Best Pandemic TV

There was nothing else to do for most of 2020 so here’s a countdown of the best TV I saw while dozing off on our sectional.

 

16. Fargo. No. The first and second seasons of Fargo were amazing but the third and fourth seasons were disappointing. The idea was interesting: When can immigrants call themselves Americans (or something), but the problem was that so many characters had monologues that the writers wanted to serve as thesis statements for the season. There was one whole episode that consisted of one monologue after another. Some of the characters also annoyed me. Zelmare and Swanee (Marginalized 1 and Marginalized 2) were annoying assholes who lost sympathy when they shot up a train station and killed a bunch of people. The actor who played Gaetano should be embarrassed. Oraetta Mayflower was less a character than a collection of tics and a living symbol (she was the only white non-immigrant in the cast and her name was Mayflower and she murdered her patients she was supposed to care for—get the Symbolism?). Steve summed it up the week after the show ended when we were deciding what to watch and he realized, “We don’t have to watch Fargo anymore.”

 

15. The Outsider. Mare Winningham.

 

14. The Mandalorian. I’m not as into the Star Wars lore as everyone else is but I’m enjoying this exploration of their vast galaxy. Ming-Na Wen is the Queen of Disney.

 

13. The New Pope. What the hell did I watch? A young, miracle-performing pope played by Jude Law awakens from his coma to advise a new pope played by John Malkovich, an aristocratic heroin addict and former punk rocker. It’s a sometimes-hallucinatory rumination on faith, power and duty. It also had Jude Law emerging from the ocean in a white Speedo like Venus on the half-shell, if you’re into that. 

 

12. The Boys. The show’s exploration of the Seven as neo-Nazis was heavy handed (complete with a literal Nazi) but it was necessary and fit with the style of the show to reinforce the idea that the line between superheroes and fascists can be thin. The one downside was that I had no interest in the titular boys. I didn’t care at all about Butcher, Frenchie and the other guy.

 

11. Little Fires Everywhere. No, it wasn’t as good as the book (the idea that “they all did it” was just stupid). The story about adoption wasn’t as nuanced. But the miniseries was amusing. Kerry Washington’s performance was appealingly standoffish, as one can definitely see why she doesn’t trust people. Reese Witherspoon was good as the wealthy woman who condescends to Black and poor people. It was worth it for the scene where Kerry Washington screams “Get in the car!” to her daughter while she dalliances with Trip.

 

10. Upload. Imagine that after you die, you can go not to Heaven but have your consciousness uploaded into a kind of paradise where you can “live” forever. The catch is that your living family has to pay, so if your living fiancée is on the outs with you, you are under her thumb and may end up in the equivalent of steerage. This was fun in both idea and execution.

 

9. The Haunting of Bly Manor. It wasn’t as scary as the Haunting of Hill House series but it was very poignant. I was especially taken by the sad story of Hannah Grose, who flashes back and forth through time, not realizing she’s a ghost.

 

8. Dead to Me. This was a riot and I was howling at the twists and turns like when they crashed their car into the dead guy’s brother (it was funnier than it sounds here). It was a comedy but Christina Applegate gave a great performance that walked a fine line between comedy and tragedy as a grieving widow/murderer: at times her eyes were staring a thousand miles away, like she was deep in shock.

 

7. Agents of SHIELD. We lost track of this show two seasons ago and recently binged the series with our son in time for the finale. The final season was a zany ride, a time travel adventure that was a great excuse for the cast to have fun and dress in period costumes (the bulk of it took place in the early ‘80s, so I was thrilled). A standout was the episode when they were trapped in a time loop and had to keep reliving the same situation over and over again until they found a way out, which managed to be poignant and as comic-booky as possible.

 

6. The Crown. There’s a debate about how accurate season 4 was in depicting Princess Diana’s clashing with the royal family and how responsible Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles were. I take it all with a grain of salt. I can appreciate the show taking poetic license with all this drama—and besides, if you want to know the real story of Charles and Diana’s marriage, it’s not as if there’s a shortage of resources. I liked the delving into the Queen’s lack of self-awareness of her non-maternal instincts. Emma Corrin was fiery and magnetic as Diana and Gillian Anderson was scary as Margaret Thatcher, all helmet hair and contempt for the poor.  

 

5. The Plot Against America. I was fascinated by Philip Roth’s book about an alternate future where Charles Lindbergh wins the presidency on an isolationist platform and foments anti-Semitic violence, and the miniseries was a thoughtful adaptation. It’s an always-relevant cautionary tale about hate, how it may look attractive and acceptable, and how it seduces people. Zoe Kazan nailed the scene at the heart of the book when Bess Levin, already under extreme stress, talks her son’s friend Seldon through his mother’s death at the hands of an anti-Semitic mob. It was an act of incredible kindness that really moved me in the book and the movie.

 

4. Mrs. America. This was a complex, compelling retelling of the complexities of feminism and the battle to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. You can understand why Phyllis Schlafly (an uncanny Cate Blanchett with incredibly subtle micro-facial expressions) opposed the ERA, even if you don’t agree with her, and you can also understand who she appealed to and how she defeated the constitutional amendment. Her story is piled with irony: She advocated for traditional womanhood but left most housework and child-rearing to assistants. She was a smart woman who would have done well in foreign policy but figured advocating against the ERA would give her a seat at the table—instead she ends up shut out of the Reagan administration and ends the series peeling potatoes at her kitchen table. Each episode goes in depth about a different woman as they battle for the ERA: Shirley Chisholm, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug. I learned a lot about them and women I didn’t know about, like Jill Ruckelshaus and Brenda Feigen. It was a great look at the compromises each side had to make for and against the ERA and how it helped get us Reaganism. Also, what the hell, America—we couldn’t get it together to pass something as obviously needed as the ERA?

 

3. Schitt’s Creek. I’m so glad we binged this show and caught up just in time for the final season. It was so refreshing to watch something so funny that was also breezy and light, almost a throwback to the sitcoms that were wrapped up in 30 minutes and reset for the next episode. Except nothing truly reset: the Rose family grew and changed over a few seasons to become better people, yet remaining idiosyncratic until the end. It was also a delight to see an affirming story about a gay character with no angst at all about his being gay. All four main cast members won Emmys (as the show did for Best Comedy) and they deserved it.

 

2. Lovecraft Country. This show was a remarkable exploration of Black pain, Black mythology, Black potential and Black horror as one man searches for his father and learns about his family’s legacy. It mixed the supernatural horrors encountered by a group of smart, adventurous Black people in the Jim Crow ‘50s (those Topsy Twins, with their herky-jerky limbs, were seriously terrifying) with the more down-to-earth horrors such as racist cops and neighbors, and the profound horror of Emmett Till’s murder. Lovecraft Country blends both kinds of horrors—in one episode, in a quest to achieve some empathy, a white sorceress pays some guys to murder her like Till was murdered, resurrecting herself by using her magic. In another episode, the sorceress gives Ruby the ability to wear a white woman’s skin, which Ruby uses to get the job at Marshall Fields that she was denied and torture the boss who harassed her. In another episode, astronomer Hippolyta uses an orrery to transport herself to the past (dancing with Josephine Baker in Paris) and the future to realize her full potential that she never had a chance to fulfill. All that and the cast travels back in time to live through the Tulsa Black Wall Street Massacre. Every episode gave us a lot to unpack. 

 

1. Better Call Saul. The latest season continued Jimmy McGill’s evolution into Saul Goodman and his descent into an alliance with the drug cartel. Jimmy ends up getting shot at in the desert with Mike and clashes with the wily and enormously charismatic Lalo Salamanca. Better Call Saul is Jimmy’s story but we already know what happens to him by the time of Breaking Bad. We don’t know what happens to his new wife Kim and that’s what gives the show an extra thrill. Rhea Seehorn continues to give the best performance on TV as Kim Wexler and it’s a crime against art that she’s never been nominated for an Emmy. In season 5, she faces down Lalo fearlessly and saves Jimmy’s life. She deals with the tension between her pro bono work, which satisfies her, and her corporate lawyering, which chips at her soul, by quitting her corporate job. But by the end of the season, we realize Jimmy is not the only person who has been morally deteriorating. Kim has turning toward the dark side herself. When she proposes a plan to screw over Jimmy’s former boss that even Jimmy blanches at, he tells her that she wouldn’t seriously pursue the plan. “Wouldn’t I?” she says, like slap in the face. I don’t want this Breaking Bad prequel to end and I don’t want anything bad happening to Kim Wexler.