Hey, it's...Ned Bellamy!

I have been catching up on season 2 of HBO's Treme of late.  Last night I watched the second episode, "Everything I Do Gohn Be Funky," and I must confess that I am still not fully engaged in it.  I had such high hopes for David Simon's follow-up to The Wire and while the series has a great cast, its lack of narrative drive and urgency is making it harder for me to tune in.  It has me pining for the July return of Breaking Bad, a drama series that is nothing if not urgent.  The plot line from "Everything" that I found most interesting was the one in which Toni (sublime Oscar-winner Melissa Leo) helps a Bostoner find out how his son died during a post-Katrina looting incident.  I perked up when I saw that the father was played by Ned Bellamy, whom I recognized from The Shawshank Redemption (he was one of the prison guards alongside future "Hey, it's..." post subjects Clancy Brown, Paul McCrane, and Don McManus) and from the late-period Seinfeld episode "The Fatigues."  Bellamy played a mailroom employee of J. Peterman who is promoted by Elaine because she she is too scared to fire him (he wears the titular fatigues).  His deranged catalogue ideas are one of the episode's highlights.

Countdown: The 10 Greatest TV Seasons of All Time - #2

Arrested Development - Season 3 - I didn't give much thought to Arrested Development when it first aired on FOX in 2003.  Here was another sitcom starring Jason Bateman that didn't look very promising in the early ads and would probably last three or four episodes before being unceremoniously cancelled.  I tuned in from the pilot episode and was surprised to find that the show was actually pretty entertaining.  It didn't blow my mind, but the cast was superb and the writing was sharp.  But somehow, by the end of the first season, I had come to believe that it was the best comedy on TV.  And by the end of the second season, it was. in my opinion, the best show on TV.  And then the third season was even better.  I can almost understand why the show had poor ratings and was whittled down to cancellation despite drawing rave reviews and winning Emmys.  The characters were frequently terrible people and the humor was dark, often subtle, and usually depended on the audience having seen multiple episodes to get it.  Not to mention the fact that each installment had more confusing, intersecting plot lines than three Seinfelds put together.  But the show snuck up on me (and grew a sizable cult following) so quickly that I didn't know that I was being hooked until it was too late.  Going back and watching the first season again has shown me that Arrested Development arrived pretty much fully-formed.  It is the type of show that grows on you and, even more than The Simpsons, rewards repeat viewing. By the time the third season comes around, the show is chock-full of so many hilarious in-jokes that the writers could have penned entire episodes without an original thought (or at least an original punch-line) and they would be comedy gold from top to bottom.  Season 3 is not everyone's favorite, and it has practically half of the number of episodes that the first two seasons had, but catching up with it again I am convinced that the series was definitely not on the decline and was in fact cut down at the height of its brilliance.

Countdown: The 10 Greatest TV Seasons of All Time - #4

Seinfeld - Season 4 - Seinfeld put the last nail in the coffin of the traditional multi-camera sitcom.  Apologies to How I Met Your Mother and...and...(I can't think of any other halfway decent multi-camera shows), but modern audiences have concluded that laugh tracks, bright lights, and fake, simplified sets are more of a detriment to comedy than an impetus.  Seinfeld worked because it was often hilariously self-aware of the ridiculousness of the old format, making it the first true postmodern deconstruction of situation comedies.  Never was this more clear than during the show's Emmy-winning, groundbreaking fourth season.  Co-creator/show-runner Larry David and company had the brilliant idea of doing a season-long arc (something they had initially eschewed because Seinfeld was supposed to be about nothing) where Jerry (who, of course, plays himself--a stand-up comedian) and pal George write a pilot for NBC that will star Jerry as himself and ends up being exactly like Seinfeld--following the adventures of a fictional version of Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer.  This allowed the writers to poke fun at themselves and the sitcom genre as a whole, and season 4 finds everyone involved at the top of their game.  There are stretches of episodes that represent possibly the best streak of greatness ever sustained by a comedy series.  Seinfeld remained superb for another three seasons or so, two of which could easily have made this list, but when you see the key episodes below, you will understand why there was no real competition.

Countdown: The 10 Greatest TV Seasons of All Time - #8

8. Curb Your Enthusiasm - Season 2 - Larry David's influence was felt so heavily during the run of Seinfeld that it often seemed as if he were the fifth cast member.  He co-created the great sitcom, wrote many of the best episodes, voiced the beloved "character" of George Steinbrenner, and provided the basis for the character of George Costanza.  Thus, when the world was deprived of Seinfeld in 1998, it made perfect sense that Larry David would be the one to star in (and write) a show that continued the legacy of "nothing" -- even though he never really acted in anything before.  Striving for a more realistic and brutal sense of humor, David took Curb Your Enthusiasm to HBO, which allowed him to push the boundaries that he could never touch on his previous show.  Curb is amazingly still on the air now 11 years after the initial hour-long mockumentary functioned as a back-door pilot, and it has solidified its status as one of the funniest shows of all time.  There are seasons of Curb that have more of an overall story arc, but season 2 stands out as the best because it contains ten episodes of pure comedic brilliance.