Geekscape Picks the Best TV of 2009!

For us geeks, 2009 was the end of an era, and as we watched Battlestar Galactica take its last journey into the heart of the sun, we couldn’t help but think… “Wait, that’s it?!” Love it or hate it, 2009 was a weird year for TV geeks of all kinds. Glee finally gave theater kids the first show of their own since Kids, Incorporated, Lost got a little better instead of getting a little worse, Supernatural kicked ass while no one was watching, Fringe became the last bastion of decent science fiction as Fox fed Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse to the… well, foxes, and apparently Courtney Cox was starved for attention. But were they any good? Find out what Geekscape’s finest thought were the best television shows and performances of 2009… right now.

Okay, this show is also my candidate for Worst TV Show of the Year. But you know what? It united us Geekscapists like no other show this year in our celebration of the polar opposite demographics documented in this T masterpiece. If ever there were reasons to pride ourselves in being geeks, they are on display every week in the botched abortions of humanity living at The Jersey Shore. MTV… we slow clap you. Now go orchestrate another situation in which a woman gets punched in the face by an orangutan doing Jager shots.

Season 4 of Dexter pushed Debra Morgan the furthest she’s ever been. Sure, past seasons have seen Deb kidnapped, professionally tested and angrier (and more foul mouthed) than any other character but Season 4 had her deal with a real loss for the first time and Carpenter rocked it. I watch these episodes with my fiancé Laura and congrats, Jennifer Carpenter, for making her cry several times during your incredible performance in Season 4… or maybe your performance just reminds her that she’s marrying me in a few months! Either way, you struck a huge chord!

Despite occasionally exceptional episodes and strong performances, Torchwood has, until now, never stepped out of Dr. Who’s shadow as a television series of any real value. “It’s like Dr. Who but with guns and bi-sexual sex and it never leaves Cardiff” was a pretty good description. But 2009’s mini-season Children of Earth finally made all the pieces work, focusing one of mankind’s most horrific accomplishments: the moral compromise. As aliens threaten to kill the world unless we hand over 10% of Earth’s children – to be used as narcotics – the real drama doesn’t come from Torchwood’s valiant and creative attempts to stop the disaster, but from behind closed doors as politicians rationally decide which children they can afford to lose. There are also some neat action sequences. Torchwood had been dancing around the theme of mankind’s irredeemable nature for two seasons. Children of Earth finally made brought it to the foreground, and brought Torchwood to the best television series of the year.

7. Harper’s Island (It may have been cheap and tawdry, but that’s just what it needed to be)

9. The Cleveland Show (It’s the same as Seth MacFarlane’s other shows, except that it’s consistently funny and works as a television series)

The cast of Battlestar Galactica gets a lot of praise (not from the Emmy Awards of course, but that’s another matter), but no one ever seems to talk about the unusual crux of every performance in the series: Every single character is a victim of post-traumatic stress, and dealing with that psychological damage in unique ways. And while Apollo was free to indulge in his perpetual identity crisis, and Duwalla was able to take the coward’s way out, it was Bill Adama who had to hold his shit together so that humanity could carry on. This last season, we watched as straw after straw was added to the load as all hope for salvation vanished, the one person to whom he could show weakness betrayed him, and the love of his life died in his arms night after night. And thanks to Edward James Olmos, he did it all with dignity… when he wasn’t drunk off his ass. James Callis might have the kookier character, but Edward James Olmos was Battlestar’s rock.

4. Steve Colbert, The Colbert Report (So great a performance that some Republicans don’t think it’s a performance. Really.)

6. Peter Capaldi, Torchwood: Children of Earth (This Oscar winner – for Best Short Film – carried the most terrifying and tragic story of the year as a political middleman scapegoated for Earth’s greatest atrocities)

9. Jim Beaver, Supernatural & Harper’s Island (Sure, it’s the same character, but I like that character)

10. Ritchie Coster, Virtuality (Fox’s unjustly cancelled series ended before Ritchie Coster’s breakout character could captain the ship. I bet he would have been TV’s greatest asshole.)

I think the Season 3 detractors who have described Mad Men as too slow or lacking in plot need to go back to watching Two and Half Men and CSI. If you can’t see that there are more levels of story happening in ONE SCENE than in an entire season of most other shows, nothing I’ll say here can help you. The show is genius, top to bottom.

2. Battlestar Galactica (Read my archive reviews.)

3. Science of the Movies (Come on. It’s awesome.)

4. Fringe (Feeds the X-Files junkie in me.)

5. Charlie Rose (I’ve been watching it for 12 years, and it still surprises me every night.)

I’ve made no secret in my BSG coverage that Gaius Baltar is my favorite TV character since Fox Mulder. It’s the result of two things: great writing and Callis’ ability to perfectly balance the dramatic anguish of the hallucinating Baltar with impeccable comic timing. Whether he’s manipulating a flock of religious whackos or delivering a sincere message of unity at a pivotal moment, Callis was always fun to watch. His final moment of the series, when Baltar is overcome with emotion while speaking about his family’s farming roots, was a surprise masterstroke. James Callis, please come back to American television soon.

2. Vincent Cartheiser, “Pete Campbell”, Mad Men (The whole cast is stellar, but Pete is a personal fave.)

5. Jason Alexander, “Himself”, Curb Your Enthusiasm (So fun to see his comic brilliance back on the tube!)

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll cheer: All clichés, and yet all true when it comes to Glee. This show is pure television goodness, and the best show about high school since (dare I say it?) Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And forget Will & Grace or Ellen, Glee is the gayest thing ever on mainstream television. And what’s funny is that probably half of America doesn’t even realize it.

By far, the most improved series after a disappointing season. From start to finish, Dexter came out swinging this year.

The insanity and the fun were ramped up big time this year. Just saying this is just Twilight for adults is selling it short. Although non abstinent vampires ARE better. Just sayin’.

Like most Whedon shows, this really started to take off in the second half of the second season. Farewell Dollhouse, we hardly knew ya.

Ya know…if Starbuck hadn’t turned out to be an angel, this show would have ranked higher.

The best thing about Dollhouse is not Eliza Dushku  or anyone else, it’s this guy, who plays the Active/Doll code-named Victor.  This guy can quite literally play anything, which of course is what the show requires of those who play the “Dolls”. But week after week it is this guy who shines over everyone else. Of all things on Dollhouse I’ll miss, number one on that list will be Victor.

I’m not even sure how a comedy with song and dance number on the Fox Network even made it on my list let alone shoot straight to the top. I almost never watch a show on the computer. But if I miss a single episode of Glee I need to get a dose of that sweet, sweet crack in anyway possible. The show is great and is deceptively simple. You think it’s a simple comedy thank it smacks you in the face with some much tenderness that it could make a grown ass man cry. It blends comedy and drama seamlessly in such away that it’s actually mind blowing that Joss Whedon has nothing to do with the making of this show. Oh, by the way he’s doing an episode next year –get your geek on! 

4. Pushing Daisies (YOU CANCELLED IT YOU BASTARDS!)

”…I will go to the animal shelter and get you a kitty cat. I will let you fall in love with that kitty cat. And then on some dark, cold night, I will steal away into your house…and punch you in the face!” This is one of perhaps a thousand comments that had left me bleeding from the sides as I laugh myself to death. I’m not sure if they just let Jane Lynch adlib every thing Sue Sylvester say or if it’s great writing coupled with a great performer all I know is that I want more. 

 

I’ve been patient with all of you as I explained how good this show was. How high concept, how well written and acted, and how in danger of being canceled. And now it has been. So when you eventually view it off Netflix, and you smack yourself in the head the same way you did when you finally got around to watching Freaks and Geeks, I will laugh at you and your tears and tell you to go watch the new season of The Vampire Diaries that you deserve. One hour a week this good from a network is hard to find. And thanks to all you philistines, if I want to see seasons three through six, I’ll have to raid a DVD store in an alternate universe.

You don’t get many characters on TV as good as Walter White: cancer patient, high school teacher, chemistry whiz, husband and father, and aspiring drug kingpin all in one package. Walter ostensibly keeps things together in his family life, cancer treatment, and criminal enterprises all for the sake of his loved ones, but all his solutions are about salving his own male ego. He has to solve all his problems himself, in his own way, without help from anyone. Give all due credit to the show’s writers and creators, but with an actor as strong as Bryan Cranston as Walter, the complexity of the character shines through brilliantly.