2009 Calvin Awards: Best TV Show
February 9, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The support for 30 Rock was perhaps galvanized by the fact that one of the webmasters of BOP, yours truly, had turned on the show midway through its second season. After a moderate amount of mocking occurred over the quality of Tina Fey's writing, the body of 2008 saw something of a staff civil war involving passionate debate over 30 Rock as well as the genius of Tina Fey. By the end of the year, her Sarah Palin impressions had made her arguably the hottest comedian, actress and writer on television, rendering the entire discussion largely moot. Even so, the staff at BOP isn't above piling on, so they voted en masse for the show that a pair of the webmasters at BOP despise. 30 Rock's support was so strong that its voting tally more than doubled from last year, bumping from a respectable 42 points to 87 points, the highest in the history of the category, and an easy win in the race for Best TV Show of 2009.
What is it about 30 Rock that our staff loves? Obviously, I'm not the best person to ask. Then again, no one else on the face of the planet has been told so frequently what there is to love on the show...and I include Tina Fey in that. What my friends fervently believe is that 30 Rock has the best and deepest cast of zany characters that network television has seen since the heyday of Friends and Seinfeld. Fey's sense of humor is such that she can take the best parts of The Office's premise as her own then throw in the slapstick moments she learned so well as a content creator on Saturday Night Live. She also honed her ability for quick and timely pop culture jokes that may negate the show's holdover appeal in reruns (a fate Seinfeld has suffered), but currently provides a plethora of celebrity critiques that are acerbic as well as surprisingly introspective. This is a show that not only has a crazy man, Tracey Morgan, at its core, but it also goes further than that and gives plenty of face time to his minions as well as how others interact with the mini-posse. It somehow manages to give just the right feel for how 30 Rock operates behind the scenes as well as in front of the camera, a rare accomplishment and one that is done without the need for documentary style filmmaking, the process our second favorite show requires.
I said it last year and I will say it again. Always a bridesmaid (or perhaps the Maid of Honor) is The Office. For the third straight season, the Steve Carell comedy finishes in second place. The good news is that its voting totals keep increasing, giving The Office hope that it may eventually supplant its competitors and finally finish in first place. After garnering 50 votes in 2007 and 52 in 2008, the show spiked to 77 votes in 2009, a score that would have won any of the past three years. Unfortunately, support for 30 Rock was so strong that The Office is left with the silver medal yet again. Our staff's slogan for the comedy has proven to be "The best show on television each year...except for that one."
What is it we love about The Office that makes it almost our favorite show every year? This sitcom can do the improbable with ease and grace. Ryan can go from the underdog everyone likes and cheers for at the end of a season finale one year to the villainous egomaniac who suffers a humiliating fall from grace the next. Pam starts as a secretary with dreams of improving herself but then when she fails in her attempts at re-education, she returns to her former glory with nothing tangible lost in the process. The show that can allow someone to try and fail sans long term punishment is offering a message about how best to define self-improvement that is not textbook but it is subtly sage. This is what The Office does particularly well although sequences such as the post-Super Bowl office fire (which technically won't count in our voting until next year) are the big comedy moments that we know the show always has in its arsenal when it wants to go big. The Office can succeed on a grand scale and it can excel on a small one, making it a constant source of amazement and popularity for our staff.
Last year's winner, Friday Night Lights, slips back to its 2007 standing with another third place finish. While its 57 votes almost matches last year's winning total of 61, the outpouring of support for the prior two shows is more than the Texas high school football drama could overcome. Of course, the fact the show even exists is welcome news in and of itself. When I relayed the news of its 2008 category victory, Friday Night Lights appeared certain for cancellation. Instead, DirecTV entered the picture as a surprise candidate for renewal, offering to air first run episodes of the show prior to its NBC dates in exchange for covering a significant portion of the show's hefty production costs. Instead of the show ending sans benefit of anything resembling closure, a new 13-episode run provided the creative staff the opportunity to offer resolution to the arcs of injured running back Smash Williams and crippled quarterback Jason Street while introducing new characters in anticipation of a continued relationship with DirecTV. This historically unprecedented working agreement has proven beneficial to all parties and there is cause for optimism about the future of Friday Night Lights. If there is no such luck about future episodes, the show's legacy will be a pair of third place finishes and a first place victory for Friday Night Lights during its three season run. We wish more of you would watch the show as it currently re-airs on NBC to prevent that fate, though. Television simply does not get better than this.
Dexter makes its first appearance as a selection in Best TV Show category this year, finishing fourth with 53 votes. Prior to this year, it had been a buzz show that a couple of members of our staff passionately celebrated, but it wasn't until the DVD releases became readily available and the writer's strike allowed for network airing that the body of our group fell in love. Dexter's quirky, unsettling premise is that the guy doing the autopsies to help track down the killers moonlights as a guy who kills them himself. And there is a much deeper level of complexity than that. Dexter's twists and turns over its three seasons have included multiple people sussing out his side gig, causing some to become friendly and others to become foes. New characters added to the show have been forced to choose alliances, and a few of them have even been afforded the teachings of Dexter's code. Particularly noteworthy among these is Jimmy Smits' season three character, Miguel Prado, who constantly walked a fine line of moral ambiguity while dealing with Dexter. His introduction is a perfect example of how cleverly the Showtime series keeps storylines fresh and ethics situationally fluid.
Since this category's introduction in 2006, no show has provided more of a love/hate relationship for our staff than our fifth place selection, Lost. We originally voted it the fourth best show on television in 2006, lauding the first season finale and the genius of the introduction of the Desmond character at the start of season two. In 2007, Lost fell outside the top 10 in voting and I mentioned in passing that the staff found it "increasingly frustrating". A solid third season featuring Locke being thrown out a window by his father and an absolutely impeccable season finale that used flash forwards as well as flashbacks returned the show to our good graces. We named it the sixth best show of 2008, albeit with only 20 votes. Lost benefited by our house being divided on what the best programs on television were outside of the Big Three (Friday Night Lights, The Office and Battlestar Galactica). This year sees Lost finish only one spot higher, but its 50 votes are more indicative of how satisfied we were with season four. Thanks to great episodes such as The Economist, Ji Yeon, There's No Place Like Home (the two-part season finale) and The Constant – my choice for the best single episode of television of 2008 – almost all has been forgiven with Lost. Now that it has the opportunity to build toward a finish, even more should be expected of it in our voting over the next two years.
Chuck and Mad Men, two of our other new selections this year, finish in sixth and seventh place, respectively. Chuck's first season was a celebration of the everyman geek, albeit one that celebrates the spy fantasy that so many people working in boring jobs use to pass their days. Chuck is hysterically funny, features BOP fave Adam Baldwin in a role tailor-made to his skill set, and introduced us to the glorious (and occasionally 3-D) majesty of Yvonne Strahovski. There is much for us to love about it. Meanwhile, Mad Men is almost diametrically opposed to Chuck in terms of premise and tone. Set in the high powered advertising world of the 1960s, this cynical take on the mores of the business world back in that day is fabulous. Mad Men exposes a world of chauvinism, manipulation and predatory marketing while somehow managing to create engaging characters we root for almost in spite of ourselves. Believe the hype on Mad Men. It's one of the best dramas on television not just today but ever.
Rounding out the top ten this year are How I Met Your Mother, Battlestar Galactica, The Daily Show, and Top Chef. The CBS sitcom that features Dr. Horrible and Buffy's BFF, Willow, moved up a spot from 2008's ninth place finish to eighth this year. Presumably, the voting increase from 17 last year to 40 this year can be attributed to the fact that the show hits its stride with seminal moments such as Robin sleeping with Barney and the vaunted slap bet episode. Meanwhile, Battlestar Galactica fell victim to unrealistic expectations a bit in its slide from third last year to ninth this year. The first half of season four felt like filler too often for people anxiously awaiting the show's getting to the fireworks factory by revealing the final Cylon. Given the lavish praise thrown on the 2009 episodes to date, it's reasonable to expect a much stronger showing next year. The malevolent way this show works, I would not be surprised if it ended with a most literal bang. Finally, you probably notice I list eleven shows for our top ten and the rationale is that we have a tie in tenth place. Our staff was divided between our love for The Daily Show's magnificent election year coverage and our passion for our new favorite reality program, Top Chef. Both are worthy nominees, so we decided not to pick between them.
Just missing selection this year were Life, The Simpsons, Burn Notice (my personal favorite program of 2008), South Park, True Blood, Entourage, My Name Is Earl, The Colbert Report and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Dr. Horrible has proven to be a frustrating piece of content to quantify as it's not really a television show per se but it was a staff obsession for the body of 2008. We may even need to redefine the specificity of the category moving forward as more entries such as this are released. Television is evolving in a manner we would not have anticipated even just a couple of years ago and programs that debut on computers may have to be included under that umbrella as we move forward. Alternately, we may just add a new category for Best Internet Program. (David Mumpower/BOP)
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