My Favorite TV of 2015

When I decided awhile back to rank my favorite TV shows of 2015, I just couldn’t decide if Mad Men or The Americans was my favorite. The shows are very different and each had a very strong year and it’s just too hard to rank one above the other. So I was just going to leave number one as a tie between these two.

Then I saw Fargo. Jesus Christ, what an absolutely torrid season of television. So this will be a three-way tie for number one among The Americans, Mad Men and Fargo, with just too little daylight between each to discern. A few critics agree and I’ve seen some combination of all three at the top of a few lists.

This will not include all the TV I watched this season. There was a lot that I still enjoyed, like the finale of Parks and Recreation and the ABC Wednesday night lineup but there just isn’t much I can say about them that I haven’t before. There were some shows we started but didn’t finish, like Better Call Saul and Orange Is the New Black, so I can’t rank them. House of Cards was trashy fun but too stupid to write about. Dishonorable mentions go to Fear the Walking Dead and Scream Queens, which we turned off halfway through the first episode. So I’m just going to focus on a few shows of note.

Transparent. I think season one came out in 2015 so I’ll talk about that. It has a great performance by Jeffrey Tambor as a transgender woman just coming out. The sustained joke in this show is that as in transition as Maura is, she still has it together more than her self-involved, un-self-aware kids. This show also reminds us that Judith Light is a national treasure.

Daredevil and Jessica Jones. I’ve covered these before but I’m really enjoying the look at the uglier corners of the Marvel Universe, well portrayed by two very pretty people.

The Walking Dead. I should wait to judge the season as a whole but the beginning of season six has been uneven, with one of my favorite episodes ever, “JSS,” mixed with boring interludes in Alexandria. I hope the show takes a critical look at the plan to divert the zombies out of the quarry because even though some of the consequences were unforeseen, there’s an argument to be made that the plan made things a lot worse, and the zombies infiltrated the town anyway. Of course, that would mean the show acknowledging that Rick may not be infallible, so I won’t hold my breath.

Game of Thrones. I never thought I’d care for this show but am very glad Steve got me into it as I love the palace intrigue and scheming. The last two episodes stand out to me for a few scenes. In the penultimate episode, I loved the fight scene in Meereen, especially when eagle-eyed Jorah threw that spear from dozens of feet away (holy crap!) to kill the assassin targeting Daenerys. Less awesome was the sick, sick joke of Stannis burning his daughter for, as it turned out, no reason at all.

So many things happened in “Mother’s Mercy” that it’s hard to focus on one thing. Cersei’s naked walk of “Shame!” flabbergasted me, mostly for Lena Headey’s stunning performance as she tried to maintain a stiff upper lip and then crumbled. Oh, and also in that episode, Marcella died, Brienne avenged Renly by killing World’s Worst Father Stannis, Sansa and Theon escaped the Boltons and Jon Snow may be dead. Did I forget anything?

Fargo. The season was about the Massacre at Sioux Falls, which started when a married couple, too different for their union to survive, got in the middle of a war between two crime families and the decisions they made or failed to make, but it was about so much more that I’m still processing it. It was anchored by terrific performances by Kirstin Dunst (engrave her Emmy now), Bokeem Woodbine, Jean Smart, Ten Danson, Patrick Wilson and Jesse Plemmons.

For all the violence of the season, what affected me were the quiet scenes in the Fargo finale. A butcher shop girl quotes Camus, telling a dying mother that living when you know you’re going to die is absurd. “I don’t know who that is,” says the mother, “but I’m guessing he doesn’t have a 6-year-old girl.” Later the mother tells her father he’s a good man. “I don’t know about that but I do have good intentions,” he says. It’s amazing that this violent show could find such humanity and hope in the end.

Mad Men. The back half of season seven started a bit slow with the diversions of Diana the Waitress and Pima the Photographer, but kicked into high gear when the partners lost their battle to keep Sterling Cooper and Partners alive, in a sly subversion of all the previous times they rallied to save the firm from destruction. The whole season was full of scenes that mirrored or contrasted with previous scenes, rewarding people who had watched the whole thing.

After some thinking, I really did like Don’s ending. After sinking to his lowest point (which is saying something on this show), losing his wives and home and career, and confessing his sins to Peggy, he has a breakthrough and realizes he will always be at heart an ad man. I loved how the show suggested that in Don’s mind, even a genuine epiphany was just fodder for the Coke ad. Season seven also had the single best scene the show ever did: Peggy strutting into McCann with that provocative painting under her arm, sunglasses on her face and a cigarette in her mouth, ready to conquer. For anybody who followed the character’s growth, that payoff was almost orgasmic. So ends Mad Men, one of my favorite character studies of all time.

The Americans. WHY AREN’T YOU WATCHING THIS SHOW? It really is a shame that it has low ratings and low Emmy recognition, despite the critical praise. I don’t know if season three was better than the first two but it was probably the most disturbing. The latest installment had some splashy moments of violence, like Annelise’s corpse getting stuffed into that suitcase, the amateur tooth extraction and necklacing that South African.

But the really disturbing moments were more insidious, things the characters wouldn’t be able to shake or reconcile easily. Phillip has a slow-motion breakdown while having to seduce a teenager and remembers his own skeevy seduction training. Elizabeth kills a defenseless old woman who condemns her as evil. Martha wakes up to the fact that she betrayed her country for love and realizes that love is a lie, in that horror movie scene of Phillip pulling off his wig. And of course, Phillip and Elizabeth are in an impossible situation, debating whether to recruit Paige as a spy or lie to their own daughter. As in the first two seasons, the very last scene was stunning: As Paige confesses to the priest that her parents are spies, Reagan calls out the Soviets as “the focus of evil in the modern world” as the camera focuses on the resolute Elizabeth, leaving the wavering Phillip behind. Applause.