This Season in Television - 2011-2012 (Part 2)

Before I get to my choices for the best episodes of this past TV season, I'd like to announce a slight format change on this blog. When I first started it up, my intention was to do a write-up of every movie and TV show I was watching for the first time. There was a very small number of things I didn't write about because I just had nothing to say about them, but for the most part I was diligent and got every review posted. As you can see, I haven't posted anything in over a month, and that last post was a month after the previous one. I've still been watching all kinds of movies and shows, but I've decided it's just too time-consuming to write about all of them. It probably takes me at least an hour per post (I'm not a fast thinker, okay?), which means every 2-hour movie takes up 3 hours of my time, and that piles up if I watch a few things in fairly close succession and then don't have the time to write them all up because of work and life getting in the way. To be honest it gets a little tiring forcing myself to write about everything, and it isn't really worth it when there's barely anyone reading. I'm not shutting down the blog, I just won't be posting about every single title anymore, and I will probably gravitate toward posts on more general topics and top 10 lists. I'm not going to do a weekly television post anymore (though it was fun naming a hero and douchebag of the week), but I'll likely still do season wrap-ups like this one, and I will always post about my top 10 movies of the year, even if it comes in June. Apologies to anyone who might be disappointed by this news, but it's still kind of cool to have a complete snapshot of my viewing habits over a three year period. Thanks for reading and now let's talk about some episodes!

Once Upon a Time
This show really surprised me in the later episodes of the season, because I had been mostly lukewarm about it and was expecting to name "Skin Deep" as my favourite. It's still a great episode, and probably makes a close second, but the finale, "A Land Without Magic", was just too epic and exciting not to choose it. It made me want to see the next season, a total reversal of where my opinion was when the series began.

Glee
It's no secret that I find every episode of Glee frustrating for its messy writing and overabundance of unnecessary characters, so when choosing the best episode it's not so much the best episode as the one that annoyed me the least. Tough call this time, as season three was the worst to date, but I guess this season's "least bad" episode goes to "On My Way", one of the few times I didn't feel that their handling of a serious issue was offensive or ineffective.

New Girl
Like Once Upon a Time, the second half of the season was an improvement on the first, although I don't think there was really an episode I loved more than the others. Maybe "Injured" or "Secrets".

Community
This year's pick was surprisingly easy for me. As always, this show continues to do amazingly fun and creative episodes, but "Remedial Chaos Theory" blew them all away as not only one of the series' best episodes, but one of the best episodes I've ever seen of any television show. It was so brilliantly written, so fun, lively, hilarious, and strategic with the characters, that it was really the perfect half-hour of entertainment. I mean, I can't not choose an episode at which I was grinning the entire time and repeating "This is so awesome!" to myself.

30 Rock
I think it's a tie between "Idiots Are People Three!", which had Devon Banks and Kelsey Grammer, and "Kidnapped By Danger", which had Weird Al Yankovic, and Billy Baldwin playing Jack Donaghy in a TV Movie. Excellent use of guest stars.

The Office
This season had its ups and downs, but never managed to be as hilarious as it was with Michael Scott around. Still, it had some laughs and sweetness left in it. I'd say top marks go to "Special Project", because I really liked the idea of Dwight getting stuck with the "dud" characters for his Tallahassee team but then finding them to be more capable than he thought.

Parks and Recreation
"Citizen Knope", the Christmas episode that very much highlighted what makes this show's cast of characters so awesome and lovable, each in their own completely unique ways.

Up All Night
This show was disappointing in that it was a lot less hilarious than it should have been, but the finale, "The Proposals", was more or less enjoyable after a mediocre first season.

Awake
In my opinion, every episode of this tragically cancelled series was fantastic except for one, which is not a bad track record at all. But my favourite was the series finale, "Turtles All the Way Down", because it wrapped things up in a way that was actually 100% satisfying, which doesn't happen that often in finales. Maybe because shows that go on longer than one season have built up an audience expectation that they can't completely fulfill.

Fringe
Fringe doesn't normally have stand-out episodes to me, but they did something unique this season in "Letters of Transit" when they spent an episode in the future. It was a crazy and risky move by the writers, but a very riveting episode that apparently served as a sneak peek for season five. Plus Desmond from Lost was in it.

On a final note, there is no new show this fall that looks good or interesting to me, but I will probably at least watch The Mindy Project. I hope mid-season will be better.