Jmunney’s 2022 Emmy Wish List, Part 1: Comedy

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CREDIT: Netflix

Fun (or Frightening?) Fact: this year’s Emmy ballot includes nearly 3000 performers. We’ve all known for several years now just how overwhelming television has become, but somehow it still had room to launch into another level. So for my personal wish list, I decided not to think too hard. I’ll just include however many or however few selections per category I’d like to. I’ve probably forgotten some worthy contenders, but I won’t stress about that too much. We’ll find out what the TV Academy has to say when the nominations are announced on July 12!

My favorite Comedy of the season was Kyle Mooney’s singular Netflix show, Saturday Morning All Star Hits, but I can’t find it anywhere on the ballot! Not in Comedy, nor in Animation. Oh, well.

Anyway, there are a few other newbies that I’d really love to see all over the ballot, like Abbott Elementary, Girls5eva, Only Murders in the Building, and The Sex Lives of College Girls.

And one important note: Kevin Can F*** Himself is in the Drama field on the ballot, correctly. But I’ve got Eric Petersen (as the titular stereotypical thoughtless sitcom husband) down for Comedy, as the scenes with him function best as parody.

KEY:
Bold=My winner
*=I have placed this nominee in a different category than the Emmy ballot.
**=Not on the Emmy ballot

Comedy Series
Abbott Elementary
The Afterparty
Barry
Dickinson
Girls5eva
Only Murders in the Building
Resident Alien
Saturday Morning All Star Hits**
Search Party
The Sex Lives of College Girls
What We Do in the Shadows
Young Sheldon

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The Best TV Episodes of 2021

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CREDIT: HBO

I probably watched somewhere between 1000 and 2000 episodes of TV in the past year. I don’t keep track of this information too specifically, so it’s hard to say for sure, but going by an estimate of at least 3 episodes per day, it must be somewhere within that range (if not higher). Anyway, these are the episodes out of that bunch that made enough of an impression on me to make me go, “Yeah, they nailed it.”

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The 77 Best TV Shows of 2021

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CREDIT (Clockwise from Top Left): Screenshot, Netflix, Screenshot, Screenshot

For the Year of Our Screens 2021, my list includes all the shows that I would recommend to my fellow viewers as “worth watching.” So that’s 77 shows! There’s a lot of TV nowadays, and a lot of it’s also pretty good.

I utilized a self-imposed rule in which I had to watch at least 50% of a show’s 2021 output for it to be eligible. However, there were some noteworthy shows that I watched less than 50% of, so I’ve spotlighted those in an honorable mention section:

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Entertainment To-Do List: Week of 1/7/22

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Pivoting (CREDIT: FOX/Screenshot)

Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.

Movies
A Hero (January 7 in Theaters, January 21 on Amazon)

TV
RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 14 Premiere (January 7 on VH1)
Search Party Season 5 (January 7 on HBO Max) – Final Season Alert!
A Discovery of Witches Season 3 Premiere (January 8 on Sundance Now, Shudder, and AMC+) – I’ll probably wait until it airs on AMC proper, though.
Pivoting Series Premiere (January 9 on FOX) – Eliza Coupe in a sitcom that looks like it has some bite to it.
The Righteous Gemstones Season 2 Premiere (January 9 on HBO)
Superman & Lois Season 2 Premiere (January 11 on The CW)

Music
-The Weeknd, Dawn FM

Jmunney’s 2021 Emmy Wish List, Part 1: Comedy

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CREDIT: YouTube Screenshot

It’s that time again! The 2021 Emmy nominations will be announced on July 13, which means I’ve got a Wish List for the nommy noms I’d most like to see! In case you’re wondering, I haven’t held myself to any minimum or maximum number of entrants per category, nor do I strictly adhere to official Emmy rules. (I’ve included explanations for my deviations.) And of course, I must mention that I haven’t seen everything, so there are probably some worthy considerations I may have missed. First up: Comedy and Animation.

Almost every single one of my Comedy Series preferences from last year is not eligible this year, whether because of series finales or longer-than-average breaks in between successive seasons. Luckily we have a plethora of streaming services to fill the gaps, and plenty of them are represented here. We’ve got Hulu! We’ve got Peacock! We’ve got Apple TV+! We’ve even got that dang HBO Max. There’s also some room for basic cable in the form of Syfy’s Resident Alien. And it looks like for the first time since I’ve been making Emmy Wish Lists, there is no broadcast network series making my cut (although one of my choices began as an NBC show and another is a reboot of an NBC show).

In the acting categories, it’s an absolute embarrassment of riches in the Lead Actress category, with every one of the ladies I’ve selected giving the performances they were born to play. That’s also true of Alan Tudyk, who’s my easy winner in the Lead Actor field. (He’s an alien … pretending to be a human! Can you imagine?!) Over in Supporting, it’s a mix of newbies and usual suspects, with plenty of sitcoms really making full use of their deep ensembles these days.

KEY:
Bold=My winner
*=I have placed this nominee in a different category than the Emmy ballot.

Comedy Series
A.P. Bio
Dickinson
Pen15
Resident Alien
Saved by the Bell
Search Party

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Entertainment To-Do List: Week of 1/8/21

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Dickinson (CREDIT: Apple TV/YouTube Screenshot)

Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.

TV
Dickinson Season 2 Premiere (January 8 on Apple TV+) – I just started watching Season 1, and I hope to be caught up soon!
Whose Line is it Anyway? Season 17 Premiere (January 8 on The CW)
A Discovery of Witches Season 2 Premiere (January 9 on Shudder and Sundance Now) – You know I GOT TO watch a show with Teresa Palmer.
Critics Choice Super Awards (January 10 on The CW)
Search Party Season 4 Premiere (January 14 on HBO Max) – The third season arrived less than a year ago!

The Best TV Episodes of 2020

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(CREDIT: FX/YouTube Screenshot)

When making Best Episode lists, some TV critics limit themselves to one entry per show, but I never operate by that self-imposition, as certain shows are just masterful when crafting a single hour or half-hour (or whatever runtime they feel like using), and that ought to be reflected in the ledger. So you’ll find that several shows have wound up more than once in this list, and those tended to be the ones that also fared the best on my Best Shows of 2020 list. You’ll also find at least one program that didn’t make my Best Shows list, as it’s possible to have one excellent outing within an otherwise disappointing season. So forthwith, if someone who missed all TV in 2020 asked me for a refresher, here is where I would direct them:

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The 67 Best TV Shows of 2020

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Clockwise from Top Left: What We Do in the Shadows, Never Have I Ever, Better Call Saul, How To with John Wilson (CREDIT: YouTube Screenshots)

Last year, I decided to rank as many TV shows as I felt like recognizing in my year-end list, and that worked out so well that I decided to do it again for 2020. So welcome to my ranking of the 67 Best TV Shows of 2020! Not every show is accompanied by a blurb, just the ones that I felt like I really needed to say something about.

I worked with a self-imposed rule that I had to have watched at least 50% of a show’s 2020 output for it to be eligible, but there were some shows that I’ve only just begun to watch that I wanted to recognize as well, so they’ve got their own Honorable Mention section. And there were also some shows that aired relatively few episodes in 2020 to the point that I didn’t think they should be eligible either, so they’ve also got an Honorable Mention section. And then there’s one more show that’s managed to establish its very own Honorable Mention section, and that’s where we start.

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Entertainment To-Do List: Week of 6/19/20

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Eric Andre: Legalize Everything (CREDIT: Brian Roede/Netflix)

Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.

Movies
You Should Have Left (On Demand) – Blumhouse horror starring Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried.

TV
Sherman’s Showcase Black History Month spectacular (June 19 on AMC and IFC) – Just in time for Juneteenth!
-2020 ESPYs (June 21 on ESPN)
Perry Mason Series Premiere (June 21 on HBO) – The classic defense attorney returns to TV in the form of Matthew Rhys.
Search Party Season 3 (June 25 on HBO Max)
The Twilight Zone Season 2 (June 25 on CBS All Access) – Guest stars include Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, and Billy Porter.

Comedy
-Eric Andre: Legalize Everything (June 23 on Netflix) – Legalize “everything”? Including … ranch?

Music
-Bob Dylan, Rough and Rowdy Ways
-Neil Young, Homegrown

Best TV Shows of 2017

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CREDIT (Clockwise from Top Left): Michael Gibson/FXX; Showtime; AMC; Kelsey McNeal/ABC

This ranking was originally posted on News Cult in December 2017.

In recent past best-of-year lists, I have pointed out the impossibility of watching every single program that airs on television. The medium is now saturated to the point that not only could one average viewer be watching a completely different set of shows than another average viewer, but so could one professional critic be similarly disconnected to another critic. It naturally follows then that no best-of is any more “correct” than any other. But this has been the case all along. The value of such year-end curating is not a matter of accuracy, but of insight and personal style. Thus, I encourage readers to seek out as many best-of lists as they find edifying, from as diverse a group of critics as possible. Think of each as the best according to a particular palette. Here is my contribution to that cornucopia.

(Shows that were top 10-worthy this year that I didn’t have enough room for include Baskets, BoJack Horseman, The Carmichael Show, Legion, Rick and Morty, Riverdale, Silicon Valley, Speechless, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, The Young Pope, and You’re the Worst.)

10. Review (Comedy Central)
If this list were determined by density of entertainment value alone, the three-episode final season of Review would easily take the top spot. Andy Daly’s career-defining work as “life reviewer” Forrest MacNeil brought his combination of explosive hilarity and existential despair to its logical eternally continuous endpoint. Great series finales tend to be either ambiguous or definitive; Review’s is somehow both open-ended and forcefully conclusive.

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