A few preliminary notes:
- I watch a lot of television. So much television. Too much television, honestly. It can’t be healthy. And even with this gluttonous diet of content, I still missed so many shows this year. Transparent? I’ve heard it’s wonderful. But it just didn’t happen. Not yet, at least. We all have to make our own choices and stick and move as we see fit in this crazy world, and that means that me, you, and everyone else missed some great stuff this year.
- The point of that extended disclaimer is to remind you that this list only contains moments and thing from shows I saw during the calendar year. I can’t be expected to remember something I never learned. That’s not how memory works. (Boom, science.) So if there’s a moment or thing you think should be added, please, by all means, chime in below.
- Spoilerz ahead, obviously.
Okay, let’s get started.
The Whole True Detective Thing
Man, did we ever get into True Detective. The theories, the think pieces, the various mash-ups and parodies, the whole nine. It’s a pretty safe bet that the Internet devoted more words and time to this show in 2014 than any other show on television. I doubt it’s even close, actually. I chipped into the madness by drawing the above picture in MS Paint. This represents the most work I put into anything all year long. We all got a little carried away.
See you in Season 2 next year.
Cocaine!
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from television 2014 is that everyone is on cocaine now. Review did a segment on it, Bono’s daughter injected it into Clive Owen’s penis on The Knick, and hell, Archer basically devoted an entire season to it. There was so much cocaine on TV in 2014 that we were able to do a roundup of the best cocaine moments. It was essentially 1984 out here all over again. Someone get Don Johnson a Ferrari, a pair of pastel pants, and an ornery pet alligator. I smell reboot.
But the best cocaine moment of the year, hands down, happened on TNT’s update of Dallas, when Judith Light’s character did a giant line at the rodeo. I could provide you with context, but, I mean, why? What good would it do? Judith Light did cocaine at the rodeo. The show didn’t survive the year, but that GIF will live forever.
Whatever the Hell 24 Was Doing
Jack Bauer and company returned for an abbreviated season of 24 this year as well. At one point, in an attempt to prevent a terrorist attack in London, Jack had the President of the United States of America walk into an empty, fully-lit Wembley Stadium — Why was an empty stadium fully lit, you ask? Hey, shut up, guy — to get blown up by a drone piloted by Catelyn Stark from Game of Thrones, who would later die when Jack threw her out a window rather than bring her in for questioning.
BUT.
It was all a ruse and President Heller didn’t actually get blown up. Obviously! Because 24!
California Pete Campbell
The first half of Mad Men‘s split final season was a bi-coastal affair, with Don and Roger and Peggy holding down the fort in Manhattan while characters like Pete and Megan zipped off to Los Angeles to further their respective careers. The Megan thing was a big deal because it kind of ended up being the dagger in her already struggling marriage to Don, but I have no interest in discussing that any further right now because would you look at Pete Campbell up there? Have you ever seen someone go from zero to California faster than that in your entire life? He would do that, too. Pete Campbell strikes me as the kind of guy who would go to Paris for a week and then come back and make a big deal about how he can’t eat American croissants anymore because they’re horribly inferior due to the differences in the minerals in the water over here and ugggggggggghhhhhhh.
There’s still time for him to get eaten by a bear. Let me have this.
Officer Molly Solverson and Her Roving Conspiracy Wall
The degree of difficulty on Fargo was incredibly high. Taking a beloved movie from a critically-acclaimed team of directors and turning it into a cable series, without the involvement of the original directors or the crutch of familiar characters, yeah… this show had no business being as good as it was. Heck, it ended up being our favorite show of the whole year. Talk about a pleasant surprise.
And while there was certainly a lot to love about it, including but not limited to Billy Bob Thornton’s performance as Lorne Malvo, I think my favorite part had to be Officer Molly Solverson and her evolving wall of conspiracies as she put the case together. It started out on the window of her hospital room drawn in marker, then moved to her home, then to the station, picking up files and pictures and red squiggly lines connecting them all along the way. I like to picture her taking it down piece-by-piece and re-doing it every time she needed to move it. I mean, I suppose a Powerpoint would have been more efficient, but it lacks the pizzazz and lunacy of a giant wall-sized hard copy. Solverson today, Solverson forever.
Too Many Cooks
Still not exactly sure what to make of “Too Many Cooks.” All I’ve figured out so far is (1) Watching it for the first time at about 2:30 a.m. was either the best or worst decision I’ve ever made, (2) I will never get that song out of my head as long as I live, and (3) I want to know what would have happened if Smarf pushed that button more than anything else in the world.
Silicon Valley Going on a Season-Long Walk to Get to a Dick Joke
We do realize that’s what happened here, yes? That Silicon Valley took us on a 10-episode, five-hour walk through the ins and outs of starting a tech company all for the pay-off of one extremely elaborate dick joke? Because that is definitely what happened.
Don’t get me wrong, the walk was enjoyable as hell, too. T.J. Miller was a comedic force of nature, and the arc about Big Head getting paid an exorbitant salary to show up and do nothing but grill on a roof was basically everything I’ve ever dreamed of out of a career, but all of it was in service of this particular bit in the finale. And it was glorious.
The Ridiculous Airplane Scene from Scorpion
Let’s quickly run down what is happening here: A jumbo jet is malfunctioning and needs an emergency program uploaded to its system, and so a genius with an IQ in the very high 100s grabs Katherine McPhee (who was working as a diner waitress literally moments before), hops in an expensive sports car, and speeds down an airport runway at breakneck speeds with the plane flying five feet above them so Katherine McPhee can hand the co-pilot an ethernet cord that is hooked up to a laptop with the program on it. It was the stupidest and most ridiculous thing to happen on a runway since the end of Fast 6. I loved it dearly.
Comedy Central Just Killing It
Comedy Central already had shows like Nathan for You, Key & Peele, Workaholics, South Park, Drunk History, Inside Amy Schumer, and Kroll Show in its stable of primetime shows, and then this year it went ahead and added Review and Broad City. That’s a pretty ridiculous collection of talent. In fact, you could make a pretty solid argument that those two most recent additions are the best ones yet. It hasn’t been a great year for comedy on the networks, but let’s just consider this a reminder that television as a whole might never have been funnier.
Eye-Popping Game of Thrones Deaths
The death of noted royal weasel Joffrey Baratheon was much deserved and long overdue, and very few things that happened on television this year made me happier. (Always odd to be in the position of loudly cheering the poisoning death of a child, but that one’s more on George R.R. Martin than me or you, really.) And yet, somehow, it ended up being only the second most notable death on Game of Thrones this year, and maybe even the third, depending how you feel about powerful patriarchs getting shot with crossbows by their eloquent dwarf children while they’re on the toilet.
Point being, a dude named “The Red Viper” died because a second dude named “The Mountain” put his thumbs in the Viper’s eye sockets and squeezed until the whole dang head popped. That’s tough to top. And besides, there’s something that just feels good about not even giving Joffrey the satisfaction of having the best death. Let’s just go ahead and bump him down to number three, actually. Yes, that’s much better.