from Newsweek
#10 'In Treatment'The word “talky” is sometimes thrown around in a pejorative sense to describe television shows, as though having characters converse is an unwanted relic of the radio age. How refreshing, then, to have a show appear that willfully ignores the potential of a visual medium. On HBO’s In Treatment, the talk is the action. Based on an Israeli format, each episode is a voyeur’s dream—a peek inside a person’s therapy session. Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) is the therapist, who like many of his real-life peers, struggles to keep his professional distance from patients dead set on blurring the boundaries of the doctor-patient relationship. Feats of thespian derring-do come faster than you have time to process them all, as the patients lunge and Paul ripostes. For those who live in a town without a robust theater scene, In Treatment is the closest thing to a spectacular off-Broadway play starring name actors.
#9 'The Shield'One of the great Emmy moments of the decade was when the barely known Michael Chiklis upset fierce competition (Kiefer Sutherland, Martin Sheen, Michael C. Hall, and Peter Krause) to win best actor in a drama. By the end of the series’ run, he showed again and again why he deserved it. In a decade full of antiheroes, Chiklis’s Vic Mackey was among the most extreme. His renegade detective respected no boundaries when it came to meting out Hammurabian justice and skimming cream for himself whenever possible. After seven seasons of The Shield, Vic was responsible for so much chaos that it seemed no comeuppance would suffice. Then, in a pitch-perfect move, the writers opted not to kill Vic, but to put him into his own personal hell, cut off from any family or friends or the job he loved. A rewarding end to a series that always evolved in unexpected ways.
#8 'Friday Night Lights'Friday Night Lights is the unlikeliest great drama of the aughts. It’s a network drama, for one, in a decade that saw cable networks dwarf the quality and ambition of network television. It’s set in high school, and it’s about a football team, factors that would also seem to limit its appeal. But like the other dramas on this list, Friday Night Lights defied the limitations of its premise by creating an authentic world. In Dillon, Texas, nothing is more important than high-school football, and so its players are saddled with enormous responsibility and pressure, all while dealing with the doubt, anxiety, and awkwardness that come with being a teenager. Add in the nuanced Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) and his wife, Tami (Connie Britton), and you had a show that parents and kids could genuinely watch together and all feel like they were being spoken to at their level.
#7 'Six Feet Under'In hindsight, the idea of setting a drama in a funeral parlor as a means to explore issues of the way people live their lives and struggle to embrace mortality seems a little clumsy and obvious. But I’ll be damned if Alan Ball didn’t turn the metaphor into an elegant depiction of an American family trying to stay together as its members moved in their own directions. The culminating moments of its finale, which saw all the members of the extended Fisher family age and die, puts it among the greatest television finales not just of this decade, but of all time. And even if all Six Feet Under had contributed to the culture was its brilliant, perfect opening credit sequence, it would still have had a life of which to be proud.
#6 'Mad Men'If Seinfeld was the show about nothing, then Mad Men is the show about everything in which nothing happens. Even the show’s most fervent fans will concede that to call the show’s pace glacial is kind of an insult to the efficiency of glaciers. But by setting the show in the 1960s, Matthew Weiner took the pressure off the plotting. The action doesn’t have to be in the show’s plotline, it’s already in the zeitgeist, and the political and social upheaval of the decade constantly insinuates itself into the lives of the well-dressed, chain-smoking grifters at Sterling-Cooper. Its characters are endlessly fascinating, particularly Don Draper (Jon Hamm), who manages to be gripping even as he goes back to the same philandering ways again and again. In a way it makes sense; at a time when everything was changing, what could be more comforting than a familiar pattern?
#5 'Battlestar Galactica'No one would have predicted that the biggest Big Idea show of the decade would be Battlestar Galactica, which couched its explorations of terrorism, patriotism, security, and theology in a sci-fi yarn with a goofy title based on a cheesy 1978 series. If you’ve been avoiding the show for these reasons, do yourself a favor and gorge on the DVDs. More than any other show, Battlestar reflected the anxiety of a nation following 9/11. But it was a fun-house mirror reflection, with spaceships and robots, so it was a way to explore our feelings in a safe way. A show set in the far reaches of space felt distant, but still managed to hit close to home.
#4 'Breaking Bad'The plot explored in Breaking Bad—the milquetoast metamorphosis—is a familiar one, but it’s arguably never been executed in as fascinating a manner as it is here. Perhaps it’s because its protagonist, Walter White (back-to-back Emmy-winner Bryan Cranston), is not the everyman he appears to be at first blush. Sure, he’s a nebbishy high-school chemistry teacher struggling to make ends meet for his family and battling an aggressive case of lung cancer. But as he transitions into his second job as the crystal-meth kingpin of Albuquerque, he displays a capacity for dishonesty and violence that suggest the potential has been there all along. Then again, it could also be argued that this is exactly what makes Walt the everyman, that we all have potential for evil that goes untapped because we haven’t been cornered. But it takes a brave viewer to make that argument. Most of us watch Walt’s descent with our hands half covering our eyes, repeatedly telling ourselves that could never be us.
#3 'The Sopranos'Picking a favorite scene from The Sopranos is tough, because many of its most memorable scenes showed things that had never been tried on television before, things that made you want to grab the phone and ask someone if it’s possible you just saw what you thought you saw. For me, it was in season 3, in the episode “Employee of the Month,” when Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) burst into tears in session with Tony (James Gandolfini), torn over whether or not to wield him as a weapon against the man who raped her. It’s a perfect scene, wonderfully acted, observantly written, and quietly heartbreaking, in a series full of such scenes. For all the talk of the infamous cut-to-black in the series finale, it’s not acknowledged enough that it wasn’t the first time David Chase had played us like a violin. He had been at it for years.
#2 'Lost'Imagine a tall, suave, handsome stranger meets you by chance and fills your life with love, passion, and spontaneity. And there’s a whirlwind romance, all rose petals and jewelry and notes written in mirror fog. Then, after a few weeks, he casually mentions that he’s had three failed marriages, has six (possibly seven) children and a credit score in the teens—things you wouldn’t have tolerated if you’d known in the beginning but manage to choke down now that you’ve been seduced. To a large swath of its viewership, Lost has been this playboy with baggage. First it’s just a bunch of pretty people who crashed on an island and want to get home. But, oh, by the way, there’s a smoke monster. There are hatches, too. Did I not tell you about the hatches? How about the murderously territorial tribe of people on the other side of the island? Surely I must have mentioned them. But by that time, even the most sci-fi averse had been sucked into the ambitious adventure by its rich, relatable characters. And that’s all the audience really wants, characters to love, loathe, and puzzle over. Showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse understand this; it’s what has emboldened them to shower us with puzzle pieces that can’t all possibly fit. But they’ve also set themselves up for microscopic scrutiny. They nailed the routine, but can they stick the landing? Even if they don’t, we’ll still have our fond memories of the infatuation stage of this most unlikely romance between a nation and a disappearing island.
#1 'The Wire'If I hear one more person whining about The Wire never winning any Emmys, I may end up turning to drugs. Of course it never won Emmys. Let’s face it: it’s not the stuff Emmys are made of; it’s bleak, cynical, complex, violent, and ruthlessly esoteric. Anyone who says it didn’t take him a few episodes to figure out which end was up either has a police-issued gold watch, Jacob the Jeweler-issued gold teeth, or is a filthy, filthy liar. The characteristics that got the show overlooked at the Emmys are the same ones that made it the best show of the decade. It’s impenetrable on an episodic level, demanding rapt attention week after week. Those who committed to the journey were introduced to a sprawling ensemble of characters so vividly rendered they felt like people we knew, or could know, even if they did just happen to be morally compromised cops or casual killers. We watched an honest-to-God, real-life ecosystem blossom before our eyes, one that felt wholly authentic, like it existed before the opening credits and after the closing ones, and would keep on churning whether or not we were there to see it. The effect The Wire had on its viewers is one that can’t be quantified with shiny statues. I’m sure David Simon would trade an Emmy for the satisfaction of knowing there are people like me who understand on an intellectual level that it’s only a television show, and yet still wonder what Marlo Stanfield is up to these days, and if he’s OK.
