (Miniseries): Based on Justin Fenton’s 2021 book of the same name, We Own This City is a true crime drama centering on police corruption in Baltimore. In a sense, then, the show is an extension of The Wire (2002-08), one of the most decorated series in TV history. In fact, the creator and principal writer of The Wire, former Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon, has a similar role on We Own This City. Yet, while the two series have similar DNA, their plots are quite different. Whereas The Wire took a broader perspective on the problem of urban crime, focusing on a diverse array of people, from judges to drug dealers, We Own This City homes in on a particular abuse of police power. The always compelling Jon Bernthal plays Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, a onetime “good cop” who slowly but surely becomes a despot within Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF). The reasons for Jenkins’ demise are complex, but We Own This City pays more attention to systemic, rather than personal, problems. Jenkins’ shrewdly realizes that Baltimore’s political élites only care that he’s making arrests, not how he is making them. Thus he pockets money found at drug busts, often buying off his fellow officers in the process, even as he runs up overtime pay in exchange for a sterling arrest record. It was too good to be true: getting rich while putting criminals behind bars. So, as Jenkins’ scheme tragically unravels, We Own This City asks hard questions about what, if anything, can be done to improve the criminal justice system in America.
Better Call Saul (Season 6): The conclusion of Better Call Saul actually marks the (likely) conclusion of the entire “Breaking Bad franchise.” It has been a remarkable run, and not just because Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul have proven successful. Indeed, in my view, what makes this franchise exceptional is its capacity to evolve. Breaking Bad (2008-13) was a revelation when it burst on the scene—a dark, delirious, and indelible exploration of humanity’s nefarious potential. The show dared to suggest that even a decent high-school teacher and family man could devolve into a cold-blooded killer under the wrong circumstances. Of course, Breaking Bad’s premise is also reductive. The rise and fall of the show’s antihero Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is as improbable as it is extreme. After all, not everyone who “breaks bad” does so with White’s unfettered yen. This is the case with Better Call Saul’s protagonist Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk). Whereas White is a bad man in the guise of a good one, McGill seems to be a good man in the guise of a bad one. A small-time conman and aspiring lawyer, who grew up in the shadow of his brilliant yet neurotic older brother, McGill does not want to engage in wrongdoing as such. He simply believes that justice sometimes has to be won through false means. However, over the course of Better Call Saul (2105-22) McGill’s series of minor transgressions not only alter his personal identity (literally, to “Saul Goodman” and later to “Gene Takavic”) but force him into a criminal life that he never really wanted. A profound meditation on selfhood and the nature of sin, Better Call Saul reaches a crescendo in its sixth and final season. It may not have been the show’s most entertaining season—I would nominate Season 3 for that award—but it manages to advance the story to a dénouement that at once complements and contradicts that of Breaking Bad. Whether or not Jimmy finds redemption is doubtful, but he at least he comes to terms with who he is, for better and for worse.
The White Lotus (Season 2): When I started this exercise of reviewing my favorite movies, music, and television of 2022, I mentioned that I have the regrettable habit of starting TV shows around 11pm at night. That’s fairly late, obviously, and there are many nights that I only watch for 15 or 20 minutes. Not so, however, with the second season of The White Lotus. Once started, it was all but impossible to turn off (much like HBO’s new 2023 series The Last of Us). Compressed into an abbreviated seven-episode run, The White Lotus is packed with dramatic tension, centering on the discovery of a dead body in the season’s opening sequence. And yet, the show is not really a whodunit. Instead, writer/director Mike White uses this conceit to probe human relationships, particularly romantic ones. That sex can lead to betrayal and death is a fairly unoriginal literary trope. Thus White’s achievement lies primarily in the execution. Featuring an excellent ensemble cast—Meghann Fahy, Tom Hollander, and Aubrey Plaza are especially good, in my opinion—The White Lotus is again set in the worldwide luxury resort of the same name, this time in Taormina, Sicily. It’s truly a postcard setting, and the show does not tire of highlighting the area’s beauty. Still, as with the volcanic Mount Etna looming in the distance, danger is ever present. To be sure, the holidaymakers at the White Lotus have not left their problems at home. A trio of men, representing three generations of a Sicilian-American family, are forced to come to grips with a heritage of infidelity. One husband-and-wife couple seem happy, but that may be because they believe happiness is a sham. Another couple disguise their mutual distrust by pretending to be respectable and mature. A third couple link up at The White Lotus, apparently headed for a week of carefree fun, only to discover that they are immersed in a potentially murderous scheme. Somehow White keeps these diverse stories (and more) in gripping equipoise, ultimately bringing them together as the season comes to an end. It is an impressive feat, punctuated by Juan Cristóbal Tapia de Veer’s memorable worldbeat score. Yet, even more impressive is how White uses this overarching plot to ask a question that every person has grappled with: what constitutes a good relationship? I don’t think he arrives at a definitive answer, but it’s a thought-provoking journey all the same.
Honorable mention (in no particular order): George & Tammy (Season 1); Yellowstone (Season 5); The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Season 1); Stranger Things (Season 4); The Last Movie Stars (Limited Documentary Series).
"Dark Winds," "Better Call Saul," "Barry," and "The White Lotus," you make them all sound compelling, particularly Barry. As for Euphoria ... huh ... I don't know, it sounds somehow really sad. And of course, I'm always happy to talk about "Evil," which is the one series that I keep following over seasons, it seems. Evil does have the police procedural thing going on like the X-files did, with the tension of believer/skeptic and male/female, and also like the X-files, has the perturbing recurrent antagonists (the smoking man, Leland), but the lightheartedness, sometimes tender, sometimes manic brilliance of the circle around Kristen and her family especially, really breaks through sometimes when her high-performing darkness and the Rev. seminarian David's genuineness meet. Maybe what I like the most is how the atmosphere from the friend group of responsible adults - Ben - David - Kristen, and from Kristen;s children's perspectives, gives the sense of creeping doom about, well, evil, lurking just nearby in our technology, the threat to our souls of the algorithms, the opaque corporate control permeating what seems to be just individual choices within families (the fertility clinic plotline) and that all of it has a crispening smack of the old-fashioned demonic overtaking us whether we can see it or think it or not, it's there. Anyway -- that's what I get from the shows vibes which really ring true for me.
I couldn’t watch enough of “Evil” to make a worthwhile assessment. Well, maybe one brief assessment…..YIKES. I don’t like seeing things that I can’t unsee.