The Best Of Television, 2012: Part One

I tried doing this last year and failed miserably, as I didn’t manage to finish it in the midst of all the end-of-the-year movie reviews I was trying to do, which I also didn’t finish.

Yet another banner year in the world of the Ten-Four Blog.

Still, this is a place where I write when I feel like writing, and so if I start a list at number thirty-two and flame out at about nine, that’s just something we’ll all have to live with.

Where’d I finish in my “Top 100 Albums of All Time” list? I don’t even remember.

In any case, I ranked this list not on quality, but on the enthusiasm with which I looked forward to each episode. The episodes at the top were “drop everything, stay up late, whatever you have to do to see this,” the ones at the bottom were “let ‘em roll up on the DVR and catch ‘em on a lazy Saturday.”

I started a list for this really breaking down my relationship with each show, but my skill set isn’t much suited to that sort of thing. Instead, I’ll just start writing about things I find interesting, then put the final list up after I finish that. Otherwise, I end up so harried by the end that I reject all research and editing, and my reviews begin to look like:

“’Sherlock’ is a British show from a British channel (check on this later) that stars Benedict Cummerbund and Martin Sheen, and features unforgettable performances by guess starts like ______(check IMDB).  There are only a few episodes every season, and the reason is ______ (copy Wikipedia entry). The show is very, very, very well written by Stephen (Steven?) Muffett, who we all remember from his work on “Dr. Who” and ________ (add obscure thing he’s done and a sentence that makes it sound like I’ve seen it). I enjoyed this show very much. Four starts."

Speed is not my strong suit. If I was the lead in “All The President’s Men,” I’d still be hacking away at the Nixon article.