Welcome to my Monday newsletter! This week, I am continuing my Year in Review with my Top 11 Episodes of the Year. Plus, I am looking at the latest episode of Pluribus and taking a look back at Outsourced!
YEAR IN REVIEW
TOP 11 EPISODES OF THE YEAR
Normally this would be a Top 10 Episodes of the Year but I just couldn't take one of them off this list so I decided to make it a Top 11!
I really wasn't a fan of the first season of Paradise but this was a case where one episode was so far and above everything else that came before and after. The penultimate episode, titled "The Day," took us back to the apocalyptic event that led to the premise of the show. I didn't really care about how it fit into the show's mythology, because I don't like the show, but I thought it was a fascinating and eerie look at what could happen if the people in power find out the world is ending before the general public. It was very well done, anchored by a great performance by James Marsden, and very chilling.
10. Matlock "I Was That, Too" (CBS, April 10)
While I enjoyed Kathy Bates, I was sort of mixed on much of the first season of Matlock but it really picked up steam towards the end of the season and hit a peak with "I Was That, Too" - a very tense hour after Bates' Matty Matlock had her secret discovered by Olympia (Skye P. Marshall). Bates spent most of the episode locked in a room and she and Marshall had some fantastic scenes with each other. It showed how good the show can be when it's dialed in.
This season of Only Murders in the Building was a renaissance season for me as the focus went back to the Arconia. The "After You" episode was the departure episode of the season but it came in the second episode and looked at the life and career of Lester the Doorman. It was sweet, poignant and still quite funny with strong performances from Teddy Coluca as Lester and Emory Cohen as the younger version of Lester.
8. Severance "Woe's Hollow" (Apple TV, February 7)
Severance has been a show that has spent so much time indoors, mostly on one severed floor. So the company retreat in "Woe's Hollow" was such a breath of fresh air, literally and figuratively. Before the season sort of buckled on itself too, there was a lot of tension in the plot with John Turturro's Irving catching onto Helly's (Britt Lower) secret. Those very dramatic moments set against the serene backdrop made for one of the more visually striking episodes of the year.
Last week, I talked about the brilliance of Rhea Seehorn in my Top 10 Performances. Her best showcase to date came courtesy of "Got Milk?," an episode where she was basically by herself for the entire episode. The episode was eerie, comedic, thought-provoking and so much more. It's impressive how much time this show is willing to spend in silence and in the minute tasks Seehorn's Carol does to try to make sense of the new normal.
6. The Studio "The Oner" (Apple TV, March 26)
One of the most well-regarded episodes of the year and part of a trend of "oner" episodes and shows, The Studio's episode "The Oner" was a madcap. cringe comedy feat. With a remise about a single take in a movie and shot in one take, there was so much impressive film-work happening even as the premise was super silly with Seth Rogen's Matt getting in the way of everything Sarah Polley wants to do on a film set. It is deserving of the hype it has gotten.
I loved all the episodes of the first season of The Pitt and the late in the season mass shooting episodes certainly were considered for this list. But I thought an earlier hour in the day, "2:00 P.M.," represented the show at its best. It was just an hour of lots of compelling stories with some of them coming to an end and others just starting. But it had a very moving end of the episode with an honor walk for a teenager who had overdosed. It was a poignant and memorable ending to an episode that was emblematic of how great this show was on a week-to-week basis even when there wasn't a major mass casualty event.
4. Dying For Sex "It's Not That Serious" (FX/Hulu, April 4)
I didn't love all of Dying For Sex but what I liked best was the friendship between Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate so the finale was definitely my favorite episode. Yes, it was sad - any show about someone with terminal cancer is going to be sad - but it was also uplifting and sweet and gentle with a fair amount of humor still mixed in. Add in great guest appearances by Sissy Spacek and Paula Pell and it was one of those finales that made me think better of the whole show in retrospect with truly winning performances from Williams and Slate.
Amidst the woods of Eastern Pennsylvania came one of the tensest hours of the year. All the ground-setting Task did in its first five episodes came to a head in a penultimate episode that felt like a season finale. The episode was highlighted by a very long sequence in the woods to start off the episode and had a perfect amount of suspense while also feeling propulsive despite its length. It also felt like a scene an episode should end with so it was fascinating to see it kick off an episode and then see where we go next. That was really inventive storytelling and there were of course great performances by Mark Ruffalo, Tom Pelphrey and others.
2. The Lowdown "This Land?" (FX, October 14)
I loved each episode of The Lowdown's first season because Ethan Hawke was so interesting no matter who he was paired with for the episode, and there were plenty of great journeys the character went on. But the best was his two-hander with guest star Peter Dinklage. As old friends and sometimes enemies, Hawke's Lee and Dinklage's Wendell were a perfect comedic pair with so many great bits throughout the episode. Then the ending of the episode featured a brilliant oner shot of Lee going through a party from hell to meet Kyle MacLachlan's Donald Washberg. It was a brilliant episode from start to finish.
I understand the critiques of the second season of The Last of Us, I share some of those critiques. But I think people's frustration with how the season progressed and ended made people forget what a brilliant episode "Through the Valley" was. Set against a beautiful backdrop of a wide open snowy western United States, the episode had two very strong storylines. Of course the one everyone talked about was the death of Joel (Pedro Pascal) with heartbreaking performances from Pascal and Bella Ramsey. But I thought the attack on Jackson was equally compelling. The production looked massive. When it first aired, people were referring to it as one of TV's all-time great episodes. I think the muted reaction to the rest of the season put a damper on that but it really shouldn't. It was an exceptional hour of television.
LAST WEEK ON...
It sounds like people really enjoyed this past week's episode of Pluribus and while I have been LOVING the show, I did feel a little more cold with this episode. I thought the parts with Rhea Seehorn's Carol continued to be very compelling. Seeing her embracing the advantages of the hive mind was a refreshing change for the character. Where it started to lose me was the journey from Paraguay for Manousos (Carlos-Manuel Vesga). The cinematography was beautiful and there were some interesting elements but I just realized how much of my enjoyment of this show hinges on Seehorn. I get that other characters are going to have to be introduced and it can't be sustainable to be a solo show for Seehorn but I just didn't feel as connected with this episode.
PILOT RE-REVIEW
This season, I am traveling back in time to the 2010-11 season, the first season I did this blog. I will be re-reviewing the pilots from that season, at least as many as I can find!
Original Review: Click Here!
What I Think Now: This is such a 2010 show. From the entire premise of a company downsizing and moving its jobs to India to its approach to racial jokes, which is somewhere between complete parody of earlier years in sitcom history and much more awareness (dare I say "woke") of today. So it definitely was a show of a moment in time and would probably be conceived much differently if it was a new show now. The biggest problem with this pilot is there is not real character development happening, they are all types - just Indian versions of types. Aside from the Ben Rappaport character (and even sometimes including his character), the joke for pretty much every other character was that they didn't get something that should seem obvious and was obvious to us as the audience. That's it, that was the joke of the entire pilot. I really think there could have been a show here, it just needed to be entirely reconceived. They needed to have some more respect for their Indian characters and what they could do. A show like this now on a streamer would probably have a much better approach. I think this was the first time I saw Rizwan Manji and he has annoyed me in pretty much everything since. He's actually a little more restrained here, he's been worse in other things.
What Happened to the Show: Back in 2010, NBC had a Thursday night lineup that was full of critically acclaimed shows that had lots of buzz online but mostly low ratings. The Office was the exception but the others shows on the night - 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation and Community were beloved low rated shows. Since NBC was in such disarray at the time, these shows all survived for years because at least they had the critical acclaim and fandom. So along came Outsourced and fans were immediately unhappy that Parks and Rec was going on the bench for this show. Then it was savaged by reviews and quickly it became clear that it would not be the next Thursday darling. NBC tried for about half a season to make this show work, airing it after The Office. In January, they brought Parks and Recreation back though and Outsourced was moved to 10:30pm, usually a death knell for a comedy because comedies just don't air in the 10pm hour on Broadcast TV and it's never worked when they've tried. Despite some critics saying it got better during its run, it was cancelled after one full season of 22 episodes. I'm pretty sure I only watched the first episode and never checked back in.
COMING UP
As with last week, there's not many premieres as we head towards the holidays. In fact, there are only two but they are both pretty high profile. On Wednesday, Prime Video has the second season premiere of Fallout. The first season did quite well when it premiered in April 2024 as a binge drop and it will now switch to a weekly rollout. On Thursday, Netflix has the fifth season premiere of Emily in Paris, which will take the character to Rome. The series has quietly become one of Netflix's longest running shows at 50 episodes.
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