BEST OF 2017: RICK AND MORTY

4. RICK AND MORTY (ADULT SWIM)

It’s unfortunate that the narrative around Rick and Morty’s long-delayed third season has revolved to such a degree around how some of its most devoted fans are mean-spirited, entitled morons, because the show itself had its best year yet.  To think that you are some sort of intellectual ubermensch because you learned the proper way to interact with the world from a farcical cartoon is rather pathetic to start with.  And that is only compounded by the gross misunderstanding of the text required to view it as a straightforward endorsement of Rick’s misanthropy.

But leaving the fanbase aside, this season was wildly original and relentlessly, riotously, scabrously funny from top to bottom.  There are jokes that Rick and Morty does that only Rick and Morty could do, which is one of the things I appreciate most in a comedy.  Maybe some other Adult Swim show could wring its biggest laughs from a child accidentally murdering his sister, or the heroes’ hyperviolent pissing match with the POTUS.  But I can’t think of another that could build some of its most affecting emotional moments from its hero turning himself into a brutally homicidal pickle to avoid family therapy, or an imaginary land ruled over by a deranged refugee cannibal that sustains himself by impregnating the wildlife to produce his own incestuous livestock.  And there damn sure isn’t any that could even attempt the insane nesting doll of the Citadel Of Ricks spotlight episode, which layers a Stand By Me coming-of-age parody into a Dog Day Afternoon hostage standoff into a Training Day gritty cop drama into a Face In The Crowd political allegory, with the entire cast consisting of only two characters, but not the versions of those characters we actually "know".  That all that comes out mildly coherent is stunning.  That it is top-to-bottom hilarious is just incredible.  And that it is actually somewhat thoughtful about the attendant sociopolitical underpinnings of all the tropes it is subverting is just phenomenal. 

And that may not even be the best episode of the season, not with the surprising pathos of “Pickle Rick” and the loopy clip-show that revealed added layers to the central relationship even as it sprayed out insane and hilarious gags at a Gatling gun pace.  For as much as the ugly fringe of the fanbase might wax egotistical about the philosophy and conceptual fuckery as the source of the show's brilliance, they have it twisted.  It brings to mind an aside in the "Vindicators" episode where Morty is justifiably angry at Rick's drunken pettiness getting several of the titular heroes killed, and Rick uses the fact that he saved the universe the day before as a deflection.  Morty insists that isn't the issue, to which Rick shrugs "eh, would've been if I hadn't."

I hope you're proud of yourself.
Uh, I kind of am.
I saved the God damn universe.
That's not the issue, Rick! Ahh, it would've been if I hadn't! 

Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=rick-and-morty-2013&episode=s03e04

I hope you're proud of yourself.
Uh, I kind of am.
I saved the God damn universe.
That's not the issue, Rick! Ahh, it would've been if I hadn't! 

Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=rick-and-morty-2013&episode=s03e04

The sci-fi in a sci-fi comedy is not the issue.  If the jokes aren't working, none of the rest matters. And the this season had at least three episodes that could stack up competitively with any other half hour of comedy you could find as the funniest ever on a minute-per-minute, joke-for-joke basis.

Watch It For:  Pickle Rick.  The promos had me thinking it might be where I jumped off the series for good, but it may be the best episode of the entire run.

BEST OF 2017: LEGION AND FARGO

5/6.  LEGION/FARGO

I am bundling these two together, as you can look to the dropdown menus on the right to find my reviews of each individual episode of the season.  Suffice to say that while I understand those that preferred the languid sensuality of American Gods, or the auteur-certified dreamscape of Twin Peaks, Legion was my preferred stop for hyper-stylized mindfuckery this year.  When it comes to alternate dimensions, give me Jermaine Clement dancing around in a leisure suit over a giant tea kettle standing in for David Bowie.  And definitely give me Aubrey Plaza’s off the wall, tour de force performance over any other villain on TV.  Probably anything else, actually.

Meanwhile, Fargo’s third season suffered from a growing familiarity with its eccentricities and a slower start than the last two years.  But time is showing it to be the most directly resonant, and perhaps the best fictional accounting of the Trump Era, despite mostly predating it in terms of writing and production.  While plenty of shows – from Broad City to Saturday Night Live to Mr. Robot – contented themselves with flipping the bird at the buffoon in chief, Fargo was the only one that seemed to immediately cotton on to the fundamental trauma his rise represents.  What creator Noah Hawley calls “the mental violence of finding out the world is not what you thought.”     

The full-bore attack on reality and facts has only intensified in the year since his electoral victory (which in itself represented a repudiation of the raw vote totals).  And as we have learned more about the methods and motives of the trolls and bots that helped astroturf his rise to power, this has still proved frustratingly ineffective at combating them.  Last June, the finale left us with an unresolved duel between a worldview that said the rule of law still reigned in our great American experiment and a more nihilistic view that all the terms are set by moneyed and inveterate liars.  Six months later, the country is still waiting to see if it will be a Robert Mueller that walks through that door to drop the hammer, or a Mitch McConnell to tell us all that all this evidence of high crimes staring us in the face was a big misunderstanding and really nothing of interest at all even happened here.

Watch It For:  When Hawley really goes for broke, dropping without warning into a silent horror film or a purgatorial bowling alley.

BEST OF 2017: BETTER CALL SAUL

7.  BETTER CALL SAUL (AMC)

For its third straight year, Better Call Saul continued its “How To Do A Prequel That Isn’t A Huge, Disappointing Waste Of Everyone’s Time While Also Somehow Diminishing The Original Thing Even Though That Shouldn’t Technically Be Possible Since The Thing Still Exists In Precisely The Same Form” clinic.  It even managed to work in a significant appearance by Gus Fring, which perfectly exemplifies the tightrope it walks with such practiced ease. It’s a decision which seems at once like a no-brainer (what kind of prequel is not going to take the opportunity have the original's most iconic villain reappear?) but is also nearly impossible to pull off organically (because that villain was defined entirely by being too much of a professional to expose himself to a cheap grifter like Saul Goodman).  And the show had the patience to withhold it for the entirety of its first 2 years, essentially only dipping into that well after it had established for good and all that it didn’t need to, not really.

 

The self-control required to pull that off demonstrates an enormous degree of confidence, the type that usually only comes paired with a stultifying sense of self-importance.  But part of what made Breaking Bad so special was that even when it was playing with Big Ideas and Dark Turns, it always maintained its wicked sense of humor, and never betrayed a feeling that it was too good for its genre roots.  To that end, Saul's ethos is split between that of its two diametrically opposite leads.  In presentation, it is Jimmy McGill, who recognizes the value of a flashy visual to hook people (just look at those suits) and does not so much think of himself above an honest day’s work as he is pathologically unable to resist gilding every lily with as much showman’s flair as it can possibly bear.  But under the hood, its storytelling is all Mike Ehrmantraut: patient, precise, never seeming to move above a tortoise’s pace but somehow leaving all of us hares perpetually struggling to keep up.  

Saul has, from the start, had the confidence to devote more time to the slow destruction of Jimmy’s relationships with his (hitherto unseen) brother and love interest than to building up his connections to the cartel, despite all the flash and fan-service associated with the latter.  But it also has the willingness to indulge in suspense sequences as intense as anything its predecessor produced, without ever feeling like it is placing itself into direct competition with it.  If Jimmy McGill could have managed living in his elder sibling's shadow with half as much aplomb, his career, his relationships, and even his name would be very different.   

But that's not how this story goes. We know that, and it is apparent that this is a show that knows where it’s going, how to get there, and how to make every step count.  Most prequels only know one of those things.    

Watch It For:  “Chicanery”, which is such a dramatic, directorial and performance powerhouse that I can totally forgive the central conceit that somehow an ethics panel convened specifically to review Jimmy’s honesty and integrity would be swayed in his favor by a stunt involving his secretly hiring a pickpocket to tamper with an opposing witness's person, in the courthouse, during the proceedings.  That’s like my wife accusing me of cheating with her sister and my deciding to have my actual mistress call to vouch for me.  

BEST OF 2017: THE GOOD PLACE

8. THE GOOD PLACE (NBC)

          I’ve talked in various reviews, including the first entry on this list, about my distrust of the Big Twist as a narrative device.  That such reliance on the Big Twist could wind up being a liability to the hacker conspiracy thriller, and also the greatest asset to a goofy sitcom feels like a twist unto itself.  But the first season of Mike Schur’s theological sitcom kicked off the year with a pull-the-rug moment that would have made Lost or Battlestar Galactica jealous, recontextualizing what had already been an enjoyably goofy riff on the afterlife and creating the opportunity to create a second season that was wildly different from the first. There was no guarantee that being different would make it good, though, and it wasn’t until late in the year that we found out that it was actually better than what came before.  Now that the audience can see behind the curtain of the attempts to create a “paradise” that will make its inhabitants miserable, very different types of jokes and performances are possible.   And it has opened up a vein of unobtrusive metacommentary, as head fiend Michael has to corral the increasingly diva-ish demands of his fellow demons for plum roles and pointless accents, while trying desperately to stay one step ahead of the “audience” of narcissists and dirtbags he is in charge of tormenting.

But even before the twist, it was already something of a miracle that the show was good at all.  It had a super-high concept that would seem to require constant reexplaining, while also sealing it off from most guest stars and current events, and perhaps most troublingly, feeling inherently pretentious (a deadly but increasingly common trait for comedies).  “Sitcom as ethics lecture” seems like a tough sell, but if you are going to try to climb a hill that steep, it helps to have professionals like Parks and Rec/Brooklyn 99 vet Schur, TV’s fun uncle Ted Danson, Veronica Mars herself, shameless scene-thief Darcy Carden, and pun-crafter extraordinare Megan Amram on board.  These people seem to understand that a sitcom based on the teachings of Kierkegaard and Kant all but demands an enthusiastic sense of absurdism to avoid feeling like homework.  And so the digressions on the nature of morality and free will are leavened by the oddest gags you’ll find on a network show, such as Carden’s perkily omniscient helper-bot designing herself a boyfriend with wind chimes for genitals.

The second season is only halfway over, but it has already burned through several seasons worth of potential plots already, zigging a half dozen times for each zag I thought I had puzzled out.  Nothing about this show should work, and yet it is consistently one of the strangest, funniest and genuinely surprising half hours on TV, and left this year on a cliffhanger that I am more curious to revisit than Westworld’s.  It may not be my absolute favorite show, but it is absolutely forking amazing nonetheless.   

Watch It For:  The restaurant puns.  Knish From A Rose!  Biscotti Pippin!  A Little Bit Chowder Now!

BEST OF 2017: GODLESS

9.   GODLESS (NETFLIX)

I worry that my compliments to Godless are going to come out sounding weak and backhanded, because its strengths are quite simple – great acting and gorgeous cinematography – and what struck me about it were largely things it didn’t do.   But I have to be honest, hearing the premise had me a bit wary.  A western about a town populated almost entirely by women sounded at once like an interesting concept and one primed to be loaded with preachy feminist anachronism.  But I was surprised to find that while that description was accurate as to the setting, it’s not really what the show is about.  In fact, Godless is most surprising in how few revisionist elements it has to match that premise.  Rather than what I feared, which was a simplistic female empowerment fantasy, as written by a well-meaning dude* (so like The Force Awakens, but with horses), I found a surprisingly straightforward, traditional western that happened to have a diverse array of strong female characters populating it.

A couple of notes on those adjectives.  When I say “diverse”, I don’t mean that there are many non-white women featured prominently.  There are not.  But the women within that rather homogenous community are shown to have different, distinct perspectives that have a lot more nuance than “saintly advocate for progressive values” and “regressive gender-traitor”.  And when I say “strong”, I don’t mean they are uniformly courageous and highly competent action heroes.  Some are brave, some are not.  Some are more intelligent than others.  Some embrace the opportunity to step into the boots normally reserved for their husbands, while some are eager to bring men back to repopulate their traditional roles.  Some are religious, some are gay, some are caring, some are independent, some are sexy, some are hardened, and they feel like actual people as opposed to avatars for a specific demographic.  And that seems more remarkable lately, as it feels increasingly common for creators to either mistake positive representation for strong characterization, or to simply prioritize the former over the latter.  

Godless doesn’t mistake its premise for a story, however, or a thematic statement for a character.  Rather, it carefully develops a familiar but rousing story in the Seven Samurai mold, of a vulnerable community banding together to fight off an inevitable incursion by dangerous bandits, and inhabits it with great actors giving great performances.  Jeff Daniels brings a wonderful intelligence to the Big Bad, such that you can tell he almost buys his own religious hype even as he’s committing undeniable atrocities.  After spending a few seasons not leaving a much of an impression on Game Of Thrones, Thomas Brodie-Sangster brings surprising depth and soul to a role that could have been just a dim-witted sidekick.  But the absolute standouts are Merritt Weaver, as the woman most eager for the town to forge a new identity independent of patriarchal influence, and Michelle Dockery, as the one who is just doing it her own self without waiting for the rest of the gals to catch up.  Frame those people against some epic western landscapes and get them all shooting at each other, and you got yourself a hearty western stew goin’.   That Godless managed to do this with such without overcomplicating itself, or succumbing to the customary Netflix bloat by stretching its 7 episode run to 13, is enough to make you second-guess the title. 

 

Watch It For:  The beautiful cinematography and epic climactic shootout. 

BEST OF 2017: MR. ROBOT

10.  MR. ROBOT (USA)

Last year, Mr. Robot suffered a sharp sophomore slump, trying to chase the same high as its first season's Shyamalan-esque twists, with Shyamalan-esque diminishing returns.  I did not expect it to even be in consideration again, and really 10^th is about as high as any show revolving so closely around Imaginary Friend tropes is ever going to get on my list.  That and the persistent opaqueness of the various sinister conspirators seem fated to keep me always at a slight remove from the action.  But on the whole, Mr. Robot bucked this year’s trend of established shows putting out weaker efforts*, roaring back to life with a heavier reliance on its signature cinematic style over narrative trickery.  It also displayed an increased sense of humor even as it is plumbed darker depths than ever, with an increasingly dystopian landscape creeping quietly into the margins of the show’s NYC, and the sympathetic characters boxed into increasingly nightmarish scenarios.

But if the show still felt more sprightly despite growing ever bleaker, a lot of it is down to the Bad Guys letting their hair down.  While malevolent puppetmaster Whiterose relied too heavily on the questionable trope of opting not to just kill the heroes in favor of “sending a message” by murdering her own dudes, there was a good deal of fun to be had with her henchmen.  On that front, rapper Joey Bada$$’s expanded role provided a hypercompetent, laconically lethal counterpoint to Elliot’s brand of hypercompetent, twitchy intensity.  But the major addition was Bobby Canavale’s as the weirdo fixer Irving.  Switching between goofy and icily menacing, sometimes within the same scene, he helped provide a welcome contrast to the moping and ranting of every other character.  For a show that can be so claustrophobically focused on its protagonist’s tortured psyche, having supporting characters that can take us outside of his head and remain entertaining is vital. 

While the show’s direct swipes at him could feel clumsy, the election of Donald Trump also seemed to refresh and invigorate its general social cynicism.  While he is still on the verge of taking power in the show’s alternate timeline, the season’s thematic preoccupation with erasing the past marked it as particularly of this moment. For many of us, whether we are voters or Denver Broncos fans or season of television tasked with cleaning up after a disappointing year that went too far up its narrative sphincter, 2017 was The Year We Really Wanted A Do-Over.  That is the stuff of science fiction the likes of which Mr. Robot does not (as yet) traffic in, however, so it looks like we’re all going to have accept our mistakes rather than erase them.  Hopefully the rest of us can all rebound as quickly and thoroughly as this season did.

Watch It For:  The awesome, left-field needled drops, ranging from Gang Star to the Bill And Ted soundtrack.

*among them Game Of Thrones, The Americans, You’re The Worst, and Veep, all of which fell off the list from last year due to inconsistent, if still enjoyable, seasons