The introduction section of a yearly top ten list article is where you’re supposed to summarize your general feelings about the year’s crop of whatever you’re listing before figuring out some way of transitioning to the main list. In that spirit, here are my feelings about TV in 2022: It was very good! Now I’m going to use the rest of this space to talk about Better Things because it got bumped off my list for dumb shenanigans and arbitrary bullshit.

Better Things has made my lists twice, and it was almost on every other year it aired. It’s been harder for me to find a slot for it because the way the show changed the most after Louis C.K.’s departure was that it embraced more overt serialization and, somehow, became even more intimate in its storytelling and emotionality. This didn’t make for a worse show, mind you. Quite the contrary. It just made for a show that, for me personally, felt a bit more ephemeral. I was engrossed by every moment it was on screen, and then that feeling was gone come the end of the year.

To be abundantly clear, I never stopped loving Better Things, and that ephemeral feeling is exactly why. Simply put, there is nothing even remotely like Better Things. It’s a show that often feels, and even operates, like a dream. However, the emotionality its going for and the situations it conjures are so grounded that it still somehow feels real.

The season of Better Things that aired was its final one, and it was magnificent. It’s a show that had a rather bizarre relationship with serialization, yet even ideas planted in season one got a proper payoff by the end. Sam’s on solid footing with her children, all of whom seem to be going down their own paths, her mother’s finally found a new direction, and the people that are regularly in her orbit all seem happy. It might not seem like much, but if you’ve been watching from the beginning, it’s more than satisfying. Then the whole cast sings “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” Incredible stuff.

I’ll miss Better Things deeply. Anyway, on to the list!

SPOILERS BELOW!!!

Runner-Up: Pachinko

How does culture survive?

Of course, the answer is that enough people who adhere to a culture’s values live to pass on the traditions and their meaning. However, what I meant is that when a culture suffers wave after wave of attack and erosion, how, in a more existential sense, can the torchbearers bear to keep fighting?

You move to a new country to pursue a new life, and the local culture punishes you for not assimilating. And that’s if you’re lucky. For the unlucky, forces invade the land you call home and try to enact their will on you. With enough force, they will most likely be successful. Times change. Values change. Things get better and they get worse. You move somewhere else, or another group of invaders come, and the cycle repeats itself over and over again.

When it comes to this dynamic, it’s almost always Europe and America versus everyone. The west trying to impose itself on everything around it. There are, of course, countless examples of hostilities and occupations that don’t involve the Bible or the king, but as far as recorded history is concerned, those instances are increasingly rare.

Pachinko lands somewhere in the middle. In the beginning of the show’s timeline in the 1910s, the occupying force in Korea is the Japanese. Though their values as portrayed in the show can be seen as western in many ways, (capitalism, disrespect of labor, etc), there are distinct cultural differences between Japan and America, and Pachinko depicts those differences rather deftly and in some cases, tragically. Later, the central family the show follows finds itself in Japan, and even later, in America. The means of hardship morph with the times, but the heartbreak remains the same.

Pachinko displays a cultural struggle I’m lucky that I never have to think about, and inadvertently brings up a darker answer to my initial question. How does culture survive? Korean culture did, or at least many of its aspects and specificities. But what of the cultures that were wiped out, never to be heard from again? How could the torchbearers bear to keep fighting? Because they have to.

Still, it’s enough that Pachinko can make us ask these questions in the first place. The only reason it’s not on my list proper is that I didn’t always find the plotting and structure effective, particularly in the 1980s timeline. Still, Pachinko was frequently brilliant and fells like a huge event when you’re watching it. I’m fascinated to see what season two brings.

Favorite Episodes: “Chapter One,” “Chapter Four,” “Chapter Seven”

10. Bust Down

Bust Down should’ve been a way bigger deal than it ended up being. I can see why it isn’t. But still.

Part of the reason it may not have gotten the hype that it should’ve is that it’s a show that’s almost intentionally designed to be a landmine for white people such as myself to write about. Even the marketing positioned this show as counter-programming to shows from black creators and casts meant to either convey a sense of uplift or highlight the struggles. Rather, Bust Down is essentially the black answer to It’s Always Sunny. A glorious ode to ignorance that revels in what shouldn’t be a controversial question: Why does all media made by black creators need to be “special?”

It’s not that Bust Down is unflattering or degrades black people. (Though granted, that’s not my call to make.) It’s more that the show treats its characters like they’re normal people in America. Large swaths of Americans, much like the rest of the human race, are dumb as hell and/or find themselves in work circumstances nobody on the planet could pretend to care about. (I explained to my father that this show takes place in a casino in Gary, Indiana and he groaned just thinking about it.) When you’re that low on the totem poll, why pretend to give a shit?

It certainly doesn’t hurt that it has one of the most impressive and talented creative teams behind it, as the show was created by its cast: Langston Kerman, Jak Knight, Chris Redd, and Sam Jay. Most people know Langston Kerman from the first season of Insecure, Jak Knight from Big Mouth (and Twitter, for those who knew where to look), Chris Redd from SNL, and Sam Jay from her HBO show PAUSE as well as other projects. Also joining the writer’s room is Zack Fox of “Jesus is the One (I Got Depression)”/Abbott Elementary/Being suspended from Twitter for making fun of Diplo fame.

It’s a little unflattering to the show to just list their creative personnel instead of focusing on the actual writing. But if you’ve been following some of these people for as long as I have, you’d understand. You either know who some of these people are and know just listing them is enough, or you’re going to.

Which, unfortunately, leads to the heartbreak at the center of this pick, which is the suicide of Jak Knight earlier in the summer. The news, of course, was devastating, and I can’t begin to fathom how much a loss like this could mean to certain circles of comedians and writers. Some people just have an energy about them that screams, “This is going to be someone” and Jak Knight was almost the embodiment of it. I could go on about how tragic it is to lose him, but instead, here’s some clips of him being funny as shit. RIP Jak Knight, and thank you.

Favorite Episodes: “Bad Hang,” “Post Nut Promises,” “Party of Two”

9. Andor

Andor proves an unfortunate conclusion I came to around the time the whole The Last Jedi hoopla was happening. Star Wars isn’t for kids anymore. Or rather, older generations have their grasp so tightly around Star Wars that anything that doesn’t rise to their expectations will be met with derision and piles and piles of steaming online bullshit.

I rather liked the idea of Star Wars as the universal first Thing. The first movie you show to your kids to say, “Hey, look at what movies are capable of! Look at what your imagination can accomplish!” True, there’s pitfalls and the capitalist reach of the toys to consider. But come on. It’s big, it’s easy to understand, and at the right age, it can fire off the right signals in a young mind. I have a fraught relationship nowadays with Star Wars, but I know that it played a huge part in why I care so much about culture now, and why I want to pursue the arts the way I do.

However, it’s supposed to be a stepping stone. A bridge to other movies and media with more complexity you’re supposed to love even more. Generations of internet shitfucks clearly didn’t get the memo. Now, if you introduce any new ideas or non-white, you hear about it seemingly forever and ever and ever. It’s only in an environment like this that something like Andor can even exist.

Paradoxically, Andor is the Star Wars project I’ve always wanted. People have always toyed with the idea of Star Wars for adults, and here, somebody finally did it. (At least in film or TV.)

I resisted Andor’s call for quite some time, and by that, I mean it was literally the last show I finished before making this list. The Mandalorian is fine, but I could live without it, and based on the reactions from my friends, I didn’t even bother with the Boba Fett or Obi-Wan shows. Then Andor came out, and the response was utterly fascinating. Indifference became “Hey, this is pretty good!” which became “This is fantastic!” which ultimately became it becoming one of the most critically acclaimed shows of the year. I even saw some say it’s the best piece of Star Wars media since A New Hope and Empire.

So I finally caved and watched it, and it turned out that Andor is Army of Shadows, but Star Wars. On top of that, it’s shot beautifully, it has some of the best dialogue I’ve seen this year across all mediums, it has a heist and a prison escape in one season and somehow makes that work, the lore it adds to Star Wars is fascinating, it does the most of any Star Wars project to build on the actual ideology of the Empire I’ve ever seen (something I’ve been complaining about for years), and it has a coked out beach party planet. I loved it.

I still have a very slight misgiving about why Andor exists, and I hope we finally get good kid friendly Star Wars to go along with Andor. But Andor overrides those fears in sheer quality alone, let alone the frequently (and accurate) analysis of it being one of the first great post-Trump shows. It’s deeply resonant, mature, and everything a more aged Star Wars fan could want. I was skeptical at those who compared it the best of the movies, but now you can count me amongst them.

Favorite Episodes: “The Eye,” “One Way Out,” “Rix Road”

8. The Rehearsal

You’ve read enough about The Rehearsal this year.

Favorite Episodes: “Orange Juice, No Pulp,” “Scion,” “Pretend Daddy”

7. Harley Quinn

(*Opens up Metacritic. Clicks on the ranked point TV list thing they do where they compile all the critics’ top 10 lists. Scans each list.*) Still no love for Harley Quinn, huh?

Okay, to be fair, all the critics I follow loved it, and as it was much earlier in the year, it might’ve been lost in the shuffle. Also, shows like Harley Quinn rarely do well in lists like these, and there are admittedly more “important” shows to reward this year, many of which we’ll be talking about in the entries to come. I also realize that a great show continuing to be great is not as exciting as a new show that’s great in a new way.

But come on goddamn it!

There’s so much to love in season 3 of Harley Quinn. The practical assembly line of pleasure and hilarity that was the exploration of Harley and Ivy’s relationship. Socialist Joker’s mayoral campaign was a surprisingly rich vein of storytelling despite me craving election content in 2022 about as much as I craved a violent slow death. There was Clayface’s turn as Billy Bob Thornton, Sam Richardson and Harvey Guillén’s very welcome turn as, respectively, Swamp Thing and Darkwing, and several more interesting plays on DC mythology.

But the most important thing about season three is how it renews its continued commitment to deconstructing Batman fiction. Mainly, we see the completion of an arc that’s been hinted at in the show and one that many could anticipate coming, which is Harley’s revelation that she wants to be a good guy.

Harley watches as trauma turns Bruce Wayne into the man he is in the show: An overbearing boyfriend to Catwoman and a man so desperate to see his parents return that he’s willing to take drastic steps to resurrect them. Steps that wind up endangering the whole city. Harley, naturally, wanders if a similar thing has happened to her because of her relationship with the Joker. Does she want to be a villain, or was she just traumatized into being one? I don’t know if these questions were ever addressed in the comics or any other Batman fiction, but the way the show tackled them was utterly fascinating.

Here’s another way of putting it: Harley Quinn did a Batman origin story again, but it did so in a way that was not only funny but, somehow, interesting. I did not think I’d ever give a shit about Batman’s origin story ever again. But here I am, saying the Batman origin story episode of Harley Quinn is one of the best episodes of television I saw this year. I truly cannot fathom how they pulled that off.

Harley Quinn’s the first returning show on this list. It won’t be the last, but it’s arguably the one that evolved the least. I took “better” shows off this list for similar reasons. (I will find some way of safely hurting myself for not putting Barry on the list.) Sometimes, however, that’s what I want. A show that brings me joy just to keep on doing its thing.

Favorite Episodes: “A Thief, A Mole, An Orgy,” “Batman Begins Forever,” “The Horse and The Sparrow”

6. My Brilliant Friend

Another show that’s still failing to get its due!

I’d argue that the first season of My Brilliant Friend is about the more loud and explicit forms of misogyny that most girls and young women, let alone most women in Italian culture in the mid 20th century, face when growing up in a violently patriarchal system. Forced gender roles, a lack of respect and equality, and of course, cruelty and sexual violence. It should go without saying that the first season is much more nuanced than that. However, when you think of the major plot points of that season, the more obvious tentpoles of misogyny come to mind.

Season two is about the results of internalizing all those tentpoles. The kind of person you turn out to be when you’ve experienced a near constant onslaught of sexism as a child. Of course, those tentpoles are still very much present, and they don’t go away in season three either. But it’s a season more about being forced to accept it. We watch our two heroines marry men that don’t respect them and make decisions so self-destructive that I shudder when thinking of them to this day.

Season three, so to speak, is about “nice guys.”

Alright, that’s a snide way of putting it. Really, it’s a season about thinking you’ve evolved past certain cycles, or maybe even outright escaped them, only to learn that you’ve just landed yourself in a different situation.

You’ve escaped your hometown which, for all intents and purposes, is a loveless cesspool of backwardness that would seem quant were it not for the fact that this is where you’re from and where your family still lives. You marry a man. A scholar who loves the arts and literature and has the same values as you do. You think your writing’s going to take off. Instead, your progress comes to a halt as you’re buried under self-doubt and responsibility. You want to claim your passions again, but it turns out your husband isn’t as progressive as he seems as he still expects you to put the family first and play your role. Once again, you’re trapped.

Or maybe you’re working yourself to death in a factory, and you take on the dangerous cause of workers’ rights. Then you find yourself ascending, but in order to do so, you had to ally yourself with the family you’ve been fighting against for the entirety of the show thus far. You have doomed yourself to repeating the cycles you swore you’d fight.

What’s even more incredible is that you actually somehow manage to find the liberation you’ve been seeking. Maybe.

I’ll be honest, I’m being light on the details because it’s the kind of show that takes a billion years to explain. (You can’t explain season three without explaining seasons one and two.) But My Brilliant Friend is as affecting as ever. It was a quieter, more subtle season. But one that’s immensely rewarding. I don’t know why this show isn’t a bigger deal.

Favorite Episodes: “Becoming,” “Try Again,” “Those Who Leave, Those Who Stay”

5. We Own This City

Many people had the understandable impulse to compare We Own This City to The Wire. I say “understandable” because, after all, it’s a show from the same creator set in the same location with many of the same actors. Most people came to the conclusion that We Own This City pales in comparison to The Wire. I agree, but I also think that line of thinking is rather unfair.

There are easy points to make. First and foremost, We Own This City is only six episodes, whereas The Wire had five whole seasons. The character work can’t be as rich, the storytelling has to be somewhat condensed, and We Own This City doesn’t have the luxury The Wire had in taking its time to make its point. We Own This City is more expositional (because it has to be), and as a result, it’s a little more blunt.

That said, I’d argue that the lack of subtlety is a good thing.

The Wire is a show about the compromise of institutions. About why the services that are supposed to help people can’t because they must subject themselves to those who see the systems as a means to an end. We Own This City, on the other hand, is a show about what happens when an institution does get what it needs and does nothing but abuse that power. The Wire is designed to be empathetic. We Own This City is not.

Who could blame David Simon and crew? In the years since The Wire concluded, we saw a limited amount of progress with the Obama administration. Then 2016 came around and we backslid into what feels like an endless nightmare. As a result, not only has it somewhat aged The Wire, but it’s also made some of its attitude towards the role of police officers seem outright quaint. In a way, We Own This City is a response to The Wire. An apology for going too soft on the cops.

The raw anger on display in We Own This City is part of its appeal. But there’s also the unexpected joy of being back in Baltimore. And, of course, there’s Jon Bernthal as Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, a contender for the greatest depiction of an obnoxious crooked cop in the history of depictions of obnoxious crooked cops.

Just watch it.

Glorious.

Favorite Episodes: “Part One,” “Part Four,” “Part Six”

4. Reservation Dogs

The thing that I wanted season one to stop doing was separating the kids. To stop isolating them into their own stories.

I understand the impulse. When you narrow in on a single person’s story, you have way fewer balls to keep in the air, and you can keep the narrative much tighter and open a number of options for yourself. The problem, however, is that Reservation Dogs casted too well and the writing’s too good. Unfortunately for the show and the people who make it, the chemistry everyone has is practically contagious, and so I get slightly annoyed whenever they’re apart. What a terrible burden.

However, unlike a lot of shows that find ways to break up their ensemble, Reservation Dogs makes up for it by telling very singular excellent stories, and this season, they found a trick that makes it work in the show’s favor: Make individual stories revolving around being isolated from the group.

Elora has left her friend group behind in order to escape to California. Naturally, everything that could go wrong does. But it isn’t the tragedy of life on the road that winds up bringing her and Jackie back home. It’s her family, and her reunion with the gang is awkward and only gets worse before it gets better. Willie Jack wants to get the gang back together, and must confront her intense grief for Daniel by visiting his mother in prison for guidance. Cheese gets sent to a group home and begins to question his values, but finds them validated when the gang temporarily reunites to save him.

In other words, they justified breaking up the gang so many times by essentially making a season about the gang breaking up. Simple, yet brilliant. Also, there are more episodes with them as a group then I’m making it seem. But still.

On top of that, the show finds new aspects of Indigenous life to explore with the same sense of surrealism and humor as the first season. Mainly, among other examples, we see more instances of the outside world reducing Indigenous life to an academic point or a scam (one prime example: the “Young Elder” and the “Matriarch” grad student/influencers from the youth summit episode.), the menial labor you’re forced to take when prospects are low, and the inner-circle of women in the reservation, and how much like the four friends at the core of the show, they’re united in grief.

And if being one of the funniest and warmest shows on TV isn’t enough, Big arrests a group of elite white supremacist catfish fuckers. You gotta love it.

Favorite Episodes: “Mabel,” “Offerings,” “I Still Believe”

3. Better Call Saul

Holy shit. It finally happened. Better Call Saul is on my top ten list!

Better Call Saul has always been just about the last thing I cut every year it’s in consideration, and every time I do cut it, I feel like a giant moron. Now here we are at the last season, and I don’t know whether or not I have everything to say about this show or nothing. What, after all, is left to say?

Bob Odenkirk. Rhea Seehorn. Jonathan Banks. Michael Mando. Michael McKean. Patrick Fabien. Giancarlo Esposito. Many many more. The best acting ensemble met the best creative team possible and made the best show. The only bump in the road was the time it took the audience to accept the fact that this wasn’t going to be Breaking Bad again. It was going to be an internal character show that paid off on all of Breaking Bad’s themes, as well as its own.

I don’t know what to add to the conversation, so here’s some throwaway opinions:

1. As I write this, I’m still on team Breaking Bad. However, I take it for granted that one day, I’m going to rewatch both shows and walk away thinking Better Call Saul is superior.

2. I love Walter White’s final appearance. It’s probably the last time we’ll ever see footage of this character we haven’t seen before. Only this time, he’s not going out in a blaze of glory or offering counsel to Jesse or anyone else in his charge. He’s in a basement with Saul high roading him for bringing up time travel and fuming over being supposedly screwed out of his company. Truly, the most accurate portrait of the man.

3. Rhea Seehorn, man. This is probably the most overstated opinion about the show, but her performance should’ve been showered with awards and recognition, and there’s actually no such thing as overstating this opinion.

4. Michael Mando too.

5. I don’t know what Vince Gilligan and his comrades will do next, but I think I need them to finally leave Albuquerque and the Breaking Bad universe behind. They wrapped it up perfectly here.

And that’s what I got. I’ll miss Better Call Saul so goddamn much.

Favorite Episodes: I’m just going to go ahead and say all of Part 2 of the season.

2. The Bear

Want to know how to ruin TV for yourself? Study screenwriting and story structure for four years in college, do a non-degree or a grad program, start a media analysis blog, and devote an inordinate amount of your time to watching as much TV as possible.

Most people do at least one of these things, and most of the time it’s the last one. But when I say “watch as much TV as possible,” I’m not just talking about prestige TV. I’m talking about all TV. You’ll begin to notice patterns. A lot of them. Then one day, you’ll be talking to someone who hasn’t given themselves over to this kind of media consumption, you’ll complain to them that a TV pilot feels too “pilot-y,” and then they’ll politely inform you that they have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.

Watch enough TV, in other words, and you’ll start to see the matrix. Do enough of anything and you’ll see the matrix, but as TV is, most of the time, not really a closed loop like movies are, you’ll see how shows introduce worlds and characters and set up conflicts and so on.

What I love about The Bear is that it doesn’t really feel like a TV show. Or rather, it doesn’t feel like it’s operating in that matrix.

You can wrap-up each episode’s plot in a little paragraph if you wanted to. But never has there been a wider gulf between reading a summary of a show and actually watching it, as what you read isn’t actually what you see. You may read that a chef comes home to Chicago after his brother’s suicide to run his restaurant. But then you watch the show and what you get is something much more abstract. Information is provided via a choppy visual language. It doesn’t explain its terms. It doesn’t really have exposition, or at least not in the traditional sense.

Most other people would write this show in the more traditional TV style. They’d start with the NY restaurant, and then shortly after, they’d show a scene where Carmy finds out about his brother’s death. Carmy decides to quit the NY gig, he flies out to Chicago, he tries his hand at the restaurant, it doesn’t go well, and it seems like he made the wrong choice. But then there’s a second wind. We get the sense that maybe he can straighten his brother’s restaurant out. There’s still problems to be worked out, but we have a whole season to work on those. Carmy smiles and the pilot ends.

The Bear doesn’t do any of that. Instead, it just throws you in the deep end and you have to learn to swim. It’s a show where you’re constantly playing some form of catch-up, and in that sense, it mimics the nightmare that is working in a restaurant. It’s perfect storytelling synergy

No show in 2022 looked like The Bear and no show in 2022 felt like The Bear. Hell, no show in any year, as far as I’m concerned, has ever felt like The Bear. It is, in every sense, something completely new, and when it comes to TV, that’s rarer than you think.

Favorite Episodes: “Hands,” “Review,” “Braciole”

1. Atlanta

I know not everyone loved the one-off episodes in season three. But I loved them because they felt like Atlanta, a show I now consider one of my all-time favorites. It is mostly everything I love in one show, and I’ll cherish it always. If I start writing about it too much, I’d probably never be able to stop.

Also, “The Goof Who Sat By the Door” is the hardest anything’s made me laugh in years.

Favorite Episodes of Season 3: “Three Slaps,” “Sinterklass is Coming to Town,” “White Fashion”

Favorite Episodes of Season 4: “The Homeliest Little Horse,” “Work Ethic!,” “The Goof Who Sat By the Door”

Honorable Mentions

Abbott Elementary
Barry
Better Things
Craig of the Creek
Documentary Now!
Heartstopper
House of the Dragon
How To with John Wilson
Little Demon
Ms. Marvel
Never Have I Ever
Our Flag Means Death
Peacemaker
Ramy
Rap Shit
Rick and Morty
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law
Search Party
Severance
Stranger Things
What We Do in the Shadows
The White Lotus

Will Watch Someday

Black Bird
The Dropout
Fleishman is in Trouble
High School
Mo
This Fool
This Is Going to Hurt
There’s assuredly more