Year End 2014: Started from the bottom now we're here

The last two years in which I've written a TV top ten list (i.e., the only times I've ever done it), I ended the post with a question, or even a dare. The first one was "Whattaya got, 2013?" and holy shit, 2013 responded with perhaps the best year of television drama the small screen has ever seen. And then last year, I closed my top ten post with the suggestion, "Top that, 2014. I dare you." And dare I say that...2014 might have done just that. It's easier than ever to find quality shows with so many new outlets for programming, and that only makes it more difficult to parse down my ten to twenty favourite TV shows of the entire calendar year. But I've carefully selected the ten shows I feel represent the best in television for 2014. And those shows will appear to you by clicking the "read more" button below!

Year End 2014: Close, but no cigar

The annual best of the year series continues with a look at my "second ten" for the year in television. Much like with last year's second ten, almost all of these shows would be top ten worthy in a lesser year of quality programming, but given how many outlets we now get "small screen content" from, it seems unlikely we'll ever get another slow year. But hey, no complaining from me! (Just ignore any time I tweet about how hard it is to keep up with everything currently airing, like the two or three episodes of "Scandal" and "How to Get Away with Murder" currently sitting on my DVR which will be lucky to be watched even before they both return at the end of January).

To the list!

Year End 2014: My favourite TV episodes of the year

Do not adjust your picture, this is indeed a new entry over here on the ol' Blogspot! I continue a grand holiday tradition here at the blog (shut up, three years can be long enough for tradition) by kicking off  my year end series for 2014 with a list of my favourite episodes of television from this calendar year.

The list is extensive but still probably by no means definitive (I definitely slacked on keeping good tabs on it in the fall), but is still a reflection of some of the small's screen specific highlights over the last twelve months.


The full list after the break!

2014 Emmy nominations post-mortem: Ugh, Emmys, go wait in the car until we're done TV-ing

     Mindy Kaling of "The Mindy Project" and Carson Daly of
     "The Voice" announce the nominations for The 66th
     Primetime Emmy Awards in North Hollywood on Thursday
     (July 10) morning.

The most wonderful time of the year in television is that special Thursday morning in July when reporters and critics on the TV beat (at least the ones located on the west coast, where most television is produced) are awoken at 5 o'clock in the morning to hear two semi-famous television people read off most of the major nominations for the Primetime Emmy Awards. Some of these nominations are downright infuriating. Some of them are completely unexpected and pleasant delights. And the rest are somewhere in between, the recognition you'd expect to see but aren't jumping up and down about (partly because you're so tired).

But after about an hour, you start to realize that those three categories don't really exist simultaneously - rather, they are the sort of "Five Stages of Emmy Grief" that one goes through when they are forced to process a prestigious voting body showering recognition on works of art they feel passionate about on a very limited amount of sleep. On Thursday I found myself turning into Comic Book Guy from "The Simpsons" and tweeting things like "Worst. Nominations. Ever." and "Really Emmys? Really," but with time to really take it all in I've realized that the nominations this year aren't really any worse than other years, nor should I continue to react with such haste in future years. The Emmys are at best a compromise, often paying dues to the quality programs that are simultaneously popular while tragically ignoring the ones that are not. Such is life. The process for nominating and organizing categories is so very, very broken, but this is not the place to suggest alternatives, nor am I the person to suggest them. What I am the person for is being annoyed and complaining or using too many exclamation points when I like things. Oh, and of course, what I hope is at least a vaguely knowledgable sense of the history, voting patterns, and other weird tics of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

So if you're down with that, let's go category by category for opinions, predictions, and other crap. And if you missed my hypothetical ballot from Wednesday, click here.