2023: One Show For Every Kind of TV Viewer

I’m not a big fan of Top 10 Lists. Even when there’s this much TV, you end up with a lot of lists that look the same, and they all kind of assume a specific viewer. But there’s a fundamental problem with that task—not everybody watches TV for the same reasons.

Some people watch TV to be transported, some want company while they fold their laundry, and some people are determined to watch the worst trash they can.

People might be turning to lists to contemplate what makes great art, but what they’re really after is a recommendation.

We can all enjoy TV in different ways, so I broke down the year into 7 categories based on different kinds of TV-watchers:

1. “I only have time for one show”
2. “Something New and Fresh™”
3. “TV is for laughing”
4. “That's very true. The world's a fucked-up place.”
5. “I like the under-the-radar sleeper shows that slap”
6. “I don’t like TV, I like CINEMA”
7. “‘Good’ is a social construct”

Let’s get cracking.

1. “I only have time for one show”

The Candidates:

• The Bear (FX/Hulu)
• Blue Eye Samurai (Netflix)
• Succession (HBO)
• The Last of Us (HBO)

You only have a few hours to dedicate to the great American artform that is television, so let’s make it count. We get it, you have a life. Try not to rub it in.

There were a couple of quite buzzy shows that seemed to grab hold of the national conversation, namely the biggest HBO hits of the year, which is a great place to start if you’re looking for the one you should watch so you’re not out of the loop.

First, let’s talk about The Last of Us. I made a whole video essay about why The Last of Us didn’t quite work for me, namely in that I think it portrays an incredibly bleak worldview that doesn’t really have much to say about humanity that I find interesting or compelling. I won’t rehash the point here, but I don’t really understand why someone would want to live in the world of The Last of Us (except for that communist camp they found and immediately abandoned).

Succession, a show that I’ve absolutely loved over the years, had its most high-profile season this year and while there were parts of it that I loved (especially the election stuff), I thought that the finale was actively bad in a way that undercut a lot of the show’s most powerful satire. Succession was always a tragedy, but a tragedy for whom? I only care about the Roy children only because their petty little squabbles impact the lives of thousands that work for them, the millions they influence through their media empire, and the lives they’ve destroyed. I hope Kendall jumped in and drowned.

Blue Eye Samurai was not nearly as buzzy, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be very soon. The animation and artwork is incredible, and the story feels classic while still fresh (a kind of Mulan meets Kill Bill). Of every show I watched in 2023, this was the one I most looked forward to watching the next episode.

Finally we hit last year’s winner in this category, The Bear. It’s hard to think of a show that feels as different in its second season while also maintaining its excellence. This season spent a lot of its time building out the cast of characters and much less time on Jeremy Allen White’s Carmy, while also focusing far more on fine dining than on the working class roots of the sandwich shop. But, each of the portrait episodes—which focused on a different character learning a different culinary craft—gave a ton of shape to the major themes of obsession and passion. Plus a lot of people love that star studded Christmas episode. The Bear is the best show of the year that you’ll also be able to talk about with a stranger at a party.

Verdict: The Bear

2. “Something New and Fresh™”

The Candidates:

• Beef (Netflix)
• Telemarketers (Max)
• Servant (Apple TV+)

Even as TV has wildly changed over the past 10-15 years, it can still be pretty formulaic. These shows are not.

Let’s start with Beef, the Netflix series about an episode of road rage that escalates rapidly until it becomes pretty difficult to describe. Ali Wong and Steven Yeun star as incredible photo negatives of each other, one with money and one without, but both incredibly lonely, angry, and pained. When they collide, things quickly spiral out of control for both characters, and in the process pulling in their friends and loved ones. There’s absolutely no way you’ll ever guess where the next episode is headed, let alone the season at large, showing us just how universal our rage is, and just how far it can pull us all down.

Servant is a show that’s been around for four seasons, so it’s not technically that new or that fresh, but its fourth season brought some of the most creative and confident filmmaking I’ve seen in a show in a while. It’s also a batshit story that is borderline impossible to follow, you’re just along for the spooky vibes.

Telemarketers, unlike Servant and Beef, isn’t a show that’s reinventing the TV medium or trying to break out of genre distinctions. Structurally, it is a pretty conventional docuseries, but it peels back the curtain to show us the seedy underbelly of the largest telemarketing scam in American history, and produced by the people who worked it as callers.

Ultimately, Beef is the pick. It’s the show that will keep you guessing at every turn the most.

Verdict: Beef

3. “TV is for laughing”

The Candidates:

• Abbott Elementary (ABC)
• What We Do in the Shadows (FX/Hulu)
• Reservation Dogs (FX/Hulu)
• I Think You Should Leave (Netflix)
• The Other Two (Max)

Look, they don’t make funny movies anymore, TV is the last place left we get to laugh. This is the kind of viewer who’s just looking for good jokes.

The Other Two, a show about the two older siblings of an overnight internet pop sensation (think Justin Bieber) wrapped up its third, and final, season this year, and I personally think it was the strongest. The show has an incredible way of pointing out the vapid nature of Hollywood, while grappling with the fact that so many of us want to be a part of it anyway. It’s a show for people who can pick up on obscure celebrity references. The highlight of the season is probably “Cary & Brooke Go to an AIDS Play” where a series of personal and PR disasters are managed in between intermissions of an absurdly long play about how sad AIDS is.

What We Do in the Shadows remains at the top of its game, constantly juxtaposing its ancient occult vampires with the mundane goings on of Staten Island. “Local News” and “The Campaign” both do this expertly, with Colin Robinson running for comptroller (what better place for an energy vampire) and the vampires being almost found out by a local news crew.

I Think You Should Leave made me laugh harder than any other show this year—I literally fell off my couch during the doggie door sketch—but it’s a bit too specific, silly, and stupid of a sense of humor for me to feel good about recommending it to a general audience.

Reservation Dogs was one of the absolute best shows of the year, but its strength lies not so much in how much each episode makes you laugh, but instead on the intense emotional journeys about generational trauma and healing that filled its third season.

Which brings us to Abbott Elementary, which is possibly the easiest-to-recommend show out there. It’s an incredibly comfortable watch, you pick up on jokes you missed on each rewatch, and it has an ability to stare into the void that is public education in America while remaining hopeful, optimistic, and fun.

Verdict: Abbott Elementary

4. “That's very true. The world's a fucked-up place.”

The Candidates:

• Succession (HBO)
• Fargo (FX/Hulu)
• Gen V (Amazon Prime)
• Telemarketers (Max)
• Black Mirror (Netflix)

We all know the world is pretty unfair—people get away with bad stuff all the time. What you’re looking for is something that acknowledges how messed up stuff is and makes some kind of social, political, or economic commentary—stuff that has something interesting to say about our world.

Black Mirror is probably the first show that comes to mind when talking about real-world issues, as a self-aware (or perhaps hypocritical) piece of media. While the sixth season included some great episodes, I think that ultimately the show is more interesting when we look at it as a whole rather than focusing on the self-contained messages of any one story or episode. Its place as both critique of Netflix and true crime while actively making true crime on Netflix says more about the inescapable nature of capitalism than anything that ends up on screen.

Telemarketers is a pretty straightforward nominee here as well, detailing the ways in which a corporation extracted wealth from suckers, hired risky employees because they would be heavily incentivized against reporting them, and cut police unions in on the profits. It’s a show that depicts the totality of the scam, going all the way to DC and meeting politicians too scared to take on the rampant corruption of police unions.

Succession’s fourth season really raised the stakes in terms of showing the real world implications of the Roy family’s fucking around, depicting the way the rich and powerful view elections and democracy as sport and their ability to use the media to meddle for monetary gain. Unfortunately, the show’s emphasis seemed more focused on the internal family drama rather than the larger impact that drama had, which I think dilutes the show’s satire of the 0.1% quite a bit.

Gen V, the spin-off of The Boys that launched this year, maintains a ton of the same political commentary, specifically focusing on the burgeoning fascist movement within the supe society as a response to being used and abused by the Vought Corporation. I think it’s a pretty real and potent dynamic that I’m really interested to see play out in season 4 of The Boys. Gen V also deserves credit for the way each character’s power isn’t generic, but instead a commentary on specific social issues, from the gender-shifting Jordan Li to Marie Moreau’s self-harm hemokenisis to Emma Meyer’s eating disorder/size manipulation.

But my vote this year is going to be for Fargo, despite having only ever watched this season and the second season (each season is standalone so that shouldn’t matter too much). Jon Hamm stars as a constitutional sheriff—which I covered in the Veronica Mars video—a raging misogynist and abuser who is shielded by his position and is free to view women as property and give weapons to far-right militias. Opposite him stand a number of women defined by their fraught relationship with men—Juno Temple’s character is running away from an abusive marriage, Lorraine Lyon is a businesswoman in a man’s world, and Indira Olmstead has one of the most useless husbands you’ll ever find. The weight of money also weighs in heavily in the story, with Lorraine telling the police that they exist to serve the rich and powerful.

Verdict: Fargo

5. “Give me a great show I haven’t seen, and no one else has either”

The Candidates:

• How To with John Wilson (HBO)
• Blue Eye Samurai (Netflix)

There are shows that are guaranteed to be on the top of every major list. Here are some good ones that aren’t on that many.

I’ve spoken at length about How To with John Wilson so I won’t belabor the point, but I can guarantee you that you won’t find another show quite like How To. It’s focused on the weirdness of humanity, but on its own terms, meeting people where they are rather than from a purely voyeuristic and exploitative way.

Blue Eye Samurai isn’t reinventing the wheel with its Kill-Bill-meets-Mulan-story, but it is a unique gender exploration that you won’t find anywhere else, and you certainly won’t find anything that looks like this (other than maybe Arcane from back in 2021). And the show does all of this while weaving in some really interesting historical context about Japan, imperialism, and revenge. It’s gotten nothing but positive buzz, but seems to be flying under the radar.

Verdict: Blue Eye Samurai

6. “I don’t like TV, I like CINEMA”

The Candidates:

• Blue Eye Samurai (Netflix)
• The Bear (FX/Hulu)
• Servant (AppleTV+)
• Fargo (FX/Hulu)
• Poker Face (Peacock)

You’re a connoisseur, you like excellent quality filmmaking and style more than anything else. That’s not to say you don’t appreciate a good story or characters, but you’re a craftsperson, enjoying the intentionality of every single creative choice. And there were some excellent choices this year for artistry on the small screen this year.

Blue Eye Samurai is probably the closest to “every frame a painting.” The medium of animation allows the show to perfectly construct the color and composition of any shot, even breaking the rules of physics. The music and animation of Mizu’s drug-addled ascent of Heiji’s castle remains one of the most visually stunning sequences of 2023.

The Bear has already gotten a ton of credit for its expert filmmaking, especially in the field of editing, where the show is without equal in its knack for pacing, oscillating between fast cutting action and long pensive shots that can be filled with tension or warmth.

Poker Face has this tactile nature born from the show’s cinematography and film grain and Fargo puts together some incredible set pieces and has the added bonus of filming the picturesque Great Plains of Minnesota and North Dakota. Plus, everything that happens with Ole Munch definitely qualifies as cinema, somewhere between The Big Lebowski and No Country for Old Men.

But my vote this year is going to be for Servant. The fourth and final season was also my favorite, in no small part because of the incredibly creative filmmaking, which I talked about a little in this lil skippy.

Verdict: Servant

7. “Good is a social construct”

The Candidates:

• The Golden Bachelor (ABC)
• Bachelor in Paradise (ABC)
• Ted Lasso (AppleTV+)

“Good” is an amorphous and subjective idea. What makes a show “better” than another? “Good” and “bad” can’t always be separated. I mean, sometimes it’s so bad it’s good. These shows make me think the most about what kind of mindset and expectations we bring into viewing. Maybe, in the right context, these shows are actually great! Probably not though.

Let’s start with the mainstays in this category: the Bachelor franchise. The Golden Bachelor got, like, an absurd amount of good press for being “not catty” and focusing on older people, which everyone seemed to find sweet. It wasn’t. That lack of drama and cattiness left the show with no cover for the ways in which reality TV differs from actual reality. It had the same empty phrases and fakeness, just with the built-in excuse that “well if my wife of 40 years died I guess I’d go crazy enough to be on this show.” The best part of the season was the blooper reel in the Women Tell All episode, but that only served to highlight all the glimpses of “realness” that the show hadn’t aired. It was the same old Bachelor, just without letting the producers cook as much.

Speaking of letting the producers cook, Bachelor in Paradise remains my favorite of the franchise, if only because they give the editors so much license to mold the storylines before us, and because of the way it embraces the absurdity of the scenario. While most Bachelor shows pretend that this is some great way to find a long term partner, Bachelor in Paradise leaves more room for short term flings and doesn’t put quite as much pressure on making people get hitched after knowing each other for 3 weeks. It’s not a good show, but I don’t feel quite as gaslit by the straights when I watch it as I do with the more traditional versions.

But there can only be one answer here, and it’s the absolutely atrocious third and final season of Ted Lasso. I made a lil skippy about how weirdly Afterschool Special the show had gotten, covering issues that had felt pretty settled in the public consciousness for years—like that leaking naked photos of exes is bad or that it’s okay to be gay—while also giving a big old thumbs up to dating your employees. It is an absurd season of television that feels so half-baked (despite lengthening every episode by 50-100%) that it’s hard not to laugh at how bad it is.

I don’t know why, but I feel like this picture perfectly sums up Ted Lasso season 3.

Verdict: Ted Lasso