DISCLAIMER: I didn’t want to use actual TV stills because my lawyer-husband warned me against copyright issues. So, since he says parody is fair game, I got a little help from the kiddos. However, nothing is ever on our TV before 9pm that isn’t on a channel ending in Jr. I promise they have never seen any of these shows!!
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TV and I are more than just friends. For those who know me — at all, really — this is not a new confession. In fact, it’s not even a confession. I definitely catch the subtext in those who say, “Oh, I really don’t watch television.” I know what they’re thinking. TV is lazy. It’s a waste of time. It’s such a loser. I hear you, but I love it, anyway! <In my head, I’m picturing the defiant head shake of Ariel to her father, Triton. Yes, I watch too many movies, too>
When people ask me how I have time to watch so much television, I’m actually a bit confused. I have a preschooler. I have a baby. I have some serious constraints on my social life. When my children both go to sleep, the night suddenly becomes a wide open road. As J. Alfred Prufrock says, “When the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherized upon a table,” that’s when my husband and I scroll past all the Team Umizoomis and Paw Patrols to find something TV-MA to indulge in. But what do we do in the summer when all our favorite shows are on hiatus? My first child was a May baby and a slow eater (I truly understand what it means to nurse a drink now), so Netflix and Amazon Prime actually made it to my baby must-have list. Besides, with the advent of streaming, my appreciation for well-written TV actually grew with binge-watching.
Television demands perhaps the most unique style of writing: Each episode has to have a plot structure but also fit inside an underlying story arc, both within and between seasons. Characters have to retain the qualities that hooked viewers while still being dynamic enough to develop over seasons that might last a full decade. And a series finale? In my opinion, this is one of the hardest pieces of writing to accomplish. While the minds behind these shows have had to train themselves to keep a story going for years, they now have to do something contrary to everything they have been trying to do: END. So, I’m a bit forgiving when it comes to finales — the least I ask is that the show not decimate everything it had built (ahem: How I Met Your Mother!) And when a finale is actually extraordinary, I am in absolute awe.
While I have a lot of TV-loves, I have a short-list of shows that I believe never missed a beat. In no particular order, these are the ones I would recommend as a summer romance that will consistently be there for you and give you the closure you need when it’s all over.
Justified
The show is based on the short story “Fire in the Hole” by Elmore Leonard — a University of Detroit graduate who authored the novels behind Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, 3:10 to Yuma and Out of Sight. Besides his Michigan ties, I have a particular affinity for him because he was one of my dad’s favorite writers. When I saw he was behind the show, I recommended it to my dad. We DVR’d it for him, but when we saw the first episode — we were hooked. The show stars Timothy Olyphant (Live Free or Die Hard, This is Where I Leave You) as Raylan Givens, a US Marshall with a cowboy swagger who has been sent back to his hometown in Kentucky. It is, in a way, a modern Western/crime drama, but the dialogue and character acting alone are enough to make the show worth watching. Opposite Olyphant, Walton Goggins (currently filming Tarantino’s new Hateful Eight) plays Boyd Crowder, an outlaw who deals as well with words as he does with drugs. Both were born to criminals and while their early lives paralleled each other, they chose markedly different paths. Across its six seasons, one of the show’s most powerful themes is how the characters deal with the ghosts of their pasts. And if nothing else, Timothy Olyphant is damn sexy.
Where to Watch: Seasons 1-5 are free on Amazon Prime (Season 6 is available for purchase, though maybe by the time you get there it’ll be free also?).
Breaking Bad
If you don’t know anything about this one, please send me the address of the rock you’ve been living under and I’ll mail you my copy of Season 1. We started watching this show way before it was cool to be watching this show (we’re total TV hipsters, can’t you tell?). Someone told my husband that if he liked Sopranos, then he’d love this. The first season had just ended and it was on sale for about six bucks at Best Buy. We figured, why not? To be honest, I didn’t love the first season– and I think maybe it was because of that reference. Tony Soprano, as a character, I get. He’s compelling because he’s both abominable and sympathetic. Walter White, though? Everything seemed to be pointing to pity: a cancer-ridden father who was never appreciated for his genius and just trying to do right by his family. I was wrong, though; not in my dislike but in my distrust that the show knew what it was doing. For my money, this is the best all-around crafted show of all time. The directing, the acting, and even the cinematography are all amazingly on-point. Most notable, though, is the writing. Vince Gilligan took a character who was on the brink of likability and slowly 
transformed him into someone so loathsome that — as Chris Hardwick of Talking Bad put it, by the last season — no one was left on “Team Walt.” He is a near-perfect Shakespearean tragic hero whose tragic flaw is, I believe, his pride.
Where to Watch: Netflix
Friday Night Lights
This one’s the sleeper for me. I didn’t care much for the movie. I grew up in Birmingham– not the one in Alabama — and I didn’t really get the whole “football is life” thing. So, when my husband (a Texas native) started streaming the show, I just rolled my eyes at him. Even just paying casual attention, however, it didn’t take me long to figure out that it was about way more than football. Before he’d finished the first season, I caught up and joined him on the adventures of Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) and his wife Tami (Connie Britton). The series gave me one of my favorite lines and new life philosophies. When the couple were feeling particular stress at home, Taylor puts their family in this perspective: “This is our blessing, not our burden.” It’s a mantra that stayed with me while I spent nights in the hospital with my dad, nursed my children through bottle strikes and dairy intolerances, and comforted my mom in her final days. In its fourth season, the show faced the dilemma that all shows based in a high school deal with: these kids gotta graduate. We thought for sure the season would go the way of every “The New Class” attempt, but instead, the writers redefined and redirected while adding depth to a show that had already surpassed my expectations. Clear Eyes. Full Heart. Can’t Lose.
Where to Watch: Netflix
Scrubs
So, I’m cheating a bit with this one because it does, in all fairness, miss a few steps. The show spent most of its life on NBC, but was actually produced by ABC studios (if someone smarter than me wants to read this and explain how that happened, please let me know!). Being the network bastard that it was, it got tossed around timeslots, traded between nights, and — when the Writers Guild went on strike in 2007 — it was the easiest to sacrifice (to add insult to injury, they replaced it with Celebrity Apprentice. Who needs writers, right?). The show aired an awkward faux finale to its seventh season and NBC put it on a permanent hiatus. About halfway through the following season, the show switched to ABC and gave itself a proper ending (We’re going to ignore the fact that there was technically a season 9. It’s more of a spin-off than a continuing season; even Zach Braff tweeted: “The first rule of season 9, there was no season 9.” Let’s file it away under things that should never have happened. Like Joey). So, I’m giving it a pass because, you know, it’s like dating that guy who managed to pull himself together despite some pretty legitimate father issues. It’s a show that rewards its viewers (“knife/wrench! For kids!”) — the characters change and grow but stay true to who they are (go ahead and YouTube Dr. Cox rants; you won’t regret it). And while it is a comedy, it takes its setting seriously. It’s about the only show that could often make me both laugh and cry in the same 24 minute stretch. In the end, it’s a show that you only really enjoy if give it the chance to actually tell its story.
Where to Watch: Netflix, Hulu
The Wire
We got two episodes into the first season and sent the disc back to Blockbuster Online (I know; what’s that??). We didn’t get it. It had all the set-up of Law & Order: Criminals on one end, the cops tracking them on the other. And yet, the first episode offered virtually no resolutions. Nor did the second. We didn’t understand the storytelling; the only show we’d really watched at the time that had relied on season-long arcs was 24, and while it took an entire “day” to resolve, each episode certainly offered immediate gratifications. On a friend’s urging, however, we gave The Wire another shot. Before Breaking Bad, this became the show I held as the best-crafted series I’d ever seen. It’s gritty. It takes its time with the story and characters, but the payoff is more than worth it. Each season focuses on a different facet of the workings and corruptions of Baltimore: the crime-ridden streets, the dangerous docks, the corrupt politics, the inner city schools, and, finally, the news media. Each season has its own feel and themes, but is inherently linked to the ones before — like consecutive chapters of an intense novel. I did my student teaching at Mumford in Detroit and then taught on the south side of Chicago and this show portrays urban education in a more authentic way than I have ever seen. Just when I thought I couldn’t take any more Michelle Pfeiffer lessons on Bob Dylan, Matthew Perry reaching lost kids through chugging chocolate milk or Hilary Swank magically transforming the lives of high school students (while simultaneously destroying her own), Season Four did something I thought could not be done: It portrayed the reality of our “failing” schools through an unfiltered lense that is honest and respectful of the true complexity of problems these schools — and most importantly, the children in them — face. The show could have just as easily been set in Detroit; though, I think that is the point. It is the story of the American city.
Where to Watch: Amazon Prime
So, that’s my list. I have a few honorable mentions (Boston Legal, The Office, even Dexter, to name a few), but these are my top picks. Other TV-ophiles may disagree, but the heart loves what it loves.
