The Official Brain Worms Selections For Best TV of 2022
This was a big year for getting mad but in a cool way
Alright folks, it’s been a wild year. As we wind down for the holidays, I thought it might be nice to take it easy for a week. We can kick our feet up, relax, and talk about some of the best stuff that came out this year just in time for you to maybe be able to watch some of it. If you’re looking for something a little meatier, feel free to revisit last week’s piece about the existential creative threat of AI art, which has only proven more necessary in the days since it was published. I’ll be back with a proper essay about the recent trend of Anti-Wealth satire in the new year, so if End Of Year Lists isn’t your preferred genre, never fear.
Otherwise, throw on some sweatpants and get ready to talk about TV. It’s holiday break.
For its many obvious ills, one thing the pandemic did well was mark time. The pop cultural void created by the 2020 lockdowns forced a brief but powerful pause into Hollywood production schedules. The early 2010s had been marked by the end of the Golden Age prestige titles like Mad Men and Breaking Bad, filling the rest of the decade with hollow attempts to recapture the magic. Early streaming attempts at prestige tv like House of Cards and Master of None inspired a lot of glowing reviews at the time, but aged poorly. But with more competitors in the field than ever before, streaming shows have since upped their game in an attempt to win over the notoriously fickle market in the great war of “who can recreate cable the fastest?”
The other thing that last few years have done extremely reliably is make everyone extremely mad. This was the year of righteous anger in television, with anti-authoritarian, anti-work, and in some cases downright revolutionary art taking center stage. There’s a disdain seething just beneath the surface in everything from our half hour network comedies to our big-budget Disney-owned blockbusters. The end result was a lot of really great stories told in new, kinetic, ways.
Severance
I need to preface by saying that this was an extremely tough call. The three top picks each had a legitimate claim to the number one slot but ultimately, Severance was the one that stayed in my head the longest. It manages the balance between humor and drama better than any show on this list save for maybe Barry. What starts off as an anti-corporate parable about the loneliness of the modern working world (a topic in which I’m extremely interested), quickly becomes about the inherent injustice of a system in which you’re never made to see the people you make miserable. The entire cast is at the top of their game but Zach Cherry and Britt Lower in particular are doing something really special here.
Most shows about shitty workplaces get treacly by the end, deciding that the shitty workplace was actually good because it introduced all these people who now care about each other. Severance instead suggests that the bond these people share exists despite their shitty workplace, not because of it. Their bond makes it all the more important to be free of the shitty fluorescently lit basement they’re all trapped in. It harnessed the great national urge to scream “fuck you, I quit” at a time when it most needed harnessing.
Andor
Modern sci-fi and fantasy films have a long standing, annoying trend of making their heroes take the high road. In the climactic scene of the film, the main character stands over someone who’s done unspeakable evil, someone who’s sure to do more if left to their own devices, and decides to offer them mercy. No, they think to themselves, If I kill my oppressor, I am just as bad as they are. Instead, the hero leaves the villain in the hands of our famously effective justice system. This ostensibly maintains the character’s moral purity and allows them to ascend to heaven at the time of their death.
I understand why this trope was dominant in the post 9/11 era where our trust in institutions was inflated by a sense of national grief, but in 2022 it plays as naivety at best, propaganda at worst. Andor, thank god, does not have this problem.
Andor is a show about the slow spread of fascism. It’s about thinking you can sneak around undetected on the outskirts of that slow spread and then realizing that it eventually comes for us all. It’s beautifully written, requires almost no additional Star Wars context, and it isn’t afraid of saying that if you want to beat fascism you have to beat fascists. Andor!!!
Better Call Saul
It takes a lot to satisfyingly bring a show to a close and it takes even more to do so when that show is a spinoff of another very popular show. Better Call Saul managed to land the plane with some of the best performances of the year (give Rhea Seehorn her emmy!!) and a satisfying of a finale. While I think they gave in just a hair too much to fan service, they could have done so, so, much more. This is likely the best overall show on this list, with not a single stinker among its six seasons.
Barry
For a show about a hitman, Barry had done a great job of keeping the viewer on the same side as its icy-hearted main character. Even knowing the things he’d done throughout the first season, I spent the second hoping that he would somehow turn things around.
Not so in the third season, where we find Barry in a very dark place and reveling in his own worst impulses. This rug pull is done rapidly and beautifully, filling the viewer with a sudden, retroactive shame that hasn’t been deployed this skillfully since The Sopranos. Bill Hader is proving himself to be a generational talent both on screen and as a director and while I’m not sure how much longer this particular story can go, he’ll have my attention fixed on everything he makes.
Station Eleven
This technically premiered in December of 2021, but aired its best episodes in the early weeks of this year. A beautiful and self-contained adaptation of the bestselling book, Station Eleven somehow managed to tell a pandemic story that didn’t make audiences want to hurl their remote at the screen. What could’ve been another entry into the unending genre of post-apocalyptic doom and gloom instead chose to be hopeful but never saccharine (except for the precise moment where that’s what you wanted it to be.) If you missed it, it’s worth revisiting.
The Righteous Gemstones
As a Danny McBride fan, you’d never have caught me guessing that him stepping further back into the ensemble would be the key to making one of his shows a classic. Rather than focusing on another Kenny Powers-esque egomaniac, McBride filled the cast with them. This season dug deeper into what makes the family tick while still leaning on the heightened goofiness that makes McBride’s stuff feel so special. The show has has truly found its rhythm and I could watch this cast bounce lines off each other for a hundred episodes.
Girls 5Eva
Listen, I get it. Not a lot of people have Peacock. There are so many of these goddamn streaming services now and each one debuts a new show every week. But I promise you this show is worth it. If you’re like me and grew up during 30 Rock’s peak seasons, the promise of a Robert Carlock score and insanely high jokes-per-minute is enough to hook you on a nostalgic level alone. Better yet, the jokes are great! Sarah Bareilles, Renee Elise Goldsberry and Paula Pell shine in a season that successfully shook off the pilot vibes of the first (the fault of a short episode order, not of the cast or writers) and immediately occupied itself with making you laugh. It’s since been cancelled from Peacock and acquired by Netflix, a move so rapid and cynical that it feels almost stolen from the show’s own scripts. The bright side of this will hopefully be better viewership numbers for the upcoming third season.
The Rehearsal
No show that makes me laugh this much has ever provoked me to so frequently ask if the creator is evil but there’s a first time for everything. The internet had a few hundred discourses about the ~*eThIcS*~ of The Rehearsal, but if you can set that aside, the show itself is truly unique.
Abbott Elementary
In a lot of ways, Abbott feels like a spiritual successor to Superstore, another show about a group of people united by a less than ideal job situation. But where Superstore (rightfully!) had to use its setting as a perpetual villain, Abbott is able to use the titular elementary school as a source of joy. Sure, Janine is overworked, underpaid, and watching the public school system collapse around her, but the victories she’s able to manage feel sweeter because of it. Add in the sort of lightning-in-a-bottle casting that propels so many beloved sitcoms into mega-popularity and we may just have a new classic on our hands. Also Janine and Gregory should kiss!
The Bear
I’m a simple man. They make a show about Chicago, I watch the show about Chicago. Everybody sounds like a guy my grandpa worked with and they’re constantly showing B-Roll of beef. Beef Roll, as it’s referred to in the industry.
Wow wow wow, it’s Brain Worms! This is my periodic newsletter about internet culture. I’m no journalist, this is just a place for me to string some pretty words together about what it’s like to be alive online.
Next week we’ll take a look at the best non-television pop culture of the year and further discuss the pervading themes of 2022’s pop cultural landscape. Regular coverage will return in the new year.
A paid subscription here is much appreciated as it directly helps support my writing in a time when, quite frankly, it’s pretty rough out there.
Website: www.DanSheehan.co
Patreon: www.Patreon.com/ItsDanSheehan