OK, so I’m doing a little creative accounting here, doubling up on this entry, to maintain an aesthetically pleasing, metrically based Top 10 TV Shows of the Decade List. But it also speaks to how much things have changed over the past 10 years. Now it takes 2 network dramas to equal a single show from the cable universe.
The West Wing (1999-2006)
If you’d asked me to date when The West Wing ran without the help of a Google search, I’dve placed it much, much earlier. The 80s? Early 90s? It seems that long ago since the once proud networks put out this kind of hour long, high end, quality product. The fact that the show debuted the same year as The Sopranos is apt. Veteran network, NBC, steps into the ring against upstart, HBO, in a spirited but brief battle that ends with a changing of the guard.
The West Wing’s spark was white hot but short-lived, tied inexorably to the trajectory of its creator, Aaron Sorkin. When he was on fire, so was the show. Impossibly quick and smart, you knew deep down this wasn’t how politics worked in the real world but you desperately wanted to believe it did or could. Creatively, The West Wing existed in a bubble as well where character and story reigned supreme and the shallow, music video plot and theatrics of by-the-numbers police procedurals were but a glimmer in Jerry Bruckheimer’s eye.
When Sorkin burned out, the show came off the rails, giving way to the torn from the headlines stories that inevitably signal a paucity of ideas. The end, however, takes nothing away from the dizzying heights The West Wing scaled initially. It was without a doubt Must See TV.
Friday Night Lights (2006-present)
I never saw the 2004 movie this series was based on so had no expectations for it, good or bad. But when college bound star QB, Jason Street, is injured in the first episode, I thought, oh, oh, this is a little over the top. Then when it turns out that he’s not only injured but a paraplegic, well, it was too much. Too, too much. Too melodramatic. Operatically so.
Still, I kept watching. Friday Night Lights continues at times to be too, too much. Yet it is filled with quiet moments of triumph and disappointment, teenage angst and joy. It battles constantly with a tendency toward soap elements but somehow manages to right the ship just in the nick of time. A viewer is hard pressed to find any finer moments of married dynamics on TV than exists in the beautifully drawn relationship between Kyle Chandler’s head coach, Eric Taylor, and his wife, Tami, played by Connie Britton. Watching cheese has rarely been this satisfying.
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Still, I kept watching. Friday Night Lights continues at times to be too, too much. Yet it is filled with quiet moments of triumph and disappointment, teenage angst and joy. It battles constantly with a tendency toward soap elements but somehow manages to right the ship just in the nick of time. A viewer is hard pressed to find any finer moments of married dynamics on TV than exists in the beautifully drawn relationship between Kyle Chandler’s head coach, Eric Taylor, and his wife, Tami, played by Connie Britton. Watching cheese has rarely been this satisfying.
