The Newbies:
Two of my favorite things about 2013 were Orphan Black and Orange is the New Black. I came across an ad for Orphan online a couple days before the series began and was just in time to catch the pilot airing on BBC America, and I was blown away. Initially, it was due to the show's willingness to have its protagonist be kind of hate-able from the get go, but as time went on, I fell in love with pretty much every aspect of the show. But of course I couldn't love anything about it more than I do Tatiana Maslany, who honestly has to the be biggest success of the year hands down. Watching Tatiana create each of her characters from the ground up was the most fun anyone could have had each week, but the rest of the show didn't disappoint either. Orphan Black told its story with a confidence I don'tthink you generally get to see in TV outside of the upper echelon of series (more of them to come). It didn't waste any time getting around to the heart of the mystery of the show and had no interest in drawing out the reveal that the characters were clones. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D should take note on this point.
But maybe even more important than all that was the huge stride forward Orphan Black took by placing its story in the hands of a relatively unknown *female* lead!!!! Finally a show (a genre show no less) with the
And leading that charge is the other breakout new series of the year: Orange is the New Black. If Orphan Black was pushing boundaries by placing one female in the lead (playing almost every main character herself no less), then Orange was clearly out to throw grenades at the boundaries by placing multiple women of multiple races and ages at the forefront of its story. The outcome is a ridiculously funny, entertaining, heartfelt, thought-provoking 13 episodes that left everyone who watched them chomping at the bit for more.If 2013 becomes the year that all doubts or questions about Netflix's viability as a source for original programming were put to rest, then I venture to say that Orange is the New Black is the reason why. It's a series grounded in great acting and directing that just so happens to be equally entertaining on a binge watch as it is when taken in small doses, and it's the only series Netflix has put out thus far that I feel totally comfortable saying that about.
The Favorites:
Not to be outdone by the newbies, a few of the perennial favorites also had (expected) great years, or at least great episodes as was the case for AMC's The Walking Dead. When it aired back on March 3rd, I was very quick to hail the episode Clear as the best episode of TV that 2013 was likely to see barring entries from TV's top dogs Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and Game of Thrones which hadn't started their seasons yet.Clear turned out to be the quietest most well contained, and overall best, episode the show had seen since its first season. Indeed, the core of the story harkened back to storylines from that first season. The Walking Dead is a show that works best with a bit of forward momentum. So long as the characters are moving forward and driving towards something, it tends to be enjoyable and worth watching, but once they become stagnant, the show lacks much of what makes it special. This was the problem with all of the second and a lot of the third season. And just when I (and a lot of others) was starting to think that the show was going to lose all coherence and watchability, the (then) future showrunner, Scott M. Gimple, penned an episode so good that all of my faith was renewed. I didn't know TWD was capable of being as good, enjoyable, and introspective as Clear turned out to be, and I'm so happy to find out that it could. The beginnings of season 4 that aired last fall were equally good, proving that Gimple is exactly the man for the job, but nothing really surpassed Clear if for no other reason than because it was just so much better from start to finish than I thought the series was capable of being any longer.
While The Walking Dead revived its storytelling ability, Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones merely solidified their constant places at the top of the TV pyramid. Game of Thrones has long been a favorite of mine, but I think it truly set itself apart by taking something that a lot of people knew was coming and still succeeding in making it completely affecting and seriously entertaining. The Rains of Castamere is great. From start to finish it's just great, and there's not much more anyone can say about it. But I'm going to try anyway. I think there are three main points to be made about the episode's greatness:
1) It teaches you how to watch the show.
In the event that there was anyone uncertain that they needed to be watching the ninth episode of each season ready for something epic to happen, The Rains of Castamere put that doubt to rest. I hadn't read the books when I watched through the first season, so if I had a knock against the show, it was that its pacing didn't make sense. To hit the penultimate episode and kill off your protagonist only to follow it up with the boringest episode the season had seen was ridiculous to me. Now that I understand the rhythms of the series, I don't feel that way anymore. I know exactly what to expect from a season of GoT. I know the first 2 episodes will play catch up with all of our characters, I know that the 9th episode will be the most epic thing we'll ever see, and the finale will just be a bit a place-setting for the next season. This should have been clear to most people after the second season, but two points make a line and not a pattern, per se, so the ability for the third season to reiterate these things was important and enjoyable. And the fact that they did it was a set piece as amazing as the Red Wedding was sheer brilliance.
2) The title!
It would have been so pathetically easy to call this episode The Red Wedding and be done with it. Everyone who'd read the books (and even just those of us who were only on tumblr) knew what was to come. The Red Wedding is one of the most iconographic moments of the series, and maybe all of Fantasy as a whole. But instead what the showrunners did was take this song which has its own sense of mystique and put it at the forefront. One of the smartest adaptation moves D.B. Weiss and David Benioff have made has been to have The Rains of Castamere orchestrated (at least I hope that was their decision) and to make sure they've had it playing on the show's score during some of the most important and shocking moments. In that sense, the song has just as much meaning to the viewers as it does to the people of Westeros. This way, when the song starts playing at the wedding, we don't even need Catelyn's reaction shot to tell us shit is about to go down. The title of the episode and the song carry all the weight and some subtlety to anyone still a bit too slow to get it.
3) The Stark-centric nature of the entire episode.
After focusing 2012's Blackwater fully on King's Landing with Sansa being the only
Rounding out the best of the best of 2013 TV are the two best installments the medium has ever seen, or might ever see in future: Breaking Bad's Ozymandias and Felina. I swear I don't think it's even remotely possible to say anything about these episodes that hasn't already been said, and said far more eloquently than I could ever imagine. While the greatness of an episode of The Walking Dead could be found in the series reaching heights it didn't seem to possess any longer, and the greatness of Game of Thrones could be seen as a relatively young show simply continuing to solidify itself at the top, the genius of these two episodes of Breaking Bad is all about the final and inevitable death of a king finding a way to go out on top. BB doesn't simply end its run on a note that continues its stance as a great show, it burns the house down behind it and challenges everyone to even try and achieve what it's achieved in its six years on air.
If the main question surrounding the pending end of the most addictive show on television was whether or not it would be able to live up to the series' storied run, Ozymandias and Felina put all those questions to rest. Two hours of amazing storytelling, great visuals, pulse pounding action, wrapped up lose threads, and questions finally answered. Vince Gilligan and company finally took a firm stance on the long-standing question of Walter White's sympathy or morality and told all Walter White apologist to STFU once and for all with the series' most riveting moment: "I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really....I was alive." It's all of a minute long, and it's some of the best acting and one of the most jaw dropping moments in all of TV history in my not so humble opinion.But that's to say nothing about the other great moments of those two outstanding episodes. Everything from Hank's death, to Skylar standing up to Walter (and if the way the camera holds on the shot of the knife and the phone while she makes her decision isn't just the most amazing thing you've ever seen, then I don't know what), to the final fracture and eventual heal (band-aid at least?) of the Walter--Jesse relationship was handled with the utmost skill, respect, and appreciation. I think that there will always be people who refuse to watch Breaking Bad for one reason or another, but in the end, the reason all of us and all of your friends have been harping on you about this show is simple: It's the best thing that the small screen has seen in many many decades. It's a show that pushed the medium forward and definitively showed what long-form storytelling was truly capable of, and I just don't know that anything will surpass it.
Honorable Mentions:
1) Scandal is a show that it can be tough to admit to loving, and recommending to others, but when a season premier features a scene like this one, how can you not throw yourself behind it? Very few shows have as many "Oh Shit!" moments as Scandal does on a weekly basis, and the third season opened with one that perfectly encapsulated a lot of what the show is about, what it stands for, and what the rest of the season was really going to be. It also might be the single most perfect foundation laying scene ever as we're finally introduced to Eli Pope not as just the strong shadowy figure getting shit done, but as Olivia's father. It was great!
2) Hannibal was an early surprise for the 2013 season because I didn't think anything on NBC would be capable of being that enjoyable, but I honestly should have known better than to bet against a genius like Bryan Fuller. Great performances from Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen center this show, a great balance between being serialized and episodic elevate it, and a visual beauty that's unprecedented on network TV truly marked it as one of the greats of 2013. Small audience numbers will probably doom it and the other NBC break out Dracula to being cancelled before their time, but I'd strongly suggest enjoying them while they last.
3) On the Comedy tip, I think attention has to be paid to Fox's Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I honestly don't watch very much comedy (when you've got Archer, I don't think you really need much more), but Brooklyn turned out to not only be effortlessly funny, it's also astonishingly diverse. It's characters are fully realized and unique, and its comedy is derived from those characters being placed in great situations not the typical racist, sexist, homophobic humor that got old back in the early 2000s. With any luck this could be the future of network comedy, but so long as Seth MacFarlane is being contacted to make TV, I wouldn't bet on it.
4) The Americans had a very quiet opening season, and while I don't know that it'll be one of the shows 2013 is truly known for, I do think it was a great start to what will hopefully be a long run. It perfectly integrated its marital troubles story into its spy craft in a way that I didn't expect heading in. It was interesting each week, and there were always funny wigs, so there's that.
So I know I droned on for awhile, but this is something I'm passionate about and I felt I needed to make up for a month's worth of not posting. I'm going to spend the next couple days working on a post focused on The Bad aspects of 2013 TV, and maybe a separate post dedicated to where I hope TV is and isn't going in the future based on these findings, so keep an eye out for that. And here's to the year to come in Storytelling!
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