Barstool Best Of 2015 - Television

Charlie 1/4/2016 1:30 PM

It’s officially 2016, and another year has come and went. By any standard, it was a weird, weird year in sports and pop culture. So we at Barstool decided to document the best moments of it for you, broken down into seven blogs by seven categories. Best can mean a lot of things: Our favorite, most memorable, most significant, and most important. This list isn’t meant to be comprehensive or exhaustive, just some of what we’ll think of when we look back on the year 2015.

Television

KFC (@KFCBarstool) – Barstool New York

Pick: The Leftovers

Best. It’s a word thrown around way too often. Particularly by your boy KFC and especially in the world of television. Every new show or new season is immediately dubbed the “best” in one way or another. The “best ever.” The “best since…” Somehow every show these days gets marked the best something.

And with the number of shows out there to consume in 2015, you can imagine just how many best’s there were being thrown around by TV viewers. From showtime and HBO to Netflix and Prime, there were more episodes of high quality TV to consume than ever before. We’re still in that Sepinwall “Golden Age of Television” and the technology only continues to get better and the outlets and content continue to grow. So naturally there’s going to be a ton of arguments and debates and discussion of which of these various shows were “best.”

And so these days the best way to really break through to me as a TV viewer is to show me something I’ve never seen before. That’s why if I’m picking a Best TV show of 2015, it’s gotta be The Leftovers. Peaky Blinders was exceptional – but I’ve seen a gang run a neighborhood before. Vikings is the most underrated show – but I’ve seen medieval sword fights and power plays for the throne. What I haven’t seen before, was what season 2 of the Leftovers gave us. Kevin Garvey as an assassin in Hotel Purgatory. Prehistoric cave women in the Axis Mundi between heaven and earth. A new age form of social terrorism from Liv Tyler and the Guilty Remnant.

Chief (@BarstoolChief) – Mad Men Series Finale

We are living in what has been a called a “Golden Age in Television” and Mad Men is a big contributor to that distinction. Mad Men ended its 8 year run in 2015. While it was critically acclaimed and won several awards, Mad Men never reached huge audiences and was somewhat overshadowed by Breaking Bad on the same network(Breaking Bad Finale had 10.3 million views while Mad Men only had 3.3). If you haven’t watched Mad Men, its on Netflix now and you should stop reading now. Seriously, stop because there will be spoilers in this blog.

Finales are naturally disappointing and will always be criticized, but for me this final episode was perfect. I love that the all of the characters found some type of peace. Even Betty(fuck that bitch, I’m glad she died) got her redemption by having an affair with Don the previous season and realized his transgressions were never really about her. Pete got to start over with the life he perhaps didn’t know he wanted, and Peggy was able to “have it all” as a modern working woman. Some criticized it for being too sappy, but those people are miserable assholes.

Mad Men was always about Don. His struggle to get into his own life or appreciate it. He had a great ability to connect to the public emotionally through ads, but couldn’t connect to the people in his family. After hitting rock bottom and having an almost catholic style confession with Peggy, Don was finally able to sell to himself what he’s been selling to everyone all along: that you can have a better a life. Ending the show with the most iconic commercial of all-time(which actually was a McCann-Erickson ad in 1971) was the perfect way to drop the curtain on show.

Franco (@BarstoolFranco) – Barstool Philly

Pick: Hannibal

Hannibal was the best television show of 2015. The iconic movie character is reincarnated to perfection by the writing of Bryan Fuller (X-Files) and the acting of Madds Mikelssen (Casino Royale). Being a Hannibal purist myself I was tentative about an NBC show reviving the Red Dragon book characters. The movie in my opinion did not do it justice. How could NBC deliver? Well they didn’t just deliver they brought the whole damn restaurant and staff.

The show puts you right into the mind of Will Graham, an FBI consultant tasked with hunting Hannibal. Through the use of color, sound, and incredible dialogue you begin to melt into the schizophrenic mind of Graham and begin to lose your concept of good and evil. The lines become blurred and you begin to wonder who you really want to live….and die.

If you have an absolute love of cinematography, music, and perfectly setup shots then you need to watch Hannibal. The gore makes Game of Thrones look like Sesame Street and the acting/writing is a couple of notches above True Detective Season 1.

More so, if you are a lover of high fashion and cuisine you will get lost in a world of sophistication where “eat the rude” becomes completely understandable. Is Hannibal preparing human tartar or is that Kobe beef? It looks so delicious do you even care?

Trent (@BarstoolTrent) – Barstool Iowa

Pick: Fargo

Fargo Season 2 was the best show of the year. Hands down. I said it in a blog earlier this week and I’ll say it again. This show turned me into something I vowed to never become. I became the guy who would jump down people’s throats if they hadn’t seen Fargo season 2. Or at least started watching it. I’d literally scream, “HOW HAVE YOU NOT WATCHED FARGO YET?” right in their stupid faces. The show is good enough to warrant that type of inappropriate response. Trust me. It made Mondays not feel like Mondays. Not to mention Season 1 was great as well. To be honest I never thought for a second that creator Noah Hawley would be able to match the first season that won the Emmy for Outstanding Miniseries. But you betcha he did.

So what makes Fargo season 2 show so great? I’m not a TV critic but what made the show great is that it’s fucking awesome. Plain and simple. More specifically, it follows a local crime family in Fargo, North Dakota (The Gerhardts) in 1979 as they try to stave off expansion from a larger Kansas City mob outfit and it’s goons. It also follows the story of a local butcher and beautician from Luverne, Minnesota who find themselves in the middle of the territory war. Bodies pile up, loyalties are tested and chaos erupts. More importantly, Fargo season 2 creates a world with characters you want to keep visiting over and over again. Despite having a much larger cast than season 1 you’re still just as interested in each character and their story. Sure, there are the funny accents and the snow-covered countryside but you also get fantastic performances out of actors you know (Patrick Wilson, Kirsten Dunst, Ted Danson, Nick Offerman, Jesse Plemons) and some you might not know as well (Bokeem Woodbine, Zahn McClarnon). All those performances put together are what takes this show from really good to great.

Bottom line is this. I haven’t forcibly recommended a show to people like this since The Wire. I’m not saying Fargo season 2 is as good as The Wire. That’s definitely not what I’m saying. What I am saying is if you’re looking for a crime show with large body counts, funny accents, dark humor, a smidge of extraterrestrials and just a goddamn good time watching TV then Fargo season 2 is for you.

(You don’t have to watch Fargo season 1 to watch Fargo season 2 but you should watch season 1 anyway because it’s fantastic)

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