What is the most underrated pop culture of the 2010s?
Image: Graphic: Natalie Peeples Aux Features AVQ&A
In continuation of our “best of the decade” coverage, this week we’re asking:
What is the most underrated pop culture of the 2010s?
Sam Barsanti
technically premiered in the last decade, but it wasn’t until the ’10s that it fully broke out of its “Family Guy rip-off” cocoon and emerged as a beautiful butterfly that Seth MacFarlane had wisely left in the hands of better, funnier writers. I completely understand people giving up on the show, especially after its crummy early seasons, but in the last decade it became a brilliantly over-the-top deconstruction of sitcom tropes. More importantly, it developed a smarter, sillier sense of humor, like in this all-time-great clip where Stan explains his high school nickname.
Randall Colburn
I was devastated when Parenthetical Girls split in 2017, if only because I never got to see what was next for the amorphous experimental pop outfit of songwriter Zac Pennington. Across four LPs and a flurry of singles, covers, and unbearably sad Christmas songs, Pennington routinely reinvented the band’s sound while refining his brainy, provocative lyricism. Still, 2013’s Privilege is as satisfying a swan song as you could want, its 21 tracks embodying everything that made the act vital and genuinely dangerous. Pennington boldly confronts sexuality, pride, shame, and violence with a sensual malevolence as the album’s synthesized backbone mingles with sumptuous acoustics, all of which unfold with a bombast and open-throated theatricality that’s exceedingly rare in modern music. That it didn’t get a warmer reception has always been odd to me, and I’m hoping such won’t be the case with his new project, rather cheekily called Popular Music.
William Hughes
This is small of me, given that it did land in the top 50 of our TV of the decade list. But I’m sick of the widespread assumption that Archer somehow fell off a cliff after its third season finale—as if it hasn’t spent the last seven years continuing to arm the best voice cast on TV with top-tier one-liners by the week. I’m well aware of the show’s flaws and bouts of lethargy, but this is still a series where H. Jon Benjamin, Judy Greer, and Jessica Walter scream glorious nonsense at each other. How could that fail to satisfy?
Alex McLevy
True, a number of our “best of the decade” items charted insufficiently high for my tastes, but instead I’ll single out something that tragically doesn’t turn up on any of them: Steven Soderbergh’s masterpiece of a miniseries, Mosaic. It came and went back in January of 2018 without so much as a peep, save for a little bit of press about the multimedia app aspect of the project. The app is forgettable—because it can’t hold a candle to the expert six-part assemblage Soderbergh makes of this twisty, philosophical puzzle, which manages to be both an addictive murder mystery and a brilliant, multi-layered meditation on the nature of storytelling itself.
Gwen Ihnat
Now that it’s about to kick off its sixth (and final) season, Schitt’s Creek appears to show up a bit more often on the pop-culture radar. But it took awhile. Fans of SCTV, Christopher Guest movies, Cabin Boy, and making fun of the Kardashians eventually found a lot to love in the CBC series, written by Eugene Levy with his son, Daniel. Schitt’s Creek (don’t let the name turn you off) chronicles the riches-to-rags story of the Roses, a wealthy family that loses everything except for the run-down town they bought as a joke. The comedy is constant as the Roses try to move their high-living lifestyle into a seedy motel, with Catherine O’Hara standing out as the ex-soap-opera-star matriarch who can turn the most minuscule small-town kerfuffle into a hilarious drama of the highest order.
Nick Wanserski
The first Dishonored came out in 2012 feeling like an attempt by Arkane Studios to capitalize on anticipation for the then-forthcoming BioShock Infinite, and that game’s special brand of two-fisted historical metaphysics. It took place in a grungy, Dickens-punk analog to the British Empire whose thematic and aesthetic reliance on whale blubber and rat plagues would come across as parody of Victorian-era miserablism if not for being so cleverly constructed. And while it never matched Infinite’s capacity to start conversation, it was a solid, well-designed adventure that encouraged a range of play styles. However, 2016’s sequel, Dishonored 2, was superior in every way. Choosing either the vindicated assassin Corvo or his daughter, the Empress, you travel to Karnaca; an imperial holding wracked with dust storms and massive blood-sucking insects brought on by invasive mining operations. The weapons and magical powers are varied and satisfying and the game even finds some space in the margins of all the bloodletting to raise some interesting questions about meritocracy, noblesse oblige, environmentalism, and colonialism. But most importantly, it does so through some of the cleverest level designs I’ve ever played—a series of shifting, labyrinthine environments that move between clockwork forms, or even time. The game was critically well-received but did poorly enough that Arkane has indefinitely shelved the title, which is a damn shame, because it remains one of the most ambitious adventure games I’ve played.
Baraka Kaseko
It breaks my heart that we couldn’t find room on our best of the decade list for Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson’s often overlooked ode to the city that shaped them, Detroiters. Built on the chemistry (and real-life friendship) of its creators/leads, Detroiters balanced absurdist humor, profoundly silly sight gags, and a spot-on representation of Detroit’s local commercial culture with a healthy dose of earnestness and heart—Tim and Sam’s genuine affection for their city and for one another make for a delightful watch. It’s unfortunate that it lasted only two seasons.
Shannon Miller
The thing that I will always attribute to this decade is my growing appreciation for the creative spaces that exist online rather than on a television or movie screen. Web series really made a significant impact on how I tailor my expectations when it comes to the art I consume, and I’ve learned that settling for anything that is just not an enjoyable use of my time is never really necessary. There were a few shows that I ended up loving – Wong Fu Productions’ Single By 30 and The Mark Gordon Company’s Youth & Consequences were strong favorites – but nothing stole my heart quicker than Fatimah Asghar and Sam Bailey’s Chicago-set Brown Girls, a comedy about two friends, Leila and Patricia, navigating queer identity and city living. Is it corny to say, “I laughed, I cried, I felt things?” Possibly. It’s also true.
Danette Chavez
As this is one of my last opportunities (of this decade) to stump for it, I’ll just remind everyone that Show Me A Hero is one of the most powerful series of the last 10 years. Director Paul Haggis corrals a political circus in David Simon’s look at the unkillable beast that is bureaucracy and the widening chasm between a citizenry and its leadership, which is as much a critique of Yonkers in the late ‘80s as it is a reflection of Obama-era politics. Hope can be a catalyst for change, but even the best of intentions are so often lost on the way to backroom deals. Along with its quietly devastating messaging, Show Me A Hero features one of the best performances from Oscar Isaac, who is now off fighting “Estar Guars,” and with a great supporting turn from Winona Ryder, should really be considered the beginning of the Winonaissance.
370 Comments
Well, considering it didn’t even crack your list of top 100 shows of the decade, I’m going to have to go with “Shorty got that what what, Shorty got that good good!” Arigato heyy, bitches!
EDIT: Actually I’d like to fine tune that and single out Luther the character as the most underrated pop culture of the decade, simply because most of the cast went on to bigger things (Krysten Ritter and Eric Andre), while James van der Beek had already been a big thing (le Beek c’est chic!) But I find it criminal that the actor playing Luther is still pretty much an unknown“I’m bout to slap me a plagiarist”“Too slow, ho!”And one of his funniest moments for me was the pregnancy scare (sorry can’t find a better quality clip):
Agree 100%. That show was criminally underrated (and it didn’t help the network aired them way out of order). And Luther is just the best. My favorite line of his is “That is a fragile plum.” His delivery of that line just kills me every time.
I’ve used his “Too slow, ho” a few times, complete with a little satisfied smile
Hey there gorgeous eyes, why do you have such….gorgeous eyes?
Chloe and the other stars of Don’t Trust the B know that you have to walk away from your past as it explodes behind you in slow motion like in a John Woo movie
Hey, it’s Ralph Dibney!
Holy crap, he really is a goddamn giant!
to be fair, former district attorney cecile horton is also very short
whut wuuuuuuuuuuuuuut
Archer fell off a cliff after Season 4, not Season 3
Detroiters 100%
I know here on the AV club we give it crowns made of gold, but in the real world, The Leftovers is criminally underrated. Try finding a normal person who even heard of the show. Try finding a normal person who’s willing to watch it when you describe the basic premise. Try finding a show that’s so perfect and haunting and funny as The Leftovers. I pity the normal people who won’t watch it, but sometimes I feel sad being the kind of person exposed to it but unable to share it.
I have the AV Club to thank for my love of shows like The Good Place and Crazy Ex Girlfriend, two shows which would otherwise have not been on my radar at all as they had zero publicity here in the UK at the time.I was so so sure that The Leftovers and Person of Interest were similarly going to be my new faves due to the passion on here. Leftovers, Carrie Coon, Carrie Coon, Leftovers. I was intrigued to finally see the show that spawned the clip of Regina King jumping freely on a trampoline. Plus I’ve already listened to the soundtrack a gazillion times as I love love love Max Richter. But then I finally watched the first episode and … I was underwhelmed. I know stories take time to build, and I know I’ll eventually give it another try, so I’d like to ask the fans: is there a definitive episode you’d label as a turning point when it shifts gears and becomes amazing must see TV?To give an example, I tried watching Sense8 and couldn’t get past Darryl Hannah’s incessant wailing at the start. But then I read lots of reviews/comments on here saying “stick with it till episode 4″ and so I tried again and yeah, that was a definite turning point when I said “I’m in!”. Does The Leftovers have a similar point?
is there a definitive episode you’d label as a turning point when it shifts gears and becomes amazing must see TV?Yes. The third episode, “Two Boats and a Helicopter,” is where it really clicked for me. If that one doesn’t get you totally hooked, at least watch through episode six, “Guest.” The show jumps a level in the second season as well.
I was having serious problems with the show in s1 but still watched because there was enough there to keep it interesting. And then the Carrie Coons episode happened and I hopped on board. Because….Carrie Coons.I’d also say that I was on board within the first 15 minutes of S2. S1 was good but hard to watch. S2, however, was pretty much absolute genius through and through- one of the best seasons of TV ever.
Agreed all around.
It’s completely unrealistic to ask someone to sit through six hours of television before it gets good
I didn’t ask him to do anything. He asked the group if there’s a point when the series improves and I pointed out that episode 3 is when I was first hooked and then it really got its claws into me in episode 6. Obviously, he’s interested already or he wouldn’t be asking. The first episodes aren’t bad by any means. They’re just not as engrossing. A lot of TV shows take a while to get off the ground but are still very rewarding in the long run. If you or he don’t want to watch past the first episode, that’s no skin off of my back.
Hmm. I mean, I definitely enjoyed the first season (not least because parts of it were filmed in my hometown and it was wild seeing places I used to walk by every day on the big screen)–and I think it is good television. But the show enters another level with the beginning of the second season. It’s still hard to point to a specific episode, but S2E1 definitely turns the entire show on its head (and Regina King makes her first appearance). Keep at it. It’s possible the show just isn’t for you, but I’d give it a few eps at least.
I’d also say that it was one of those shows that benefitted from being on a weekly basis, season 1 anyways. It’d be a mistake to try to binge it as it’s got such interesting ideas about faith and loss that it really needs some time to percolate before moving on. That said, first season is also largely character building, second season is where it really gels, they lose all the unnecessary fat of season 1 and make it bingeworthy.
S3 also benefited from that, especially as it trended towards focusing on one character per ep. Each week was so meaty and emotionally visceral that I absolutely needed that time off to process.
Hastings-on-Hudson, also home of the first season of Divorce! By name! And not always spoken well of!
Plot twist: it was also the home of the first season of My Parents’ Divorce lmao
Yea, I don’t get the love for The Leftovers. Normally, I like weird, outside the box shows, but I watched half of the series and gave it up, because it was going nowhere fast.
I was personally on board the leftovers by episode 3. That one was a spotlight episode about the preacher and all his various problems. I forget which episode, but season 1 also has a spotlight about Carrie Coon’s character that was brilliant. Common consensus is that season 1 is at best fine, and at worst kind of a chore to get through. Season 2 was basically a soft reboot (that’s where Regina King gets introduced). Season 2 got rid of many characters that weren’t working, changes the setting to one far better, and the show becomes both far more complex and downright hilarious. It also gets more experimental. Season 3 was a similar masterpiece with every episode being creative and wonderful. I definitely recommend anyone push through season 1. The season does pick up, but then after that you get two seasons of perfection.
Thanks to you and @PaulKinsey and everyone for the replies. I’ll give it another try on my next long train ride, and just pretend the first 3 episodes form one long episode …
Person of Interest is far better than The Good Place and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend…..if you are partial to the subject matter and don’t mind procedurals (The show is always a procedural on some level, so if you can’t stand the format you will be frustrated). And stick with it to the end of Season 1-if the last 5 episodes don’t hook you (along with the other great ones throughout the season), the show is probably not for you.I’ve yet to watch The Leftovers (really looking forward to it), but that is also very much a situation where people who didn’t care for Season 1 came around to love it. Sonia Saraiya was very mixed on it in her reviews, and loved it by the end of its run. Ultimately though, they’re both more divisive than the two shows you mentioned. Person of Interest super-fans (such as myself-I consider it my favorite show) really, really love it, and there are plenty of us on this site, but there are those who really don’t. The Leftovers as well. Many of those who tried it consider it one of the finest dramas ever aired, but as Mr. Smith pointed out above, hardly anyone gave it a shot.
I sort of agree that outside of our bubble, The Leftovers is criminally underrated. But at the same time, I understand how it’s brand of misery-porn is an acquired taste. (Everyone I’ve recommended it to has, to their credit, given it a chance. Problem is they watched it, and straight up didn’t like it.)
I’d also say that only the first season is misery porn fwiw.
It’s easily one of the best shows I’ve ever watched, but I also can’t recommend it to everyone I know because it demands a certain attention and receptiveness that the casual viewer isn’t always capable of. It deserves more love from everyone, but it’ll never be popular on par with Breaking Bad, say. (Not that Breaking Bad isn’t A+ quality tv; just that it never leaves you questioning “wtf did I just watch?”)
I also can’t recommend it to everyone I know because it demands a certain attention and receptiveness that the casual viewer isn’t always capable of.Um, perhaps not your intention but this sounds a little like a response to my earlier comment, dumping on people (like me) who aren’t fans by saying in polite-speak: “ YOU GUYS DON’T GET IT ‘COS YOU DON’T HAVE THE ATTENTION SPAN!”
Yeah re-reading that, it definitely comes off as condescending, which wasn’t my goal. Sorry!To rephrase: it does require a certain degree of attentiveness and receptivity because it can move slowly and, especially, obliquely, and there aren’t any typical “payoffs”, except for emotional catharsis. It often zigs when you expect it to zag, and then you feel a gut punch.Even if you give it all the attention it deserves, maybe you still won’t like it, and that’s fine and it’s not your fault for “not getting it”. It just isn’t your taste. I never fell in love with Breaking Bad, despite understanding that it was well-done. It just never quite gripped me. Taste is subjective and weird and shouldn’t be subjected to gatekeeping.But I stand by my instinct that if you struggle to stay focused, it won’t be a great viewing experience. Because it’s not like you can pick up on the plot points later. It’s not a plot-heavy show, just emotional/psychological beat after beat, so you have to invest in the characters, which means paying attention to them consistently.
The show is really, really good… one of my personal favorites of the decade but it’s not an easy watch. I don’t imagine most people would take the time to get into it and stay with it. For that reason I say that it’s not “underrated” so much as a beloved subculture show that had a great run on a mass market platform.
I tried watching it, and the reason I couldn’t get into it was because too much of the show’s emotional core came from people needing to find some kind of faith or divine reason, and that’s a really hard sell for people who aren’t religious, or who aren’t Christian. Even though so much of the show (from what I’ve gathered) is about the experience of LOSING faith (or fearing that faith has been lost), there’s a certain flavor to the show’s larger “conversation” that feels specifically Christian to me. That brand of searching just isn’t as universal as people think it is.
I mean, it definitely has elements of faith in a higher power in the narrative. But so much of the real power is from the human element. The idea that life is insane and confusing and unfair, but that only through our actions and our connections can we have any real happiness. The preacher character of Matt is a key example. He does a lot of noble things due to his faith. He also does a lot of good stuff because he knows it’s right. He also does a lot of shitty, selfish things and justified it through his faith. He eventually meets someone claiming to be God, and “God” calls out Matt that everything he ever did was basically meaningless. Matt is thrown and troubled by this, but ultimately keeps trying to be a good person, even though he has no idea if an afterlife or a higher power is real, but he does it because he knows all he can do is try to live right. I can understand that a full on atheist might have issues with the show, and even at the best of times it’s a tough show to watch, but it has way more going on than just Christian allegory. It’s worth noting that aside from Matt the vast majority characters have no real faith and the Guilty Remnant cult is literally an anti-religion religious order.
Yeah, I can’t wait to watch The Leftovers. This sounds like an ‘all-or-nothing’ proposition-no casual fans of The Leftovers. Really hoping I’m one of the ‘loves it to death’ group.
Likewise, as far as shows that get plenty of shout outs here, but not as many as they deserve elsewhere: Person of Interest.
I had forgotten about “The Leftovers.” I loved when that one episode had the opening credits sequence with the “Perfect Strangers” theme song.
For me probably either Santa Clarita Diet or Timeless.The latter, especially in the second season, really filled the Stargate hole in my life with its rather fun-filled take on historical shenanigans along with the “smartness” of the time-travel timeline.The former, because it was a completely absurd sitcom in which the completely normal setting played off against zombie-infused family drama just really worked for me.
I, um, actually thought the Santa Clarita Diet was over rated
The acting, story and writing were top notch IMO.. I loved it. Timothy Olyphant,Liv Hewson & Skyler Gisondo were just brilliant in that show. So many great supporting characters too.
I wasn’t saying it was bad, just that I don’t see how you could call it underrated. It got a lot of publicity, was a popular Netflix show that millions of people around the world watched and enjoyed, and was positively reviewed by many critics online and in the press (British press, anyway). No way does it deserve a mention when discussing “the most underrated pop culture of the decade”, in my opinion.
Valid point. I had never heard of it until like 6 months ago when I binged it, so I guessed I missed the hype and assumed it was underrated.
I don’t know, I’ve kept recommending it to people and hardly anyone of my friends has heard of it, and I didn’t see it on many lists. Plus with it getting axed while they still had at least another season to wrap up, I definitely consider it underrated.
Except for some reason, it never really caught on. Which is why it was cancelled. So I think it’s fair to call it underrated — especially as we live in a time when there is so much coverage of shows that it’s hard to be truly underrated in the way an obscure but brilliant movie could be pre-internet. (Also, if William Hughes gets to call Archer underrated, SCD def gets a pass.)
I wasn’t the biggest fan of first season, but it really really improved after that. The second and third seasons are great, imo.
I watched two episodes of it and that was PLENTY.
I would put Santa Clarita Diet at about an 8/10. Not essential viewing, but underrated because so few people watched it. And while it had its problems, it also had some unforgettable moments of brilliance. The image of Timothy Olyphant standing next to the painting of the giant finger will make me laugh forever.
Also the Aunty Donna Podcast, because it leads to some of the most insane riffs of absurdist comedy I’ve ever heard.
https://www.planetbroadcasting.com/our-shows/aunty-donna/episodes/143-lan-party/
https://www.planetbroadcasting.com/our-shows/aunty-donna/episodes/70-no-idea-name-episode/
Yes to both. But especially SCD. I bet if it was on HBO (this is an HBO comedy if I’ve ever seen one) more people would be singing its praises.
Damn, do I love me some Timeless. Show a wonderful show, so sad it was cancelled but I loved the fact that they were able to wrap the show up the way they did.
I loved Timeless. It was the last network show that I made a point of watching. It knew how silly it was (“There has been another history crime! Off to the costume closet!”) but it was just so fun to watch. I liked how it highlighted lesser known historical events and focused on women and people of color. My only issue with the entire show was the central romance. The Wyatt actor just couldn’t compete with Goran Visnjic in the chemistry department. I feel grateful that we at least got a real finale.
I really liked Santa Clarita Diet, but I thought the first season, which was really a metaphor for loving your spouse through the changes that come with marriage, was much better than 2 and 3 when they strayed from that premise.If they had stuck with a more low key, character based vibe, that would have been an overall superior show
Santa Clarita Diet (the few episodes I watched) was OK, but 100 per cent co-sign on Timeless.
South Side was the funniest tv show in years.
Detroiters gets a big plus one for me. It did what Portlandia did for Portland it on a more down yo earth level. But can I also add the Netflix Marvel series’ (I know, I’m kinda cheating). The first seasons of all of them was great tv and weaves together the movies and their own stories so well.
Detroiters was awesome.
I have only recently seen Detroiters thanks to it airing on the Comedy Central channel on the free streaming Pluto Tv, and its delightful! I sure wish I could actually stream it somewhere (same with Corporate, which sounds really interesting). Hey Comedy Central, maybe you could actually build an audience for these shows or make some money on the back end if we could actually stream them anywhere other than your garbage ass app/website that requires a Cable subscription to log in! I even liked Detroiters enough after a few eps that I looked for a DVD to buy but they didn’t bother to make one! My only option is to “buy” it digitally on Amazon, but I refuse to pay for content that I can’t actually save anywhere or keep a physical copy of.
Simply ah-mah-zing.
Question: “What is the most underrated show of the decade?”Answer:
Am I still bitter about what happened with this show? Yes. Yes. Yes, I am still quite bitter. It’s even impossible to find streaming. Damn you NBC, you monsters
You mean ABC. Damn ABC for treatment of Happy Endings *and* Don’t Trust the B
Hey, not only was “Don’t Trust the B” a great comedy, but it was a surprisingly challenging educational show. All the mental gymnastics I had to do to try to figure out what the actual sequence of events was given their insanely out of order airing schedule…
“The Beek is on Dancing with the Stars … Oh no wait now he’s done with it in this episode … Now he’s back on it on the next … Now in the next episode he’s preparing to maybe go on it in future …”
YUP!!!!!
*and* Selfie
Its on Canadian Amazon Prime?
Fuck NBC for never once airing this show! (It was on ABC.)
the entire show is on hulu. it is INCREDIBLY easy to find
What are you talking about? It’s been on Hulu for at least 5 years
It’s on hulu
Hulu
Under-rated overall? I can see that.Most over-rated show ever by its fans? Definitely.
If you think this is the most overrated show ever by its fans you must be new to the internet.
The internet is where I learned this.Every article anywhere about cancelled shows or sitcoms has some dope talking about this show. It’s. not. that. good.Besides this. Your angry response sort of proves my point. You’re literally angry with me because I said a show that was a lazy Friends rip-off (something the show itself admitted to by making jokes about it) wasn’t like the ah-mah-zing show ever.
Seriously.
is this a reboot of Friends?
Yes, and even better it’s complete with “Fat Joey”
Is this Friends for millennials? 😀
Just like “Friends” but, you know, funny.
Coupling already did that. 😉
The correct, and only, answer.
Top 10 show of the 2010s for me. ABC did it dirty.
CRIMINALLY, RIDICULOUSLY underrated. One of the worst cancellation decisions ever – right up there with Buffalo Bob (google it youngins).
Boardwalk Empire. Period. The final season was a bit of a mess since it only featured 8 episodes, but I absolutely loved that show and for whatever reason I’m not seeing it on too many “Best-of-Decade” lists. Beautifully filmed from start to finish and it features one of the best ensemble casts in recent TV history. So many good characters. Criminally underrated.
Ooh… Good pick. I very much enjoyed that show, but I feel like people wrote it off because it wasn’t quite on the level of Mad Men or Breaking Bad and had big shoes to fill in the HBO Sunday Night timeslot. I’d say that Westworld is in a similar boat. It may not be an all-time top-10 show or anything, but it’s really good.
Some people seem to have a problem with season 2 of Westworld.
I’m not one of them. Westworld is up there with The Expanse and The Day of the Doctor for me.
I appreciate what Westworld is trying to do, but I don’t know why it’s doing it. Like I struggle to find an in-show justification for the timeline nonsense. Timeline tomfoolery made sense on Lost because it was literally about time travel and “who AM I???” musing. It even makes sense on This Is Us, since it explores how past experiences shape our current selves (I also think it’s a decent way to freshen up a typical family drama). But I don’t understand why a show about robots is playing the puzzle-box game.
The hosts have essentially perfect memory recall such that they can relive memories as if they’re really there at that time.
The problem is they don’t know if they’re reliving a memory or are experiencing the present, hence them asking “is this now?”
This makes the different timelines part of the way the hosts perceive reality, and a way to show how they’re different to humans.
I’m still on board with Westworld too. Season 1 didn’t have the same puzzle box aspect of the first season, but it’s still quality TV.
Mad Men feels more poignant to me these days now that I realize I’m too old to really be part of any youth-oriented cultural shift.
The day I get too old to hold hands with a bunch of random strangers in a field and sing about the healing beauty of a Coca-Cola is the day you can put me in the ground.
For me, Boardwalk was a very good show that never hit the next gear. And it wasn’t helped that in order to give it a final season (with the ending they wanted) they skipped over what should have been a great season of events.
Totally agree. It was touted as the next “Sopranos” and it….really wasn’t.
I’m not even really into The Sopranos. I think the seasonal “arc” of “someone from Tony’s past is interfering in the present and Tony just do something to protect his future” is kinda grating after two or 3 seasons.Boardwalk is kind of missing the part of Sopranos that just made it compelling. It’s gorgeous, well made, well acted, and just has everything to be a great show. However it’s missing the thing that makes you want to feel like you have to watch this. And part of that is due to that the compelling characters are the ones that got killed and Nucky was the focus.
I agree solely based on season 3 and specifically Richard going to rescue Jimmy’s son…
Richard Harrow was such a great character! I actually miss this show.
I appreciate the defense. If a key actor didn’t get sick and 2 others didn’t get fired from BE I think the show would have been much better. But Van Alden’s character arc was still squandered. His time in the wilderness between government agent and Capone crony took forever.
Yeah. Boardwalk had a lot of problems, including the fundamental one of centering the show around one of its least compelling characters (it should have been more of an ensemble show, something it did lean to a little more in later seasons). And its rushed final season by necessity had to overlook a lot of great stories it has been building (note to Game of Thrones haters: *this* is what a disappointing, fanservice-y final season actually looks like.) But even with all of its (frequently offscreen) problems it built a very compelling world and told its stories well–Season three with Gyp Rossetti was the show at its best. I understand why its been bumped from ‘best of the decade’ lists, but I am surprised at the degree to which its been completely forgotten. I imagine there’s a lot of disappointment that it never picked up the mantle of The Sopranos and The Wire as HBOs Next Great Show, but it works on its own terms, and frankly I wonder if there’s still a home for this kind of grand, historically-based series.
I agree
It was a great idea to focus a show on the “normal” guy who moved in the same circles as the more famous, big personalities. It didn’t work out, but I always appreciate a good idea. The show got a lot better once it started acting more like a mob history with pretty wallpaper. I think they should have just recast Jimmy Darmody. It’s clear from the planned ending that Jimmy was always meant to be killed, but it would have played so much better at the end of season 4. It never stopped being awkward that a lot of the characters were only in the show’s orbit because of Jimmy, as much as I loved Richard. I don’t want to be too hard on Paz because of what has recently come out about her time in Hollywood, but ugh. At the time I imagined that Billie Kent’s arc was cobbled together out of a story that was originally meant for Lucy.I hated the time jump. I would have loved to see how these characters dealt with the Depression, and there were so many cool moments in the Rothstein/Luciano relationship that happened during those skipped years so we never saw them. I also also didn’t love Chalky’s ending. I get it – he was ready for it all to be over, and he might as well face his inevitable death over something meaningful when it was his choice. But still. The storytelling was a little off.I really did love this show. The Rosetti season was awesome even though at the time it was regarded as filler to buy time for figuring out the post-Jimmy story.
Absolutely loved the first season of “Boardwalk Empire” but for whatever reason it just didn’t really hold my attention much past that. Felt the same way about both “Homeland” and “Sons of Anarchy”. Watched every episode of the first season but by the time the second season came around I just couldn’t muster up much enthusiasm for them. But these all kind of coincided with the rise of all the great television. Once you fell even a little bit behind on a show it seemed so much harder to catch up, there was just so much other stuff to watch. I still feel like there’s so many shows I haven’t even had a chance to check out yet.
Really great to see some love for Dishonored 2. I cannot understand why it sold so poorly. It’s an amazing game, with rich world building and creative level design. Each time I play it, I discover something new…another tidbit of backstory, a satisfyingly brutal kill combo or simply a new area to explore.
Completely agreed. Loved Dishonored 2. And I’m a geek for a good puzzle, and The Jondish Riddle is… hot damn
Do you play as Good Emily or Evil Emily? Given the run-down state of the Isles, I can’t bear to put its fate in the hands of a jerk, so I am as saintly a monarch as possible, sneaking around as many baddies as I can while tranquing the others where the option is available. The end result is that I’m given all these cool, lethal powers but, outside of the level where all the enemies are robots, can never actually use them. It’s like the whole game is an intentional exercise in temptation.Right now, I’m stuck at Paolo. He’s directly confrontational, he’s blocking my only route, he won’t get out of my way, he can’t be knocked unconscious, and if I kill him and his thugs, I won’t get the Clean Hands trophy. What do I do?
On my first playthrough, I played as Corvo, the weary protector. Mellower with age and still bearing scars and guilt from the violence and bloodshed twenty years ago in Dunwall, he wants to set a good example for his daughter. So tries to keep the body count to a minimum.
With Emily, I played her as the brash young Empress who starts out doing the right thing. But after being worn down by the constant treachery and betrayals, decides the only thing her subjects will understand is strength. So she ruthlessly eliminates anyone in her way.Regarding Paolo, there IS a way to broker a truce between him and the Overseer…but I can’t remember how.
What a perfect opportunity to share my thoughts, as I am currently playing Dishonored 2 for the first time! I’m getting close to the end.
Some reasons I wouldn’t quite rank it above the original:
– from a mechanics perspective, it is very much “more of the same” (which is not a bad thing)
– it has a little more sprawl. I’ve often compared the first Dishonored to a gem – it’s really the perfect length, with a ton of care and craft expended in its construction, and it has basically nothing extraneous. I feel D2 has a bunch of interstitial parts that don’t add much (despite some excellent examples of level design) – do we need a long stretch of city before every “dungeon” we’re waiting for?
– the story’s fine, but I feel less connected to the characters, perhaps because I really liked the muted storytelling of the Hound Pits from the first
– for whatever reason, it runs pretty poorly on my PC
It’s pretty distressing how roundly ignored the Dishonoreds are, considering that they’re the best and second-best Bioshock games *and* the best and second-best Deus Ex games.
Both Dishonored 2 and Titanfall 2 came out within a week of each other. Both are now rated very highly critically. Both failed commercially. There was some stupid gamergate pushback against Dishonored 2 (because the developers gave the option to play a female protagonist, seriously!) but I can’t really account for why two of the best games of the decade were both flops.Incidentally, both of them have a fantastic time-switching mission with almost identical mechanics that must have been independently developed.
Remedy’s Control in my opinion is the best underrated game of the decade.Control is a weird category of game for me. I usually love mainstream hits like The Witcher 3 but I also have a love affair with cult hits like Deadly Premonition.Control is neither of those. It’s neither a mainstream hit like TW3 or Red Dead 2 but it’s also a game that has yet to receive a cult treatment due to issues with its PS4 release alongside The Epic Games Store fiasco. I bet this game will sell more once it hits Steam later next year, but it’s certainly the type of game that should’ve sold well if it wasn’t for the technical controversies surrounding its release.Hell, this game recently got controversy on Twitter because it was nominated for GOTY at this year’s Game Awards, and people were like “Wait, this game existed? How come we never heard about it?” which says a lot about how underrated it is.It’s a shame, really. This game is so good, it’s the type of game that should have developed a fanbase like Life is Strange or Undertale. It’s the kind of game that should have fanarts of its characters and the like, alongside remixes of its music and such. Also, I really cannot wait for The DLC for this game.
I haven’t played it yet but heard good things. The main building was inspired by an AT&T building in lower Manhattan, which is cool knowing that now every time I pass by it.
Well for me it’s gonna be TV because there’s so much that went undiscovered, but I really liked BBC’s The Musketeers (2014-2016), which did a pretty good job of feeling like a throwback adventure serial, while still developing the individual musketeers more than we’ve normally seen. Full of conspiracy and class warfare, it was more serious than swashbuckley.
I came for Santiago Cabrera. I stayed because the show was pretty good.
Watched a bit of this but it didn’t measure up to the kdrama adaptation that aired around the same time and I ended up watching the kdrama instead, which was fantastic.
Good to know American Dad! fans still suck.
Ugly Americans is a probably my most underrated tv show of the decade. I’ve seen the entire series probably 4-5 times, and it’s still a consistently funny show.And this is not only one of the most underrated movies of the decade, it’s one of the most underrated ever.You can’t possibly watch A Haunted House and not laugh. It’s a stupid movie that knows exactly what it is, and it’s crazy funny because of it.
Billy Eichner and Julie Klausner’s Difficult People was perhaps the show most laser-targeted at my particular demographic I’ve ever (and likely will ever) encounter, at the cost of being one of the least universally approachable shows to grace the face of the Earth. I will love it and miss it till the end of time.Same goes for Danger 5. Not the easiest to explain, but truly magical in practice.
Instant up-vote for the Danger 5 mention. Man I love that show.
Goddamn is Danger 5 great
Difficult People gets my vote too. I feel like it should’ve been much bigger, but was eclipsed by comedies whose emotional core was a bit more obvious.
How can youyou bring up Danger 5 and not mention The Colonel and the SitmDown Gun?
I am so ready to sign a petition for a Danger 5 season 3.
The most baffling thing about Difficult People was how little attention it got from the AV CLub. This was a show dense with the kind of pop-culture references that AV Club loves that was also specific to the incredibly niche experience of BEING A POP CULTURE BLOGGER. I loved it and found it hilarious even though a lot of its stuff was not really targeted at me (I’m a straight dude who is only tangentially aware of most reality shows, theatre, etc), but I kept thinking it was gonna be the new thing for AV to champion and it never happened. I’m super bummed that we don’t get any more time with those characters, I would gladly watch another dozen episodes just of Arthur dealing with PBS problems.Also Danger 5 is flipping great and I wish I could find a region 1 DVD of it since its no longer on Netflix in the USA. I feel like it could have been very popular if it had aired on [adult swim] in America, I think anyone who watched Garth Merengi’s Darkplace on [as] would have loved Danger 5. Sadly I think its only greater pop-culture impact was “Sensible Chuckle Magazine” becoming a minor meme (at least its one of my favorite gags on the show).
I am a giant nerd for Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, and that was immediately where my mind went looking at the clip someone posted above you. I think I’m going to have to seek it out.
Danger 5 is easily one of my favorite things this decade. I’ve always had a theory that the only reason it didn’t get picked up by Adult Swim is that there is almost wall to wall swastika’s in a majority of scenes.
Game of Thrones Season 8. ‘Underrated’ might even be a bit of an understatement.
GoTS8 is absolutely phenomenal. A stunning achievement. Now that some time has passed and the show has percolated itself in my mind, I’d even go so far as to say it is my favorite season. About half of all the truly great and memorable moments of the entire show are from season 8. There is not a single wasted scene. A million subtle things tie it to every previous season and drive home the themes of the show.
Lol
Is this a bit?
🤔🤔🤔🤔
I sense sarcasm, but I agree with most of this. I predict we’ll start seeing the first ‘the final season of GoT wasn’t as bad as you remember’ thinkpieces in early 2022, and by 2029 it will be an interesting historical factoid to note that ‘at the time, many people were disappointed in GoT’s final season!’
While I am aboard the “S8 wasn’t as bad as people thought it was” train and that a lot of the reaction to it involved factors that had nothing to do with the show per se but people’s relationship to the show, I’m not quite sure if we’ll get the reassessment. People STILL haven’t gotten over the end of Lost or BSG even though it’s been years (although, to be fair, they both sucked some serious balls and none of them involved dragons laying waste to cities or zombie attacks).
A much closer comparison to the end of GoT is the end of How I Met Your Mother. Like in GoT you had producers brave enough to tell a coherent story with a coherent theme that purposely went against traditional narrative tropes while ostensibly following them until almost the very end (Dany’s rise to power in GoT, Barney and Robin in HIMYM), but at the same time giving the more astute viewers extremely subtle hints of what was truly happening (e.g. Dany’s brutality, 45 sec speech and signs of cracks in B+R relationship). Then when the ending came, the fans were enraged that the conventional narrative tropes weren’t fulfilled and turned on the producers HARD, accusing them of ‘ruining character development’!
As far as I can tell, HIMYM is after all these years still very popular despite some people still grumbling about the ending.
As far as I can tell, HIMYM is after all these years still very popular No, it isn’t. It’s very poorly syndicated, despite the fact that it was a successful show that ran for 9 seasons.I see reruns of that show with David Spade and Landon Donovan’s ex-wife 10 times more often than I see HIMYM.
XIO666, can’t speak for all fans, but anyone who could only cope with standard narrative tropes would have bailed on GoT when Ned Stark got the chop. The problem I had with Dany’s heel turn was not what happened — the series was one giant exposition on the dangers of power and any viewer who thought Dany would turn out to be the benevolent ruler Westeros needed hadn’t been paying attention— but that S8 compressed what should have been a longer arc into a few episodes plus a tiny bit of early foreshadowing, largely because D&D wanted to wrap up in a hurry so they could jump ship to the Star Wars universe.So, yeah, the worst of the fannish anger was ridiculously overblown (which is nothing new) and there were great moments in S8 (Brienne’s unofficial knighting for instance). But it still had worse narrative problems than previous series because the showrunners’ agenda for S8 was not aligned with good storytelling.
Well, here’s the thing. People are willing to tolerate some deviation from the tropes in the beginning and middle of the story, but are FAR FAR more inflexible when it comes to the end because of a strong sense of entitlement that has accumulated, i.e. they want to be ‘rewarded’ for all their ‘effort.’
Season 8 was NOT compressed. Add any more scenes and the story would drastically lose its impact. For example, have an entire season of mad queen Dany and MQD becomes just another cookie cutter villain whom you defeat by conventional means, e.g. some grand showdown that would have no doubt pleased the casual fans. But that was NOT the point. The point was to recognize someone like Dany before that can happen and do something about it. Jon killing Dany in the way he did is the culmination of the whole series.
Second, why do you propagate the Star Wars lie? It is an easily verifiable falsehood. The scheduling of the show and number of episodes was decided two years before D&D got the offer from Star Wars. Anyone doing the basic thematic analysis of the show, for example comparing the vision in S2 with reality in S8 can clearly see it was all planned in advance (another example: tons of Dany’s scenes mirror Nazi propaganda posters). So the eagerness with which this SW conspiracy theory is propagated along with all the vitriol against D&D is a clear indicator that the criticisms of the show are not genuine.
Fans are not raging because of any fault of the show, they are raging for being called out:
-for their inferior moral judgement as demonstrated by: supporting Dany, supporting Stannis and forgetting every bad thing Jaime did while denigrating Cersei beyond all reason.
-for their inferior understanding of the themes of the show as demonstrated by: insisting John should kill the NK and not Arya, the one hard-core nerds rage about the most, insisting on R+L=J, insisting Jaime should ‘redeem’ himself by killing the mother of his unborn child (!), insisting Arya keep up with the whole ‘revenge’ thing and sneering at Bran as a good choice for a king.
-for their spoiled and infantile behavior, reminiscent of that character from Misery, in feeling more entitled to decide the course of direction of a show and when the show should end than the people making it.
That’s possible, although I’d suggest the difference between GoT and Lost/BSG is that the latter two were (or became) puzzle-box shows that had no shot at pleasing their fanbases–their endings essentially teased big, all-revealing endings that inevitably fell short. GoT had a lot of plot threads to tie together, but ultimately its narrative was much more conventional. Also, I can’t speak for Lost (never watched it), but BSG’s plot really got needlessly complicated when they decided they needed to have more cylons hiding among the humans. I think one of the things people might come to appreciate about GoT is that the showrunners decided to end it (despite HBOs pleas) rather than stretch it out. I think the problems raised by a somewhat compressed plot are more forgivable than those of a sprawling, extended plot.
But neither LOST nor BSG also carried the weight of a billion dollar selling book series on their shoulders. When the show decided to skip over the whole point of the Night King, that meant there was a good chance that fans of the books would never find it out either. People wanted the show to do what they wanted the books to do but since we’ll never see the books, they’ll always be pissed that what they got is what they got
Right, but I think fans of the book should direct their ire at George RR Martin for having no pages
I thought Season 8 was entertaining and worked on paper, but was kind of botched in execution-I like it a bit more than Season 7 and more than most people. I didn’t think it was the worst thing to ever exist. It was alright. But can we dispense with the notion that ‘your fan theories didn’t come true’ or ‘it was never going to please everyone’ are valid arguments in favor of the season? They are both straw-man arguments.Would some people have never been pleased? Was wrapping up this story an extremely difficult task? Sure, to both. I still think they could have pleased a lot more people if the quality was higher.
What you said is right, it worked on paper but that the execution was botched. I also think that the finale was going to be almost near impossible anyways due to all the external stuff going on about the show. Anyways, there’s a big difference between between “worked on paper” and “the island was like a magical cork that kept evil forces from setting loose into the world” or “the woman who we said was going to be the mother dies and it turns out it’s the one everybody predicted from the first episode of the show”
This is good Kinja.
Which one are you, Benioff or Weies?
Honestly, I liked the first couple episodes.
No sarcasm, no ifs, no buts, I truly liked the first two episodes of season 8.But the moment they just threw the Dothraki away, it all went downhill from there. Same great effects, same great settings, same great performances, but the writing, the soul of the show, was lost and I asked that one question you should never have to ask about a story if you’re enjoying it: “why should I care about these characters?”
Right – it’s not like there aren’t some great moments in season 8 – there are plenty. But, as a whole, it’s not a good season, quite possibly the worst.
‘’I asked that one question you should never have to ask about a story if you’re enjoying it: “why should I care about these characters?”’’
And there’s the exact moment you went wrong. In some works of art that is absolutely the right question to ask. Not every work of art is character-driven. Some are, for example, narrative-driven. Game of Thrones is THEME-driven. Characters in GOT, however rich and identifiable they’ve been rendered are secondary to the deeper themes of the show. It’s not that I wasn’t happy when good things happened to good people and sad when bad things happened, it’s that I was acutely aware of the themes at any given moment and if a moment happened that ran counter to the themes of the show, there was a good chance it would become undone sooner or later. That’s why I wasn’t, for example, running victory laps when Arya was knifing Walder Frey or Oberyn was goading over the Mountain’s nearly dead body as I was acutely aware that this was not the kind of show that glorifies or rewards revenge, at best it gazes upon these moments with silent indifference. My guess is your understanding of the characters shattered when the true themes of the show emerged in the last few episodes after hibernating for many seasons just under the surface, gleefully ignored by most viewers.
Agree to disagree.
Yeah….I’m not really a fan of that commenter’s arguments. They seem fallacious to me.
LOL no. It is not underrated. At least, Season 8 is rated exactly where it should be: under-achieved. It should have been amazing and fulfilling the way Season 6 was. Additional years in writing and production did NOTHING to improve the quality of season. After the strangely-made Season 7, Season 8 was a massive disappointment from production and narrative standpoints.
First off, Detroiters for life. Just the best show. Secondly, I had only seen an episode or two of American Dad when it first started and I was not impressed. But then my girlfriend showed me the episode Blood Crieth Unto Heaven and Holy Shit it’s such a radically different show now.
“You thought I was asleep, didn’t you? ACTING!”If nothing else, the show gives us yet another reason to love Patrick Stewart. Picard alone would make him a legend, Professor Xavier cemented that for at least another generation, but his willingness to vigorously commit to the most insane behavior/dialogue on American Dad is just next level. “You’re a fascinating man, Smith, I would love to do mushrooms with you.”
Kroll ShowBinding of IsaacMandyTranscendental Youth
Kroll Show definitely. I don’t think Binding of Isaac is underrated, sure your average person who only has an XBox for Call of Duty and sports games hasn’t heard of it, but its at least in the top 5 most talked about and praised indie games of the decade. The fact that it is STILL getting new content 8 years after release and it has come to every system this decade basically qualifies it as a cultural institution at this point. I guess maybe if you look at the fact that there are people who have played it hundreds, even thousands of hours across multiple platforms it is quantitatively underappreciated compared to how many hours of entertainment people have gotten out of it, but I literally can’t imagine it being bigger than it already is without changing key elements to make it more broadly appealing.Mandy seemed like it hit cult favorite status almost immediately (with good reason!). The Cult of Cage is strong.
Weki Meki Bois.
There can be only one answer to this:
“Are you fucking deaf? I said, are you fucking deaf? If you are, then you may be thinking of investing in a digital hearing aid”
Let’s just say that going from Star Trek: Discovery to Toast was….jarring.
I went the other way, me and my roommates were constantly referring to Lt. Cmdr. Clem Fandango.
That’s undoubtedly what I would have done had I not watched it in reverse chronological order. I mean, they GOTTA work in a joke at some point where Tyler is on a planet desperate to contact the ship and they finally say, “Yes, I can hear you, Ash Tyler!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MxWlBel-l0
Ray Bloody Purchase…
Somethings that made my 2010s better:Penny Dreadful (damm you Showtime and John Logan for nothing giving me that 4th season Mummy riff you set up in S1).Misfits (S1 is from 2009, but let’s assume America didn’t get it until 2010). Legend of Korra.Raising HopeWarehouse 13The Eleventh Doctor years of Doctor WhoHow Did This Get Made PodcastYou Must Remember ThisRevolutions Podcast
I’m with you on Penny Dreadful and Raising Hope. Penny Dreadful was a pleasant surprise after I found myself unable to get into Hemlock Grove but still wanted a “Dark Universe” style show. Raising Hope was a wonderful spiritual successor to My Name Is Earl, one of my favorites. Plus, it started my crush on Shannon Woodward.
Yay to the 11th Doctor (he gets forgotten a between Tennant’s star turn and Capaldi fan boys) even though he was one of the most original versions of the doctors. Also, Karen Gillan (umm, I mean AMy Pond).Also good shout out to the Revolutions podcast. It really is an amazing podcast series and something that’s taught me a lot about the past 200-300 years of history.
Eleven is my Doctor. And Moffats times-whimsy whimsical nonsense is like heroin for me. I can rewatch Series 5-7 endlessly.And, Revolutions is just so informative about a relatively niche and my only regret is that my memory is so bad I can’t retain it all.
11th Doctor gets forgotten? He was huge during his tenure and the show became even more popular.
Wow I really felt like Matt Smith’s years were largely overexposed and overrated. Definitely more heavily meme’d and popular with the kids than Capaldi’s. If I never hear the name River Song again it will be too soon, though I love Alex Kingston.
Forgotten by whom? I always thought that it was between Tennant and Smith for best of the new Doctors.
HDTGM is phenomenal.
HDTGM has given me as much entertainment as any thing period since it launched.I’m just hoping they cover Baby’s Day Out before the end. That’s like my dream film for them to cover.
They need to record new episodes as long as Fast And Furious movies are a thing.
I stopped listening when they started doing every episode live (or close to it). The live shows suck.
Yay to You Must Remember This! I just discovered it last year and have devoured several seasons in a short period. I think the best way to get someone hooked on this would be to start with the Charles Manson’s Hollywood season.
The Manson series was good but every Podcast company in existence did a Manson series so that shine kinda wore off for me. (Hollywood and Crime did one and it just wasn’t as good as their Dahlia series). I’d probably recommend the Dead Blonde series of Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon.
Also a great season, which I just finished recently.
Ah, I’d forgotten “Raising Hope” was 2010’s. That’s one of the few network shows I can remember that ever looked at how tough it is be in the bottom 20% of earners in the US, but still goddam funny.
Hell yes to Penny Dreadful, Misfits and Raising Hope. Its funny, though, as much as I love all 3 shows, I think they each started pretty good, became great at a certain point (“Possession” for Penny Dreadful, “Jimmy’s Fake Girlfriend” for Raising Hope, the episode of Misfits that shows how Curtis got arrested), and then eventually had a dip in quality that meant each series ended at its lowest point.
Misfits is one of those shows I rewatch every year (thanks British short seasons).The first two seasons are damn near perfect.It’s also one of those giant “what if’s/wish I could see the parallel universe”What if Sheehan doesn’t want to leave and comes back for one more Series?What if Lauren Socha doesn’t go on a racist tirade and Series 4 has to be written weeks before filming?What if they could have gotten the film made?
Yeah, its definitely one of those cases where a seemingly endless series of outside issues affected the show that we got. If not for Joseph Gilgun I think the whole thing would have fallen apart in the later seasons. The Socha thing especially bummed me out because my wife and I had a big crush on her and loved her character.
Yeah. Definitely.Gilgun holds it together.Though I do think Series 4 & 5 do play better in rewatches. Back half of 4 anyway (except for the finale and the horsemen looking like Future Simon for no good reason).5 has good episodes, but, it feels like he Overman tacked on his ending plans for the original cast on to the new cast and it doesn’t ring true emotionally. And I hate Finn with a passion.
Finn is definitely
Penny Dreadful would be my answer too. I really wish we could have seen season 4 because mummies were surely coming. I also think it would have brought home that whole “Amunet reincarnation” thing that unfortunately had to be dropped. I’m glad we got our ending though. I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did.
‘You Must Remember This’ — all the way. I’m pretty sure it’s well-lauded now but her work is breathtaking.
It’s much loved over here in the UK but I wish Detectorists was more popular in the US, and the rest of the world, as it’s just an incredibly lovely, gentle, sweet and uplifting affair.
Terrific shout, what a programme that is.
Have you tried “Don’t Forget the Driver”? Similarly arty vibe, and also has that Toby Jones in it.
I’ve only seen the first episode so far, I didn’t mind it but it didn’t grab me like Detectorists did. But I’ll definitely get around to watching the rest of it soon,.
I think it takes 3-4 episodes to get into the groove (or lack of groove) but it’s worth it. The final season is wonderful.
Requisite:
My wife is a detectorist so we jumped on the show because its such an obscure hobby, and when I saw that it starred Makenzie Crook and Toby Jones I knew it was going to be good. It is almost an anti-show, where there are characters and plot but it just breezes by and events transpire. The commentary and emotions are so delicate that it feels more like a you’re getting a glimpse into people’s lives rather than watching a “TV show,” even the humor is subtle (and excellent), the pacing makes you slow down and relax while you’re watching.
I couldn’t agree more, I love the relaxing aspect to it, and used to comment to my now ex-partner that it felt like we’d been on a mini-holiday break after watching each episode as it had such a soothing feeling to it.
Have you watched Joe Pera Talks With You, out of interest? It’s quite a different kind of show, but is the only one where I’ve felt that it has that same relaxing aspect to it.
I haven’t, I’ll have to check it out!
If you’re based in the UK you can watch it legally on Channel 4’s site – https://www.channel4.com/programmes/joe-pera-talks-with-you – and if you’re in the US it’s on Adult Swim’s – https://www.adultswim.com/videos/joe-pera-talks-with-you
Peep Show and That Mitchell and Webb Look!!
Glad that someone else loved Mosaic as much as I did. I thought it was absolutely tremendous, as did the person I watched it with. I don’t know anyone else who has seen it.
There is only one show this list needed:
I can’t even count the number of times I’ve had to stop myself from absentmindedly singing “Period Sex” or “Let’s Have Intercourse” while at work.
For me it’s The Miracle of Birth! So catchy but i have to be careful singing it, at a minimum I’d get disapproving looks if I was overheard singing “Tear, tear, tear goes your vaginaaaa! It’ll never be its cute little self again!”Also: “Aw shucks, Gee wizz, I got that grade A jizz… My sperm is healthyyy, my sperm is healthyyyy”
When I find myself absentmindedly singing “You ruined everything, you stupid bitch,” I know it’s been too long since my last therapy sesh! Hundro P.
I’m still blown away that there are a team of people who manage to pull this off every week — a full-on musical that openly attacks mental health while being totally odd and irrelevant. It’s flabbergasting in the ambition and execution. Each episode could one day be a successful Broadway show.
Lodge 49. Such a lovely, innocent show. We didn’t deserve it!
Difficult People was a show I’m surprised wasn’t much bigger. Very funny and it felt like an antidote of sorts to some of the more emotional comedies out there that often came off as too self-pitying.
Season 1 of BoJack. Yeah, y’all came onboard afterwards but my god did everyone shit on the first season. If it had been released at a different point in Netflix’s lifecycle, Bojack would be a one-season oddity, remembered only by a handful of weirdos.
Because Season 1….wasn’t that good. I watched the first half then bailed. Then everyone said, “oh, it got really good.” I just went straight to season 2.
is that true? huh. living in a non-english speaking country, i often have a warped view of what’s popular. everyone from my circle raved about bojack season 1 so i just assumed it was a big hit.
“When it premiered as Netflix’s first adult animated series, The A.V. Club was quick to shoot it down, claiming it “spoofs the emptiness of celebrity, but does so without any novelty or true insight””https://tv.avclub.com/bojack-horseman-is-more-early-seabiscuit-than-prime-sec-1798192859
That’s only criticizing the first episode though. The first few episodes really undersell what the show is about (deliberately I think), but look at the scores for the next episodes.
Those reviews appeared after season 2. The initial review for S1 was a C+. http://tv.avclub.com/netflix-s-entry-into-the-adult-animation-race-bojack-h-1798181164#_ga=2.95015454.305527774.1533272455-525726489.1503284145
That review only covered the first six episodes.
What is the definition of underrated? Does it count if the thing is mediocre but it was panned, because the absolute difference between the rating and the true quality is large? Is it just a sense that the thing did not get the love you think it deserved? Am I over-thinking this?
For dumber folks: over-rated = bad
For more self-centered people: over-rated = lots of people liked it but I personally did notI’ve gotten in so many pointless debates about how something can be both good and over-rated (Friends) or bad and under-rated (Chris Rock movies).Also… if I pretty much agree with your comment 100%…You’re over-thinking it 🙂
So on this — if it’s just about underrated, then I will hold my line and say “Thor:Ragnarok” is the best Marvel movie I’ve ever seen.If it’s something that no one watched, then I’m going to say the ‘Formula 1′ series on Netflix. Watch that and tell me it’s not crazy compelling. If it’s something no one loved but I did, then it’s ‘Mortal Engines: City of Bones’ — I’m not saying it’s good but my god is it nuts. It has ‘Iron Giant,’ It has the West and the East, it’s post-apocalyptic, it’s YA, it’s bonkers. In other words, like they said in the 2010’s, it’s everything. Or it’s a Stefon skit. Either way, I love it.
netflix’s ‘the characters’. noone ever talks about it, it completely came and went and will presumably never be revisited. was really hoping we’d see second and third seasons with other up and coming comedians. hopefully with tim robinson’s show popping off this gets watched a bit more, but i implore everyone who considers themselves a comedy fan to check it out.
I still can’t get over the lack of Blade Runner 2049 on your decade’s best list. It tops mine just on the beauty of its visuals and I loved the plot even more. The deconstruction of a chose one story. The continuation of what makes one human themes from the previous movie. It’s one of the very few films I saw twice in the cinema.
And on TV side I’m really sad how underappreciated People of Earth has been. I feel like it’s because no one watched because how could you not love it if you did? It has the same lest help each other be better vibe even the otherworldly threat that The Good Place has. It’s just with aliens instead of demons. They even manage to bring so many to human side. I miss the experiencers. I miss the aliens. I still can’t get over the fact that all the season 3 scripts were written and the show was about to go to production when it was suddenly cancelled.
I’m so happy I’m not the only one who fell in love with that show. I’m still sad it ended so abruptly and prematurely.
It was beautiful and precious and I’m so mad we didn’t get season 3. I need to know if Jonathan got his baby Ozzie back and what happened with the invasion.
TBS has weirdly gated its two most interesting shows from streaming; I WANT to watch People of Earth and Search Party, but they’re not (AFAIK) on any streaming
Some cable channels make it really hard to find their content after broadcast. It’s very annoying and hard to understand – do they not wont money from rerunning them?
Search Party is moving to HBO Max and the third season will premiere when max launches. You can watch it now on the tbs website though. I binged it again a few months ago.
I would have been okay with the third season being its last because there would have likely been some nice resolution to all the arcs.Leaving the show in such a huge narrative cliffhanger regarding to the death of one of its main characters really bummed me out.
What really destroyed me was that the show was renewed and was almost starting filming the third season. And then they pulled the plug. I’m still angry about that.
Only saw it the once in theaters, but I watched the original Bladerunner a couple of times the days leading up to 2049’s release, and I remember thinking that this movie largely improved upon the original in almost every way (the soundtrack not being by Vangelis or even Oneohtrix Point Never prevents it from a true 5 for me). The original movie is something people are way too nostalgic about. Sure seeing it in theaters or on a musty VHS must have been really magical and special and impossible to duplicate, but frame for frame 2049 has more visual splendor to get lost in. Harrison Ford’s original Bladerunner performance was really shoddy with or without the VO, whereas his Decker in 2049 was infinitely more soulful or interesting that what he was attempting to do in the original where he seemed completely checked out. The overall acting by the whole cast is far and away the biggest improvement from the stiff and hackneyed robotic original, but I think the original’s aesthetic casts way too big of a nostalgic shadow that clouded most critics and casual viewers.
The audience and critics will come back around for Dune and Villeneuve and company will get the props they deserved for 2049, and I think that’s because there is no solid nostalgia hurdle to overcome. Audiences are also generally far more well versed and open to harder sci-fi and genre work than they ever have been. The army of teenage girls will devour anything Chalamet is in, whereas that pure teenage heart throb devotion years of Gosling has probably sailed.
Really? Because I mostly remember BR2049 as being rather ugly to look at with all the dust (yes, I know they were making a point about the environment, but still), as opposed to the beautiful cyberpunk setting of the original. And the whole “replicant resistance movement” was pretty dull and recycled out of a dozen YA dystopia movies. I don’t think it is a terrible movie by any means, but much like this year’s Doctor Sleep, a good movie that’s a belated sequel to a classic ends up being rather underwhelming.
The overall acting by the whole cast is far and away the biggest improvement from the stiff and hackneyed robotic originalWait… what?Rutger Hauer, Emmit Walsh, Edward James Olmos, Brion James, Joe Turkel, William Sanderson, James Hong, Sean Young.I agree with your overall point that the original Blade Runner is remembered over-fondly, but, whatever flaws it has, the cast and their performances aren’t one of them.The audience and critics will come back around for Dune and Villeneuve and company will get the props they deserved for 2049, and I think that’s because there is no solid nostalgia hurdle to overcome.There are some hardcore fans of the David Lynch Dune out there. There’s me, and… well, probably a few other people..
I watched Blade Runner first in my early teens on TV and remember being mesmerised by it. Of course over the years the impact of it’s visual cheapened as countless worked borrow it (this is how we imagine the dark, high-tech future). And as I grew up I started to see the problems with the story. However, it helped me to realise that Deckard wasn’t the hero of the story – he was the villain. Deckard is the Javert. It’s Roy who is fighting the Demiurgs. His is the hero quest and the final moment of compassion to his pursuer.
I loved about the sequel that it goes further. Not only K realises that he isn’t the hero and the story isn’t his but this is not where the film ends. We see him make a choice to discard his role. To refuse all those who want him to be the tool – his police superior, Wallace Corp and even the Replicant rebels – and help others escape them too. In a world that treats all of them as objects he made sure that they can all have a little freedom.
I really loved the K-Joi stuff. It was nice to see how these two beings painted as machines had the best relationship in both films and one of the best I’ve seen in the last few years.
I remember going back and forth about if Joi became more than her program through their time together and not being able to decide until it hit me that was the point. After all the whole Blade Runner franchise is about that it doesn’t matter. Their relationship was real. It changed both of them. And it was beautiful.
Exactly. The whole film’s message was more about the point that there was literally no difference anymore between the Replicants and Humans other than the belief there was.
Yes, the how you were created should not decide on your personhood. I think that even the Replicant Uprising was going at it the wrong way. They put all their faith in the special child believing that the ability to procreate would prove them human but Wallace was trying to achieve the same thing just to enslave them more. And as we know from history procreation is no barrier to objectification.
It shouldn’t matter at the end how you came to be just what you’ve become. Human, replicant or even someone like Joi. Even if they are still made in factories if they own those it’s as good way of being born as any.
Except BR2049 is not a deconstruction of a chosen one story, it’s a reaffirmation of a chosen one story, the only ‘twist’ being the chosen one is not who you originally think, and with a plot that heads straight off a damned cliff in the third act both in terms of logic and in terms of thematic consistency. I still like the film overall, but it ended in a mess.
I’m not sure what you mean. It’s the first 2/3rds that play exactly like you standard chosen one story. K discovers there is a special child and then clues he might be the child. He becomes the person on who all the different forces fighting to find the child converge. He’s set up to be crucial to their conflict.
And then it turns out he’s just a nobody. One of many who just happened to find some clues. Sure Anna really is one but she is barely in the story, plays almost no active role and we only learn she’s the one at the very end. There is no hero journey for her.
I can understand that that pulling the rug out from audience can be disconcerting but for me that was the best part. Since K was no longer bound by the chosen one narrative he had to decide who he is by himself. It becomes a journey of self-realisation. In becoming unbound he finds his own path instead of being a tool for either his owners (police), his makers (Wallace corporation) or even his fellow slaves (Replicant Rebellion). All of them want him to give into their cause and make the child an object. He instead chooses to help her and Deckard to find each other and have a choice about their fates.
This is how he finds his soul – understanding the importance of connections with others and choosing his own path instead of one others design for him. That’s what makes him different from Luv.
It is up there with 2001 and The Shining as my favourite films ever made. Every new viewing gives me something more to think about. And the Soundtrack was my most played album of 2018 and 2019.
I was extremely happy that they pulled the rug out from K’s wishful thinking that he was the centre of the mystery. That was great. But just because the Chosen One is not the protagonist doesn’t stop it being a Chosen One narrative. Even so, a Chosen One narrative can work for me if it undercuts itself, as in Dune the novel. But BR2046 asked us to believe that there was a magical individual whose very existence would create the impetus for the replicant revolution to move forward. She was such a Chosen One she didn’t even need to do anything, she just needed to be alive to satisfy the story.
The fact that Rebels believe she’s their saviour doesn’t make it a Chosen One story as they too barely are part of it and really are just there to deliver the revelation it was a girl. Their belief is never validated – in fact Wallece want to make Replicants who procreate so he can just make more slaves not consider them people. It’s more like religion (see also K believing only those born have souls until he finds his) they have and real Anna has barely anything to do with it. They don’t even know it’s her. You could replace her with any other symbol.
It’s not even like Terminator where John Connor is important to the future. The child is just a McGuffin here. It’s starts the plot and there are a lot of factions wanting it but at the end nothing comes of it. There is no change in society all the different groups talk about. There isn’t even and then she’ll lead the revolution as we don’t know if Replicants ever learn about her. No one even knows who she is and most think she’s was a boy and is now dead. It’s just about reuniting father and daughter.We are not supposed to believe Anna is “magical”. Sure she’s special to all those hunting her for different ideological reasons but that film just shows us how they all lead to atrocities – form Joshi ordering the death of the child, through Wallace and Luv destroying all in their path to fabricate more, to even Replicant Rebellion wanting to kill her father – they all use their causes to justify evil. In the end K chooses to show kindness to two people instead and that what makes him more human than any of them.
Great, great, freaking gawd damn great movie that’s unfortunately 10 minutes too long… The pacing can really drags at times.But damn, the story, theme, acting, production, soundtrack and set-up for another standalone chapter are all near-perfect. Agreed, it is really underrated film, at least by audience. As I recalled, the critics loved this film more so than audiences.
I’m fine with length just because every minute is so damn beautiful. But everything else was basically prefect too.
Casual.
I would go with Fargo on this one. It’s one of the best things I saw this decade and it still seems to fly under the radar for most people.
The first two seasons and the first episode of Legion.
First season, for sure.
Yes, some Dad! love.The most underrated thing ever was NBC’s cteepy Siberia in 2013 because nobody else watched it.
I thought Wild Beasts were probably the best band of the decade, but they never seemed to move beyond fawning reviews for their albums followed by indifference. Was listening to Present Tense last night, came out in 2014 but it seems like just now everyone is catching up to it.
Yeah agreed, they always seemed like the odd-man-out in my list of favorite musicians and bands, just because so few people knew of or liked them outside of critical circles. The sequence of Two Dancers-Smother-Present Tense is such a fantastic trio of albums.
Probably the records put out in that time by my friend Christine Fellows. I tell you, it’s great stuff!
Good call, Burning Love was fantastic!
A real fantytale choice!
The entire “On Cinema at the Cinema” saga.Probably underrated on account of it’ll suck up, like, entire months of your life, and who in their right mind would subject themselves to that? But I think everyone should at least watch the first two seasons of “Decker.” They’re free on YouTube, and the comment section on each episode will give you an idea of whether or not you want to dive further into the, uh, lore. Seriously, “Decker” is fantastic. Best action movie spoof since “NTSF:SD:SUV::”
I haven’t met a single person who’s seen You’re The Worst, yet it’s the perfect distillation of navigating modern life with various mental health issues in the most narcissistic and self-involved of times. Plus it’s SUPER funny, usually in the meanest, pettiest way possible. “This baby looks like it should be screaming at an old lady in an Aphex Twin video…!”
I wonder how many here have even heard of The Worricker Trilogy. Besides having a cast led by Bill Nighy and including Judy Davis, Rachel Weisz, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon, Felicity Jones, Helena Bonham-Carter, Christopher Walken, & Rupert Graves, it also features Winona Ryder a year before Show Me a Hero (which I never heard of and can’t wait to watch) and should actually be considered the start of the Winonaissance.
I just read a little of the wiki and it sounds intriguing. Had to stop before I spoiled the whole plot. It must have a huge cast, Winona isn’t even lon the list of characters/actors on the wiki page. Doesn’t look like its streaming in the USA other than on Hoopla (what the hell is that), but I will try and keep an eye out for it.
Person of Interest.It gets a lot of love around here (and AV Club is the reason I even tried it) but it’s a hard sell (difficult to explain how it’s not really the procedural it appears to be). It doesn’t tend to get a lot of attention in the media, and by the end pretty sure only us die-hard nerds were watching.Also The Expanse. Best science fiction tv show in years and has become the very definition of a cult show.
It did get high ratings. But it has neither received the high ratings or popularity of some shows, nor the intense critical acclaim other low-rated shows (Rectify, The Leftovers, The Americans, Halt and Catch Fire) receive on here. It did make their ‘Best TV of the 2010s’ list…..at #73. Below The Great British Baking Show.
I’m going to go with Damages. Kicked off the trend of big-deal movie stars doing prestige TV with the best of them all, broke out Rose Byrne, and enjoyed consistently great writing and supporting performances. Snubbed by your decade-end list, and the 3 seasons that aired this decade were snubbed for any sort of Best Drama nomination. And at this point nobody seems to remember it existed, let alone how amazing it was.
I remember checking out in the second season, but the first one was brilliant. And I think you’re right that it’s a watershed in breaking the barrier between ‘TV’ and ‘movie’ actors.
It was a pretty dang good show. The last season had a drop-off in quality, and I think the contrivance of the flash forwards didn’t work for every season, but it was definitely memorable television. Dylan Baker as jerry Boorman in season 4 particularly stood out for me, even in a show where almost the entire cast was great.
Damages is great but I don’t agree it kicked off the big movie star doing TV trend. Glenn Close had already done TV before Damages, she had a starring role on S4 of The Shield. And beyond that, she really wasn’t a big movie star anymore at that point of her career. The trend of actors who could still get starring movie roles doing TV started much more recently than Damages.I also thought S4-S5 of the show was a step down from S1-S3. Don’t get me wrong, I loved having more of the show. But IMO the reason it doesn’t make lists for this decade is cause it peaked in the last decade.
The Increasingly Poor Decisions Of Todd Margaret. The first two seasons are the best thing David Cross has ever done and more people need to watch that show
I love the damn theme song.
Most underrated pop culture of the 2010s? You guys. By that I mean both AVC and Gizmodo (formerly) Gawker Media. Throughout the last decade, both AVClub and io9 were my go to sites for movie, tv and comics coverage. Random Roles and Morning Spoilers were my favorite regular features, and both sites had (have) the most stimulating comments sections.
Gawker was a favorite news and gossip site, and Deadspin the only sports blog I frequented. The commentary system, Kinja and its predecessors, have always driven me nuts (that and the lack of proofreading), but as noted the smart, amusing community I found there made it worthwhile.I don’t want to sound like an obituary — you’re still putting out the best site that you can — I only want to note that collectively these sites represent an important, entertaining era of internet journalism that deserves appreciation.
Yeah, I was going to say something like this. Most online pop-culture writing seems informed (not always skilfully) by c. 2011 AVC’s ‘smart and critical but snarky’ tone. Same with Gawker and news/current events/celebrity culture.
Even the modern Newswires on this very site often feel like they are trying to reach some mandated level of forced snark, trying to imitate O’Neal’s great work in ye olden days. Just because he made it look effortless doesn’t mean its easy!
I do wish there was a stronger editorial hand that encouraged Newswire writers to develop their own style rather than try to be mini-O’Neal’s.
I’m imagining Spanfeller emails to AV Club staff that say “Stick to snark!”
Let’s not forget how influential the satiric humor of The Onion was, until our absurd reality rendered that satire moot. We now live in a world where it is difficult to differentiate between an Onion headline and an actual news headline.
I have probably spent more hours killing time on the AV Club at work and school than I have actually spent watching movies or playing video games in the last decade. The era when we could count on regular entries for Random Roles, Year/World of Flops, New Cult Canon, and O’Neal’s razor sharp newswires was a golden era of content and we never knew how good we had it until it was gone. I remember my first months on the site combing through the entire archives of those and other regular series reading every entry. There is still good content here, albeit a lot less, but I think the only thing that regularly matched the quality of the old days was the “History of Violence” series (and of course any time they let Will Harris do another Random Roles, its a bummer seeing him talk about waiting weeks or months for them to run stuff he has written and having problems getting paid).
It is pretty much an obituary IMO. When I first discovered AV Club, they were reviewing shows I had never heard of and doing retrospective reviews for forgotten shows. Every feature they had was worth following and the level of clickbait / pure snark articles was low. It felt like a haven for someone looking to talk TV / movies.It hasn’t been that for a few years now. Still better than IGN and other competitors but the site’s gotten worse year over year IMO.
It is pretty much an obituary IMO. When I first discovered AV Club, they were reviewing shows I had never heard of and doing retrospective reviews for forgotten shows. Every feature they had was worth following and the level of clickbait / pure snark articles was low. It felt like a haven for someone looking to talk TV / movies.It hasn’t been that for a few years now. Still better than IGN and other competitors but the site’s gotten worse year over year IMO.
I wonder what effect the increased splintering of pop culture had on AVClub. I havent heard of 3/4 of the TV mentioned in the comments. 10 years ago it would have only been three or four things. Not counting music because I’m in my late 40s so it’s impossible for me to keep up with that.
That was quite an era. Kotaku back then though was very biased regarding to gaming overall, but it is now much more improved and balanced.Sadly, Gawker and Splinter and Deadspin were THE sites to look forward to reading and now they’re all but diminished (thank you very much, fucking Thiel and The Herb). These other sites may need to be restructured or reorganized into… what? I dunno, I don’t want these writers to be let go as they’re great bunch of people working to give us tantalizing, relevant stories. I am not sure how all of this would remains intact for most part while everyone involved resolve… whatever issues they’re going through.
These were the sites I’d go to specifically to read certain writers, like Caity Weaver (I still remember her story on the Paula Deen Cruise) or Charli Anders, who gave valuable lessons on sci fi/fantasy writing. Its not the same as in its glory days, but I do appreciate that there are talented, enthusiastic writers still aspiring to that high standard despite all the crap they have had to deal with over the last few years.
I want to give a little shout out to the CW’s the 100, the little show that could. It got lost on the CW due to all the Arrow-verse shows and rarely taken seriously because it was a CW show but at it’s best it featured some great storytelling, massive worldbuilding, and an amazing ability to have all sorts of craziness occur that still made sense in the show’s universe. Also underrated was Eliza’ Taylor’s Clarke as a new kind of hero, one who’s main super power appeared to be the strength to do things everyone else didn’t have the guts to do and then had to suffer for the consequences for doing so. Credit also goes for how the show handles her and Bellamy and creating one of the most unique and often touching (PLATONIC) partnerships on TV
What’s funny is Clarke and Bellamy got married IRL.
God, now that we’re approaching the end ‘The 100′ — I have 1,000 feelings about it so I have to agree with you. To me, in the early seasons, it was everything that was amazing about the CW. Bold, odd, basic, genre, way better done than it should be (Supernatural — also on my list for criminally underrated, not just for the basics but for what they did for Sci-Fi X-Files-esque genre shows). Now, I’m just a bitter Bellarke shipper angry at a tyrannical show runner who won’t take feedback (also, Arrow – not Olicity but the idea that everyone had to be miserable and that Oliver’s feelings were the only thing ever worth talking about). HOW DO YOU NOT GO WHERE IT NEEDS TO GO? HOW DO YOU NOT GROUND THIS WHOLE EFFING STORY?
Mosaic was fine, but the ending was pure Just World fantasy trash that ruined everything that came before it. I would swap it out for The Keepers, it should have gotten just as much if not more attention than Making a Murderer.
Bret McKenzie’s work as Muppet Song-meister.
Here’s a tour idea: First, Jemaine comes out and does a 35 minute set solo in character as Vlad. Spoken word & “traditional” Romanian music mixed.Second, Bret comes out and does a 45 minute set of his Muppets material.Third, Flight of the Concords takes the stage for an hour and a half, first as their simple duet and finally with the bigger band – Muppets and vampires (to varying degrees) included.
No no, that’s fine, I wasn’t using my brain today, I don’t mind that it keeps repeating this over and over.
Do it all again! (Do it all again.)
Here’s a real obscurity….Golan The Insatiable. Only six episodes were created, and they were burned off in the summer of 2015. But boy, did that crew make the best of the little they were given. If you can somehow find the series, you’ll enjoy it.
I had long since abandonded Animation Domination/Fox by that point after ditching “TV” (cable) so I’d never heard of it until now but I am intrigued by the trailer. It’s on Hulu for now (until I presume it moves to D+) so I’ll give it a shot.
I would also recommend Lucas Bros. Moving Co., that was the only show in Fox’s ADHD block that felt like an [adult swim] show instead of an imitation [as] show. At least one season still seems to be on Hulu (I think this was the only ADHD show to get two seasons?), and the Lucas brothers in general are delightful.
I love that show! I think they’ve said they want to do more episodes in interviews but they haven’t found a home for it.
Definitely had its moments (and Rob Riggle and Aubrey Plaza were terrific), but it seemed to be (in my view) one of those adult animated shows that sometimes confused being ‘LOL shocking!’ with being funny. (See also “Drawn Together” and “Neighbors from Hell”).
I couldn’t get into this one, but I really enjoyed Lucas Bros. Moving Co., which also shared the unfortunate fate of being part of Fox’s almost immediately abandoned ADHD block.
Ya’ll know the “2010s” decade has a whole 13 months left right?
12 Monkeys was screwed by its network and became increasingly hard to find in its last two seasons, but it was tightly plotted and too good for this world. I’ll never forget you, Jennifer Goynes.
Brockmire. This show took the brilliance of East Bound and Down’s first season, but unlike that show it improved upon its premise season after season.I watched the Season 3 J.K. Simmons episodes while spinning at the gym, and I was joking on the laughter, and then crying on a stationary bike like some kind of demented asshole. And I’ve rewatched those episodes about 3 times (while not trying to maintain an elevated heart rate), and I cry and laugh the same way each time. That show definitely deserves more awards and attention.
I’m picking Baskets and Rectify.Those shows all belong in the same category; off-beat critical darlings that no one apart from this scattered group of fans online seems to have heard of. Together with The Leftovers but enough people have been mentioning that one here. Baskets especially, man, talk about a slam dunk. I’m currently halfway through the last season (no spoilers!) and oh man it keeps hitting me with these moments of pure pathos that I’m rarely prepared for. That doubly counted for Rectify, that show was one big gorgeous gut punch.
I’ve had Rectify on my list for a while (it’s fairly far down) but I love Baskets. Well, really, I love Christine.
God, Christine is such a well done character. It would be so easy to lapse into ridiculousness or mockery, but she feels so real in the writing and performance that I literally don’t even think about the fact that its Louie Anderson in a wig.
Amen. Who knew Louie Anderson had dramatic acting chops? Many episodes I’d forget “he” was in drag. Between her Reagan fetish, sacharine vibe, and low-brow taste, I should loathe her but no! I want to know her and be someone she cares about with 100% of her being.
Came here to say Rectify! I know AV Club people love it but I’ve literally never met anyone in real life who heard of it.
Rectify was 26th on AV Club’s top 100 list though. And people rave about it all the time. Not sure I consider it underrated.
Underrated because of the ‘category’ I put it in. People rave about it all the time… within these kinds of comment sections and communities. And it’s a critical darling. But with the general public it seems almost completely unknown.
Rectify was a haunting watch, and it deserves its high slot but… I get it not being known outside of places like here. It played on Sundance, which is super niche, and it’s not the kind of show that’s an easy sell for binge watch on Netflix. There’s plenty of character driven shows that succeed, but Rectify deliberately kept the pace slow, and Daniel introspective. The “mystery” was a complete and utter afterthought, which to the broad audience, can easily be a non starter.
I’m with “the long and winding road” here, outside of AClub it seems no one has heard of it. And personally, I think 26th is way too low.
Not in this corner of the Internet (I have AVC to thank for my awareness of both), but the vast majority of people have never even heard of Review or Rectify. I wanted to love Detroiters but couldn’t stand Tim Robinson, which means I haven’t bothered with I Think You Should Leave despite all the praise it’s gotten.
Review is so goddamn good. Probably one of my favorite comedy shows of all time, not just the last decade.
Lodge 49 is the definition of an overlooked cult masterpiece that was mismarketed. It combines the the grounded depression of late stage capitalism with the lofty metaphysics of alchemy. Its flawed characters actually restores your faith in humanity rather than feeding into pessimism. The show has such an impact on those who have seen it that it’s inspired people to join the Twitter hellsite just to campaign fora network or streamer to grant it the two more seasons it needs to finish.
The scene where Liz basically says “take the money I have now and call it even or I will definitely die or kill myself before you get what I owe” was so funny, sad, empowering and heartbreaking at the same time. I just mentioned in another comments section how hard it is to sum up or sell this show, “Its about life, crushing debt, loneliness and human connection, and possibly alchemy.” Can’t wait for season 2 to come to Hulu so I can watch even if it doesn’t get another one (why didn’t they at least wait to see how the second season did on streaming? Arrg)
This is not necessarily my answer but something just made me think of Rubicon. That was 2010—right before Homeland, The Americans, and a slew of other intelligence/espionage shows this decade. Mad Men and Breaking Bad thrust AMC into this new position and I remember being bummed at the time (it was replaced two weeks later in the Sunday lineup by The Walking Dead) but I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone IRL who even heard of it, let alone watched it.
If Rubicon had been released four or five years later in its exact same form, it… still would have been underrated, but at least it would have a cult following and maybe another season or two.
I remember that when I watched it, sometime in 2012-13, I was really surprised it hadn’t survived. So much smarter than most of the espionage/intelligence community tv out there.
Rubicon sounds so exactly my taste that I’m afraid to watch it because I’ll just wind up sad that it was cut short.
The best show of the decade that no one watched.
Well, I don’t think I saw any anime on any of your 2010 lists so…Something, anything, just one thing anime.
Thank you.
Sad. They need to watch more anime. Everyone does.
I’ve updated my list a lot of anime quite a bit since then, and yeah….they missed out on a lot. Hunter x Hunter, Steins;gate, One Punch Man, Log Horizon, Psycho Pass, and more deserved some recognition in the West.I’m new to the medium, but I can already tell there’s tons of great storytelling I would have missed out on had I never tried it.
In the 2010s I also enjoyed: No Game No Life, Yuri!!! on Ice, Kids on the Slope, Hyouka, Usagi Drop, and Katanagatari to name a few.
Agree on Detroiters for sure.I think the Fred Savage/Rob Lowe sitcom ‘The Grinder’ was hilarious and sadly overlooked by many. It was very funny.Counterpart was an excellent show as well that only got two seasons and little love.
I think about The Grinder a lot. I can’t say it was a great show but it really stuck with me for whatever reason.
The biggest revelation for me was William Devane. He was really funny. The scoring was great as well.
The most underrated movie was Popstar and the most underrated game was Alpha Protocol. As for tv, was Better Off Ted in this decade? If so, that.
Better Off Ted was mostly last decade, but the last few episodes aired in early 2010.
‘Better Off Ted’s diversity episode is still one of my favorite episodes of tv, ever.
Popstar should be a Nathan Rabin article and be called a Fiascopiece. Because they sooo overstuffed that, it was basically a sketch show in a movie but it’s sooo good.Also, it’s going to come out some time that Jason Segel was in the club scene, right? It has too. It just does. IT WAS HIM.
Can I get some love for Amazon’s The Tick? It’s so underrated I can’t even find a decent YouTube clip to upload. But if you saw Season 2 and that bit with Superian spoofing the “can you read my mind?” scene from Superman, you know what I’m talking about.
I’ll give some Tick love.
I also love that they cribbed ‘Attack on Titan.’
Its a catch-22 trying to crown the most underrated pop culture because you’re obliged to pick something that’s appreciated by a lot of people in order for them to get the reference. You can’t go pick something completely obscure because it’ll go over people’s heads. For instance, if I were to nominate the Korean mukbang drama ‘Let’s Eat’ not only would you have never heard of the series, you probably wouldn’t know what the word mukbang meant either. Would that qualify as ‘most underrated’?
Movies: The Grey, Captain Fantastic, Tangled (Disney doesn’t seem to treat this movie as well as they do other hits like Frozen or Moana), Straight Outta Compton, which yes, was Oscar worthy.TV: The Grinder (Fred Savage was so great), Waco (really well told mini series), Love, The Get Down, The First (I would have liked to see Sean Penn go to space), Speechless, Underground, Agent Carter, Masters of Sex.
*sigh* oh Agent Carter, you were too beautiful for this world. Could we at least get a weekly youtube show of just Hayley Atwell looking gorgeous in period outfits? Pretty please?
The Grinder only getting one season is criminal
My vote for the most underrated movie goes to ‘I am Mother.’
It is a cracking movie. The entire set-up, that of a robot selecting to raise a human child oozes just the right amount of unsettling malevolence, no matter how many times ‘mother’ assures the child it’s acting in its best interest. The ending also comes as a surprise, but perhaps an inevitability.
Show Me a Hero is such a great choice. It is one of the best collections of accents ever put together.
it’s so well-made but so damn depressing i don’t know if i could recommend it to anyone. want to feel sad for a month? watch show me a hero!
If you have any thoughts on this. Read. A. Book.They’re still awesome and require zero American Dad watching
It’s almost like you can enjoy both! Crazy, I know!
We Hate Movies needs a lot more love IMO. One of the funniest podcasts around.
technically premiered in the last decade, but it wasn’t until the ’10s that it fully broke out of its “Family Guy rip-off” cocoon and emerged as a beautiful butterfly that Seth MacFarlane had wisely left in the hands of better, funnier writers.Finally The Cleveland Show is getting the appreciation it deserves.
I feel like the only person in the world that’s seen The Congress with Robin Wright, which is in my top ten films of all time. It’s bizarre and inscrutable yet incredibly moving at the same time, and the fact that the marketing for the movie tried to hide how the majority of the movie wasanimated in a style like Tezuka meets Felix the Cat meets Yellow Submarine was criminal.
QUE BUENO ESTAR GUARS. Que grande el tío de Oscar Isaac. Gracias por ese detalle, Danette. Show Me a Hero was great and criminally ignored.
Galavant.
TV: Bent; Cougar TownVideo games: Parallax; Red Amazon; Semantris; Tokyo DarkAnime: Planet WithMovies: Another Day of Life; Big Fish & Begonia
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and You and Me and the Apocalypse two quite funny takes on the end of the world.
Baraka has the best answer. Sam is runner-up.
“archer” is soooo wonderful!
Some of my picks have already been mentioned: Penny Dreadful, Timeless, and Boardwalk Empire.I think that Brooklyn (the film) was underrated despite the awards season love. It was a sweet little story about choosing an easy life (and becoming like the other people who live that life) or striking out on your own. Can we call Mr. Robot underrated? I feel like USA kept it on the air to boost its pedigree, not because it makes money. I love that Rami apparently had no angst about staying on such a small show after winning the Oscar.
I have created an account to mention Search Party (the TV show, not the regrettable movie).
Selfie! Karen Gillan and John Cho in a delightful and gone-too-soon network sitcom.
That’s my pick, too. So much potential, never to be realised 🙁
The Karaoke episode still kills me. Best ever version of ‘Chandelier’ ever.Also, John Cho should be on this list because he should be huge right now.
IMO it’s Venture Bros. Gets very little attention for the most part but has amazing animation, stories, humor, voice acting, etc. People freak out about Rick and Morty but IMO VB surpasses it in almost every aspect.
Agreed 100%. The impressive rolling storylines (and deep character histories), the shockingly sharp humour, great soundtrack (Foetus for life!)…… everything about this show just WORKS for me, I can never get enough. And it’s endlessly rewatchable – I just re-enjoyed S.4 for the 8th time and it just holds up SO well. ‘Operation P.R.O.M.’ is one of my all-time favourite pieces of animation, ever.
Patriot. The name makes it a hard sell but it is simple indie vibe tv comic perfection
TV – The magnificent return of MST3k will never be appreciated enough imo, it’s that great. And this is coming from a guy who worships the original runs (my current ringtone: “This is where the fish lives”.)MULTI-MEDIA – Although it has been around since the early 2000s, “The Found Footage Festival” has really taken on a life of it’s own in the past decade; not only for their ever-improving live events, but also including a weekly YouTube show that rolls-around in the self-same muck that won its audience in the first place. WTF?!! – The entirety of the “On Cinema At The Cinema” world. The series, the Oscar blow-outs, the full Trial of Tim, Dekkar/DKR, the recent feature length movie, and all the rest of it. One can easily lose themselves in this alternate universe and find themselves endlessly entertained. It’s just masterful. LITERATURE – “Building Stories” by Chris Ware. A piece of art which manages to redefine what constitutes a narrative structure, and also how we consume it. Pure genius!
Los Campesinos! Technically they’ve been around since 2006 but their output since 2010 has been incredible. I don’t get how they can remain so under the radar when Romance is Boring, Hello Sadness, and No Blues are three of the best albums of the decade. I genuinely think something sinister has happened with their management – even at their peak they barely made any money, and have limited tours etc. Sadly it kind of feels like their window has closed, but god, no other band is as funny and creative and heartbreaking and fun. LC!4lyf!
Anything created by Robert Pollard.
The Grinder was hilarious but I seem to be the only person that remembered it.
I feel like I am the only fan of Flash Forward. I loved the way it played with the idea of if you know your future, what do you do?
There’s one correct answer and it is Halt and Catch Fire.
Black. Fucking. Sails.
No mention of Nightcrawler… no film this decade better lays out how society is already doomed. Almost everyone completely missed what the film was warning against. Hint: it wasn’t sensational and depraved television news
The music of The Handsome Family! (I know they were featured on True Detective, but still). Endeavour! Inside No. 9!
You forgot to mention nostalgia-fueled circle jerks. Also, hot takes.
All of the “How to Train Your Dragon” stuff. It’s consistently good, even through multiple sequels and a long running TV show. Even though it’s for kids, it has appeal to adults as well. The characters are diverse, and the message is always to care for the creatures around you.
See you yesterday and edge of tomorrow are 2 Sci fi time traveling movies of a different ilk and should be seen for 2 totally different reasons.
TV – American Dad, Childrens Hospital, The Goldbergs, High Maintenance, Joe Pera Talks With You, Easy, Brockmire, Dream Corp LLC, and Toast of London
Movies – Mistress America, An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn, 20th Century Women, Brigsby Bear, Columbus, and Pawn Sacrifice
Music – Boyscott, The Stroppies, Junica, Milk Teddy, No Middle Name, Gingerlys, Cool Sounds, Chook Race, Suburban Living, Literature, and Boomgates
I would add “Hap and Leonard,” “Another Period,” and “The President Show.”
RectifyI have friends who seem to watch every show on TV, and they have no idea what Rectify is. And the only place I found that has really praised it (AVClub), ranked it #26 of the decade. What?
I know there’s only about a dozen of us who feel this way, but I’m going to put this out there… Tron: Legacy.
Huge love for Barsanti for acknowledging American Dad. I haven’t kept up with the most recent seasons, but I watched from the start up through seasons 12-13ish, and it was one of my favorite shows from high school all the way through college. Too often lumped in with the dreck that Seth MacFarlane is better known for, American Dad always had 100x the laughs, brains, and heart of Family Guy. Steve is my boy.
Actually, you know what? Norm MacDonald has a show (and all the earlier podcast/youtube interviews that he did before the Netflix version) is THE most underrated and my favourite thing from 2010s pop culture.
The Guest, mostly for Dan Steven’s abs.
The Middle. Many times a stunningly brilliant comedy, the show found its feet when it discovered that the core cast members could carry big and small stories, and make surprisingly high-stakes situations out of relatively low-stakes.And they RULED inside small spaces, particularly the family car. Some of the best short plays I’ve seen, I saw on The Middle.But it is not in your Top 100 TV of the decade, nor on this list. You reviewed every episode, it stayed fresher and funnier than another show that premiered the same season (five-time Best Comedy Emmy winner Modern Family), you gave the finale an A!I guess The Middle is another example of stuff you guys forgot about, much like the youngest child, Brick.DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE “AND BRICK”?