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Year in Review: Television of 2022
What were your highlights for the year? What were the best things you watched? What surprised you? What let you down?
Reflect back on the year and talk about anything and everything related to the television you watched in 2022. You do NOT have to limit it to 2022 releases -- anything you watched this year counts.
Atlanta came back, and knocked down all my expectations. The middle of the series splintered into even more of an anthology than the first season signalled, went way further in social criticism and surreality than I think anybody would've expected to work, and even though you never knew whether the events of any given scene were real, or hallucinatory, or dreams, each main character grew in both depth and personal strength across it all. Despite that fragmentary quality, the final season unveiled (to a large extent) the truth as seen by the characters, and while that should have been either droll or saccharine, it was cathartic more than anything else. It may have cemented itself as my favourite series, period.
If you enjoy surrealism in art, hip-hop, satire, unflinching navelgazing, or social critique, give it a try. A lot of people are put off by the premise, because either they're a little more racist than they want to admit, or just because they don't think it's for them in some sense, but it's a breathtaking show that even middle aged white guys from small-town Midwest, USA with no real exposure to hip-hop or african-american culture can easily love.
Excellent commentary. Admittedly it was hip hop culture that pulled me in, but then the show evolved into something else and I stayed for the journey.
Atlanta is just a stunning piece of work.
The Orville was the Star Trek I needed, while Strange New Worlds lost me with its gloominess, hermeticism, and empty spaces. Peacemaker was a delightful surprise. How I met your Father was terrible. Inventing Anna and The Dropout were good examinations of very different con artists. She-Hulk started fine and got progressively bad.
I love The Orville and I hope they get taken up for more seasons. If I had to pick only one - The Orville or Strange New Worlds - I'd pick the Orville.
But I did enjoy Strange New Worlds. I don't enjoy most Star Trek content, and I tend to like the stuff that other people don't (I thought Voyager was fine, for example). I'd like SNW to get another season just to see if they can develop it a bit more.
My main issue with SNW is that due to COVID the ship and away locations feel empty and lifeless. It's not the classical Starfleet experience. Also, the distancing between characters was awkward in many scenes.
Hopefully, with the end of restrictions, the second season won't have the same fate.
My second issue is that I don't like the captain. Much like his surroundings, Pike is lifeless and stiff. I understand they took a different direction with the character that is faithful to the original Pike, in stark contrast to Kirk and even Picard. But they went too far. He's subdued to a fault.
I didn’t actually watch a lot of TV this year.
Peacemaker I thought was really good. I’m glad Gunn is now in charge of the DC Universe. Actually I just recently learned that the actress that plays Harcourt is James Gunn’s wife.
I saw Seinfeld for the first time. I didn’t grow up watching a lot of these household sitcoms. My parents being from Mexico would mostly watch Mexican television shows. Though my mom was a big fan of Friends. I wasn’t expecting it to be like It’s Always Sunny. Where the main characters are all actively terrible people and ruin the lives of those around them.
I didn’t really love any of the Marvel shows that came out this year.
Abbott Elementary, fantastic. Probably the best show I watched this year. If you haven’t watched it, get on it. It’s an easy watch.
I love Abbott Elementary too (but I'm, of course, biased).
The running line with me and my coworkers is that the most unrealistic thing about it is that the teachers have that much time to talk to each other.
I'll limit myself to 2022 releases because it's been a good year for tv. Here are the first 10 really good series I can think of, in no particular order:
It's no surprise The Bear has been placed so high on many lists. I was not expecting this to be one of my favorites this year. It was great.
The conclusion of Peaky Blinders with season 6 was somehow not a let-down, which in itself is a huge feat. It's easily in my top 3 for the series.
Pachinko was amazing. Korean dramas have been incredible the last couple of years. It's no wonder Netflix and other streaming services are gobbling them up. If you're okay with subtitles, there's a feast to be had of just good, old, easy entertainment.
I'm a sucker for the entire premise of For All Mankind. Season 3 this year was strong. I was expecting it to be a let-down. It certainly wasn't.
I had to try the first two episodes of Andor twice before I got hooked. It was refreshing with a Star Wars series that focuses on a more normal person and not just a "world savior" with huge main character vibes. I didn't know where the show was going, which was unexpected for Star Wars.
Industry's second season was good. It's left me hoping season 3 will also hold the same standard.
Reacher was pretty fun, although the main character was maybe a little too one-dimensional compared with the books.
Yellowstone's 5th season was way better than the fourth as far as I'm concerned. That's saying a lot because it's held a high standard. The spin-offs have been bad.
I enjoyed The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Tolkien's stories in this are way more compelling than other things that've been made into many-part movies. There's a big future here if they just stick with the raw material and don't force additional romance or feuds.
Twenty-Five Twenty-One is another Korean tv-series that hit it out of the park. Who could think that a tv show about fencing would be an incredibly exciting story?
The thing I watched that I enjoyed most, and really want other people to watch, is Station 11. I freaking loved everything about this. It felt like everything comes together to make something greater than the sum of its parts. Sometimes I can watch something and appreciate the camera work or the character or the acting or the costume design, but here it's everything.
Honestly I have a terrible memory for tv programs. There were probably some awesome things I saw at the beginning of the year that I completely forgot.
One of the more interesting things I can mention is that The Simpsons has become good again. It looks like they shook up the creative team and they are now willing to make more s and they usually pay off.