Best Shows I Watched in 2009

I would have difficulty coming up with a top ten list of best albums for this year and I've been posting the individual tracks that I got excited about throughout 2009, so instead I'm just going to post a list of 10 television shows that I loved.

It's kind of shocking how much TV I've consumed this year. My job as a composer requires a lot of waiting - for files to bounce down - as well as breaks to decompress, when I've been at the studio for longer than 12 hours basically concentrating the entire time. So I like to come to work armed with TV series that I can watch and stop, watch and stop on my laptop, without needing to be commit hours of my full attention the way I would with a movie. The comedies work best for this, like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Eastbound and Down. But so does the pulpier stuff like Dexter and Nurse Jackie.

I also think that TV is better art than ever. With the quality takeover of cable over network programming, as well as the built-in space of serialized television to tell a story slowly over the course of six months, there is more freedom available for cable shows to get it right. The Wire showed everybody how a detailed story produced in a way that took the viewer's intelligence for granted could have the same depth-of-experience payoffs as reading a good novel. And now shows like Damages and In Treatment are following suit with long story lines that build in cumulative power, as well as less serious stuff like Entourage and Hung that manage to be poignant through humor as well as maintaining long story arcs.

So here's my list with minimal commentary.

Mad Men - Nothing else can touch this show. It's like an immaculately scripted dream.

Damages - I predict that in the next year or so everybody is going to catch up to the brilliance that is Damages. Insanely addicting. This show is beyond good and evil, in the way The Wire was. Morality is beside the point. Glen Close plays a bitchy high-profile attorney who bullies and breaks the law to get what she wants. The non-linear format of this show is a huge part of why it works.

Hung - This show has a really unique tone to its funny. Ann Heche is hilarious as a psycho ex-wife trying to bond with her kids, and though the premise might seem far-fetched if spelled out in a one-sentence synopsis (high school gym coach becomes gigolo), the true genius of this show is how it makes it all seem so believable.

Glee - This show is insane (it's also the only one on this list on network TV). I personally hate musicals. And yet... It's kind of Election meets High School Musical (you almost know that's how it was pitched) and so it has both wholesome and subversive elements. There are also lots of allusions to other classic high-school-gone-wrong movies like Bring it On.

In Treatment - Gabriel Byrne's psychiatrist Paul Weston is probably the fictional character I feel the most empathy for (next to Bolano and Lima from The Savage Detectives). This show is definitely a slow-building storm and season 1 ended by blowing up Weston's life. Season 2 takes a bit of a calmer tack as he tries to put it back together, but I enjoyed the new patients and the new setting.

Jersey Shore - Guidos.

Nurse Jackie - Edie Falco's first show since The Sopranos, on which she was probably the best thing. A crabby nurse who goes through work high on pain killers, trying to do some good but really just trying to make it through the day. Funny and drab and very original.

Entourage - I never get tired of defending this show about shallow-ish dude-bros living in Hollywood. It works on different levels and I like them all.

Eastbound and Down - I couldn't get this show out of my head for weeks after watching it. The first season is a six-episoder which is basically one long movie cut into parts. Some of the blackest, most unrepentant humor available on the market. Like a bad dream re-imagining of Talledega Nights. Danny McBride is one of the best things in the new Comedy Mafia of Will Farrell and Judd Apatow's troupes. Super pathological character work on the level of Ricky Gervais in the original The Office.

Curb Your Enthusiasm - I have much in common with Larry David.

The Goode Family - Mike Judge (King of the Hill, Office Space, Idiocracy) has a new cartoon about well-meaning NPR-grade liberals who frustrate themselves to no end with their anxiety about living a PC lifestyle. To the people who will get the jokes, this is brutal but affectionate satire.