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In 2024, TV really got away from me. A lot of it was for reasons my colleagues have already mentioned — the 2023 strikes in the entertainment industry, the further erosion of television feeling distinct from other online content we consume, living in the post-peak TV era, etc. TV also just doesn’t serve as vital of a service to me in my day-to-day at the moment. Music is something I listen to at various times throughout the day in a way that feels very personal and full of limitless discovery. Movies are something I tend to watch in a theater, so they’re a bit of an event that I get to build my day around. TV has become… just something to put on to pass the time.

That said, there were a few TV shows that I watched this year that felt like a bit more than that, so I’m more than willing to recognize their ability to stand out from the content swill, even if it felt like there wasn’t quite as much of that as in years past.

Shows I wish I’d gotten around to watching:
Shōgun
Ripley
Baby Reindeer

5. Abbott Elementary – Seasons 3 & 4

It was easy to forget, but due to the nature of network TV (it’s still around! Barely!) there was a lot of Abbott Elementary to watch last year. We got the entirety of Season 3 after the strike-shortened second season as well as a decent chunk of Season 4. I can’t say that all of this run was perfect, as the period of Janine working at the Philadelphia School District added a new dynamic and tension to the show, but things felt just a little bit off. Thankfully, once she returned to Abbott later in the season, things started to feel as right as rain as the characters eased back into their old rhythms and the show finally followed through on the “will they, won’t they” intrigue of Janine and Gregory.

Otherwise, the show has found fun ways of pitting different characters against each other or as allies in the ways that the best sitcoms learn to in their later seasons. I can’t say that the plots are always able to stray too far from sitcom conventions, but the characters are so well-defined and the actors are having so much fun playing them that it doesn’t really matter (call it The New Girl Effect?). Also, Abbott‘s 2024 run doesn’t quite encompass the just-aired It’s Always Sunny crossover, but its surprising greatness leaves me with even warmer recollections of what the show has had to offer.

4. Hacks – Season 3

Hacks lost me a bit in Season 2, perhaps because it focused too much on driving its two main characters apart after spending a delightful first season making them learn how to work together. Well, Season 3 leaned a bit more into this latter dynamic and the sublimely cranky showbiz vibes were back in a big way. To be honest, I can’t remember a ton of this season, since I did a rare binge of it during a brief-but-memorable Covid bout last Summer. Still, the chemistry between Hannah Einbeinder and Jean Smart felt just right again as they navigated Deborah Vance’s long-held dream of returning to late night, while a particularly great “lost in the woods” episode boiled these characters prickly push-and-pull down to its purest elements.

3. English Teacher – Season 1

I wasn’t entirely sure that I needed another public school-set show in my life, especially after letting AP Bio completely pass me by. But where Abbott Elementary leans into just being a fun, charming show that happens to take place in the public school system, English Teacher leans much more heavily into the exhausting realities of being a teacher in our current culture war-ravaged times. But mostly, it just feels like a show where a bunch of funny creative friends got to bounce their chemistry off of each other on FX’s dime. And while it seems like a second season is still an uncertainty, at least for this debut season, it was a lot of fun watching the staff of Morrison-Hensley High School fake their way through their careers and questionable personal lives.

2. Fargo – Season 5

The last few episodes of Fargo’s fifth season ended in early 2024, so I don’t really think that would’ve made it eligible for last year’s list considering this show always seems to be building toward its self-contained, inevitable conclusion. Also, I didn’t watch the season until the early months of this year after hearing that what was once one of my favorite shows had a considerable return to reform. And guess what? That turned out to be completely true, as Fargo applied its usual mix of Midwest crime strangeness to the foreboding days of late 2019.

Fargo definitely feels like a show that could potentially be too on-the-nose when delving into the political climate of the last 10 years, but this season managed to hit just the right mix of blunt inhumanity combined with a scathing depiction of the darkest ideology that has reared itself into the mainstream lately. This manifests itself most in John Hamm’s violent evangelical sheriff with a burning desire to control the wife who escaped his grasp (played wonderfully by Juno Temple). Every Fargo season has great casts, and this one was no exception, with memorable performances from not only Hamm and Temple, but also from the likes of Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dave Foley, Lamorne Morris, and Sam Spruell as perhaps the weirdest character yet on a show that has been inhabited by plenty of them.

1. Somebody Somewhere – Season 3

As I scrambled to make sense of what shows I should be watching in order to put together this list, I kept coming across the third (and possibly final) season of Somebody Somewhere on many TV critics’ Best of the Year lists. So I took it upon myself to make my way through this show that I’d heard good things about, which wasn’t too hard considering each season is 7 episodes long and the show has a generally good-natured breeziness to it. Somebody Somewhere is a great show about platonic friendship and like any good long-lasting friendship, the bond between Samantha (played by Bridget Everett) and Joel (Jeff Hiller) has gotten more complicated as time has gone by, but also stronger, and the show was all the better for it.

Also for that reason, Somebody Somewhere just got better with each season, so if this does end up being the last (HBO declined to renew it), that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. There is an inherent niceness to this show and its depiction of misfits and queer people finding community in rural Kansas, yet the characters also feel multifaceted enough that it never feels like mere comfort television. These characters are messy and full of contradictions, just like any humans still figuring out what the hell they’re doing in their 40s, and more than in any other season, they felt like a TV family whom you could also see your own friends and family in.

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