Start Snitching's Top Ten TV Shows of 2007

(Best New Show of 2007)

I'm not that late with this so let's go.

The writer's strike was too late in the year to mess with anything so this year was fairly awesome, television wise.

But what hit me as I was compiling this list was the god awful taste of television critics. They are worse than music critics.
At least film, in some instances, aspires to be high art so you get better Top 10 movie lists, but some of the shit I saw from "TV critics" was just embarrassing.

I know lists top 10 of 2XXX lists are symbolic and fluid, but can you explain this to me.

Newsday (Diane Werts)
1.	Showtime Shows
2.	The Sopranos (HBO)
3.	The Shield (FX)
4.	Women Protagonists
5.	Dancing With the Stars (ABC)
6.	Hugh Laurie on House (Fox)
7.	Pushing Daisies (ABC)
8.	Planet Earth (Discovery)
9.	Slings & Arrows (Sundance)
10.	The Wire (HBO)

This fool has The Wire at number 10 of 2007.
There was no Wire in 2007. It last ended in 2006 and just started again in 1/08.

Catch with this video if you need a refresh.



It's pretty awesome.

Anyhoo, are Dancing with the Stars, House, Pushing Daises and WOMAN PROTAGANISTS (What the fuck show is that shit?!) all better than The Wire?
Diane Werts, one yourself.

Please Google any shows you don't know the plot of. It's too many damn URLs for me to put up.


Shows that next to end ASAP (2007 Edition)

• Rescue Me (FX) - Leary's vanity project has went on long enough. You're angsty, you have demons and you hate/love your ex-wife. I get it. End it.
  
  
• Weeds (Showtime) - A MILF sells weed and it's called MILF WEED. Get it? Mary Louise Parker is pretty hot, but this show jumped the shark and lost any satirical edge it had.
  
  
• Brotherhood (Showtime) - Let's make a bootleg hybrid of Sopranos and The Wire that captures none of Tony Soprano's charismatic psychopathy and The Wire's laser precise analysis of failing cities. Let's put it in Rhode Island and curse alot. No.
  
  
• Tell Me You Love Me (HBO) - Boring, depressing white people having boring depressing white people sex and then talk about it to their therapist. Why HBO?
  Dysfunctional white people have brought such great entertainment as Six Feet Under, Woody Allen's entire oeuvre and American Beauty but HBO caught a brick with this soft porn gimmick.
  
  
• Nip/Tuck (FX) - Um, yea. Stop. Thanks.
  

Start Snitching's Disappointments of 2007

• Big Love (HBO) - The second season was better than the first but this show will never be more than OK.
  
  
• Family Guy (FOX) - The joke to bomb ratio has gotten a little high.
  
  
• John From Cincinnati (HBO) - This show was the most unique failure I've ever seen on television. I respect what it tried to do and even what it did at times but this was the case of an artist not relaying his vision in a way for other to enjoy. You can make your art challenging, (David Lynch) but you have to let the viewer in somewhat. Half mesmerized by it's lyricism, half bored by its pretension and half confused its plot (that's a lot of halves) this show hurt my brain. I expect better from Milch.
  

Start Snitching's Honorable Mentions of 2007

• Damages (FX) - At times it seem too slick for it's own damn good, with the story being told from 2039 directions but it came together so damn well that you have to respect it.
  
  
• Riches (FX) - The American Dream, distorted, broken and almost made into a full season idea. Completely fell apart towards the end.
  
  
• Brothers and Sisters (ABC) - My shameful guilty pleasure show.
  
  
• Friday Night Lights (NBC) - Beautiful portraits of small town failures and those trying to get away. A little formulaic in its 2nd season, but still good.
  

The Top 10 Television Shows of 2007


10. Extras: Christmas Special (BBC/HBO) - No one makes you feel guiltier about laughing than Ricky Gervais. He may only have one story arc, but this toil/success/failure/redemption gimmick works like hell.

9/8. 30 Rock / The Office (NBC) - I would dare to say that NBC's new 1-2 Thursday combo is better than Seinfeld/Friends. Too bad they don't get nearly half the shine at those 90's stalwarts. (Btw, Friends sucks.) And Tracy Morgan should be some sort of Ambassador .

7. Flight of the Conchords (HBO) - TV can still make you laugh out loud. Really loud.



6. Californication (Showtime) - What I thought was going to be another David Duchovny post X-Files flounder turned out to be a beautiful reflection on failure, family and love. Agent Mulder did the burnt out failed LA writer thing well. Although the ending sucked.

5. Dexter (Showtime) - A serial killing detective being brought down by his own department. Good shit Showtime, but again, your ending sucked.

4. Rome (HBO) - This show wasn't perfect but I loved it. As a pseudo-history buff it was interesting to watch HBO's spin on things. It wasn't 100% historically accurate but the way it showed the small personal foibles that created these incredible historic events was amazing. Kind of like Bush's daddy issues bringing us into Iraq.
Ahem...

3. Sopranos (HBO) - I said it before and I will say it again, when this show is great, there is no show that is great in the same way. It hits on the visceral action level, the wrenching emotional family stuff, the psychological baggage that traps us all with firm slap of societal comment to boot. That ending froze in my mind for months after the show.

Tony Soprano, you sick homicidal maniac, you will be missed. I could fuck with a Sopranos movie in 3 years.

2. Mad Men (AMC) - Wow. Where did this come from? I mean, I know where it came from, Matt Weiner, a former Sopranos writer and executive producer pitched this show to HBO, who in their infinite wisdom, let AMC grab it. But where did it come from on the social radar?

Set in the 1960 Madison Avenue advertising world, it focused on a top level advertising executive, his career, family, past and mistress(es) and completely immersed itself it in the nicotine drenched post-war, pre-everything social milieu of the early 60's.

When I say pre-everything I mean, pre-Civil Rights, Women's Lib, pre-Jewish assimilation, pre-cigarette ban, pre-psychology. There was no political correctness.

When you understand the power lock white men had on society you can see why giving it up, or sharing parts of it later on in the 1960's was such a fucking disaster.

It was bizarre to see the writing imprint of a Sopranos handler show itself in a completely different setting but this show was as brutish as anything in the Sopranos.

And the ending, oh the ending. Incredible show.

1. The Shield (FX) - In reading this blog you may have kind of sorta heard that I like this little show called The Shield. There is one more season in 2008 and if Vic dies, which might damn well happen, I may not make it through 2008.


Did I shit on your favorite show?
Completely ignore another or overrate something?

Let me know.

UPDATE

I forgot "The Unit" on CBS.

It's produced by Shawn Ryan of the Shield and it's an awesome show that captures the By Any Means Necessary / No Excuses alpha male attitude of the military that so absorbed me when I was a wee lad.