Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful. It says so right there in the name. So let’s do that. Let’s be thankful. And while there are many other important things to be thankful for besides television, let’s all agree that this is a TV website and the world demands holiday-appropriate content, so here we are.
Let’s be thankful for TV.
Below, please find an incomplete list of TV things to be thankful for this year. The important word there is “incomplete.” There is so much TV and so many TV-related things happening right now that compiling a complete list of just my favorites would have taken most of November, and that doesn’t even take into account all the good stuff I missed, of which there was plenty. So here’s what we’re going to do: If you have a favorite moment, performance, scene, show, or “thing,” add it in the comments. Let’s make this as comprehensive as we can. I’ll start.
The Battle of The Bastards. There was, to understate things a bit, a lot happening on Game of Thrones this year. There was a naval battle involving dragons controlled by a fire-proof blond warrior queen and that was somehow like the third or fourth biggest moment of the season. That list was topped by the long-brewing Battle of the Bastards between Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton. It was a big sweeping expensive episode with hundreds of extras and dozens of horses and one giant who martyred himself for the cause (R.I.P. Wun-Wun), and it was exactly the type of huge event Game of Thrones does better than any other show on television.
Every single thing that happened on The People v. O.J. Simpson. What a gift this show turned out to be. Sarah Paulson was so good as Marcia Clark, and Courtney B. Vance was so good as Johnnie Cochran, and David Schwimmer said the word “Juice” north of 40 times (but not, sadly, 100). And then there was Travolta. My God. John Travolta as Robert Shapiro gave a performance that was at once big and hammy but also perceptive and fascinating and it’s very upsetting to me, personally, that we aren’t still discussing it every day. At least I’ll always have this picture.
Bojack Horseman going underwater. One of the best and most touching episodes of the year was a mostly dialogue-free half-hour about a depressed famous cartoon horse who went underwater for a film festival and ended up trying to reunite a baby seahorse with its factory-worker father. Raise your hand if you saw that coming.
Zoo and the liberation of a mutated sloth that can cause earthquakes with its shrieks. I’m so happy to have this GIF of Bob Benson from Mad Men slapping a four-star general in my life. It’s almost better without context. Just email it to someone right now, with no subject line or text.
Janet from The Good Place. The entire show is great, and it’s exactly the type of colorful weirdo escapist comedy we could use right now. (It’s really a shame there’s not four or five seasons of it to binge over the long weekend.) But with all due respect to the fictional Florida fine dining establishment Stupid Nick’s Wing Dump, Janet (D’Arcy Carden) has been my favorite part. She pops up — literally — rarely, but when she does, usually with an answer or a cactus, she steals the scene like a master criminal.
America’s greatest comedy team, Richard T. Splett and Jonah Ryan. Veep sent these two off to campaign this year and the results were magical. Splett’s naive optimism and Jonah’s loud douchebaggery made for some of the funniest moments of the year. Possibly the funniest. This clip is incredibly NSFW. You should watch it anyway. Peter MacNicol was nominated for an Emmy for his guest role on the show but the nomination was rescinded when they realized this scene put him over the maximum number of episodes. Worth it.
The second season of Better Call Saul. In hindsight, this entire show is such a brazen act of audacity. Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould chose to take one of the best and most beloved dramas in history and spin it off into a prequel about its goofiest character. And somehow it not only worked, but became a great companion piece to the original. I don’t know that I’ll ever think Better Call Saul is better than Breaking Bad, or even as good as it, but it’s almost definitely a more enjoyable watch, and that counts for something.
The characters played by Jake Johnson on New Girl and Andre Braugher on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Nick Miller and Captain Holt could not possibly be more different. One is a straight white slob whose life is a mess and who beats the heat by lounging in a kiddie pool surrounded by fans. The other is a buttoned-up gay black police chief who loves order the opera. The only similarity between them is the fact that their shows air on the same network on the same night. And we are truly blessed for that.
The time Silicon Valley mentioned this website. I have a strange job. It’s hard to explain it to people in the real, not-Internet world. It’s much easier to just show them this clip and say “I work there.”
Paul Giamatti on Billions. The very first episode of Billions — a good, fun Wall Street drama that’s worth binge-watching if you need something to watch over the holidays — opened with Paul Giamatti getting urinated on by a dominatrix. I feel like that’s worth noting.
The scene in The Night Of when John Turturro’s eczema healed well enough that he could wear shoes. I did not like the feet thing. Feet are bad. Shoes made this better.
Stranger Things, in general. Netflix’s supernatural monster mystery about unsupervised children on bicycles came out of nowhere to become one of the biggest and most discussed TV shows of the year, which was a godsend to get us through the slow and otherwise boring summer.
Jimmy’s fake mustache on You’re the Worst. Probably my favorite character on television. The mustache, I mean. Jimmy’s fine, too, I guess. Although after the season three finale he has a lot of mustache-wearing to do to win me back.
Whatever exactly The Young Pope is. The Young Pope doesn’t begin in America until next year but it won me over forever the second someone said “This Pope does not negotiate” in the trailer. I almost don’t even want to watch it. It’s already perfect.
Amy Poehler finally winning an Emmy. One could nitpick here that the Emmys waited a decade to give Amy Poehler an Emmy, and even when they did give her one she had to share it with multiple winner Tina Fey for their SNL joint-hosting gig, but this is not the time for picking nits. A cosmic wrong has been corrected. We’ll take it.
Joanna from Mr. Robot. The second season of Mr. Robot was kind of ehhh as a whole, as it tried to navigate the world it created in season one. And Joanna wasn’t even that necessary, plot-wise, if you go back and look at it all again. But I don’t care. She’s so evil and terrifying and I love her.
The following action show tropes: loose cannon cops getting taken off a case by their chief but then following through with the investigation anyway, storming the villain’s warehouse without backup to take him down; high-ranking government officials flying a helicopter to some remote mountain to recruit a former Marine, and when the Marine asks “Why me?” the government official says “Because you’re the best”; hot shot lawyers getting held in contempt; any time a bad guy starts a speech to a good guy with, “You know, we’re not so different, you and I.”
Atlanta. Atlanta was a blast. It was an occasionally serious show that gave viewers a very real depiction of being poor, and an occasionally funny show about navigating the hip-hop scene in the South, and an occasionally very weird show about a fictional talk show host discussing identity politics. But mostly, it was the type of show that casually mentions “an invisible car” during an episode and then makes sure to pay it off by the end. That’s my favorite type of show.
Happy Thanksgiving!
