2024 in TV, Part No. 2

We continue on from yesterday with the next ten shows on our list, with some old favorites, series finales, and new entries all represented.

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20. Bob’s Burgers
Seasons 14 and 15
FOX

The show rolls along as ever, and even in an abbreviated season (14 was cut short and scattered all over FOX’s schedule due to the writers’ strike) still provided us with some solid episodes. Even though I don’t have a particular favorite among the batch from 2024, reading the episode descriptions reminded me of a lot of fun stories. Teddy needing a rescue from Bob. Louise and Linda’s treasure hunt. Tina’s house party experience. Bowling with Rudy and his family. Gayle’s reality show audition. Bob training Sgt. Bosco to go undercover as a burger chef. Tina’s news show reporting on Frond’s new counseling computer software. Bob’s efforts to save the drive-in. The kids pranking the drone footage of Wagstaff. Louise’s admiration of Gene’s willingness to do the right thing. The Cheese Royale. The open mic night. Bob and Louise boogie-boarding. Tina and Louise fighting. The family rescuing a dog on Christmas Day. Tina’s advice column.

Yep, that’s all of them. Strangely, we didn’t get a real Thanksgiving episode this year, but that was about the only thing off about Bob’s in 2024. The show continues on as steadily as ever.

19. American Dad!
Season 21 (probably)
TBS

21 is what Wikipedia says, although some sources list this season as 20 or 19. I’m going with Wikipedia, as I have since I started writing about the show. (Even though that’s the opposite of how I decided the Futurama season. TBS calls this season 19, if you want to go with the network currently airing the show.)

The writers’ strike delayed the show’s production, meaning we didn’t get the typical season split between spring and fall; it only returned to our TVs on October 28. And it keeps chugging along, steadily as ever, still finding tons to mine from the character comedy, whether the plots involve domestic life, CIA shenanigans, or other crazy adventures.

So far the season has been a lot of fun. Above, Stan takes the family on a mountain adventure which starts poorly, gets better, and ends in typical lunatic AD! fashion. In other plots: Stan, Francine, and Roger come up with the perfect plan for a bank robbery… then discover the bank was robbed according to their exact plan, even though they didn’t do it. Stan and Roger try to repair their friendship, in an uncomfortable way thanks to Francine and the CIA’s resident mad scientist. Steve doesn’t care for the clams restaurant that all his friends do, and the experience Jokerfies him. We also get a Christmas episode, which features a return of Santa… not quite in the murderous-psychopath form we know him as.

The show chugs along, steady as ever, never suffering any real drop-off even after all this time. It is a great favorite. Roger is dancing, dancing. He says that American Dad! will never die.

18. Only Murders in the Building
Season 4
Hulu

Only Murders has never quite again reached the heights of season 1, but season 4’s personal element to the case, with a sniper killing Sazz (and possibly intending to kill Charles), invigorates it in a way that season 3 was lacking. There are a lot of balls in the air this season: The three have agreed to a movie being made about their story, which leads to dealing with the whole production of that– high-wire studio heads (Molly Shannon as Bev Melon), insane directors (the Brothers sisters), and the actors playing each of the trio (as you can see above, Eva Longoria, Eugene Levy, and Zach Galifianakis).

The case also delves into a different segment of history in the Arconia, as the trio’s investigation of the mysterious M. Dudenoff leads them to the Arconia West, heretofore not explored as part of the Arconia and its rich history… because the weird people who live there are… renters. And, of course, there are the personal stories for each of our trio as well– Oliver is worried about his relationship with Loretta (Meryl Streep); Mabel is trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life besides “hang out with a couple of 75-year-old guys.” And we get a little more insight into Charles’ relationships with his family, with the appearance of his younger sister Doreen (Melissa McCarthy).

But the main personal throughline, of course, is Charles with Sazz. It’s possible that Charles only came to truly appreciate Sazz in her death; more likely, though, just some reflection of his life over the years and who’s come and gone made him realize, that after all these decades, Sazz Pataki was the one person always there for him, always ready to be his rock when he needed some steady footing. They’re each other’s Number Ones. Charles processing his grief through that lens, and through the conversations with his imaginary Sazz that he wishes they could’ve had in life, are arguably the strongest part of the season.

The season does provide some fun otherwise, though. There’s a murderer’s row of guest actors here; possibly the most fun wrinkle to the season is that the three actors playing our podcaster trio in the film are actually much better detectives than anyone would’ve expected. The killer also gives us, in a way possibly not since season 1, a sense that our heroes are in genuine danger. While the tightness of the murder plot of season 1 and the attendant tension has never quite returned, Only Murders in the Building still delivers a well-made good time on the whole.

17. What We Do in the Shadows
Season 6
FX

What We Do in the Shadows aired its sixth and final season in 2024. The show seeded a couple of ways this could’ve been a real final season, possibly with the awakening of never-before-seen fifth housemate Jerry (Mike O’Brien), who tries to revive the vampires’ essential mission of conquering America, which they’ve frequently forgotten over the last several hundred years. Another possibility is that only Guillermo moves on, as he’s taken a job in the human world with Cannon Capital Strategies– some sort of shady finance firm run by Tim Heidecker’s Jordan. Guillermo moves up quickly, perhaps in part due to the vampires looking out for him; perhaps due to his hard work and willingness to do whatever it takes.

Along the way, there are some fun adventures, such as when neighbor Sean shows up for one last curtain call asking Laszlo and Colin to get him a job at “the railroad you guys work at”; a Warriors homage; an appearance from the great Steve Coogan as Laszlo’s ghost-father; and a celebratory party at Cannon Capital where Guillermo is expecting a promotion. Laszlo finally has some success building “Cravensworth’s Monster” as well, and he and Colin take up the role of, in a way, co-parenting it.

In the end, though, the vampires of the house continue on, as they must, as they always have. And Guillermo, of course, can never truly quit his friendship with Nandor (even if it may or may not take on a Batman-and-Robin quality going forward).

This ranking probably feels a little low, and it’s really not as low as it sounds– we’re kicking off a relatively flat run, quality-wise, with the next nine or so shows. At the same time, while I always enjoyed What We Do in the Shadows, often found it very funny, and thought the performances were terrific, I somehow never quite fell in love with it the way so many others did. But that’s not to denigrate it in any way, because the show really did maintain a strong consistency throughout in comedy, writing, and performance. And the show’s final season was a more than worthy way to conclude its run.

16. St. Denis Medical
Season 1
NBC

Well, NBC sure put in a hell of a lot more promotional effort with this show than they did with Justin Spitzer’s last, the late, lamented (by me, anyway) American Auto. But unlike that show (which really didn’t fully blossom until season 2) and more like Spitzer’s biggest success, Superstore, St. Denis Medical has come out strong right out of the gate.

Spitzer’s latest is a single-camera mockumentary (with talking heads, so you know it fits that description) about the staff at an overworked, under-resourced hospital in Oregon. You can see some very familiar faces above, of course: Wendi McLendon-Covey as the executive director, Allison Tolman as the supervising nurse, and David Alan Grier as the emergency physician. Dedicated TV watchers may recognize Kaliko Kauahi and Josh Lawson from Superstore, or even Mekki Leeper from Jury Duty. (I haven’t seen Kahyun Kim in anything before, to my knowledge.)

The show seems to have found its voice pretty quickly, always a promising sign for a sitcom (which often needs a first season of fine-tuning before returning with an improved season two). The characters are really well drawn and make for natural comedic dynamics, both in the passing-the-time sense and in the ways their job brings them into conflict. Grier’s Ron may be my favorite so far, a curmudgeon played with a lot of nuance, with an affection for the staff and real and particular qualities that make him more than a grump.

The last couple of episodes were particular highlights. Ron and Lawson’s trauma surgeon Bruce come into conflict over the last candy bar in the vending machine, which escalates to absurd heights the further the episode goes on… until the conflict is immediately dropped when they have to work together to save a patient, and then in their separate talking heads they reflect on how they really do have respect for one another’s skills. Then they immediately resume the feud. It’s also got a good story for Leeper’s rookie RN Matt, who was one of the shakier characters for the first few episodes, wherein he expects and tries to worm gratitude out of a patient he helped resuscitate. (The final beat of this story is both extremely funny and a lesson Matt badly needed to learn.)

Then the next episode was the Christmas episode, which, similar to Tacoma FD‘s “Full Moon Fever,” has some of the most outrageous emergency incidents of the year (including, like Tacoma FD, a wedding ring stuck on a penis), and a great story with Ron and Tolman’s Alex as they care for an elderly leukemia patient who just wants to be united with his family. It’s really impressive how the show has managed to reach this level of comedy in just its fifth and sixth episodes.

I might be overrating the show a little considering it only aired six episodes before the holiday break, but remember, my list always comes down to vibes in the end anyway. Perhaps I was just excited for a new network sitcom that shows so much promise so early, and St. Denis Medical has given me plenty of reasons to be excited for the show’s future.

15. Elsbeth
Seasons 1 and 2
CBS

Apparently, the network procedural is back for 2024! Our first example of it is Elsbeth, the spinoff of a fairly minor character from The Good Wife. Quirky, highly intelligent and observant but scatterbrained lawyer Elsbeth Tascioni leaves Chicago for New York, where she’s tasked with overseeing a consent decree regarding NYPD misconduct. (She’s also on a secret mission from the Justice Department to investigate Captain C.W. Wagner– Wendell Pierce, who’s only really similar to Bunk Moreland here in that they’re both cops– for corruption.) As it turns out, Elsbeth has a knack for solving murder mysteries and picking up on the little details in the evidence and people’s behavior that no one else sees, and pulling on that thread until the whole mystery unravels.

In some ways, Elsbeth splits the difference between two other shows you’ll read about soon: Like one, it’s also about a woman attorney in New York who uses her image to get people to let their guard down; like the other, it’s about a hyper-observant woman who cracks cases the cops can’t, and is often overlooked by virtue of 1)not actually being a cop and 2)her, ah, unique fashion sense.

Elsbeth is mostly a Columbo-style inverted detective story format (aka the “howcatchem”), where we see exactly what the murder is at the top of the episode, and the episode is dedicated to how Elsbeth proves it, often alongside younger officer / new friend Kaya (Carra Patterson) and a rotating cast of detectives who are at first put off by Elsbeth’s very presence but generally, and gradually, come to appreciate her. (My favorites in this regard are Molly Price’s Det. Donnelly, somewhat gruff but who generally enjoys Elsbeth and Kaya more than the other detectives and actually has fun with them; and Daniel Oreskes as Det. Fleming, who has an almost Steve Billings-esque commitment to not working too hard and looking for the simplest answer, but who’s more than happy to admit when he’s wrong.)

Admittedly, this ranks as the lowest of our three procedurals on the list for a couple of reasons. It’s fun, but it doesn’t also have some of the dramatic stakes and tension of the other two shows (yet, I should say). Another bit reason is that the middle of season 1 started to drag a bit and sink into formula, as Elsbeth figured out who the real murderer was from their behavior almost immediately, and the rest of the episode was just a matter of proving it. But toward the end of the season, this picks up in a couple of ways, both with Elsbeth’s investigation into Wagner coming to a climax, and in the season 1 finale, where even the audience doesn’t know who the murderer is, and there are several strong suspects. Season 2 also varies the format by giving us some more twist cases, with one episode featuring a dead body we’re not even sure was a murder, another featuring a murder that’s a setup for a heist which Elsbeth and co. have to thwart, Elsbeth working from the jury box when she realizes the defendant is being set up, and a recurring role for Michael Emerson (Carrie Preston’s real-life husband) as a villainous judge.

What makes the show work in large part is Carrie Preston’s performance; Elsbeth is upbeat and a delight to be around, certainly for someone who spends most of her time dealing in murder investigations. The cases are generally interesting if not the kind that elevate the show by themselves, but they bring in a murderer’s row of guest starts for the murderer of the week, and I really should have picked a different phrase there. Names ranging from Jane Krakowski to Jesse Tyler Ferguson to Nathan Lane to Laurie Metcalf to Blair Underwood show up here as our suspects. The recently departed Linda Lavin plays a murder victim in one episode. And Elsbeth even befriends a couple of the associated people she runs into in her investigations; my favorite are Daniel Davis as plastic surgeon Dr. Yablonski, and Laura Benanti as recently retired supermodel Nadine.

Elsbeth doesn’t reinvent the murder procedural, but the combination of the format and such a delightful character at the center of it all makes the show an easy, breezy, good time.

14. Mr. Throwback
Season 1
Peacock

This six-episode show (I have no idea if it was intended as a limited series) is a sitcom with some of my favorite creative talent behind the camera (David Caspe as creator and head writer; David Wain as director of every episode). It is also a sitcom starring Steph Curry.

The premise is that Curry and his old junior high teammate Danny Grossman (Adam Pally) were inseparable as kids. Danny was the real phenom, better than anyone on the court, and the coach’s son too. Then it came out that Danny’s father lied about his age the entire time, and he’s actually two years older than they’ve been claiming. So at 12 14, Danny Grossman overnight turns from a kid with a bright future into a national punchline. And he’s never gotten over it.

Fast-forward 20-odd years, and Danny is still in Chicago, running a sports-memorabilia store, with an ex-wife (Ayden Mayeri) and daughter, getting into some kind of debt (sports betting? something else? I forget, but he’s just kind of generally a low-rent scam artist besides), and then the Warriors are in town and he decides to drop in on his old friend– and their other old friend, Kim, played by Ego Nwodim, who manages all of Curry’s affairs. (And there’s a lot to manage; Kim’s explanations for how Curry is essentially an industry unto himself are intriguing and enlightening on an aspect of celebrity most of us never have to think about.) He almost immediately gets caught trying to steal a game-worn Curry jersey, and then admits he’s having money troubles… because his daughter is dying (she is not).

This, of course, leads Curry to provide his old friend with all the financial and medical support his daughter needs, with fundraisers and everything else… while Danny has to figure out whether and how to come clean, particularly as the pressure on the situation rises. There is also a documentary being made of the whole story, and, of course, the documentarians are another angle Danny has to deal with. His dad (Tracy Letts) comes back into the picture, too, and his ex Sam seems to have taken a shine to this new doctor being brought in to look at their daughter Charlie, even as Danny harbors delusional hopes of getting back together… There are a lot of balls in the air and a lot of ways this story could come crashing down. (Only six episodes sounds about right; Danny simply wouldn’t be able to keep up this ruse any longer than that.)

The foundation of covering a lie gives the show a lot of dramatic tension, and it’s also very funny. Pally is great as a fuckup who’s never gotten past the defining moment of his life or grown out of it, swimming in a sea of delusion and excuses and dreams he has no power to bring to fruition. (I saw another review describe Pally’s performance thus: “There isn’t a dull moment when he’s on the screen because he gives off the impression that he doesn’t even know what he might do next.”) Curry acquits himself well, Nwodim leaves no doubt that Kim really runs shit around here, and Mayeri does a good job in what could be a thankless ex-wife role, showing both how Sam and Danny made a connection in the first place and why she is just completely tired of his shit now. It’s only a six-episode series, but it made for a lot of good laughs.

13. Curb Your Enthusiasm
Season 12
HBO

Nearly twenty-five years after the initial special aired, Curb Your Enthusiasm finally closed its doors for good, with Larry David declaring this the last season. I suppose he could still bring it back, but there’s a sense of finality to this season, with Larry getting arrested in Atlanta in the first episode, and the rest of the season having a throughline with his upcoming (and then present) trial. as he prepared his defense and to rehabilitate his public image, all the while through plenty of typical Curb plots and favorite characters and locations old and new. Larry of course manages to get into multiple feuds at the country club (and of course uses advice from Leon to get out of one of them), of course gets into some weird tiff with Richard Lewis, and on the new side, is still dating Irma from season 11 and then trying to get out of it when Sienna Miller expresses interest.

The arrest and trial immediately– and intentionally– draws comparisons to the Seinfeld finale, although I find it much improved on the original, and much more appropriate to Larry. The law Larry gets arrested for breaking, the “Election Integrity Act of 2021,” is unjust, but Larry is just ignorant of it, not performing a conscious act of civil disobedience. Larry is in the right, but public perception is going to play an important role in his trial, and Larry can’t stop undermining his own PR campaign with his own behavior– sometimes fairly, sometimes not.

And the ultimate ending is also much more fitting for Curb and for who Larry is– he is, after all, an extremely rich white guy who refuses to learn any lessons from his shenanigans. It was also a delight to see Jerry Seinfeld in the finale; he and Larry’s easy chemistry makes clear why they made one of the most successful sitcoms of all time together. They’re misanthropes, but in different ways– Jerry is more like an alien at remove amused and bemused by human behavior; Larry is just annoyed by everyone and everything and that they won’t either follow his own social rules or just leave him alone. But from those perspectives, they get each other.

The finale wasn’t perfect, but it gave us a satisfying conclusion, a satisfying twist on the Seinfeld finale, and everything we’d expect from Curb. One last argument with Richard Lewis (the conversation about having kids was great). One last scheme by Jeff that ends up with him in Susie’s doghouse. One last little thing that leaves Cheryl exasperated with Larry. And one last ridiculous, hilarious line from Leon, who apparently had never seen Seinfeld, and after watching it concludes it’s “a show about weekly ass.”

After twelve seasons and nearly twenty-five years, after being one of the signature and defining sitcoms of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, Curb Your Enthusiasm went out on its, and Larry David’s, own terms, with a final season that delivered everything you could hope for from the show.

12. House of the Dragon
Season 2
HBO

With the conflict between the Targaryens and Hightowers officially underway after the way season 1 ended, House of the Dragon season two moves into the various maneuvers and schemes of both houses, the Hightowers’ to establish Aegon’s legitimacy and the Targaryens’ to claim Rhaenyra’s rightful place upon the throne.

I will admit, House of the Dragon season 2 suffers in comparison to season 1 for two reasons: One more minor one is that, with the story now no longer jumping forward in time, it feels less like it’s sticking to the strictly essential points of the story. Two, the initial order of ten episodes was cut to eight, and it feels like some really climactic stuff was cut off from the end of the season. (I guess that’s appropriate enough when you’re adapting a story from the guy who wrote A Dance with Dragons.)

But the actual episodes we got were still pretty terrific and compelling. There’s a lot of complexity and drama here in not just the conversations and schemes, but the plots set into motion, and the complexities of this whole thing. That includes, in some great dramatic story points on scheming, aspects where characters lose control of events already set in motion, and can’t count on characters to act in expected ways or as they need them to. (This ranges from Blood and Cheese’s substitute plan, to Otto Hightower’s intentions for Aegon vs. what Aegon wants to do, to, well, just about anything Aemond or Daemon do.) You can’t control when and if your loyalists out in the rest of Westeros will break into battle, either, and when you’ll need to support their efforts. You can’t control your… uh, dragons (that may be less universal in drama). And we do get some good battle sequences, too. And this is war. People die.

House of the Dragon has a lot of moving parts and a lot of scheming, but it’s been compelling and appointment television in the way Game of Thrones was at its best. Even with a season seemingly cut short, that held true for the episodes that did air in season two.

11. Girls5eva
Season 3
Netflix

After Peacock dropped the show, Netflix bought the rights and renewed it for a six-episode season three. The Girls5eva spent most of the season on tour; after their song about Fort Worth becomes a hit in the city, they play there for several weeks before Wickie pushes Dawn to kick it into gear and book the rest of their tour. The Girls head for stops in the Ozarks, visiting Wickie’s parents, to Orlando to play the birthday party of a young woman in an apparent sugar-daddy marriage, Cleveland, and ultimately to New York to see through their dream of playing Radio City Music Hall.

Along the way, we learn more about our characters’ backgrounds (see above with Wickie’s parents), unlikely friendships formed (Gloria befriending pop star Gray Holland despite not knowing who he is), the schemes they’re getting up to as part of their tour plans or other aspects of life (Summer trying to be a businesswoman), and more. (I for one wasn’t really expecting our writers to be hip enough to give us an appropriate Arlo Parks reference. Shows what I know.)

Of course, the show’s most evident pleasures are obvious, with the great pop-parody songs, the dialogue that has the wit and sparkle of Murphy Brown 30 Rock, and that, as much as we do care about these characters and their friendships (individually and collectively), more to the point, it’s just been really and consistently goddamn funny. That said, I can’t overlook that there’s some particularly clever plotting in how the ultimate solution to the problem of selling out their show is resolved by events seeded earlier in the season.

Alas, it seems like this is all the adventures we’ll be getting from our girl group’s midlife return to relevance. 30 Rock‘s creative team has birthed a number of quality, funny shows since that show went off the air, but very few have gotten much attention or audience, and I suspect as much as anything it’s from not getting much promotion. (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt might be the only exception.) Girls5eva, this season and for the sum total of its run, stands as another worthy successor to its parent show.

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We’ll kick off the top ten tomorrow at the same time.