Top 10 Lists

Beginning this past Monday, the Manifesto started ranking every TV show that we watched in 2018. We’re wrapping things up today with our top 10. If you missed the prior posts, you can access them here:

#s 93-71
#s 70-51
#s 50-31
#s 30-11

10. Better Call Saul (AMC, Season 4; last year: 8 of 108). As Better Call Saul inches closer and closer to the events of Breaking Bad, it becomes increasingly endangered of being swallowed by its predecessor’s shadow. So it’s kind of amazing that the show remains as consistently good as it is. Or maybe it’s “shows”; this has really become two series in one, with one following Mike Ehrmantraut as he solidifies his fateful partnership in crime with Gus Fring, and the other tracking Jimmy McGill’s long slow slide into legally sanctioned amorality. The Mike material is stuff that we’ve seen before, and while it’s executed with patience and panache, it can’t help feeling like a perfectly constructed echo. Jimmy’s descent, on the other hand, is the heart of the show; even though we know the sad destination, the journey remains fascinating, as Better Call Saul continues to pave his road to the dark side with thrilling complexity and ambiguity. Bob Odenkirk continues to do great work, and he’s matched in Season 4 by Rhea Seehorn, who’s turned Kim Wexler from a one-note love interest into a quietly tragic figure of misguided optimism. Eventually, Better Call Saul will have no choice but to finally rip off the band-aid and abandon Jimmy McGill for good. But for the time being, his fall keeps reaching new heights. Read More

In 2017, we at the Manifesto watched 108 different TV shows. That’s right: one hundred eight. We’ve since ranked and written about them all. For convenience, here are those complete rankings; click on the header links to be transported to the particular page with detailed write-ups of that group’s particular shows: Read More

We’ve been counting down every TV show we watched in 2017, and we’ve finally arrived at the top 10. If you’ve missed our prior posts, you can access them at the following links:
#s 108-81
#s 80-51
#s 50-31
#s 30-11

10. The Leftovers (HBO, Season 3; 2015 rank: 6 of 62). You can pick nits with The Leftovers’ third and final season. Reduced to an eight-episode order, it largely shunted aside the Murphy family whose dynamic was so richly complex in Season 2; it arguably returned to the (literal?) well one too many times with its “international assassin” gambit; and some of its metaphysical journeys this season—in particular Scott Glenn’s helpless wanderings through the Australian outback—never quite acquired the fearsome power they desired. But these imperfections seem trivial when compared with the show’s staggering greatness, the way it meditates on questions of love, family, and faith in such strange and stimulating ways. Perhaps recognizing that she was the standout of the first two years, the show pivots ever-so-slightly to focus on Carrie Coon’s Nora, and some of this season’s most memorable sequences—the Wu-Tang trampoline; the “Take on Me” smoke detector; the pigeons carrying words of hope—explore her explosive grief. But this has always been a humane and democratic show, and it still makes room for its uniformly devastated (and devastating) ensemble. It says something that I’d never especially warmed to Amy Brenneman’s Laurie, and yet Season 3’s most wrenching episode for me was “Certified”, a heartbreaking hour that examined her newfound place in the world with clarity and empathy. I might not have thought that was possible, but over three remarkable seasons, The Leftovers continuously redefined our collective notion of belief. Read More