1. Broad City (Comedy Central)
2. True Detective (HBO)
3. Bob's Burgers (Fox)
4. New Girl (Fox)
5. You're The Worst (FX)
6. Black-ish (ABC)
7. Masters of Sex (Showtime)
8. Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Fox)
9. Veep (HBO)
10. Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (HBO)
11. The Leftovers (HBO)
12. The Mindy Project (Fox)
13. Community (NBC)
14. Rick And Morty (Cartoon Network)
15. Transparent (Amazon Prime)
16. Enlisted (Fox)
17. Inside Amy Schumer (Comedy Central)
18. Saturday Night Live (NBC)
19. The Affair (Showtime)
20. How I Met Your Mother (CBS)
21. Sonic Highways (HBO)
22. Halt And Catch Fire (AMC)
23. Suits (USA)
24. The Strain (FX)
25. Sons Of Anarchy (FX)
26. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Nickelodeon)
27. Playing House (USA)
28. Kroll Show (Comedy Central)
29. Key & Peele (Comedy Central)
30. Parenthood (NBC)
31. Marry Me (NBC)
32. Married (FX)
33. True Blood (HBO)
34. The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (CBS)
35. The Pete Holmes Show (TBS)
36, The Late Show with David Letterman (CBS)
37. Funny Or Die presents Billy On The Street (Fuse)
38. The Soup (E!)
39. The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
40. Drunk History (Comedy Central)
41. Selfie (ABC)
42. Suburgatory (ABC)
43. Gracepoint (Fox)
44. Silicon Valley (HBO)
45. The Bridge (FX)
46. Justified (FX)
47. Parks & Recreation (NBC)
48. Benched (USA)
49. Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey (Fox)
50. Too Many Cooks (Cartoon Network)

- I'll never claim to be any kind of connoisseur about TV, I mostly just like what I like, but I try to keep up with things and say something at the end of the year (for some context: my year-end TV lists for 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006). This was a pretty good one, I think. A better time for TV comedy than a lot of people would probably tell you, while cable dramas have been in kind of a good-not-great rut as far as I can tell.

- It was definitely a good year for new shows, judging from my top 10. I respect a lot of the arguments against True Detective, but I don't really care, I loved every silly damn minute of it, and can only hope they can do something great with a less promising cast next year. Black-ish gave me some renewed hope for network sitcoms, while You're The Worst broke out of the pack of usually unpromising cable sitcoms.

- Happy Endings is gone, but I'm glad that its cast member diaspora has found homes in good established shows (New Girl, The Mindy Project) and promising new ones (Marry Me, Benched).

- A lot of shows I liked went off the air this year, and some shows ended on a higher note than I expected (How I Met Your Mother, True Blood) while Sons Of Anarchy was mostly a big letdown after a pretty great penultimate season. I think I'm just down on finales in general at the moment, considering that in the last month SOA, The Affair and Gracepoint all aired finales that made me bump them down far lower on this list than I thought they'd end up. But I'll miss Craig Ferguson and Pete Holmes doing their underrated loopy versions of late night, and am still trying to savor the final months of Letterman's run and hope for the best with Colbert's transition. And I've got lots of sympathy for Emily Kapnek, who got 2 very funny and underrated satirical sitcomes, Suburgatory and Selfie, canceled this week. And Enlisted was the best show to be dumped on Friday night for a half season in quite a while.

- The Leftovers, The Strain, Halt And Catch Fire, and The Affair all seem like part of an underachieving claass of cable dramas that will probably be put out of their misery after 2 or 3 seasons, like The Bridge and The Newsroom just were. But I like all those shows, and the similarly undistinguished sophomore Masters of Sex, a lot more than a lot of the prestige dramas I'm supposed to have loved, and I'll keep happily watching them as long as they're on.

- Honorable mention to shows that I've liked but haven't kept up with new episodes of (Orphan Black, The Americans, Sherlock), and to the various popular streaming shows that I still have not gotten around to checking out. Dishonorable mention to Louie and Girls, which continue to be "different from regular comedies" in ways that are increasingly unfunny and unrewarding, and I hope I will manage to stop watching both in 2015.

- The worst bullshit you probably think should be on this list is Fargo, and I encourage you to come fight me about it. I've got lots of ammo. But at least The Newsroom flopped into the grave so horrifyingly and entertainingly that I almost was tempted to include it as some kind of hate watch tribute.

- Too Many Cooks was both worth and not worth the hype. But it's better than most Adult Swim shows because it's never going to ask us to come back every week to watch minor variations on the same gag and pretend it doesn't suffer from diminishing returns (hi, Eric Andre fans).

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 27, 2014 at 2:54 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.