TV help b/w next GRB Tourney

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lukethedrifter
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Re: TV help b/w next GRB Tourney

Post by lukethedrifter »

Semi relevant (and coincidental)

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ghostrunner
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Re: TV help b/w next GRB Tourney

Post by ghostrunner »

Taking a quick stab at this:

The Leftovers, Season 2
The Wire, Season 4
Justified, Season 3
Fleabag, Season 2
Hannibal, Season 2
Twin Peaks, Season 1
Breaking Bad, season 3
The Terror, Season 1
Stranger Things, Season 2
Terriers, the only season

There are better shows, or just as good, that I can't pick out a single season. Mad Men, Sopranos, Atlanta, X-Files, Simpsons, Gilmore Girls.

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BottenFieldofDreams
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Re: TV help b/w next GRB Tourney

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lukethedrifter wrote:Semi relevant (and coincidental)
That's a great question. These days everything is building toward something. A self-contained episode is rare. Any respectable list of Simpsons rankings will give you at least 10, probably 25. Cape Fear, Itchy and Scratchy Land, Selma's Choice and on and on. Perfect.

I'd be curious to see a list of the greatest procedural/body of the week episodes.

Edit: I was thinking of A Fish Called Selma. Even the title there is marvelous. Selma's Choice is also excellent.
Last edited by BottenFieldofDreams on August 29 19, 9:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

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33anda3rd
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Re: TV help b/w next GRB Tourney

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ghostrunner wrote:There are better shows, or just as good, that I can't pick out a single season. Mad Men, Sopranos, Atlanta, X-Files, Simpsons, Gilmore Girls.
I'll stan hard for Season 2 of Atlanta. Season 2 gave us Alligator Man with Kat Williams and the one with Donald playing Michael Jackson and that awesome ep where Paperboy just wants to get a haircut and the one where Earn and Van go to the white town where she grew up and the one where Van goes to the party at Drake's house, which all are probably among the 20 best episodes of half-hour television of the last 20 years.

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lukethedrifter
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Re: TV help b/w next GRB Tourney

Post by lukethedrifter »

Lots of recency bias here. OTOH tv is better than ever.

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ghostrunner
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Re: TV help b/w next GRB Tourney

Post by ghostrunner »

Both seasons of Better Off Ted were incredibly solid, and either one could go on this list.

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Re: TV help b/w next GRB Tourney

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lukethedrifter wrote:Lots of recency bias here. OTOH tv is better than ever.
I think best shows would allow for older shows, but 20+ episodes leaves room for a lot of chaff that bring down or make it hard to pick out whole seasons.

X-Files is a really interesting case here. What made that show great IMO were the one-off episodes, which probably would not have existed had the show been made today. They'd have focused on the alien storylines, which ran out of gas about 3 seasons in. One of the best episodes is a one-off that satirizes all the alien/conspiracy stuff.
Last edited by ghostrunner on August 29 19, 10:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

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BottenFieldofDreams
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Re: TV help b/w next GRB Tourney

Post by BottenFieldofDreams »

Community 2 or 3, I'd have to have a closer look.
30 Rock?
South Park at its sharpest?
The Daily Show at its best?
Renegade season 3 when Reno is absolutely smoldering.

Lazy post. I'll look.

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33anda3rd
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Re: TV help b/w next GRB Tourney

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lukethedrifter wrote:Lots of recency bias here. OTOH tv is better than ever.
I mean let's be honest what TV pre-1970 other than Twilight Zone holds up? Our crime dramas now are stuff like Breaking Bad and Sopranos, complex large-scale portraits of interesting people. The 50s gave us Dragnet, which is nothing more than police propaganda. Our half-hour programming now is stuff like Atlanta and Arrested Development and Eastbound And Down, and back then it was Andy Griffith--simplistic and trite. The Mary Tyler Moore show is the turning point for American TV comedy, it's basically the point at which it was like ok some TV can be good and have a point besides black/white (morally not the film stock) drama and setup/punchline hacky comedy, and even then in the mid-70s there was junk like Happy Days, which is little more than MAGA nostalgia 40 years before MAGA.

It's like listening to late-70s hip-hop. Good lord is it bad. For the time, groundbreaking stuff. But in hindsight really very bad.
Last edited by 33anda3rd on August 29 19, 10:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

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thrill
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Re: TV help b/w next GRB Tourney

Post by thrill »

In the interest of variety, I'm only letting myself pick one season per show.

X Files Season 3
Deadwood Season 1
Game of Thrones Season 6
Breaking Bad Season 5
Mad Men Season 4
The Wire Season 4

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