What does a Lost-loving Lawyer watch during the 24 hours of prime time television in any given week. I've come up with a "top 30" TV shows, which I'll tell you about over the next couple of weeks. This week opens with a bang - number 1-10. Here's what I think: tell me what you think (and keep in mind there's 20 more where these came from).
1. Lost
No surprise here. Unlike many contemporary serialized dramas, Lost has been content to reveal its treasures at a slow pace, demonstrating the complexity of its plotting by asking more questions even as it allows its answers to trickle out. The mysteries are compelling, the characters wonderfully flawed, and the visuals gorgeous. Entertainment Weekly’s resident Lostologist Jeff Jensen has written that what Lost is about is the experience of watching Lost. That is to say, each of us watching the show has experienced the unmistakable sense of purpose that John Locke experienced when he first found the Swan hatch – a sense that a greater answer will imminently be revealed, only to be followed by a crisis of faith as the second season progressed without major answers coming to light. How we react to the continued vagaries and unresolved mysteries of the show tells us if we are more like Locke, whose faith was so easily shaken by the Pearl hatch orientation video, or like Eko, who embraced the deeper puzzle with a renewed sense of purpose (not surprisingly, the second season finale made abundantly clear that Eko’s view was the “correct” one). In any case, Lost does not take shortcuts, and so much attention has been paid to ensuring there are no logical leaps or contradictions, that Lost may well go down as the most densely plotted serialized drama of all time.
2. Battlestar Galactica
Called the “best show on television” by Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone and others, BSG is science fiction at its best. The creators of this “reimagining” of the short-lived series from the 1970s have taken much of the original’s concept (12 colonies of humans in search of their long-lost 13th colony on Earth in the wake of the annihilation of most of their civilization at the hands of the mechanical Cylons) and updated the series to the post 9/11 world. The modern Cylons reminded us for two seasons of a far more successful Al Qaeda, only to become in the third season the American occupiers of Iraq, offering us a disturbing view of the world we inhabit. Nowhere else on television can you find the three great forces of any society – politics, religion and military power – and the tensions between them displayed with such naked honesty, while revealing how human weaknesses can distort ideological purity. After two seasons of taking old plotlines from the original series and making them much, much better, the show is in exciting new territory in its third season, having settled the human survivors on a desolate new planet, only to see a Cylon occupying force sweep in and conquer, leaving half the familiar characters to form an insurgency. And is there a more convincing sniveling coward on TV than Gaius Baltar (James Callis), or a sexier pair of “toasters” than Caprica 6 (Tricia Helfer) or Sharon Valerii (Grace Park)? I don’t think so.
3. 24
In many ways the antithesis of Lost, 24 is just as densely plotted but with the added urgency of requiring each season’s plot to resolve itself in exactly 24 hours (which is really closer to 18 ½ once you subtract commercial time). In retrospect, most of the plot points strain even the loosest sense of credibility. Yet the brisk pacing, the intense acting, the immediacy of the ticking clock and the eye-level camera work are so immersive, 24 keeps us glued to our seats. The straight-through run the show has enjoyed the past two seasons (and will again in season 6) is a huge benefit to the audience, who does not have to wait weeks at a time for a resolution of each episode’s obligatory cliffhanger ending (because really, when in real life does anything resolve itself at precisely the 59 minute mark of the hour?) The deaths in season 5 of so many familiar characters and a major season-ending cliffhanger lets us know one thing – this is the one show on television in which anything can and does happen…
4. The Shield
…with the possible exception of the Shield. In a series where the protagonist, Detective Vick Mackey (a role for which Michael Chiklis has won a best actor Emmy), has you rooting for him and his Strike Team despite their violent and often Machiavellian tendencies, it’s hard to escape the fact that the very first episode ended with Mackey’s execution-style murder of an internal affairs mole. But then, why forget it? As much as Vick and company have struggled to redeem themselves, this past season made abundantly clear that Mackey’s boys will never quite be off the radar in the open investigation of Detective Crowley’s murder. After Glenn Close’s season-long run as Mackey’s commanding officer ended, there was a sense the show may decline. But the addition of Forrest Whitaker as an obsessive I.A. detective, which led indirectly to the death of one of Vick’s boys in the shocking season finale, proves this show is not scared to plumb the depths of these deeply conflicted (and conflicting) characters. There are some inconsistencies across the series (C.C.H. Pounder’s Claudette seems to change personalities more often than most people change underwear), but the show’s continued exploration of the raw depths of (now) three men who made some highly suspect moral and ethical decisions is without peer.
5. The Sopranos
It is time for this show to end, and end it will in a set of episodes due to premiere after the new year. But that does not mean it’s faded from its former glory (although the relatively slow pacing of this past season was a bit of a head scratcher). Rather, it means these characters have been so thoroughly explored in first and best of HBO’s original dramas, that they have earned their fitting conclusions. Given the history of the show, it’s obvious more than a couple of the characters will meet their ends in unceremonious whackings (my money is on Michael Imperioli’s Chris-tuh-phuh meeting an untimely end before the series finale), but it’s very unlikely that many in Tony’s crew will just fade out with a “happily ever after” after all these years of theft, arson, murder, assault, prostitution, drugs, and family values.
6. The Office
Funniest. Show. On. Television. Unlike the British version, that perhaps rang a little more true as it was less censored and cartoonish, the Emmy-winning American version gives main character Michael Scott (Steve Carrell) some pathos, and a streak of “good guy” at the end of his self-centered world view and social retardation that makes us root for him even as we enjoy flubs by Michael’s assistant to the regional manager, Dwight Shrute. The Jim-and-Pam will-they-or-won’t they romance was perfectly paced in the first two seasons, and the lesser characters have all had their chance to shine. Better than any other comedy on television, The Office takes advantage of HDTV’s wider aspect ratio because so much of the humor comes from the facial expressions of the observing secondary characters who just happen to fall within the frame. Here’s hoping the U.S. version does what the British version did so well, and combined Jim’s new Stamford office mates with Michael’s bizarre Scranton crew. The comedic version of a car crash is easily the best show on NBC, and its best hope to regain its former glory, particularly on Thursday nights.
7. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
That said, the cream of the freshman crop, Studio 60, has been a real find for the Peacock. While reuniting exiled West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin with his on-screen alter ego, Bradley Whitford, the tightly-packed scripts have done what few thought was possible – redeemed Matthew Perry from the caricature his Chandler Bing had devolved into by the end of Friends. A terrific cast, a fun environment, and the sense that you might actually become smarter just by watching signal that Sorkin may have finally gotten what he deserved years ago – a full hour version of his pre-West Wing gem, Sports Night.
8. Grey’s Anatomy
Although I get annoyed by TV’s most shamelessly self-indulgent rationalizer Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), the supporting cast, led by Sandra Oh’s Cristina Yang and Chandra Wilson’s Miranda Bailey has more spunk in each episode than most shows pack into a season. Dr. Karev (Justin Chambers) is a world-class jackass, and George O’Malley (T.R. Knight) is the nice guy you can’t stop rooting for. A believably incestuous workplace (when do surgeons have time to date?) makes for a consistently excellent dramady. Plus, this show gets extra credit for the single best post-Superbowl episode in history.
9. Scrubs
If George from Grey’s took over as the narrator, and the humor took center stage, you would get Scrubs. TV’s zaniest comedy has made a star out of the unlikely Zach Braff. There is no better best buddy than Chris Turk, no whackier female lead than Dr. Elliot Reid, and, no, Shirley, you ca-an’t get any funnier with a sharp tongue than Dr. Cox.
10. Desperate Housewives
Perhaps not as good in its first season or as bad in its second as most critics would have you believe, the latest in a long line of prime time soaps is smart enough to not take itself too seriously. The exploits of the bigger-than-life inhabitants of Wisteria life make suburban existence far more exciting than it has any right to be. The car wreck that is Susan’s (Terri Hatcher) love life alone would keep us coming back for more.
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