Top Ten TV Shows of the Decade: The Ones That Matter

Selecting the Top Ten TV Shows of the decade was quite a bit easier than the films. I suppose a major reason for that is because the best shows usually last, so a lot of the lesser shows disappear, making the list of real contenders much smaller than when it comes to film. However, there was still the most shows ever produced in any decade by a LOT thanks to the rise of original streaming content, meaning there still had to be some metric for selection. The metric I chose is the shows that really mattered in some way, either to the medium of TV or to the culture. Here we go!

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10. Portlandia

Portlandia reinvigorated the sketch comedy genre at the start of the decade and paved the way for several other singular sketch shows throughout the decade. It also foretold the current backlash against a segment of white liberal America with its razor sharp skewering of hipster trends against the perfect backdrop of hipster haven Portland. The pair of Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein have a quirky chemistry that charms and the variety of characters they can transform themselves into is astonishing. The main sketch of the first episode is possibly my funniest TV moment of the decade.

9. The 100

The 100, like several shows this decade, explores what it takes to survive, and asks how far would you go to survive. Big questions about morality, purpose, and love run throughout the entire series and are taken seriously. However, contrary to a show with similar themes like The Walking Dead, The 100 is fun and keeps its momentum up through a consistent storytelling pace that never lags. More importantly, hope often feels more justified and attainable in this world, giving the continued obstacles and horrible choices more weight and complicating their morality. It is becoming more and more reflective of the world we live in now.

8. Rectify

Rectify is a show hardly anyone has seen, but it is probably the most finely crafted show of the decade. It changed my view of what a TV show could aspire to be artistically and thematically. Film is a medium that has always invited a lot of experimentation and singular artistic visions that TV has not because of the need to get ratings and draw ad dollars to stay on air. That has changed this decade in the era of streaming, but no show has reached a higher artistic bar than Rectify. Sadly, that means it is very niche and may not appeal to a wide audience. But, that also means it has a lyricism and depth about the burden of humanity that few other shows could ever match.

7. Silicon Valley

Big Tech has taken over the world, controlling the flow of information around the globe, for good and for evil. Silicon Valley was a necessary balancing force to take down the industry with biting satire. At times it may have been messy, but it always maintained a sharp focus on the absurdity and vanity of a group of people that continually create disastrous unintended consequences from their work in pursuit of intellectual validation and garish displays of wealth. This show is proof that no matter how brilliant you are, you’re also just a dumb human.

6. Homeland

Homeland may be the most controversial selection on my list, but it was important in a number of ways. First, it offered up a strong and flawed female lead played brilliantly by Claire Danes, and actress whose film and tv output had never quite matched her talent. before this show. Second, it showed a messy but mostly realistic portrait of dealing with mental illness and trauma in a job that is constantly triggering, but never judged it. Finally, it reflected just how complex and impossible modern national security is at a time when the public’s awareness of such things was being blown open by the likes of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Many viewers gave up on this show after only a few seasons, but the first season still stands as one of the most tense, intriguing, and well-crafted seasons of TV this decade.

5. Parks and Recreation

Parks and Recreation was the most relentlessly optimistic and hopeful sitcom in a decade full of antiheroes and pessimism. Amy Poehler as Leslie Knope is one of the best female role models in television history, always working for the betterment of her community and uplifting others even when no one appreciates her work. It also has a terrific ensemble and happens to just be really damn funny!

4. Game Of Thrones

Game Of Thrones proved that appointment viewing television can still be a thing in the 2010s. I caught up on the entire series before the final season, but I know it was a show people loved to talk about every Monday throughout its run, a rare feat for TV these days, and I felt left out the cultural conversation by not watching it in real time. It also showed that serialized storytelling has caught up to and maybe even surpassed the modern blockbuster movie when it comes to production quality, making TV now the perfect medium for epic stories such as this and paving the way for the upcoming Lord of the Rings show and other fantasy epics.

3. Orange Is The New Black

Orange Is The New Black is the show that changed everything. Original content for streaming platforms was totally unproven and seemed very niche when OITNB premiered on Netflix back in 2013. It was new, it was daring, it was complex, and it was utterly compelling. It showed the kind of risky and rewarding stories that were possible in a world of original streaming content. Its success helped Netflix grow and become the original content behemoth it is today. It was also beautiful to see a show full of complicated female characters that would not traditionally be explored in a network or even cable TV show. For my money, this is still the best show made by a streaming platform to this day.

2. Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad is the show that more or less guaranteed the 2010s would be the Age of The Antihero in popular entertainment. Walter White is the most iconic TV character of the decade, bar none. This show also comes the closest to the artistic achievement of Rectify, but with a much more engaging, exciting, and mainstream storyline to hook viewers. Breaking Bad is definitely one of those sea change shows in television history where you can classify things as before Breaking Bad and after Breaking Bad. It is incredible from beginning to end.

1. BoJack Horseman

Yes, the best TV show of the decade is a cartoon about an alcoholic former celebrity horse-man, and for me, it wasn’t even a close call. The first season felt a bit uneven to many viewers because no one knew yet what the show was to become. However, the penultimate episode of that first season had one of the most devastating and human moments of the decade, and that was just the first of many achingly beautiful moments to come in later seasons. There has never been an animated series that captures the pain of being human better than BoJack, all while being irreverent, visually inventive, and hilarious. There are many standout episodes that are formally experimental, such as the silent undersea episode ‘Fish Out Of Water’. It also takes a deep, hard look at our celebrity culture, depression, addiction, childhood trauma, recovery, sexual abuse, and much more. BoJack Horseman has become quite possibly my favorite show not just of the decade, but of all time. If you've never watched it before, it is highly bingeable, and you must watch to at least episode 11 of season 1 before you can properly judge it. If you find being human a struggle, you will love this show.

Top Ten Films of the Decade: The Ones That Stuck

When thinking about the Top Ten Films of the decade, it’s impossible to find any objective measure for putting together such a list, which means there is no way to avoid making it personal in some way. That means it’s up to me to determine what is the most important factor in choosing my personal Top Ten, and for me, I had to go with the ten films that stuck with me most. A decade of films for a film fanatic like me means hundreds of films, making comparing a film from 2011 to one from 2019 incredibly challenging, and I don’t have time to go back and rewatch any of them. So, it only makes sense to choose the ones that burrowed their way deep into my heart, my mind, or my soul in some way and found a home there, whether I remember every detail or not. 

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10. Spring Breakers/The Bling Ring

I must start with a bit of a cheat, because these two films are inexorably intertwined in my mind and I cannot include one without the other. They were released within months of one another, both by A24, and although they are polar opposites in style and approach to storytelling, their commentaries on modern American youth are so complimentary that they belong together as a perfect cultural artifact of the time. Together, they capture a holistic view of the emptiness of life as a teen in a capitalist utopia that is burning itself to the ground as we speak.

9. An Oversimplification Of Her Beauty

An Oversimplification Of Her Beauty perfectly captures the relationship anxiety we feel when we are young and infatuated with an idealized version of love and foolishly project our fantasy onto an actual human. An exploration of how we get in our own way in the pursuit of love by treating someone as an object of desire rather than a person would be powerful enough, but this film does so much more. It plays with form, narrative, and aesthetic in brave ways that turns the ordinary into something transformative, for the artist as much as the audience. Never have I emotionally resonated with a protagonist’s struggles as fully as I did in this film, and to attempt to describe with the words the impact this film had on me would surely be an oversimplification of its beauty.

8. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

A simple description of A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night sounds like a parody of a pretentious hipster art film: black & white feminist Iranian skateboarding vampire film! However, in practice it is a film so alive in its stillness that it sucks you in to its world and holds you there, breathlessly waiting to see what will happen. The black & white nighttime cinematography is hauntingly entrancing, and the magnetism of lead actress Sheila Vand is hypnotic. There is a moment of such incredible tension built out of such simplicity of imagery that it creates the illusion of stillness in motion. No other single scene in a film this decade stayed with me more vividly, and no other movie of the decade exuded indie cool quite like this one.

7. The Tree Of Life

Terrence Malick is my biggest inspiration as a filmmaker, and Tree Of Life is the purest and fullest expression of his artistic vision as a filmmaker. Although I said there is no objective way to measure the best films of the decade, if there is one film on this list I feel deserves objectively to be on any list of best films of the decade, this is it. After decades as a filmmaker, it seems like Malick finally felt completely free to make the kind of creatively unrestrained film he always dreamed of making. He seeks out answers to the biggest questions of existence in this universe we call home by eschewing narrative almost completely and focusing on a poetic, almost stream of consciousness approach to imagery. The free floating movement of the camera and the seamless editing of the disparate moments of life give the film an out-of-body, otherworldly feel. If you let yourself free fall into the flow of this film, you will experience the awe of existence, in all its beauty and sadness.

6. Mustang

My memory of the details of Mustang are the fuzziest of any film on this list. What I do recall without a doubt, however, is that it is one of the most sensitive and authentic portrayals of girlhood and sisterhood I have ever scene in film. It is the story of five sisters living under the guardianship of conservative family members in the Turkish countryside after their parents pass. As they try desperately to assert their independence and express their burgeoning womanhood in an increasingly restrictive environment, they are quickly put on lockdown in their house and slowly forced into arranged marriages one by one. The term coming of age is used to death in film, but there certainly was not a more lovely and heartbreaking coming of age tale this decade about young female characters becoming women..

5. Tangerine

I debated the inclusion of this film more than any other on the list, but watching the trailer again brought back the vibrant kinetic energy of this film and I knew it had to be on the list. This was also the first film that showed the power and promise of the iPhone as a filmmaking tool, ushering in a new era of independent filmmaking where all barriers to making a successful, acclaimed film, real or perceived, were shattered for good. Most importantly, it tells a painfully human story featuring characters, and actors, that have been forever stereotyped and marginalized in film and in society. For me, this film is like a bridge to the future, where the possibilities are endless of what a film can be.

4. Mad Max: Fury Road

Mad Max: Fury Road is the greatest achievement in practical filmmaking that has ever been made. In a world of increasingly CGI centered blockbuster filmmaking, bringing to life a world as distinct and imaginative as this one within the real world instead of on a green screen is a feat of filmmaking not surpassed by any other this decade. The non-stop action, the crazy car chases, the wild costuming and vehicle design, and the insane characters all pull you into a desolate world of violence and survival. If I had access the biggest and best cinema in the world and could choose only one film from the past decade to show, it would be Mad Max: Fury Road, the greatest cinematic spectacle of the decade.

3. Her

Her fits perfectly into the tradition of classic indie rom com drams of the 21st century such as Lost In Translation and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. What make it unique is its exploration of the evolution of consciousness through an AI-human relationship. Our worldview is so human-centric that often even when we explore higher concepts like AI or alien life in stories, the story still imposes a human worldview onto the narrative. Her has the intelligence to acknowledge that any higher consciousness that may evolve in the future, whether out of human technological ingenuity or the natural order, might not fit our needs or our narrative. In fact, rather than serve us or work with us or enslave us, this evolved entity could choose to not even engage with us and let us seal our own demise. It challenges our sense of self as humans in compelling ways that forever changed the way I think about the evolution of consciousness.

2. The Act Of Killing

The Act Of Killing explores the darkest corners of the human psyche in ways that are squirm-inducingly uncomfortable, but impossible to look away from. In my opinion, it is the best documentary of all time, and it redefines what its possible for documentary film as cinema. In a nutshell, the filmmakers ask a few perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide of the 60s to make a film recreating their crimes however they wish. The ruling party who ordered the genocide is still in power, meaning there has been no reckoning of the horrors it brought, so the killers are still considered heroes for their misdeeds. Through one of our protagonists, we see the agony and humanity of spending decades living with guilt of murdering the innocent without punishment or consequence. There is no greater magic trick in storytelling than taking a real life monster and making the audience feel sympathy for them, because it makes us ask ourselves what is our level of complicity in the atrocities of humanity? We all believe we could never be like those monsters, but the truth is that most of us have been fortunate enough to never be in the kind of circumstances that would truly test us. Not yet, that is.

1. A Separation

A Separation is as close to a perfect film as you ca find. It illuminates a part of the world that Americans are told to be afraid of, full of people we are led to believe are fundamentally different from us. Instead, what we see is people just like us struggling to live under a system of laws and cultural beliefs they did not choose and make do the best they can. The brilliance of the narrative and the craftsmanship of this film is that it allows the filmmaker to examine and critique a very restrictive society so cleverly and obliquely so as to not diminish its societal criticisms while also not inviting censorship from an Iranian government extremely sensitive to artistic critique. It also happens to be a masterclass in acting, directing, and tension-building. Put simply, it is the finest film of the decade.

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Special Mention: Best Music Video Feature Film

Girl Walk // All Day

I will close this post with one last cheat by giving a special mention to Girl Walk // All Day. I had a hard time decided whether or not to call this a movie and consider it for this list, but considered as a movie it could not possibly make the list of best movies of the entire decade. However, as something wholly unique and original unto itself, a feature length music video for an album comprised of improvised dance around New York City, I had to include it somehow. The lead actress/dancer, Anne Marsen, is a revelation and an inspiration as The Girl. She is the least technically proficient dancer in the film, but she allows herself total freedom of expression and movement, quirky as it may be, making her the most captivating performer in the film. If you want to see a dancer living fully in the moment as her authentic, artistic self, watch this film (split into a series of chapters on youtube, the first of which is embedded above).

Thanks, Sweetie

“Sweetie”, by Jane Campion

“Sweetie” is a hard film to write about for several reasons. For starters, the style and aesthetic of the film are like nothing else I’ve seen, making it impossible to do it justice through mere description. More importantly, one of the greatest strengths of the film is discovery, and so the more I write about the film, the more it takes away from the film. The one tantalizing thing I will say about the film is that while it is called “Sweetie”, it is more about Sweetie’s sister. If you can understand the psychology behind such a choice, you will have a good idea what the main themes of this movie are. However, even unraveling this clue so completely as to know everything about the themes of the movie will not give you even the slightest clue as to what this movie is like or what to expect. And that brings me to what I can write about with this film, artistic discovery.

When I talk about artistic discovery, I mean of the artist, but true artistic discovery becomes discovery for the audience as well. All filmmakers, like all artists, have influences and heroes of their own. But the true artist digs deep inside of themself to find what is theirs and theirs alone to share, to create, and risks vulnerability to create something new and never before seen. It is such a risk because all art is subjective, so there is no guarantee that if an artist follows this urge to create that it will be appreciated or even accepted by audiences, popular and critical. The more daring the artist is to dig deep and expose themselves, straying outside the norm, the greater the risk of rejection or ridicule, especially by the popular audience. But it is only when great artists risk that cruel rejection of their exposed self that something as remarkable as “Sweetie” can exist. 

Of course now it sounds like I am putting unreasonably lofty expectations on this film that it could never live up to for those who read this and then watch it. But my appreciation for Sweetie as remarkable has nothing to do with how it was received by anyone who has watched it before, and not for anyone who will watch it after. It is merely an acknowledgment of the film as something wholly unique, unlike anything I’ve seen before. WIth the long history of film, that is quite a feat. A film like that really only comes about when it is an authentic representation of something really deep and personal within the filmmaker. And, if the audience is open to it, then the audience gets to discover something new as well, something that may just alter their perspective on film, on people, on the world. 

Finally, that brings me to “Sweetie” and me. I have not felt this creatively invigorated by a film in a long, long time. There are many films I love, many more I admire, but few nowadays that open up my eyes to wondrous new possibilities. I have started working on a treatment for my first feature film script, with plans to begin writing soon. It is going to be the most personal film I have written by leaps and bounds, and while I have the story and themes down very clearly, I have been having trouble visualizing just what I want the film to look like and to feel like. I was feeling a little bit stuck inside of old ideas and old influences, and that was leaving me feeling empty of vision. Watching “Sweetie” pumped precious new life into me creatively speaking and I am excited to start seeing this next film in my head rather than merely thinking about it. Thanks, Sweetie.

Seventh Seal of Fate

Bengt Ekerot as Death in ‘The Seventh Seal’ by Ingmar Bergman

What I was most surprised to pick up in ‘Seventh Seal’ is the idea that action, good or bad, can give purpose to a man and relieve existential crisis. The backdrop is an England that is welcoming home knights from war as paranoia about the spreading plague invades every conversation and action. In this world, it makes perfect sense that Death is an actual character that is lingering around at all times, challenging and unsettling our protagonists. And it is in this context that we can understand the need to put less emphasis on right vs. wrong and more emphasis on being able to live life normally whatever it takes to stave off the fear and anxiety of impending death.

Our hero, Antonius Block, spends the entire film trying to think of any way to outsmart, trick, or cheat death to stay alive, and he spends most of his time in angst over his fight with death. His squire, Jöns, however, bullies some poor fellow one minute, and comes to the aid of another the next minute. He saves a woman from being raped, then immediately forces a kiss on her and says she is lucky he is choosing not to rape her himself. His actions sway from bad to good, but he never hesitates, and he feels none of the angst that plagues Antonius. To act is to be present, and to be present is to be free of the future and the past. The one failure we must all face, that none of us can escape, is the failure of death. And when we know it could be just around the corner at every moment, it does no good to be fearing what is just around the corner because we lose the ability to live in the present.

The dynamic between Antonius and Jöns is quite like the conversation between Arjuna and Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. Arjuna keeps worrying about how to act in the face of a huge impending battle with family and friends among the enemy forces. He fears taking the wrong actions and frets over how he could possibly prevent the war from happening. Krishna argues that he must act because war is going to happen with or without him and we cannot separate or remove ourselves from the happenings of the world. In the face of death, it is only through action that we can find peace of mind. I think most people have a hard time with throwing out the idea of right vs. wrong in any situation, and so these arguments can be problematic for some. In the modern age we might want to believe that Krishna is wrong when he tells Arjuna that the battle is unavoidable and he must not waste energy trying to prevent it. It takes away our belief in the control and free will we have as people. However, while many people could see the folly of going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11, larger cultural forces made it unavoidable. And at that point, most people sought peace of mind through action, whether that action was to join the army and go to war, or whether that action was to find out the truth and expose the lies of the government. It is those of us who sat on the sidelines that felt the most existential angst about the situation. There is real power in action, the power to control your own fate, which is the essence of free will. Fate and free will are not mutually exclusive, and they need not oppose each other, they are merely two sides of one of the universe’s many beautiful, confounding paradoxes.

There is another character in The Seventh Seal, Jof the actor, who represents passion. He is happily married with a small son, and both he and his wife are traveling performers. He does not make much money, he is always on the road, and many times the audience does not appreciate or care for his performance, especially in these troubled times ruled by anxiety. However, throughout the film while he is around this strange cast of characters in the midst of chaos, he and his family are never hounded by death. He lives a simple life doing what he loves, and his reward is family, peace, and life. In fact, the only moment of stillness Antonius has in the entire film to appreciate the beauty of life is when he first meets Jof and his family, sharing a picnic with strawberries in the countryside. Antonius cannot hold onto the moment for long, and he even states he wants to remember it, but that moment is just everyday life for Jof. So while the film acknowledges the importance of action above all else in times of crisis and fear, it also does show that acting out of passion is what will not only allow you to live without angst, but to live with joy and love instead.

Looking at its historic impact, The Seventh Seal was also revolutionary from an aesthetic and thematic standpoint. Much of the film fare of the time will still focused on entertainment, because popular success was of paramount importance. Even early masters of cinema around the globe who had bigger ideas on their minds would often put them into entertaining, relatable stories, or popular genre fare. The Seventh Seal, however, is very strange. It wears its existentialism on its sleeve, and it could easily be labeled as pretentious or corny. It doesn’t even have the luxury of great costumes or fancy techniques or special effects to mitigate those aspects that could be open to ridicule. The imagery is stark black and white, the pace is slow, and the mood is heavy and philosophical. However, when researching the film, I discovered that it was largely responsible for opening up America to international arthouse fare and not just popular entertainment from other countries because it became a big hit. As someone who first learned about the world from watching international arthouse cinema from around the globe, I feel a deep gratitude to this film and the way it helped open up America to foreign cinema, and maybe even cinema as a whole, to the idea of film as art.

Laying Around La Cienaga, Wrapped in Grace

La Ciénaga by Lucrecia Martel

La Ciénaga by Lucrecia Martel can really the warp the viewer’s sense of time in a beautiful, maddening way. Nothing much really happens in the film, just plenty of wasted days laying around the house, the pool, and the forest. There are two intertwined families whose relationships to one another aren’t always entirely clear, spending time in a communal malaise in the swampy heat of summer, with lots of literal laying around. I’m sure that sounds like the worst sales pitch ever to watch a film, and this definitely isn’t a film for everyone, or maybe even most people. But, for those that like to be absorbed into an atmosphere and to be with characters who feel lived, not created, this film is for you.

The biggest thing we as viewers can pick up on is that the adults have abdicated all responsibility and authority and left the children to care for themselves, physically and emotionally. In a scene early on, one of the mothers gets drunk, falls, and cuts herself by the pool, she yells at and pushes away her teen daughter who is trying to help her. Yet this young girl, whose family has made her grown well beyond her years, bears with the immaturity and continues to make sure her mother gets to the hospital to receive appropriate medical attention. The woman’s husband, also drunk, is lounging in the background and making no move to help out his wife or daughter while all of this is playing out. That one scene tell us everything we need to understand about these people and how they relate to each other. It sets up the rest of the film so that we don’t have to question any small interactions or things we see and what they mean, we already know how shit this family’s relationships are and any little action that seems shitty is really shitty, there is no explanation or redeeming story behind it.

The only redemption in the whole film, in fact, is Momi, played beautifully by Sofia Bertolotto. She puts up with every member of her family and their shit, and she desperately clings to the one light for her in this mess, the family maid, Isabel. Momi’s mom (the aforementioned drunk), is casually racist towards Isabel as an indigenous person and sees her as a fundamentally lesser human, whereas Momi regards her as one of the family. The tension seems such that it will eventually lead to Isabel leaving the family, taking away Mom’s one source of joy and relief. It is with that lens that we must look at Momi’s interactions with her family as fairly miraculous, still taking on the role of caretaker for the family despite the total lack of help and support they give to her and their seeming desire to drive Isabel away. Momi represents that hope still exists in this swamp of hopelessness. She represents that you can be put in the middle of chaos, you can give of yourself to everyone around you while receiving nothing in return, and still have the potential to grow up and escape the swamp and live a happy life. Perhaps that is me imposing my own hope onto this character and the film because I need there to be an escape from the dreary existence it chronicles. And I acknowledge it’s a strange hope: a teen girl being burdened unfairly by tremendous parental neglect and the need to manage her family’s drama is able to handle it without being crushed into nothingness like her parents so that she may one day live a functional life and have the chance for happiness, hooray!

But for me, it is a hope. And right now, with the state of the world as it is and all the chaos and unmanageable relationships abounding everywhere, I need a hope. Because the thing about Momi, as I see her, is that she doesn’t judge or condemn anyone around her, and she doesn’t disengage from any of them either. She deals with them as they are and tries to manage things the best she can for herself and for her family around her. Sometimes we are destined to fail and the chaos around us is too much to overcome, but we cannot be crushed by it, so we can pick ourselves back up after the fall and move forward. We cannot hide from or prevent the trauma the world is going to throw at us, we can only learn how to bear it. And for me, Momi is a symbol of hope that we can bear it with grace and dignity.