Top Ten Science Fiction TV shows

I recently caught up with the documentary about Firefly fandom called Done the Impossible; in it author Orson Scott Card says that he considers Firefly "the best science fiction TV show ever."  I don't quite agree with that opinion, but it got me thinking about what I would call the best SF TV show ever.

There are a number of problems approaching this task.  First, many brilliant SF shows are short lived (Max Headroom, The Prisoner) while many mediocre ones lasted for years (the old Doctor Who ran for decades with hackneyed plots and grade Z special effects).  Also, I have not seen everything; for instance, until I started this project I had not seen a single episode of Stargate SG-1 even though it was on for ten years (I watched the first season on DVD; this lasted ten seasons with a spinoff?).  

There are also definition problems with what is "science fiction."  I saw several "best SF" lists that included Xena and Buffy, both of which are clearly fantasy.  There are also shows like Quantum Leap and The Wild Wild West which definitely have SF elements but don't focus on them in most episodes.  The Twilight Zone is high on many lists, but it was more fantasy than science fiction.

With those caveats, here is my list of the ten best science fiction TV series:

1) The X-Files

2) Max Headroom

3) The Prisoner

4) Doctor Who (modern)

5) Star Trek (original)

6) Lost

7) Star Trek Deep Space 9

8) Star Trek the Next Generation

9) Battlestar Gallactica

10) Eureka

What’s surprising is not that numero uno is The X-Files, but that it is number one by such a wide margin.  It has the longevity of Stargate SG-I (which produced one more episode than X-Files) plus the brilliance of a short-lived series like Max Headroom.  At its peak it produced episodes like Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose, which won Emmies for Best writing in a Drama and Best Guest Actor in a Drama for Peter Boyle, and was named by TV Guide as the second-best episode of television EVER.  Sci-fi series never get that sort of mainstream accolades.  Add in a Best Actress win for Gillian Anderson and a few other brilliant episodes (Triangle, set on the Queen Mary and filmed in wide-screen and with minimal editing, is possibly the best directed episode of TV ever produced) and you get the class of the science fiction genre.  Yeah, it stayed on four years past its expiration date, but few successful shows know when to quit.

I’m torn by Lost; technically it is science fiction but it almost transcends the genre.  However at the end of the day it was a series about smoke monsters, scientific experiments gone wrong, and time travel that won an Emmy for Best Drama (admittedly before things got really weird).

Putting DS9 and the original Trek will rile those who are fans of Next Generation, but I’ll stand by my picks.  The original Trek had a horrible last season, but the first two seasons featured several episodes written by honest-to-goodness SF writers (Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, Richard Matheson, Jerome Bixby, Norman Spinrad) and created the franchise that refused to die.  BBC America repeats a lot of Next Gen episodes, and you know what? I almost never feel like watching them.  The show had a weak first two seasons, a lousy last two, and the middle three only occasionally (Best of Both Worlds) fired on all cylinders.  Meanwhile, DS9 produced good Sisko episodes, good Quark episodes, good Odo episodes, good Worf episodes, good Kira episodes, good O’Brien episodes, good Bashir episodes and good Dax episodes; heck, the episode voted the best episode of Trek ever (The Visitor) was a Jake episode!  Voyager and Enterprise aren’t worth discussing.

Max Headroom is the quintessential “too good for television” series, a brilliant, imaginative series that portrayed TV as stupid and derivative.  It was technically on for two seasons but they produced only fourteen episodes; in its final broadcast episode, the announcer at the fictional “Network XXIII” reported that Max Headroom had been renewed in response to rioting by his fans.  The show famously claimed to be set "20 minutes into the future: but as years go by its setting of a permanent underclass exploited by ruthless corporations ad banal TV networks seems nearer and nearer to reality.

BSG is on the list as a courtesy to its fans; I gave up on Battlestar Gallactica midway through season 2.  I admired its bravado but it just had major problems with the story arc (it turned out that over half the bridge crew were Cylon infiltrators for Pete's sake).  

The "modern" Doctor Who is the Russell T. Davies reboot starting in 2005, which unlike "classic" Doctor Who had consistently high quality writing and acting and great special effects.  The quality is starting to slip and it may drop unless the next Doctor helps pick it up again.

I recently re-watched the entire Babylon 5 series and I have to agree with what the author of a Babylon 5 episode guide wrote--it was a great experiment that failed.  It did not change the course of science fiction, or change the nature of TV production, nor did it create a new franchise to rival Star Trek.  I also left Farscape off the list for reasons explained in a previous post; while innovative, the show mostly made no sense and the darn muppets had zero credibility.

I am disappointed that Eureka is low on most lists or entirely left off; it was very high quality for its first three seasons and still enjoyable for its last two (when they started experimenting with half-season story "arcs").   It deserves a higher reputation, and I wonder if the fact that it was a comedy lessens it in the eyes of devoted SFers.

Joss Whedon's Greatest Hits

In honor of the 6^th biennial Slayage Conference now taking place in Sacramento, I have decided to name my picks for the top ten things Joss Whedon has personally done in the Whedonverse.  These are movies or TV episodes that he either directed, wrote, or co-wrote with his name on the credits.  Jane Espensen once said in a commentary that the frustrating thing about working for Joss Whedon is when someone says to you they liked the episode you wrote and they then mention their favorite line, it is always one added by Joss Whedon.  So he contributed to a lot of things, but these items are ones he put his name on.

  

1)         “Once More With feeling” episode, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Joss Whedon wrote the script and the lyrics and the music for this, considered by nearly everyone to be the best musical episode of a TV series ever made.  The songs are wonderfully written, the script makes several major revelations for the characters, and the cast all perform well (except Nicholas Brendan, who has no musical talent but is a real trooper).

2)         Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog

Whedon won an Emmy for this webisode that was so popular, downloads of the third installment broke the internet.  Neal Patrick Harris is wonderful as the title character, a wanna-be super villain always thwarted by Captain Hammer (a marvelously cheesy Nathan Fillion).  More excellent Whedon-penned songs and a third act that will rip your heart out.

3)         “Epitaph One” episode, Dollhouse

Yes, the Whedon project most people consider a failure produced one brilliant episode that, ironically, was never seen on TV as it was a season 1 series finale but the show was inexplicably renewed.  Whedon only contributed the story (screenplay was by his brother and his brother’s fiancé) but it is a griping tale of what would happen if the Dollhouse technology was taken to its logical conclusion.  Logical and harrowing.

4)         Serenity

Whedon’s first shot at film directing (and only one until The Avengers) is one of the best science fiction films of the past ten years, a homage to fans of the TV series Firefly yet accessible to non-fans as well.  The excellent cast (Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite, and now-iconic SF actress Summer Glau) reprise their roles from the series. The movie resolves a major plotline from the series and explains much that needed explaining. 

5)         “Hush” episode, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Whedon got his first Emmy nomination for the screenplay of this episode, which is amazing in that there is none of Whedon’s trademark dialog for half the show!  Demons arrive in Sunnydale and take away everyone’s power of speech, which merely draws attention to the lack of communication the characters had been experiencing.  Plus the demons, known as “The Gentlemen,” are super creepy.

6)         “The Body” episode, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

A gut-wrenching episode about the aftermath of the unexpected death (by natural causes) of a central character.  There is nothing supernatural involved, just dealing with paramedics, funeral homes, and death.  Whedon should have gotten Emmy nominations for script and direction, and Sarah Michelle Geller’s acting is breathtaking.

7)         “Graduation Day parts 1 & 2” episodes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The culmination of the epic Season 3, when Buffy faced her most charismatic foe, the Mayor of Sunnydale who wanted to turn into a giant snake and devour the town.  Buffy has to deal with stopping him, saving her vampire-love Angel, and going mano-a-mano with another Slayer.  Oh, and graduating from high school.  Harry Groener was delightful as the Mayor; totally evil, but affectionate toward renegade-Slayer Faith and really, really concerned about the city’s infrastructure.

8)         “Waiting in the Wings” episode, Angel

Angel and his fellow demon-fighters take an evening off to see the ballet Giselle, only Angel realizes that the dancers are the same ones he saw a hundred years earlier.  Summer Glau, a classically trained dancer, plays the lead ballerina who has been forced to give the same performance over and over for a hundred years; “I do not dance,” she bemoans, “I echo.”  Throw in a couple of major plot revelations between the characters and some vintage Whedon humor and it is a classic episode.

9)         “Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest” episodes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Whedon had to write a pilot episode for his series that made people forget the bad movie with the same name; mission accomplished.  The two-part pilot introduces the characters, sets the tone for the series, and creates Buffy’s first “Big Bad” in The Master.  The pilot demonstrates all of Whedon’s strengths as a writer; great plotting, excellent characterizations, and most of all his trademark dialogue (“Gee, could you vague that up a little?”).

10)       The Avengers

Who can argue with a worldwide gross of $1.5 billion?  Ok, you can.  But Whedon was given the helm of a $220 million budget despite only having directed one previous movie because no other writer in Hollywood could possibly integrate the stories of the various superheroes that make up Marvel’s The Avengers other than a comic book geek like Whedon.  The result may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but on a degree-of-difficulty scale Whedon nails the landing (the film is also better than both of the recent Hulk films, Thor, and Iron Man 2).

In Memoriem: Casey Kasem

It is probably appropriate that I learned of Casey Kasem’s passing while I was listening to Casey Kasem on the radio.  Of course I was not listening to a live broadcast but a rerun of one of his American Top 40 episodes from 1975.  The station I listened to the rebroadcast on broke in about every half hour with news of his passing and a moment (more like 10 seconds) of silence.  He may be gone, but the show will no doubt continue on.

Kids today are probably as sick of hearing what it was like before the internet as caveman kids were sick of hearing about what it was like before fire (“We have no fire. We eat meat raw.  Ooog got sick and die because we no cook meat to kill bacteria.”).  But before the internet, we teenagers had to gather around the radio and listen to Casey Kasem tell us what was popular in music.  The music industry is now incredibly Balkanized, but at one time there was a list of single records that appealed to a wide audience.

Homer Simpson once said that music reached its peak in 1974.  I agree, down to the precise year.  I said that once and a friend challenged me, “Why 1974?” Thanks to Casey Kasem, I had an answer: in 1974 there were more different number one songs than in any other calendar year.  I think I have that factoid correct.  1974 was post British Invasion but pre-disco. No one musical genre dominated.  The Top 40 featured Motown, rock, pop, and country music that sounded like country music, not pop with a twang.  There were novelty records (Ray Stevens’ The Streak), spoken word comedy singles (Cheech and Chong’s Earache My Eye hit the top 10) and even spoken word singles (a piece called The Americans hit in two different versions).  If you listened to Casey Kasem’s AT40, you heard it all.

I have noticed two things listening to the rebroadcasts (about as avidly as I listened to the same shows 40 years ago).  One, I actually remember some of the more vivid anecdotes about the performers, the schmaltzy long distance dedications, and unusual happenstances in chart mechanics.  I not only remember the stories, but every inflection used by Casey Kasem to heighten the effect.

The second is that how much Casey Kasem and his staff documented trends.  We would call it data mining today.  Kasem was constantly noting how many foreign acts were on the charts, what countries they were from, how many female singers, how many groups/solo acts, how many songs were written by the person singing them. He noted the slow increase of disco songs on each week’s countdown; I suppose even he could do nothing to stop it.

Of course Kasem’s other eternal contribution to pop culture was performing the voice of Shaggy on Scooby Doo.  Today, everyone doing vocal work seems to have a clause in their contract that Disney or Pixar will make their character look like them (I suppose the one exception in Steve Carrell in Despicable Me).  It is hard to associate the middle-aged, nattily dressed Casey Kasem portraying the airheaded teenager who was forever crying “Zoinks!” or promising Scooby some Scooby Snacks.

As a kid I followed American Top 40 so avidly that I sent in for their list of stations they played on so I could hear the show when my family visited El Paso, Texas, on vacation.  I listen almost as avidly now, forgoing any leaving of the house for the three hours the show is on.  Often, rediscovering old favorite TV shows on DVD can be disappointing (I loved the TV show The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, but when I saw the show again on DVD all the charm was gone).  When I heard the shows were being rebroadcast I eagerly awaited the first show, and I have not been disappointed.

So, Casey Kasem is gone, but not really.  He will remain on the airwaves as long as geezers like me want to hear obscure singles from the mid-1970’s, like Meri Wilson’s Telephone Man and Dean Friedman’s Ariel.  And he’ll always remain in my memory, saying “Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars.”

Farscape: What Went Wrong?

Fandom is full of disagreement.  Even fans who agree about the quality of a particular show then have to disagree about the aspects of that show.  Star Trek aficionados will debate Kirk vs. Picard, Next Gen vs. Deep Space Nine, Romulans vs. Klingons.  It makes you want to say, “Can’t we all just get along?”

I was doing some research on the question of the best science fiction TV show of all time (a future blog; the short answer is The X-Files by a mile) and one source said that when they took a survey on the subject the most divisive show on the list was Farscape.  I get that.  I couldn’t watch it when it was broadcast, because my cable system didn’t do the Sci-Fi Network (now Syfy).  I saw some episodes on DVD but didn’t quite get it.  I thought maybe immersion was necessary, so about two years ago I started diving into the entire series, from the pilot episode to the Peacekeeper Wars wrap up.

I can see why people love the show, and I can see why people hate it.  I am somewhere in the middle but am more sympathetic with the haters.

What does Farscape have going for it?  It has an honest-to-goodness sense of humor, something many SF shows completely lack or only think they have.  It tended to go over the top with the humor, but Chricton’s endless stream of pop culture references uttered to aliens who have NO idea what he is talking about was amusing up to the end.

It also had good acting, or at least actors who were good in their roles.  Ben Browder and Claudia Black had more chemistry than any SF couple save Mulder and Scully, and they navigated their way through their characters’ unique relationship flawlessly.  The rest of the cast had to deal with prosthetics but still managed to convey real emotion, particularly Gigi Edgley whose character, Chiana, wore her emotions on her sleeves, her pant legs, and whatever other parts of her skimpy costumes she wore.

The writing was often intelligent (and often not, but more on that anon), and their SF vision was mostly unique and less derivative than most SF series of the time.

So what’s the problem?

Let’s start with the show’s raison d’etre, which was to showcase the Henson Studio’s ability to create credible aliens that got away from the bi-pedal humanoid format that permeated, oh let’s say Star Trek.  By using puppets, the show could create aliens that didn’t all look like extras wearing wigs and bad costumes.  But the truth is, on this basic point the show fails.  Even Rygel, the muppet they put the most work into, was never credible as a living, breathing entity, at least never for more than a second or two.  The muppet that was Pilot was never anything more than a prop.  Every time they try and pass off a puppet as an intelligent life form, all credibility is lost.

Next, I can’t think of a science fiction show that is less credible about its science than Farscape.  Several episodes eschewed science entirely and had plots based on what can only generously be called mysticism.  All of the “wormhole technology” that the show spends over half of its existence laboring over is nothing more than hand waving.  I suppose it is amusing to have a character that farts helium, but does that even make sense from a metabolic perspective?  How much helium would you have to ingest until it became a dietary waste byproduct?  The character Jool melted metal when she screamed; how did that work exactly?

The X-Files had some rather dubious science behind their science fiction, but they had the incredible knack of making it sound plausible.  Books have been written with titles like “The Science of The X-Files” explaining exactly how plausible the science presented on that show was; I’d be really surprised if anyone wrote a book called “The Science of Farscape.”  If there was such a book it could explain how Chricton and Aeryn could be blown to smithereens in the final episode and yet come back for The Peacekeeper Wars.

I watched the show on DVD (I swear streaming became available on Netflix the day after I mailed back The Peacekeeper Wars DVD) which means I could also access the commentaries, and the people who made Farscape were really full of themselves.  Oh, they are occasionally self-effacing; I can’t recall another show doing commentary on an episode they describe as terrible (“Jeremiah Chricton”).  But they had a lot of episodes that made only limited sense and on the commentary track they just go on and on about how powerful the scenes are even when logic has flown out the window. 

What I find oddest about the show is how they chose episode titles.  Some are extremely clever, like “I, E.T.” which puts Chricton in the position of the alien invader.  But other episode have incredibly dull titles like “PK Tech Girl” (which is about a tech girl who is a Peacekeeper) and “DNA Mad Scientist” which is about a mad scientist who uses DNA to draw a map to an individual’s home planet (which makes NO SENSE AT ALL yet is the premise of the episode).  And then many episodes have titles I don’t understand at all, like the well-known episode “Die Me, Dichotomy.”  What does that even mean?

Part of my dislike of Farscape is inherent in its risk taking; it is great to take risks, but when you take a risk and fail the result is not good.  Farscape took some outrageous risks, most notably in the two episodes written by star Ben Browder.  Some paid off; a lot didn’t.  Overall I’d say their batting average didn’t justify the risks. 

If I were to make a top ten list of SF television shows, Farscape would be on the bubble.  It lasted four years, has a dedicated fan base, and produced some excellent shows.  But it wasn’t as long-lived as The X-Files or Stargate SG-1, and it wasn’t as consistently brilliant as short-lived shows like Firefly or The Prisoner.  Depending on where you draw the line between fantasy and SF, I’d put it around number 11 or 12 on my list; it’s good, but it’s no Deep Space Nine.

The Supie Awards

Superman is undoubtedly the most enduring superhero in the mythic pantheon of extraordinary individuals.  He has survived World War II, Lex Luthor, kryptonite, and Brandon Routh (barely).  In adapting the role to the silver screen, then the television screen, a variety of liberties have been taken; Lois and Clark was basically a rom-com for the two main characters, while the creators of Smallville promised “no tights, no flights” (how well they kept that promise is open to debate).

Given the many incarnations of Superman over the years (including some I have purposely overlooked like a syndicated TV series called Superboy way back when) it is time to reflect and acknowledge the actors who gave the best performances in the various roles.

role	Adventures of Superman	Superman The Movie (I-IV)	Lois & Clark	Smallville	Superman Returns	Man of Steel
Superman/Clark Kent	George Reeves	Christopher Reeves	Dean Cain	Tom Welling	Brandon Routh	Henry Caville
Lois Lane	Noel Neill	Margot Kidder	Teri Hatcher	Erica Durance	Kate Bosworth	Amy Adams
Jimmy Olsen	Jack Larson	Marc McClure	Michael Landes/Justin Whelin	Alan Ashmore	Sam Huntington
Perry White	John Hamilton	Jackie Cooper	Lane Smith	Michael McKean	Frank Langella	Laurence Fishburne
Lana Lang		Annette O’Toole	Emily Proctor	Kristen Kreuk
Lex Luthor		Gene Hackman	John Shea	Michael Rosenbaum	Kevin Spacey
Ma Kent		Phyllis Thaxter	K Callen	Annette O’Toole	Eva Marie Saint	Diane Lane
Pa Kent		Glenn Ford	Eddie Jones	John Schneider		Kevin Costner

Best Superman: Christopher Reeves

The catch phrase of the film was, “You will believe a man can fly.”  The main reason why that was true was not the special effects, but Reeves’ performance; he acted like he could fly.  He played Superman as an accessible ideal; powerful, caring, self-effacing, sincere but not humorless.  An unknown actor at the time, he immediately became Superman.  He returned to the franchise on Smallville, providing a nice coda to his work.

Best Clark Kent:  Dean Cain

Cain did something remarkable—he made Clark Kent more interesting than Superman.  While Christopher Reeves played up the “bumbling” Clark Kent persona, with over-large glasses and a goofy grin, Cain simply played him as a nice guy who was more than worthy of Lois even without super powers.  He reminded us that, as he put it, “Superman is what I can do; Clark Kent is who I am.”

Best Lois Lane:  Teri Hatcher

Easiest call of all.  Hatcher was perfect; she played Lois as gorgeous, intelligent, fearless to the point of reckless, and just messed up enough so it was credible that she didn't have a steady boyfriend when Clark showed up.  Hatcher subsequently got an Emmy nomination for Desperate Housewives but this role transformed her image from a buxom bimbo to something more (although it is easy to forget that one of the first internet sensations was a photo of Hatcher apparently wearing nothing but Superman’s cape).

Best Jimmy Olsen:  Jack Larson

A thankless role, Larson established the “gosh Mr. White, I’ll never be as good a reporter as Clark and Lois” personality.  He later revived the role on Lois and Clark (when Jimmy was exposed to something causing rapid aging) and had a cameo in Superman Returns.

Best Perry White:  Lane Smith

While John Hamilton made the phrase “Great Caesar’s Ghost!” legendary, Smith updated and supplanted it with his, “Great shades of Elvis!”  Smith was more caring, less blustery than the other Perry Whites, one who cared about Lois and Clark and didn't just yell at them to get their copy in.  He’s been portrayed by fine actors in the movies, but the role has been made smaller.

Best Lex Luthor:  Michael Rosenbaum

Luthor has been played by two Oscar winners (Gene Hackman and Kevin Spacey) and was given a star turn by John Shea, but I am picking Rosenbaum.  He had the advantage of playing young Lex Luthor, and so played the tug-of-war within him as he tries to do good but ends up making decisions with bad consequences.  Lex Luthor as Clark’s friend gave Rosenbaum more chance for nuance than the other actors in the role had.

Best Ma Kent:  Annette O’Toole

I pick O’Toole over K Callen mostly because she also played Lana Lang in Superman III.  Callen redefined the role, making her an avant-garde artist in addition to Clark’s mom, but O’Toole was the model of motherly support (until she was written out of the series by being elected Senator).

Best Pa Kent: Glenn Ford

Eddie Jones and John Schneider were both excellent, but Glenn Ford is the essence of fatherly wisdom when he tells his teenaged son, “You were sent here for a reason, and it wasn't to score touchdowns.”  Ford imbues his brief role with such humanity that his death is painful, even after only a limited amount of screen time.

Finally, a special award to Allison Mack in Smallville for Best Non-canonical character.  She was the heart and soul of that show; I've always liked the fact that in the episode featuring the nascent Justice League she functioned as Watchtower despite the fact that she had no super powers, she was just Chloe Sullivan.  Why young Clark Kent preferred Lana Lang over Chloe is a mystery to me.

Surprise! There's something good on TV

If you are paying attention, life is rarely surprising, TV even less so.  It’s funny, but when there were only three networks, you didn’t know what to expect (Dr. Kildare?  My Mother the Car?  Laugh-in?).  Now that there are hundreds of networks, it all seems to be the same homogenized goop.

That’s why I have to tip my cap to the first TV series to surprise me since . . . well, since that first episode of Mad Men all those years ago.  If you had told me that a TV series could capture the quirkiness, the unique characters, the sudden violence, and the philosophical mélange of the movie Fargo, I would have told you that you were nuts; if you told me that series would be named Fargo, I would have had you committed.

The FX Network’s series Fargo is a “re-imagining” of the movie.  That’s another red flag, usually signaling that someone wanted to make a remake but either a) couldn’t get the rights or b) couldn’t get the cooperation of the original author.  The Coen Brothers are listed as producers of the series Fargo, so I have to assume this is to their liking.  Incredibly, the series captures the tone of one of the quirkiest, most singularly iconic motion pictures of the past half century.  Probably no film other than Pulp Fiction is more daring, more brilliant, and more unique than the Coen Brothers most successful film until they produced No Country for Old Men. 

Fargo also has some of that film in its DNA in the character of Lorne Malvo, played with understated glee by Billy Bob Thorton.  That character shares many qualities with Anton Chigurh, the unstoppable killing machine that won Javier Bardem an Oscar.  Like Chigurh, Malvo’s haircut isn't the most stylish.  He has one other thing in common with Chigurh: when he is menacing, he’s scary; when he is being polite, you wet your pants.

Fargo, the series, takes place in the same universe as Fargo, the movie.  We know this because one plot point in the series is the finding of the bag of money that Steve Buscemi’s character “hid” in the movie.  There are odd overlaps that you just have to chalk up to some cosmic synchronicity; there is now a pregnant police officer, but it is not Marge Gunderson; there is a weasely sad sack who yearns for better things (Martin Freeman, not William H. Macy); there is snow, a lot of snow.  But then it is Minnesota.

Fargo gets everything right, even down to the strange philosophical universe people seem to exist in.  Things happen seemingly randomly, yet there coming was foreseeable.  Episodes contain scenes of great sweetness and unspeakable brutality.  Good characters die, and bad ones don’t always get their comeuppance.  Each character thinks he or she is the star of his or her own movie, even the dim-witted sheriff or the deaf-mute assassin.  The tenor of the series is summed up in the first episode when Lorne Malvo has a conversation with beaten down, put upon insurance salesman Lester Nygaard, and he tells him, “Your problem is, you think there are rules.  There aren't.”

Billy Bob Thornton confirms his status as one of the great actors of this generation.  The man is a chameleon; I literally have no idea what he looks like, if he is handsome or unattractive, if he is large or slight of build.  It takes a special actor to take a character this odd and fill him with menace, yet also make him seem like a guy who would be happy not to kill anybody if he could just get what he wants that way.  Alison Tolman is amazingly expressive as the woman sheriff no one takes seriously, either because she’s a woman or maybe they’re just idiots.  Colin Hanks plays off her nicely as her colleague/husband.

If I had to complain about something, I’d say Martin Freeman (an excellent actor) is trying too hard to do the Minnesota accent.  I lived there for several years and he lays it on a bit thick.  But that’s a small quibble. 

In the movie Network the mad TV personality Howard Beale said “No matter how much trouble the hero is in, don’t worry; just look at your watch – at the end of the hour he’s going to win.”  That is not true of Fargo.  When Alison Tolman’s character was shot, I couldn't imagine that they would go on without her, but I didn't put it past them to maybe try (spoiler: she survived).  Even Lost had some rules, some characters you knew would b safe no matter how much peril they appeared to be in (although everyone was sort of dead at the end).  Fargo is written on a blank canvas where anything is possible, and no event, no matter how unpredictable, is surprising.

Fargo is a completely unexpected wild card, a masterpiece that takes a brilliant two hour movie and stretches it out over 10 hours without diminishing the brilliance.  It is the best drama on television.

How many episodes makes a "series"?

Folks, we are at a crossroads.  A decision must be made.  As Woody Allen put it, two paths lie before us: one leads to utter destruction, the other to total annihilation.  Let us hope we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

I am, of course, talking about the Emmy Awards.  The Emmys have always been the most problematic if the major entertainment awards, largely because of the repetitive nature of television.  When Forest Whittaker wins an Oscar for playing Idi Amin one year, we don’t expect him to be nominated again the next year for the same performance just because Last King of Scotland was still in theaters after January 1^st.  With Oscars, Grammys, Tonys and Golden Globes, you only get one bite at the apple, but with Emmys you can chew on and on and on.

TV shows can last for years, and performers essentially give the same performance year after year after year.  So if you get a nomination one year, the odds are you’ll get a nomination the next year if your show is still on the air.  Quality performers like David Hyde Pierce can virtually own a Best Supporting Actor nomination as long as Frasier keeps making episodes.

There have been other problems with the Emmys, like the distinction between comedy and drama.  It was fine once upon a time, then someone invented the “dramedy” and things got confusing.  The first acknowledgment of the problem was when the off-beat program Northern Exposure won the Emmy for Best Dramatic Presentation, and the creators admitted in their acceptance speech that the show was a comedy.  For years the standard was 30 minutes was a comedy, one hour was a drama (there were occasional exceptions like The Twilight Zone, which was a half-hour drama during most of its run).

That standard has pretty much been shattered, but not entirely.  Ally McBeal was the first hour long show to win Best Comedy, and since then all bets are off.  However there are still some high-brow 30 minute shows like Nurse Jackie that are about as funny as a car wreck but they still call themselves comedies, maybe because the competition in the acting categorizes is less stiff.

Which brings me to what I really want to talk about, the distinction between a series and a mini-series.  Once upon a time TV shows produced over 30 episodes a season.  For example, Have Gun Will Travel (a half hour show that wasn't a comedy because back in the 1950’s the “western” was still a genre) produced 39 episodes from 1957 to 1960 and 38 episodes per year the nest two seasons.  Eventually stars got fed up and demanded more time off and the number of episodes produced per season fell to the mid-20s in the late 1960’s.  At some point the convention became 22 episodes per season, which lasted for many years until the advent of the cable TV series.

Cable channels didn't rely on advertising revenue and could afford to repeat shows over and over, meaning they needed less product.  So 13 episodes of a show like The Sopranos could be commissioned, which meant that the quality could be kept a lot higher.  This is the primary reason why the last broadcast show to win the Emmy for Best Drama was 24 back in 2006.

An aside: look, I love The Wire.  But when you want to talk about the best dramatic show on TV ever, Hill Street Blues did what The Wire did, but with network content controls and 22 time a year for seven years, not 13 times a year for five.  I’m just sayin.’

In recent years an unsettling trend has occurred.  TV series decided to position themselves as a Dramatic Series or Mini-series as they jockey for Emmy nominations in weaker categories.  American Horror Story produces 13 episodes a season and calls itself a mini-series, while Downton Abbey produces seven episodes and calls itself a Dramatic series. This makes no sense.

This trend reached its apex this season when Mad Men cynically decided to split its final season in half, airing seven episodes in 2014 and the final seven in 2015.  Not only does this give them two bites at the Emmy apple for essentially one season, but it means they can position themselves, their stars, and their production team for Emmys in the Dramatic Series category despite producing less than 1/3 of the episodes of, say, The Good Wife.  (I am assuming Mad Men will continue to place itself in the Best Drama category; if they opt for mini-series then never mind, but I think that unlikely given they've won in the dramatic category before).

I know quantity shouldn't necessarily trump quality; but to cite Woody Allen again, it is the quality of your lovemaking that matters, not the quantity, although if the quantity falls below a certain point you might want to see somebody.  Mad Men has put out “for your consideration” ads for the cast; should January Jones be taken seriously as a potential best supporting actress nominee for having a significant number of lines in only two episodes?

The Emmy Awards need to lay down some rules.  What is the minimum number of episodes that constitutes a dramatic series instead of a mini-series?  Actors may submit “Emmy reels” from single episodes but should be required to have a certain amount of screen time over the course of the season to be eligible as a regular instead of a guest star.  And voting guideline should state that when voting for someone after a show’s first season, they should be evaluated on how much they improved over the prior season.  Michael Richards was very funny on Seinfeld, but he did the same shtick for nine years and won three Emmys.

There is no perfect way to run an awards show; the idea of giving awards for acting is ludicrous unless all of the nominees play the same role for comparison.  But if the Emmys continue to reduce the number of episodes a TV series can produce and be eligible in the best drama category, at some point a Hallmark made-for-TV movie will win Best Dramatic Series.

Note: when I wrote that last sentence I was being as factious as possible, but my research has discovered that a Hallmark Hall of Fame production of Macbeth did win the Emmy for “Outstanding Program achievement in the Field of Drama,” the equivalent of what is now called Best Dramatic series, in 1961.  I assume this was one program and not a series about the bickering Macbeths.  My clairvoyance never ceases to amaze me.