10. American Dreams

My girlfriend coaxed me into watching this Dick Clark produced TV series set in the 60s, centered on Meg Pryor, a teenager chosen to be a featured dancer in American Bandstand. It aired on NBC starting in 2002. I was prepared to not like it, but after a few episodes I wanted to see each and every one of the Pryors achieve their dreams . . . which never seemed to happen, at least in the first season. The show is rather ingenious, incorporating vintage footage from American Bandstand with current pop singers like Usher and Vanessa Carlton doing their best 60s impersonations of famous performers from that era. Side note: The show also proves that Joey from Blossom can say more than just “Whoa!”

9. The Office

In its first three seasons, The Office would have definitely been in my top three shows. Sadly, as we all knew was going to happen but really hoped it wouldn’t, The Office has lost is unique comedic touch by having to let go of the most awkward boss this side of the Great Pond, Michael Scott. I still watch the show out of loyalty (much like I did with Smallville for far too long), but the laughs are few and far between. I love the Nard-Dog, but they really should have hired from outside the office. Maybe Ken Jeong? Or do a cross-over and have Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec (Nick Offerman) move into the boss’s seat.

8. Saturday Night Live

The hey-day of Saturday Night Live is always those first five years after you learn about the existence of Saturday Night Live. For me, that was the early to mid-90s. I still watch SNL, hoping that it gets better, waiting for them to feature Jay Pharoah more, and laughing uncontrollably every time Bill Hader breaks character as Stefon.

7. Parks & Recreation

I watched the first season and it didn’t take with me. I didn’t watch the second, but I’m falling for the third. They’ve distanced themselves from The Office and have created a place with a heart as big as Lil’ Sebastian’s, which may sound negative, but it’s not. Pawnee has become so real, in fact, that I wasn’t surprised when I ran across the book Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America in a local bookstore. Genius.

6. New Girl

I’ve only watched four episodes, but I’ve laughed out loud at least twice during each. This is a good measure of a great comedy, especially considering its nascent form. Zooey Deschanel is funny, even when it’s not Christmas and Will Ferrell in tights is trying to court her.

5. Mad Men

Thank you Netflix for introducing me to the seedy world of 60s advertising agencies. Dick Don Whitman Draper has me just as confused as his wife Bets. Why do they do what, or who, they do? And the quibbling overs words and ideas in their marketing meetings can be fascinating. I watch this show and fear that I’ll succumb to lung issues caused by secondhand smoking. This is a show, much like the advertising they discuss, where what isn’t said appears as important as what is.

4. Community

I thought the first season was stellar, but the second season disappointing. Halfway through their current third season, I noticed an uptick in hilariousness. This is a strange comedy show, an avant-garde take on classic TV comedies of the past. Though each episode tells a complete story, you’re never quite sure exactly how that story will be told, whether via a documentary, stop-motion claymation, or anime. Side note: Starburns is Dino Stamatapoulus, creator of Moral Orel, an intriguing stop-motion 15-minute show that used to air on the Cartoon Network. The show has been described as “South Park meets Davey and Goliath.”

3. Modern Family

Two words: Phil Dunphy. It’s the funniest show on TV right now, and there isn’t a weak link in the cast, even down to the dog. A guaranteed guffaw escapes from me every time I watch it. While some of the plot lines become a little outrageous and unbelievable, they allow for each of the characters to shine at one moment or another. It’s little wonder that this little show has won many big awards.

2. Friday Night Lights

It was the show that technically never should have made it to three seasons, let alone five. After every season, rumors would fly that it would be cancelled because it was a critical darling but unpopular, the bane of any high-quality art (yes, art) that isn’t appreciated by the masses. Even if I hadn’t been an extra on the show a few times (my only actual on-camera scene took place during the Taylor’s baby’s christening, and that scene only showed the back of my head . . . in a wide shot), I would have still fallen in love with the show and the town of Dillon, all too reminiscent of my own Texas hometown. If you still think the show is all about football, avail yourself from that lie and start watching FNL on Netflix now.

1. Breaking Bad

For the last four years, Friday Night Lights and Breaking Bad have warred for the #1 and #2 spots on my highly subjective top TV show list. This was the year that Breaking Bad finally achieved the top ranking, mostly because I’m afraid of what Walter White would do to me if he found out that I had ever even considered a ranking below #1. Breaking Bad is dark, hilarious at times, and incredibly well-written. It’s a show where you wonder how they can keep ratcheting the tension up, and yet they do every season. At the end of every season thus far, I’ve had to pick my jaw up off the floor.

Here’s an article I wrote prior to the third season. The irony is that my main argument in the piece—whether or not redemption is possible for Walter—has been wholly crushed by the following seasons as well as what the writer of the series has already said, namely, that Breaking Bad is about the transformation of a suburban dad into Scarface.

To me, Bryan Cranston is Walter White, so whenever I see him in old episodes of Malcolm in the Middle, or on Seinfeld, or in movies like Larry Crowne or Drive, all I see is a conniving, convincing, lying, terrifying man. This perception makes his other roles take on darker qualities that were never there in the first place.

What was your favorite show to watch in 2011?

In watching the first season of Breaking Bad two years ago, I sat transfixed by this small, strange, intoxicating universe of characters and experiences I knew nothing about. Even though they inhabited a vastly different world, their motivations to do some absolutely heinous things seemed all too familiar.

Breaking Bad follows Walter White, high-school chem teacher, cancer patient, and part-time meth manufacturer.

Read the rest at RelevantMagazine.com…

“Perhaps Charlotte Staples Lewis’ literary namesake, CS Lewis, sums up Ford’s Sideways arc the best. From The Great Divorce:

‘I do not think that all those who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists of being put back on the right road. A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot ‘develop’ into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit-by-bit, with ‘backwards mutters of dissevering power’ — or else not. It is still ‘either-or.’ If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth), we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.”’

Undercover Boss is a show where the boss of a major corporation goes to work at the ground level of his/her business. The first episode of Undercover Boss follows President and COO of Waste Management, Larry O’Donnell, as he dons the uniform of an entry-level employee at his own company. Larry, a.k.a. Randy, works five different jobs in five separate areas of his company, from recycling remover and landfill trash collector, to garbage truck ride-along and cleaner of port-a-potties. Along the way, he meets and works for the very same people that work for him. None of them know his true identity. Consequently, his employees hold nothing in reserve in regards to their honest opinions on their jobs and their company.

Read the rest at RelevantMagazine.com…

I like this show. I think it’s ironic that it’s on FOX and that, at least in the two hour premiere I’ve seen, the Secret Millionaires mostly meet people helping other people through church-sponsored ministries.

It’s as if FOX is showing the world what most Baptist kids have experienced who’ve ever gone on a mission trip. No, we didn’t give lavish checks, but we gave a week, got out of our comfortable surroundings, and dug into the hard work of trying to help those in need. But then we’d come back to our “normal” lives, and we’d feel uncomfortable in this “normalcy” for awhile, but a few weeks would pass, the feeling would be gone, and we’d be back to living for ourselves. I assume that was the case for most of us; it was for me. Then again, there were the chosen few who, through one week of mission work, would get the call from God (why is it so clear for some and not others?), and they’d be headed off to Africa, or New York, or somewhere that people needed help. Which is really everywhere, but I digress.

Secret Millionaire is a great show. It’s actually doing some good. It’s worthwhile “reality” TV, if there is such a thing. I was readily engaged with the first show, where a millionaire dad and his son spent a week living in poverty. I started crying when he handed the first check to a woman who had once been homeless and had lived in a creek-bed for a year. This same woman, under the assumption that her new employee and his son were both living hand-to-mouth, took them under her wing and helped them out because someone once helped her out. When she received a check for $50,000, her first reaction was to say “I can’t accept that” over and over and over again. It was too much.

I started crying because it’s such a real depiction of what we do with God’s grace.

It’s too much.
We don’t feel worthy of it.
We don’t feel like we’ve earned it.
It’s too much.
There’s no way we could ever accept it.
Why would anyone want to give us that much of anything worth something?
It’s too much.

And I believe a lot of us live in that moment, shirking back from all that God wants to give us, repeating “It’s too much.”

It is too much.
And we will never do enough to earn it.
So do like the lady did.
Take it.
Say thanks.

Then live your life in response to that kind of generous grace.