Top 10 TV Shows of 2018

In what many consider it's "Golden Age", TV continues to astonish, with each broadcast season effectively becoming an embarrassment of riches for viewers. There's a little something for everyone, and entirely too much for any one person to catch up on all of it, so if your favorite isn't on here, assume I missed it. Or just assume I hated it. Whichever works for you.

10. Barry

• Network: HBO
• Showrunners: Alec Berg and Bill Hader

What started as a goofy comedy about a hitman trying to make it as an actor evolved in it's final episodes into something much more tragic, a story of a damaged man trying, and largely failing, to separate his two lives. Make no mistake, Barry, even at it's darkest, is still very funny, due largely to the engaging, career-best performances of Bill Hader and Henry Winkler, who both won a well-deserved Emmy for it last year, but the show is at it's best when it gives us small peaks into the mindset of Barry, who simply wants a greater purpose than to just be a killing tool and finds himself being used by pretty much everyone. It's funny, dark, and ends on one of the most compelling cliffhangers of the year, never overstaying it's welcome and leaving you on the edge of your seat for season 2.

Best Episode: Chapter 7: Loud, Fast, and Keep Going is the episode that cements the show as a tragicomedy, as Barry's actions (or lack thereof) blow up in his face, ending in him committing a despicable act before managing to give the performance of a lifetime.

9. The Shivering Truth

• Network: Adult Swim
• Showrunner: Vernon Chatman

From the guy whose given us such weirdo hits as Wonder Showzen and Xavier: Renegade Angel comes yet another animated series that's thoroughly out there. The Shivering Truth is an anthology series that often floats from story to story with no logic or reason, but rather than become irritating, the over-serious narration and increasingly unpredictable narrative becomes largely entertaining and occasionally profound, telling stories of love, loss, and terror over the course of an air-tight eleven minutes. It certainly won't be everyone's cup of tea, but those into horror, surreal humor, or gorgeous claymation will probably enjoy it.

Best Episode: Fowl Flow features series-best animation as it tells a series of stories about the patrons of a bar, including a man trying to sell a hand, a man who steals the stars, and an oddly sweet love story that ends in a moment of quiet redemption.

8. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

• Network: Netflix
• Showrunner: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

A dark, gritty reboot of Sabrina from the same people that brought us Riverdale shouldn't be as good as it is, but somehow, it totally works. A spiritual successor to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina commits to a full gothic horror tone, with cinematography, music, and production design that evokes both Vertigo comics and the drive-in horror movies of the 50's. A starmaking turn from Kiernan Shipka also makes Sabrina, a character who could've become someone annoying or indecisive, a genuinely charming hero caught between two worlds and her final choice feels like a sad inevitability.

Best Episode: Feast of Feasts is the show's most impressive balancing act, a darkly funny odd couple pairing as Sabrina must prepare her worst enemy, Prudence, to be sacrificed in a dark ritual. It's funny, unexpectedly gruesome, and ends on a killer cliffhanger.

7. Legends of Tomorrow

• Network: CW
• Showrunners: Phil Klemmer and Keto Shimizu

The black sheep of the DCTV family, Legends of Tomorrow continues to thrive by reinventing itself from a more serious superhero dramedy to a wacky "monster of the week" time-travel romp. New additions to the crew (including Matt Ryan's John Constantine, which is the definitive take on the character that was nearly squandered by NBC) add to the cast's lively chemistry without ever bogging it down, and the new status quo (Demons! Bureaucrats!) manages to keep things fresh. While Arrow and The Flash are solid, they can never quite match the hilarious highs of the little spin-off that could.

Best Episode: The Good, The Bad, and the Cuddly is a satisfying conclusion to the third season, perfectly paying off the various threads set up throughout it and bringing back one of the best running gags in TV history in an immensely surprising fashion.

6. Legion

• Network: FX
• Showrunner: Noah Hawley

While the sophomore season, based largely around the decision to slow the story down and expand upon Legion's supporting cast, didn't always pay off, the show never stopped being as compelling and visually dazzling as it's first season. It also gave Amahl Farouk, a villain that's a perfect mixture of devilish charm and chilling sadism, who often left you on the edge of your seat with each appearance, culminating in a rousing, gripping final battle in the mind that pulls the rug out from under you and leaves you entirely uncertain of who to root for.

Best Episode: Chapter 14, a sad anthology of the many possible lives of David had he not gone to Clockworks, is an emotional rollercoaster that ends with a heartfelt moral ("Don't worry about what might have been. Focus on now.") and kickstarts the season into the endgame.

5. Homecoming

• Network: Amazon Prime
• Showrunners: Eli Horowtiz and Micah Bloomberg 

Homecoming was something of an oddity. A tightly-paced Hitchcockian thriller compacted into 10 half-hour episodes, all directed by Mr. Robot helmer Sam Esmail, and it ended up being excellent. The show's visual style was a rare example of style matching substance, as it alternated between two different aspect ratios as we slowly watched the mysteries of the "Homecoming" program unravel in both flashbacks and the modern day before coming together in one of the most satisfying shots in any medium this year. It's anchored by great work from some serious heavy-hitters, led by Julia Roberts in her best performance in years and supported by the likes of Bobby Cannavale as a sleazy mastermind that's never quite what he seems to be, a reflection of a narrative that does the same: keep you guessing until everything comes together, then take it all apart again.

Best Episode: Protocol, the episode where it all comes together, is a masterwork in tension, as we see two separate investigations in two different come closer and closer together in agonizing detail.

4. Luke Cage

• Network: Netflix
• Showrunner: Cheo Hodari Coker

Luke Cage's second season was a clear case of a showrunner taking the criticisms of the first season to heart and working to improve them, and it showed. Season 2 was a darker, better paced, and more emotionally complex follow-up, and it solved it's villain problem by introducing Bushmaster, a shadow archetype to Luke who proved an intimidating but ultimately sympathetic foe, and expanding on Mariah Dillard as she slowly decayed into everything she hated. More importantly, we got to return to Harlem, one of the most fleshed-out and charming locales in the MCU, and see the show's staple of characters again, which makes the cancellation, and the realization that we'll likely never see most of these characters again, an immensely bitter experience.

Best Episode: For Pete's Sake, where Danny Rand comes to town and we all get to see just how great a Heroes for Hire series could have been.

3. BoJack Horseman

• Network: Netflix
• Showrunner: Raphael Bob-Waksberg

It's the often year-long absences between seasons that makes one forget that BoJack Horseman's take on Hollywood and our culture as a whole are increasingly on-point, as this season tackled MeToo, addiction, and the way our society often buries uncomfortable abuse for it's short-term benefit. Even at it's grimmest, the show was still brilliantly written, full of well-planned jokes (Mr. Peanutbutter's reference to Dazed and Confused hit me like a ton of bricks and made me laugh so hard I had to pause the show) and continued development for it's likable (often in spite of themselves) cast of Hollywoo oddballs. Some were critical of the season, arguing the central arc of BoJack descending into addiction after seemingly getting things together last season was a massive step backwards, but I feel it's meant to be frustrating. Going clean isn't an easy process, and the show's willingness to tackle and portray it as a slippery slope makes it feel real, even if it also includes a sex robot named Henry Fondle.

Best Episode: A couple of all-time great episodes scattered throughout here, but the winner has to be Free Churro, a 23-minute monologue on death, love, and struggling with recognizing flawed parents as people that grabs you immediately and never lets go until the credits roll.

2. Daredevil

• Network: Netflix
• Showrunner: Erik Oleson

Like most of Marvel's Netflix roster, Daredevil was cut down in it's prime, but new showrunner Erik Oleson managed to restore it to it's former glory, free of the complicated mystical mumbo-jumbo that dragged down the second season, and end it on a cathartic, arguably definitive note. Returned to it's gritty noir roots, Daredevil gave the oft-criticized Karen Page and Foggy Nelson much more to do rather than simply bog Matt down, while the newcomers of Agent Ray Nadeem, the show's moral center, and Benjamin Pointdexter, a terrifying, yet inexplicably sympathetic new baddie, prevented the plot from ever slogging as much of Marvel's Netflix output tended to do when confronted with 13 episodes, while the always great fight scenes (That prison fight! The bulletin brawl!) left the adrenaline pumping.

And of course, we got to see the glorious return of Wilson Fisk, the definitive big bad brought to life by Vincent D'Onofrio in one of the greatest performances on television, for a final showdown with Matt Murdock, played with such scrappy charm by Charlie Cox that it makes me hope this isn't the last we see of him, in a winding, complex story that builds to a conclusion that, outside of a loose thread here and there, brings the story of Hell's Kitchen to a nice conclusion.

Best Episode: Karen, focused almost entirely on the backstory of love interest Karen Page, takes one of the show's most inconsistent characters and turns her into one of it's best before ending with one of the best fight's in the series, a vicious, take no prisoners scrape between Matt and Bullseye that takes one of the most iconic scenes in the comics and turns it on it's head.

Honorable Mentions:

• Happy! (SyFy)
• Last Week Tonight (HBO)
• This is Us (NBC)

1. Atlanta: Robbin' Season

 

• Network: FX
• Showrunner: Donald Glover

After an almost unbearably long hiatus, Atlanta returned with a new season, titled "Robbin' Season", that managed to outdo it's predecessor by going to a much darker, more thought-provoking place and being unafraid to experiment. On top of the usual awkward, often bizarre humor, the show dabbled in outright horror at points, as jack of all trades Donald Glover used the genre to give his thoughts on the nature of celebrity, culture and being caught between two worlds. Every episode felt like a bizarre trip and was always the highlight of the week, and the finale, which came too soon, was both a good conclusion and left me excited to see where these characters, seemingly on the brink of superstardom, go from here. Here's hoping I won't have to wait until 2020 to see it.

Best Episode: Teddy Perkins, a 40 minute horror movie that was shown without commercial interruption, is the show at it's strangest, but also it's deepest, as we see the tragic tale of Perkins, a clear analogue for Micheal Jackson played to chilling perfection by Glover himself, as he leads Darius through his mansion for a piano before the story crashes to a violent conclusion. It takes a page from Get Out's notebook and uses horror as a set-up for social commentary before ending on an utterly haunting note.