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 - #3

The Simpsons - Season 6 - The Simpsons is the pop cultural touchstone for generations X and Y.  In the show's heyday, which spanned almost an entire decade, the show's influence went beyond the water cooler and into our lives.  Most of us have seen all of the episodes hundreds of times and our brains have become encyclopedias ready with a Simpsons quote for any situation life throws at us.  The series added new words into the English lexicon and spawned comic books, art, video games, music, clothing, a hit film, and books on surprisingly academic topics such as physics, psychology, religion, politics, and philosophy.  And all this from a cartoon spun-off from a sketch-comedy show.  In many ways, The Simpsons is the definitive American television show.  It has the broad premise of a nuclear family living in the suburbs, which allows the writers to poke fun at all aspects of American culture from the education system to holiday celebrations.  Season 6 is the perfect season because, by this point, the animation was honed but had not yet switched to CGI, and the writers had perfected the craft of delivering hilarious scripts that paid equal attention to high-brow and low-brow humor without losing their emotional resonance.

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 - #5

The X-Files - Season 2 - After quietly debuting on Friday nights (the least-watched TV night of the week) in 1993, The X-Files grew into an unlikely smash hit.  Here was a show starring two relatively unknown actors that was filmed in Canada on a low budget, using a guest cast culled from the local pool of talent, and it focused on the adventures of two FBI agents who travel around the United States chasing after aliens and monsters.  It sounds pretty terrible on paper, but creator Chris Carter and his small writing staff turned the potential weaknesses into strengths.  David Duchovny occasionally underplayed the role of Fox Mulder to the point of near-catatonia, but this is exactly what the role called for: dry humor and the ability to rattle off details about supernatural phenomena ad nauseum with a straight face.  And Gillian Anderson, who was only 26 when the pilot was shot, came out of nowhere to deliver a remarkably assured performance as Mulder's skeptical partner Dana Scully.  She was intelligent and strong, but occasionally displayed a tender vulnerability that gave the show its heart.  The Vancouver locations that doubled as anywhere from Florida to Montana were fantastic because it meant that every episode was cast in a perpetual gray dampness, enhancing the atmosphere of the show, as though a cloud of danger was constantly following our heroes.  Even the Friday night time slot (where The X-Files was relegated until the fourth season when the series moved to Sunday nights and became the the first series on the Fox network to ever crack the top 20 in the Nielsen ratings) was a perfect fit for a science-fiction show about two socially inept people working outside the mainstream and under the radar.  Like most quality shows that gain a following, The X-Files lasted about four or five seasons too long, but the three Friday-night seasons were were like a dark and original hidden gem well worth staying home for.  Season 2 especially found the pistons firing on all cylinders, prompted by the writers being forced to work around the surprise pregnancy of Gillian Anderson.  Agent Scully is abducted and our protagonists are separated, giving the season a continuity that deepened the characters and the mythology while solidifying the series as one of the best ever to air on TV.

Countdown: The 10 Greatest TV Seasons of All Time - #6

6. The Office (U.K.) Season 2 - When I first heard reports about a British comedy show that was supposedly funnier than anything on television at the time in the U.S., I assumed that it was just another sitcom that wouldn't be worth my time.  I enjoy the likes of Monty Python, Black Adder, and Mr. Bean, but I never found them as funny as similar shows on this side of the Atlantic.  Yet, the early 2000s was a dry period for American comedies so I caught up with The Office on DVD and my mind was thereafter blown.  This was not a sitcom - not in the traditional sense anyway.  It is shot in the style of a documentary, but I am hesitant to call it a "mockumentary."  The Office attains a level of realism that Christopher Guest would kill for and that makes it ten times more brilliant.  This is not embarrassment humor.  This is can't-watch-because-it's-so-fucking-awful humor.  There is no winking to the audience.  There is nothing to let us know that they can relax, that everything will be OK for the characters.  It won't be OK.  The employees of Wernham-Hogg paper company are doomed to suffer just like the rest of us.  But the writing and acting on display here milks as many laughs and, surprisingly, as much pathos from the material as humanly possible.  Choosing a favorite season of The Office is a bit silly because there were only twelve (amazingly consistent) half-hour episodes in the entire run of the series, capped off by an outstanding two-part Christmas special.  Yet, with my back against the wall, I chose the second season because of the dynamic between ineffectual manager David Brent (Ricky Gervais) and the new members of his sales team.

Countdown: The 10 Greatest TV Seasons of All Time - #7

7. Deadwood - Season 1 - In 1997, HBO revolutionized television drama with Oz, a show set inside a maximum security prison.  Because the series aired on premium cable, it could go places that the networks would never dare.  Oz had nudity, violence, profanity, rape, and most of the characters were vile, detestable people.  And it wasn't just the subject matter that set it apart from pretty much every show ever to air on American TV.  Oz borrowed from the British school of emphasizing quality over quantity by having shorter seasons with focused writing, film-quality direction, and serialized arcs that told stories with a beginning, middle, and end, like chapters of a great novel.  HBO took the Oz model and used it to create the best gangster show of all time (The Sopranos) as well as the best cop show (The Wire) and the best Western show--Deadwood.  The inaugural season of Deadwood tackles large themes--what makes a civilization, death, the existence of God, greed, friendship, loyalty, love--using distinctly profane dialogue that could best be described as Shakespeare by way of David Mamet.  The other two seasons of Deadwood are excellent as well, but season 1 reigns supreme because of the way it introduces the colorful characters and then logically details how they are pushed together to form a society despite their best intentions.

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.