Best of the 00s: Odds and Ends

Okay, so this has gotten a little out of hand, and obviously is going to have to bleed over into the new year. I'm sure you don't care, but: I forgive myself for being completely unable to adhere to any sort of posting timetable. Cue the last minute and a half of "A Quick One While He's Away."

I think this is probably my favorite individual television scene of the decade - this was the first new episode I watched after catching up on the show, and after purchasing it on iTunes, I kept returning to this scene and watching it over again. The third season of Battlestar Galactica was wildly uneven quality-wise, but it contains some of my favorite episodes and moments of the entire series. I was sort of baffled by the people who criticized BSG for getting too religious in the final season - from the very beginning, the show featured its characters attempting to explain and contend with circumstances beyond their control in a manner that always seemed to be at least partially rooted in religious faith (not to mention the LDS-referencing touches left over from Glen Larson's original series.) This scene highlights that sense of faith, viewed through the prism of the show's unique mythology. I don't know that the decade in television had any other couple put through the grinder quite like Helo and Athena, but Tahmoh Penikett and Grace Park's ability in playing the highs and lows made them one of my favorite things about a very good show.

Best of the 00s: Best Showrunners, Creators and Head Writers

I can't decide whether I want this list to be super-detailed or not. I'll just leave it as is and adjust if the mood strikes.

J.J. Abrams (Felicity, Alias, Lost, Fringe)

Judd Apatow and Paul Feig (Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared)

Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, True Blood)

Tina Fey (Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock)

Bryan Fuller (Wonderfalls, Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies)

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant (The Office, Extras)

Shonda Rhimes (Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice)

Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage (The O.C., Gossip Girl, Chuck)

Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars, Party Down)

Matthew Weiner (Mad Men)

Best of the 00s: Best Film Soundtracks

Almost Famous

It's no surprise that Cameron Crowe could put together a winning collection of seventies rock; his use of "Tiny Dancer" endures as a great musical moment.

Standout Songs: "Tiny Dancer," "Tangerine"

Josie and the Pussycats

This comic book movie/teen satire didn't need to have a great soundtrack, but the power pop that appears throughout would work even independent of the film.

Standout Songs: "Three Small Words," "Spin Around"

The Royal Tenenbaums

In my opinion, Mark Mothersbaugh's best score for Wes Anderson, plus dreamy tracks from the Rolling Stones and Nico, among others.

Standout Songs: "Needle in the Hay (if anyone wanted a 2.5 minute explanation of why Luke Wilson's AT&T ads are currently depressing me, that clip's as good as any)," "She Smiled Sweetly"

Kill Bill, Vol. 1

Yet another of Quentin Tarantino's patchwork collections of songs - however disparate, they always fit together in his vision.

Standout Songs: "Battle Without Honor or Humanity," "Nobody But Me"

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

A soundtrack I admittedly like better than the film it came from - Seu Jorge's Portuguese covers of David Bowie songs are a wholly unique contribution to the decade's music in film.

Standout Songs: "Starman," "Search and Destroy"

Marie Antoinette

Using New Wave to score a story of 18th-century teen royals shouldn't have worked, but it somehow completes Sofia Coppola's shimmering vision.

Standout Songs: "Hong Kong Garden," "What Ever Happened"

Once

It's no surprise that a film that portrays the process of creating music with such care resulted in a beautiful soundtrack, but it still feels revelatory.

Standout Songs: "Falling Slowly," "When Your Mind's Made Up"

Juno

What makes this soundtrack great: even if Kimya Dawson makes you want to light a rhyming dictionary on fire, there are still light retro tracks and beautiful songs like Cat Power's cover of "Sea of Love" that redeem it.

Standout Songs: "Anyone Else But You," "Sea of Love"

Twilight

A perfect mix of music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas' indie sensibility and author Stephenie Meyer's taste in moody rock.

Standout Songs: "Flightless Bird, American Mouth," "Supermassive Black Hole"

Best of the 00s: Odds and Ends

Camp is a bit hit-or-miss as a complete film, but its stagings of musical numbers from shows-within-the-show (most, if not all of which are from musicals that hadn't made it to the screen at the time) are fairly spot on. The increasing Oscar buzz around Anna Kendrick makes this as good a time as any to share this clip:

A list that never quite became as fully formed as I liked was "Musicals I Hope Will Be Made into Movies in the 2010s." However, Company is unequivocally at the top of that list. It's a fantastically cynical show, which might change some musical-hating minds, and it's a great ensemble piece. "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going" played so well in Dreamgirls (talk about your uneven movies), I'm dying to see an actor with pipes to do the same to "Being Alive." It would also be nice to see someone new - that is, outside of the Marshall-Condon-Ortega-Shankman group - offer a different take on the twenty-first century film musical like the eye Tim Burton brought to Sweeney Todd. Maybe Sam Mendes? His films can tend to be terribly self-serious, but the experience from his celebrated stage take on Cabaret plus his affinity for marital angst just might work for Company.

Quoted IX

"My experiences as a fan have changed how I think about media politics, helping me to look for and promote unrealized potentials rather than reject out of hand anything that doesn't rise to my standards. Fandom, after all, is born of a balance between fascination and frustration: if media content didn't fascinate us, there would be no desire to engage with it; but if it didn't frustrate us on some level, there would be no drive to rewrite or remake it."

-Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, p. 258

There's nothing more insanity-provoking that being caught in a race-to-the-finish project for class when you're actually really interested in the source you're reading. I had to sort of blow through this one, but I look forward to returning to this work in the future.

Best of the 00s: Odds and Ends

Alas, Tiger Woods going down in tawdry flames and Thierry Henry's handball scandal (I don't know, it's a soccer thing. He might get banned from early rounds of the World Cup?) probably means that we will never see the likes of this awesomely ridiculous commercial gracing our television screens in the 2010s.

I love the badass dismissals of "yesterday," followed by the delightful jingle.

Best of the 00s: Best Procedurals

Procedurals: also known as cop/doctor shows, or shows that I enjoy and frequently watch in syndication. They're ubiquitous, but here are five that stand out to me, each with a representative episode.

Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (NBC, 1999-present)

Every person has their favorite L&O; mine is SVU. The show is sometimes criticized for the intensity of its characters' "taking it personally" (particularly Christopher Meloni's Elliot Stabler) but I think the element of the personal, and its execution by SVU's rock-solid cast, is what makes SVU the best Law and Order franchise.

Episode: "Ghost", February 22, 2005

This episode serves as the follow-up to 2003's excellent "Loss," where the show's A.D.A Alexandra Cabot went into the Witness Protection Program after being shot while working on a case involving a powerful drug cartel. Cabot's return in "Ghost" to testify against that cartel features a great performance by Stephanie March as Cabot grapples with the past and rejoins colleagues who believed she was dead.

Bones (Fox, 2005-present)

I got sucked into watching Bones in reruns on TNT this summer. (They show two episodes a day! You can watch a whole season in two weeks!) The show utilizes unique characterization in a manner that frequently elevates what can be rote about mystery procedurals, particularly in the standout chemistry between Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz.

Episode: "Aliens in a Spaceship", November 15, 2006

This episode, which introduces the serial killer The Gravedigger, is Bones firing on all cylinders. The Gravedigger's m.o. of placing victims in sealed containers and demanding ransom be paid before their air runs out comes brilliantly into play as Brennan and Hodges find themselves trapped underground in Brennan's car and use their collective scientific ingenuity to craft a series of MacGyver-esque survival-prolonging tactics. Shows featuring intelligent characters don't always utilize their alleged knowledge - this episode was a refreshing example of what can happen when they do.

Cold Case (CBS, 2003-present)

There is one surefire way to get me to weep like a baby: put on an episode of Cold Case. Sure, it'll take about fifty minutes, but when that ending montage comes where the ghost of the victim appears to their loved one to show that they're finally at peace, I am Cold Case's bitch. Recently I was watching an episode I hadn't seen before, and midway through I was all, "I'm totally okay. I'm definitely not going to cry during this one," and twenty minutes later I was reaching for the tissues.

Episode: "Forever Blue", December 3, 2006

I've written about this episode, which centers on the tragic story of two police officers in love in the late 60s, before, and there's really not much to add to that. I'll just say that I watched it again recently and not only did it still make me weep at the end, but it's become one of those things where knowing what happens at the end makes me weep throughout the episode.

House, M.D. (Fox, 2004-present)

Did Fox ever luck out with Hugh Laurie - he has defined the character of Gregory House so thoroughly that he carries the show over ebbs and flows in quality that would destroy one with a less charismatic lead. The show also benefits from functioning in a clearly defined niche - diagnostic medicine - which distinguishes it from other shows in a genre that can often feel tired.

Episode: "House's Head", May 12, 2008

This first part of the fourth season finale started with an intriguing premise: how does House solve a diagnostic mystery when a) he's the patient and b) he has a head injury resulting from a bus accident. The hour of step-retracing and fantasy sequences culminated in a gut-punch of an ending when House realized that his clues were pointing to Anne Dudek's Amber having been in the accident with him, which in turn lead to what is almost certainly the show's best-executed character exit.

Grey's Anatomy (ABC, 2005-present)

If it were a more consistent show, Grey's would probably be on my best dramas list. However, the highs have been so high that the show is impossible to ignore. When ads originally ran for the show, it didn't seem like it would depart too far from the standard medical show format. The tack of having patient problems reflect the interpersonal relationships of the doctors wasn't always as subtle as it could have been, but with a solid cast, creator Shonda Rhimes made it work. Every time I think I'm ready to give up on Grey's, it sucks me back in.

Episode: "It's the End of the World"/"As We Know It", February 5/12, 2006

Grey's was on fire in its second season (for serious, the season was concluding while my sophomore year in college was coming to a close and my friends and I were totally obsessed. One of my non-watching friends came by during one of the season's final episodes when he was leaving for the summer, and we were all fully watching the TV over his shoulder as we hugged and said our goodbyes.) and this two-parter - the first part of which was ABC's post-Super Bowl selection - is a perfect example of the show firing on all cylinders. Like many Grey's sweeps episodes, this pair featured an outlandish central case - a man comes in with an unexploded bomb lodged in his chest. Sterling guest performances by Christina Ricci as the EMT holding the bomb in place and Kyle Chandler as the bomb squad leader, plus the storyline of George assisting Bailey as she gave birth (which included the notorious first appearance of "va-jay-jay") made this a Grey's classic.

Best of the 00s: Best Reality Shows

Recently, my mother asked me if I thought reality would decline as a television genre in the coming years. The long answer is: barring some sort of massive paradigm shift in the way that broadcast networks function and measure success, I think reality is too cheap to die. It often gets decried as television's wasteland, and sometimes that's certainly true. Here, though, are ten shows that, in my opinion, either epitomized all the potential for quality in reality programming or were so terrible or over-the-top that they went around bad and came back around to awesome:

The Amazing Race (CBS, 2001-present)

I feel like with CBS reality, you're either a Survivor person or an Amazing Race person. I watched all of Survivor's Australia season, and most of the first one, but otherwise it just never spoke to me. (I suppose there are probably also Big Brother people, but we won't get into that mess.) Survivor seems like it's tailored to a specific kind of personality, while The Amazing Race seems like with some luck and a decent teammate, anyone could compete. This travelogue-as-TV-competition has had a few missteps over its fifteen seasons (Family Edition, anyone?) but it remains one of TV's most consistent reality shows.

American Idol (Fox, 2002-present)

It seems hard to believe now, but Idol originated as somewhat of a sleeper hit, premiering in the "let's throw shows at the wall and see what sticks" environs of Fox summer programming. In the years since, Idol has become its own all-consuming cultural entity - one where people can become famous for giving a terrible, deluded audition performance; one that has produced Grammy winners, an Oscar winner, Tony nominees and a man who appears to have been banned from ever performing on ABC again; one that has turned Ryan Seacrest into Dick Clark's media-conglomerate-running heir apparent. Some people love the audition segment of the season, others the studio performances and audience voting - my personal favorite is the all-too-brief Hollywood week, where you get a glimpse of people's true (often egomaniacal) personalities before the gloss takes over. The Idol machine has a winning formula, at least in television viewership, and it's one that doesn't appear likely to slow down any time soon.

America's Next Top Model (UPN/The CW, 2003-present)

Tyra Banks may come off as crazy sometimes, but Top Model makes it clear that said crazy is of the "like-a-fox" variety. The drama created each cycle by the show's contestants has always managed to overshadow the fact that it ultimately operates in an entirely different sphere than America's actual top models. That Top Model continues to draw a contestant pool after a dozen cycles is a testament to the tenacity of American beauty myth culture: so many young women, it seems, want to "be on top."

I know that this kind of schadenfreude is unbecoming, but I've probably watched the Cycle 2 episode this moment is from about fifteen times:

Made (MTV, 2003-present)

MTV's shows featuring young people being totally awful are so dominant, it's easy for a show like Made to get lost in the shuffle. Each episode operates as its own self-contained Cinderella story, working to fulfill the transformative wish of a teenager. Before High School Musical found popularity in showcasing young people escaping clique boundaries, Made created an engaging formula for breaking out of a social box.

Making the Band (original incarnation, ABC/MTV, 2000-2002)

Before Diddy got involved, Making the Band presented itself as a kind of behind-the-scenes look at the boy band creation process of noted 90s pop Svengali Lou Pearlman. This is, of course, back when boy bands essentially were pop music, and when Pearlman only seemed creepy. In winnowing down auditionees to a five-man group, Making the Band served to level the reality TV playing field by showing that women were not the only reality contestants prone to catty infighting. I wish I could find a show clip of the contestants atonally rehearsing the song "All for Love," the introductory harmony of which was repeatedly mangled. We'll have to settle for O-Town's tragic first single, which is both weirdly gross for Top 40 and insanely catchy:

The Paper (MTV, 2008)

I don't know if I've ever mentioned here before that I worked on the newspaper at my high school, but I did. It was a uniquely stressful experience, a miniature pressure cooker within the already energy-draining confines of high school. The Paper, in only eight episodes, somehow captured all of the heightened emotion of that experience. The show focused on a Florida high school's newspaper, its endearingly geeky copy editor-turned-editor-in-chief Amanda Lorber, who has one of the kinds of personalities that pop so naturally that they make it obvious when other people are trying to make themselves the "personality" of a show (ahem, Suede from Project Runway season 5) and the other staff members who wanted her job. Here's the first episode, which lays out the terrible interpersonal relationships that would make the show so undeniably riveting:

Paradise Hotel (Fox, 2003)

I don't feel like I have sufficient adjectives to capture all that Paradise Hotel was. Some shows you watch because they're great, some shows you watch because their insane campiness makes them great. Paradise Hotel ran throughout the summer of 2003, with labyrinthine rules and a structure that seemed like it could enable the show to air indefinitely. The show was unique for cycling "hotel guests" in and out by taking new contestants from the viewing audience, whence came standout cast member Dave, who appears in the clip below. Paradise Hotel represents to me the best in the worst of reality television: the trainwreck that you can't peel your eyes away from, even as you hate yourself for watching. I couldn't have stopped watching this ever-stirring cauldron of drama even if I'd wanted to.

Project Runway (Bravo/Lifetime, 2004-present)

As soon as it premiered, Project Runway quickly established itself as one of TV's best artistic showcases. Featuring the behind-the-scenes work involved in fashion design, Runway brought some quality to a genre that had already become mired in tackiness. The interpersonal conflicts that inevitably rise when "real" people put themselves in a spotlight for fame, fortune or mere exposure, was tempered by the process of watching an outfit go from concept to design to execution. Add the unique presences of Tim Gunn, Michael Kors and Nina Garcia, and you've got a winner.

Runway is also noteworthy as the source of what is one of the best reality TV moments of the decade, if not of all time.

Real World/Road Rules Challenge (MTV, 1998-present)

At the beginning of this decade (you know, when they still had new seasons of Road Rules), the Real World/Road Rules Challenge was an entirely different show. The show as it originally functioned was more like Road Rules - two teams of six driving around the country in RVs and participating in competitions with each other. There was always drama, as castmates from the same RW or RR season would hash out old arguments and grudges (or create new ones, having watched said season unfold on television), but it all seemed relatively contained. Somewhere along the way, though, the producers decided to park the show in one tropical locale per season and shit got crazy. Each successive season becomes television's most reliable source of out-of-control drama, and these days features people who never even appeared on a season of The Real World or Road Rules, only challenges - it's become its own insane universe.

So You Think You Can Dance (Fox, 2005-present)

SYTYCD has an appeal similar to that of Project Runway, in that it showcases genuinely talented people and gives them an outlet to get recognized and rewarded for their craft. Unlike Idol, the partnership and group dance format of the show seems to foster strong relationships among the contestants - most seasons, they seem to genuinely like each other and get along as a group in a way that makes the show really charming. It also has one of television's best hosts in Cat Deeley. If all that wasn't enough, SYTYCD also gets points (at least from me, because I'm way cheesy in case you hadn't guessed already) for being one of the few reality shows conducive to the usually fiction-based overly-emotionally-invested fan project of shipping.

Here, from the second season, is a routine that remains one of my favorite. Enjoy it while it's here - 19 or Dick Clark or somebody is super-litigious about taking clips off of YouTube. (Dear Corporations, If you cooperated with new media instead of fighting it all the time, you could probably find a way to make it profitable and stop alienating the people you want to sell crap to. Cheers! - Liz)

"Mattresses Aren't Just for Sleeping and Fornicating Anymore"

Late-in-the-game addition to my favorite musical moments! This may also replace the Dunder Mifflin Scranton ad from the fourth season of The Office as my favorite fake local commercial. Like the off-the-cuff performance of "Ride Wit Me" earlier in the season, this number almost played more as the cast than the characters - you can feel how much they enjoy performing. Hopefully, they'll have more performances outside of the more traditional stage and rehearsal spaces in the season's back nine episodes this spring - the change of scenery worked really well here.