For some reason, TV felt a little more trivial to me than it has in the past few years of this supposed New Golden Age Of Television.  Perhaps it had to do with the further rise to prominence of the Neflix’s and the Amazon’s of the world, and just the sheer mass of shows out there seemed to make it feel a little less special when something really great would show up on the television landscape.  But perhaps that’s just me nitpicking, since looking at my list there are a lot of shows that I really liked that aren’t even on there, and there are still a couple I need to catch up with like Transparent and Veep (I’m working on it), but for the most part I watched everything I wanted to watch and here’s what rose to the top. Continue reading →

Last year felt like the beginning of a new era in TV. The shows I loved in college have mostly ended or gotten uninteresting, and in many ways the television landscape has changed. NBC is popular again, even though they abandoned their Thursday comedy block. Netflix shows started getting second and third seasons, proving that their model definitely works. Marvel found a way to extend its cinematic universe onto the small screen and it actually works (sometimes). What a weird, wondrous time. Let’s look at the shows that I liked best.

Despite watching probably too many TV shows, there are a few I wish I could have caught up with. One of those is New Girl, which I finally gave into watching over the holiday and am rapidly catching up with on Netflix. I also saw some of The Comeback and it seems great. I know I should watch Transparent, and I will, but I haven’t yet. And then there’s Broad City, which I’m not sure how to watch at this point, but I will find a way. Yeah, those are the main ones… I’ve seen promos for The Affair after Homeland and I just don’t think I’d be into it. I don’t think I want to watch profoundly depressing TV, it’s why I never caught up with The Leftovers either.
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I’d like to preface this list by saying I had a tough time with media in general this year. I had to search the ends of the Earth to find music I liked for my “Top Ten Albums” list and I’m not looking forward to my “Top Ten Movies” list which at this point will be just one long article about how Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is “More than a movie.” But TV was my saving grace, in fact… There’s almost too many good TV shows. Here’s an example, last night they announced the winners of the Golden Globes and I’d never even heard of the show that won “Best Drama Series”. I believe it was a show called The Affair. I mean, when the best show on TV according to “TV People” is a show I’m not even watching then what else could I possibly be missing? That’s why I’m going to list a few shows I wish I had seen in place of our usual “Honorable Mentions”. Lets click to it!

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Yo! I’m Michael. This is my first post here, which makes me pretty nervous. Plus, when you consider that my first post is also a top ten list, well… I’m pretty confident when I say that no person has ever felt the level of pressure that I feel right now.

Anyway, I listened to a lot of music in 2014. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever kept up with new releases as much as I did this past year. Perhaps because of that, I feel it was a pretty great year for music, making it difficult to choose only ten of the 100-ish new releases I heard. Besides the albums on my honorable mentions list, there are albums that a) I heard too late in the year to fully embrace (D’Angelo’s Black Messiah, Nicki Minaj’s The Pinkprint), b) were technically considered EPs (Vince Staples’ Hell Can Wait, Isaiah Rashad’s Cilvia Demo) or c) only existed in a weird dream I had on Thanksgiving night (Kill Machine, the new collaboration by Frank Black and my middle school P.E. teacher). Still, I think I can stand by this list.
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