All-Time Top Five
Telling off the Gray Lady with the truth about the best TV of the age.
With so much pop culture in the world, it’s hard to know what’s best. Fortunately, Media Magpies has you covered, as one of our writers will occasionally share what they have determined to be The All-Time Top Five.
“New York Times? New York TIMES? You think you’re better than us? Us? Us! U. S.! U.S.A.! No way!” Coach John McGuirk’s words in Home Movies are as true today as they were in 2002, with the alleged “paper of record” creating an insultingly trite list of the best television shows from this century. Fortunately, Media Magpies is no stranger to television rankings and is here to rectify matters. We will play by the NYT’s rules — no shows that began airing before the turn of the millennium, which unfortunately excludes McGuirk and Home Movies — and provide discerning readers with the true All-Time Top Five TV Shows of the 21st Century (although as always, suggestions are welcome in the comments).
The Glutton Bowl (2002)
Media Magpies has covered this show as an individual achievement in greater depth in the past, but this tournament of competitive eating featuring hundreds of hotdogs, gallons of mayonnaise and platters of cow brains more than earns its elevated spot among its contemporaries. The pinnacle of the then-burgeoning reality format (on FOX, of course), it excels at portraying competition (man vs. man, man vs. self, man vs. nature in the form of those cow brains) while defining indelible characters like The Doginator and Tsunami Kobayashi in a mere 45 minutes. Disgust gives way to awe, the ridiculous becomes the sublime, the viewer’s consumption of television is parodied yet honored in consumption of foodstuffs — how can you call it a medium when it’s this well done?
American League Championship Series (2004)
This benefits from knowing the history of previous programming, but like all such miniseries it stands on its own as entertainment. And entertainment of a particular breadth and depth — the first three episodes point toward a predictable arc, even as they lay the structural groundwork and emotional intensity for the stunning reversal ahead. Fans may argue over their favorite segment — the triumphant conclusion of episode 7? The ominous violence and blood of episode 6? The truly epic struggle of episode 5? — but the series turns on a remarkable moment in episode 4, where every single viewer knew what would happen next and could not look away. The 90s never had such must-see TV.
The Amazing Screw-On Head (2006)
The defining criticism of 21st century television, especially of the prestige variety, remains the lament for Surf Dracula. The Amazing Screw-On Head not only respects the viewer but makes demands that they keep up. Bryan Fuller’s failed pilot of a Sci-Fi show adapts a comic from Mike Mignola, in which the titular automaton fights Emperor Zombie and his minions at the behest of President Abraham Lincoln, and while the animation faithfully reproduces Mignola’s remarkable grimoire of monsters rendered in stark woodcut lines, the story adds even more lore and detail, as well as the plummy voices of Paul Giamatti and David Hyde Pierce. An entire season of occult madness compressed into 22 minutes, it sets the stage for further adventures never to be realized but still wildly entertaining in its excess, its joie de vivre de TV. Surf Dracula as Point Break.
Too Many Cooks (2014)
If The Amazing Screw-On Head is an entire television show in an episode, Caspar Kelly’s Too Many Cooks is all television as ouroboros of horror. Immaculately mimicked sitcoms (the production design for this Adult Swim nightmare is superb, the “cool kid’s” leather vest makes me laugh every time) share a bouncy theme song that soon crosses over into other genres — animated action, police procedural, sci-fi exploration — but a weird guy in the background is crossing over as well. The slaughter that follows is unsettling in its comedy, but it is also a jumping-off point for larger violations. Shows collide, characters discover their existence as constructs and become trapped in an inverted hell, supplanted by their credits for other lives. The genius of Too Many Cooks is how its accumulated reference and violence go from overwhelming to inevitable, the logical endpoint of a brain baked on TV shows. Slice and dice, throw it back in the pot — while there may be too many cooks, the diner is always ready to eat.
Roku City (2018-present)
But why watch TV shows anyway? What matters is that you’re watching the television. Created by illustrator Kyle Jones, Roku City is a slow scroll along a street and a skyline, dusk’s purple tones soothing the eye while letting the viewer clock the clever references to other entertainment (mostly movies, interestingly) and, as of a few years ago, actual advertisements on its billboards. Its graphics provide the lightest of visual stimuli, reminding of you of what you could be experiencing but are not. The prior century’s channel surfing required the viewer to surf active waves of ongoing shows; our streaming era provides endless options to sort instead of actually view. Roku City distills that even further, a screensaver that takes all initiative away from the viewer but still gives them something to see. You don’t even have to click. Just watch.
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Department of
Conversation
I actually called the 2004 ALCS the Lord of the Rings of baseball at the time. And just like Lord of the Rings, they followed it up with several sequels no one wants to see.
I couldn’t find a full clip of Roberts on first and Rivera trying to pick him off, but the tension there – the whole world knowing he’s going to run – was unlike anything I’ve seen in a game. Amazing TV, and then it just kept going.
What did we watch?
American Psycho – A white collar Crime and Punishment except there is no hope of exile or salvation, the eccentric detective does not always seem overtly suspicious of your sweaty, fragile, gorgeous mug, and when you do confess your misdeeds, nobody listens or believes you. There is no god who can hear Patrick Bateman, no person to validate his rising guilt and panic except perhaps a real estate agent who tells him not to come back. He filled this apartment (possibly) with blood and bodies, and the deities of capital cannot have such a rude interruption to the game of commerce and development.
Watching again, I am struck by how funny the movie is, especially Patrick’s extreme neurosis and Bale’s deeply unsettling, very conscious performance. He’s so desperate for anyone, anyone at all, to be impressed by his status and title and wealth, even himself, flexing his muscles in front of the mirror while he fucks two bored sex workers, and this is (sigh) terribly relevant to the 2020’s. (Bale looks like he’s going to scream when the two women say that no, they haven’t heard of his ridiculous Wall Street firm. It’s hilarious.) The last scene is the inner monologue of the American alt-right if they had an inkling of self-awareness, the slightest grasp of how miserable their world has made them. In the United States, no one can hear you scream.
As I said on Nath’s Discord, that scene with the real estate agent is where I fully decided that Patrick definitely did all those kills, and the world simply doesn’t notice or care. The lawyer scene is especially funny from this perspective.
Like The Sopranos, I decided I preferred not deciding. There’s evidence on both sides, especially when his gun makes a car explode, with even Bateman reacting as if to say “How did that happen?”
M*A*S*H, Season Four, Episode Twenty-Four, “Deluge”
“I’m not over here coz I’m such a fan of diarrhea!”
“You’re too young to drink. You’re lucky you didn’t have to show your ID to get shot.”
“I don’t know how you guys do it.”
“Helps a little if you think you’re God.”
“I got a buddy in there.”
“Everybody’s got a buddy in there. Look, we’ll keep you posted, we’ll let you know if it’s a boy or a girl.”
“Colonel, you don’t understand!”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“The laundry’s on fire.”
“I was wondering when things would get interesting.”
This is a gimmick episode, where the actual plot is about as simple as you can get – the Chinese are invading, which has created the eponymous deluge of casualties – and it’s interspersed with news items and pop culture from the time period (favourite: the cat playing ping-pong). The most interesting story here is Margaret not wanting to leave the front in the face of invading Chinese, trying to make it as clear as possible that she is Army, and eventually managing to get Potter with the poignant observation that nowhere is really safe.
Colonel Potter has a very funny monologue about colonels being desperate to get promoted to General – Captains and Majors are generally fine because they’d have to work so much more, Generals relax because they’ve Achieved The Goal, but Colonels are so close they can taste it.
The clips are from various dates during the Korean War, and the deluge itself, if we want to get technical about it, predates BJ and Potter’s arrival. Even in season 4, the 4077 has come unstuck in time. (Sidebar: Vonnegut was a bigger influence on MASH than Altman.)
The thing about going back to the office is that by the time I get home, I don’t have the energy for movies. I do hope this changes. Also didn’t have the energy for “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” so I will be late, Lauren.
Elementary, “The Ballad of Lady Frances”/”Dead Man’s Tale” – The first involves the disappearance of priceless guitar, but also a new surveillance device that can hear any gunshots in a given area. The device is naturally used to advance the career of a city councilman who’s running for mayor as a “law and order” type. The second has the treasure on a lost shipwreck and a bad guy who pulls a “Producers” style bookkeeping scheme (and when the pieces are assembled, Sherlock actually shows a clip of “The Producers.”) By season five standards, these are both quite good mysteries. But the big thing here is that the truth comes out that Shinwell murdered someone before he went to prison, but is so desperate to show himself a reformed man and be with his daughter that he will do anything to finish bringing down his own gang. Including beating up Sherlock. A bit of a leap, but at long last the stakes in the Shinwell plot fell strong.
More Barney Miller, and we get two snapshots of 1976. In one, it’s election night, Carter vs Ford, and a woman is locked in her bathroom by her hubby to prevent her from voting, and we learn that Harris is a Republican and that Yemana bets on the elections. (He would have been a great customer for Kalshi!) This aired before the election, but it’s not about who wins, it’s just about the mood. In another, the precinct is walloped by swine flu, even as they arrest someone who says he’s a werewolf. This one is fascinating since the 1976 swine flu turned out to be a big nothing. but there was no way to know at that moment.
Your TZ comments are always appreciated, no matter when they come in!
Ludwig, S2E6 – season two ends with a lot of drama and a bit of a cliffhanger, I guess they’ve already been commissioned to make a third. Top-tier mystery comedy as ever, I really love David Mitchell in this role and the rest of the cast is consistently delightful. Now I look forward to getting this itch again and finding that all the other similar shows aren’t as good. Again.
Neil Peart: No One’s Disciple – Not the usual talking head doc. Bringing in four drummers who are great in their own right to play Rush songs and talk about their friendship with Neil is a novel approach. I wondered if these were audition reels for a moment.
Chad Smith – Bashed his way through Working Man coming out of his seat at times making the jam explode. Geddy and Alex still have their chops.
Danny Carey – Fanboy, being humble and apprehensive as he learns his way through 2112 but he nails the middle of Tom Sawyer. Maybe the hardest songs in the film.
Gavin Harrison – Technical and meticulous coming in with a detailed chart for Dreamline.
Stewart Copeland – A non-Rush fan to the point of despising them in the 70s/80s, until he met Neil and developed the closest relationship with him out of the four guests. He pushes the tempo of New World Man.
All are in their 60s or 70s. One thing they all say at the end of their segments, in one way or another, is that drumming for Rush is hard work. Neil was 63 at the time of the last tour in 2015. With the hardest job in the band he knew he couldn’t keep up his intensity. Anika Nilles is 43. A good tribute to a hero who didn’t like heroes.
Not a Rush fan and this sounds like a neat approach to a musician documentary, especially a famously proficient one.
This sounds really good except for the part where Danny Carey is apparently 60, that should not be allowed.
Primetime
The performances are getting most of the attention, but it’s the filmmaking and visuals that really blew my mind. This is the first movie, let alone a recent movie, I’ve seen in a long-ass time that looks like nothing else I’ve ever seen. This is a movie about the American media’s fundamental sickness, and if the script doesn’t have a lot of novel insights, the filmmaking does, because the film itself looks diseased, or, as Matt Zoller Seitz, “the movie itself is a poisoned, rotting thing.” It’s all oversaturated piss-yellow and bile-green colors, blotchy graininess, and a shallow depth of field that makes everything look like you’re drifting in and out of fever dreams. This isn’t the kind of big-budget spectacle people normally tag as a “big screen movie,” but you absolutely need to see it in the theater where every dancing grain is the size of your fist. I spent a lot of the runtime planning to say thta if this crew ever does a full-bore horror movie they’ll be unstoppable, but then I realized I couldn’t name many horror movies that were this profoundly disturbing.
Year of the Month updates:
Here’s all the movies, albums, books from 1998 you can sign up for this October!
Oct. 3rd: Gillian Nelson: Movie Surfers
Oct. 4th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Pi
Oct. 9th: Gillian Nelson: Mighty Joe Young
Oct. 13th: John Bruni: High Art
Oct. 18th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Who Moved My Cheese?
Oct. 30th: Gillian Nelson: Halloweentown
And coming in November, get ready to write about anything from 1968! Here’s some lists of movies, albums, books, and TV to get you started.
Nov. 8th: Tristan Nankervis: Night of the Living Dead
Nov. 22nd: Tristan Nankervis: Slouching Towards Bethlehem