Network Upfront Preview - NBC: The Fading Champion

The biggest news this week was Undateable's renewal for an all-live season

Network upfronts – where the networks all come together to announce their fall schedules and pitch their new shows to advertisers – are here, which means the 2014-15 television season is quickly coming to a close.  I’ll probably have a season wrap-up post at the end of May, but I wanted to take a quick look at each network and its shows before upfronts hit.  First up is this season’s almost certain repeat champion: NBC.

Let’s start with the positives.  For the second consecutive year, NBC will walk away with the season Live+Same Day and Live+7 ratings crowns.  They currently lead CBS by a quarter of a point in the Same Day ratings and by .2 in the L+7 numbers.  They have the highest-rated program on network television in Sunday Night Football and a big two-night performer in The Voice. 

But look past the surface and the network’s numbers get very ugly very quickly.  Another year has gone by without developing a sitcom hit or a hit at all.  In fact, NBC is likely going to cancel every single new show it debuted during the 2014-15 season.*  That is ridiculous.  The last time that happened was more than forty years ago during the 1973-74 season when, again, NBC canceled all of its freshman series.  At least then the network had the excuse of devoting more than a third of its schedule to primetime movies and it had one of the finest nightly lineups in television history with All in the Family, M*A*SH*, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, and The Carol Burnett Show.  Even last year’s big hit, The Blacklist, has cratered in the last few weeks after getting the post-Super Bowl timeslot and initially surviving a midseason move to Thursdays. 

* I guess that’s what I get for writing this piece in the middle of renewal and cancellation week.  NBC somewhat surprisingly renewed The Mysteries of Laura late last night, guaranteeing that at least one of their freshman shows will get a second season.

For those wondering just how dire the straits are, consider this: NBC aired only three scripted hours this season that beat the non-sports average for the five broadcast networks.  By comparison, that’s fewer than half the above-average hours of CBS and ABC and fewer even than the four above-average hours of last place Fox, which also shows seven fewer hours of primetime programming than the peacock network.

The Questions

The biggest question, then, is how long can NBC stay on top?  Frankly, the answer is probably “about three weeks.”  The truth is, sans Super Bowl, NBC would currently be in a neck-and-neck race with CBS for the ratings titles.  Considering that CBS gets the Super Bowl next year, it’s not out of line to predict that, barring stunning ratings reversals, CBS is the favorite to lead the pack in 2015-16. 

In the micro sense, NBC really needs to figure out its comedy plan.  Only summer transplant Undateable, which hasn’t officially been renewed yet, seems likely to return and, in fact, the dearly departed Parks and Recreation is going to wind up as NBC’s second highest-rated comedy of the year.  The network abandoned Thursday night comedies, on which it made its name in the 90s and seems to have really lost any kind of brand identity in the genre.  Given that they’ve only ordered four new comedy series to date, it wouldn’t be surprising if the closest thing to comedy on NBC’s fall schedule is Best Time Ever, the new variety show from Neil Patrick Harris.

The Numbers

NBC’s Live+Same Day average currently sits at 2.00.  Given their recent trends, I estimate that they’ll finish somewhere around 1.95, representing about a fifteen percent decrease from last year and down even from the network's 2012-13 average, when it finished in second place behind CBS.  Sports and The Voice continue to drive NBC’s ratings, though, and their scripted series ratings continue to struggle.  For the second straight year, the network will finish with the worst comedy average of the four major networks.  I said last year that there are building blocks on the NBC schedule, but I’m beginning to wonder if that’s true, as The Voice again fails to create any momentum, The Blacklist dies when it moves off of Monday, and the network's highest-rated series all seem to end up in the 9:00 timeslot.

The Schedule (Titles in BOLD have already been renewed for next season; titles in strikethrough have already been canceled)

Monday –

7:00pm – The Voice (3.28 average rating) – Celebrity Apprentice (2.04)

9:00pm – The Blacklist (2.44) – State of Affairs (1.28) – The Night Shift (1.31)

NBC made a big move this year by moving its hit show, The Blacklist out of the prime The Voice leadout and pitting it head-to-head against last year’s highest-rated drama, Scandal, on Thursday nights.  At first, the plan didn’t seem so bad for the James Spader-helmed series.  Sure, there was a bit of drop-off from fall to spring, but it still gave the network a strong showing on a valuable night that had recently been generating little in terms of ratings.  Recently, however, the move seems to have not been playing out so well.  The Katherine Heigl drama State of Affairs bombed post-The Voice and summer carryover The Night Shift only did slightly better.  Meanwhile, The Blacklist has cratered on Thursday nights, drawing a sub-1.5 average over the last six weeks and fairly regularly finishing third in its timeslot.  Add in the fact that the network was unable to draw even acceptable ratings out of the two spring dramas paired with The Blacklist (The Slap and Allegiance), and NBC spent pretty much the entire season just praying for Sunday once Thursday came.  I don’t expect a great deal of change here when NBC announces its schedule tomorrow.  The Voice will likely retain the 7:00pm timeslot with the most promising new drama placed behind it.

Tuesday –

7:00pm – The Voice (2.91) – Parks and Recreation (1.33) – The Voice (2.91)

8:00pm – Marry Me (1.19)/About a  Boy (1.04) – Undateable (1.44)/One Big Happy (1.17)

9:00pm – Chicago Fire (1.83)

The Dick Wolf Chicago series continues to provide steady, if unspectacular ratings for NBC in the ever more difficult 9:00 hour.  The big question on Tuesdays is what NBC will decide to slot in-between The Voice and Chicago Fire.  Sitcoms have mostly struggled in that hour for the past year-and-a-half, though Undateable has done reasonably well and was just announced to be airing all live episodes next season, so NBC has a few options.  It wouldn’t be surprising to see Neil Patrick Harris’s variety show end up here as a slightly more compatible leadout than yet another drama.  On the other hand, Fire has generally been the best overall post-Voice performer, so maybe the network should be less concerned about finding the right show and just make this a home for their most-promising series.

Wednesday –

7:00pm – The Mysteries of Laura (1.19)

8:00pm – Law & Order: SVU (1.63)

9:00pm – Chicago PD (1.59)

Prior to yesterday’s surprising late night renewal of The Mysteries of Laura, I had this pegged as the easiest night to predict.  A new drama fits in at 7:00 and SVU and PD stay put.  I still think that makes the most sense, since Laura, while it draws a fair number of viewers, has dreadful demo ratings and isn’t really bringing anything to the fall schedule.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see it held until midseason, perhaps to fill a slot on Sunday night once the NFL season ends. 

The only potential hiccup to that plan are the ratings from a couple of weeks ago when SVU and PD swapped timeslots for a night during a crossover event with Chicago Fire.  Both shows saw increases of 15-25% on the night with the bigger jump coming for SVU.  It’s likely this was mostly due to the special event nature of the episodes, but it’s possible that both series might be better off in different timeslots, should NBC decide to experiment.

Thursday –

7:00pm – The Biggest Loser (1.20) – The Slap (0.76)

8:00pm – Bad Judge (0.94)/A to Z (0.75) – The Blacklist (2.39)

9:00pm – Parenthood (1.29) – Allegiance (0.86) – The Slap (0.76) – Dateline (1.02)

What an utter disaster of a night Thursday was for NBC.  The network ended up airing 26 hours of sub-1.0 new programming on Thursday nights – a solid quarter of its total output for the night.  Sure, some blame can be put on the competition these shows faced, what with the NFL on CBS during the fall and ABC’s Shonda Rhimes dramas on ABC all year long.  But even that can’t account for how bad this turned out.  Even The Blacklist, which had been performing perfectly fine on Monday nights, sank heavily on Thursday nights, falling as low as a 1.2 rating in recent weeks. 

I don’t know the answer for NBC on Thursday nights in 2015-16.  Presumably they’re going to put in a couple of new dramas (and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Chicago Med earn the 9:00pm slot, which was held down for so long by another Chicago hospital show, ER) but I think it’s going to take a lot more than just nibbling around the edges to bring Must See TV back to NBC Thursdays.

Friday –

7:00pm – Dateline (1.19)

8:00pm – Grimm (1.16)

9:00pm – Constantine (0.92)

We’re running on four solid years now of Grimm and Dateline pulling perfectly acceptable ratings on Friday night while nothing else can.  There’s not much else really to say at this point until NBC decides to try something different.  Frankly, I think The Blacklist would actually make for a solid pairing with Grimm, but there’s no chance in hell that NBC sends its top drama and the show to which it gave the post-Super Bowl timeslot to Friday nights.  Odds are, we’ll see some variation of this same schedule next year, just with a new show in place of Constantine

Sunday –

7:00pm – Sunday Night Football (7.30) – Dateline (0.96)

8:00pm – Sunday Night Football (7.30) – A.D. The Bible Continues (1.48)

9:00pm – Sunday Night Football (7.30) – American Odyssey (0.68)

Once again, Sunday Night Football dominates in the fall while everything fails in the spring.  This marks the umpteenth-consecutive year that all scripted programming has failed on Sundays.  In fact, since NBC won the Sunday Night Football contract, no Sunday scripted series has been renewed.  There’s a chance that the network will order more Bible programming, since it’s quite uncommon for network execs to decide not to be in the Mark Burnett business, but clearly something has to change here.  The Apprentice has worked well in the past on Sunday nights, but NBC decided to use it to bridge The Voice this year.  I wish I had a better idea of what they should do, but the problem is the same it’s been for almost a decade: find spring programming that isn’t terrible.  If NBC hasn’t fixed it yet, I don’t know what will work.

NBC is still the two-time reigning ratings champion.  But that title is on very rocky foundation at the moment and they don't seem to have any real strategy beyond just plugging the many holes the schedule currently has.  NBC will walk into upfronts holding the title belt aloft, but don't be surprised if this time next year sees them pinned to the mat.

Tyler Williams is a professional library and amateur television critic.  You can reach him at tytalkstv AT gmail DOT com or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.

Baltimore, Ferguson, and the Hypocrisy of Pleas for Nonviolence

We interrupt our irregularly scheduled programming for something far more personal and having nothing to do with television.  I really hope you don't mind.

I’ve been thinking a lot today about Baltimore.  Mostly, it’s the fault of this article by The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates and this interview (actually from last August concerning the Ferguson riots) with historian Heather Ann Thompson.  In particular, two passages stood out to me.  From Coates:

When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is "correct" or "wise," any more than a forest fire can be "correct" or "wise." Wisdom isn't the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the community.

And from Thompson:

Any time that there is urban rebellion, the way that it is spun has everything to do with whether it's granted legitimacy. Notably, when there was rioting in the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, and you saw the police with fire hoses and police dogs, it was very easy for white Northerners, particularly the press, to report that for exactly what it was — which was police violence on black citizens who were protesting. Everyone's very clear about that. Sheriff Bull Connor is a racist, the police are racist, and that is why it is violent.

But the minute that these protests moved northward, the racial narrative was much more uncomfortable. "Why in the world would blacks be protesting against us good-hearted white folks in the North? And how dare they?" And what it means is that they were demanding too much, and that they were in fact just looking for trouble. So that narrative of who gets to be a legitimate protester shifts dramatically once protests move northward. It's all about violence, troublemaking, looting, and so forth.

That second passage stands out not just for its relevance today, but for its relevance to pretty much every revolution ever.  The American colonists began with nonviolent resistance before graduating to property destruction (the Boston Tea Party) and, ultimately, war.  Multiple times during the 19^th century, rebel slaves took up arms against their owners.  African Americans in the 1960s, gay communities in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, black South Africans under apartheid, the rebels of the Arab Spring – all of these oppressed groups were ultimately forced into violence in order to wrest equal rights from the powerful.

So what’s the difference between these revolutions and the riotous “thugs” and “criminals” in Ferguson and Baltimore?  Well, to put it frankly, for the first time in this generation Americans are being confronted with the painful idea that maybe, just maybe, we are the oppressors.  Certainly no group in power thinks of itself as oppressive.  Running colonies across an ocean is expensive, so it only makes sense to tax those who live there.  Slave owners and Afrikaners alike believed that blacks were inherently inferior and needed the guiding hand of benevolent whites to survive. 

It is only with the distance of culture and time that we can see the unfairness of these systems and the devastation they caused to the suffering populations.  Unfortunately, we are without such gifts in evaluating our own culture.  And, much as the white Northerners in the 1960s deplored police violence in Birmingham while demonizing the “troublemakers” and “looters” in their own neighborhoods, we, today, look back at past oppressors with the appropriate level of condemnation while simultaneously crying, “No.  Not us.  We’re the good guys.” 

You can see it in the worlds of Baltimore police officials.  All week long their declaration has been “Baltimore is not Ferguson.”  After all, Baltimore has a black mayor.  A majority of its city council is black.  43% of its police officers are black.  And, yet, economically speaking, the towns are not so different.  Young black men in Baltimore (aged 20-24) are four times more likely than whites to be unemployed, and one-fifth as likely to have a college degree.  Throw in the standard insane disparities of police stops, arrests, and jail time* and it’s easy to see how many Baltimoreans can see themselves as an oppressed population being overseen by an occupying force.

* Not to mention the fact that Freddie Gray was chased, arrested, and fatally injured not because he actually committed or was suspected of committing a crime, but merely for the act of running from police.

It can be difficult to accept the idea that there is an oppressed people living within our very midst, especially when most Americans don’t feel any particular animosity toward African Americans.  But what we have is not an active racism, but a passive one in which we create laws that allow our government to discriminate covertly, all in the name of the War on Drugs and “keeping our streets safe.” 

All of this brings me back to the idea of nonviolence and whether it is a reasonable expectation in a world in which young black men are seemingly killed with impunity by police officers who, themselves, rarely face repercussions even when their killings are not deemed "justified."  Coates covered a lot of the problems with pleas for nonviolence in his essay fittingly titled “Nonviolence as Compliance,” but I think he could have expanded on one.  “Nonviolence” is the cry of the bully after his victim has finally punched back.  As Coates points out, it is a ruse, a distraction, the height of hypocrisy to breed a culture of violence in African American communities – to use violence and threats of violence to bend a people to the government’s will – and then to turn around and beg for those same people to maintain the peace once they’ve reached their limit. 

Where were the cries for nonviolence as Freddie Gray was having his spinal cord severed?  Where were the pleas for nonviolence as Tamir Rice was being gunned down in his neighborhood park?  Where were the people asking for nonviolence when Eric Garner was having the life choked out of him or John Crawford was being killed while shopping at Wal-Mart or Walter Scott was being murdered while running away?

As Coates says in his piece, this isn’t meant to argue that rioting and violence are “right,” merely that they are inevitable.  They are the inevitable result of any revolution in which the people in power refuse to realize that they are, in fact, the villains of the story.  And until we start demanding nonviolence from the powerful – our government, our police, our military – I can’t in good conscience demand the same from the powerless. 

Tyler Williams a professional librarian and an amateur television critic.  You can reach him at TyTalksTV AT gmail DOT com or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.

The Best Television of 2014, pt. 2 - Returning and Continuing Shows

The Americans has a lot of fun putting very pretty people in very ugly wigs

 

Editor’s Note: So work and life have gotten crazy for the last couple of months, preventing me from doing much writing, but I figured that if the Oscars can air in late February and the Grammys in 2015 can give an award to a song that was first released in June of 2013, then I can wrap up my Top Shows of 2014 posts in March.

The whole “too much good television” thing feels like such a cliché now that I’ve said it about a hundred times in the past two years, but when I look at this list of “also-ran” shows, I can’t really think of anything else.  There are nine continuing shows that make my “Next Best” list this year and I could make a decent argument to put any of them in my Top Ten, and very nearly did in a couple of cases.  But as will become apparent in my Best Of list, coming next week, I took a different tactic in evaluating shows this year, so some very great television did not quite make that final list.  Here, then, are the best continuing shows (those that aired in 2013 and will continue in 2015) that were almost the best in 2014.

30 for 30 (ESPN) –

For the past several years, ESPN has been putting together some of the best documentary work on television in its 30 for 30 series, but while the last few years haven’t quite seen the same highs as the initial two years did (in 2009 and 2010), 2014 featured some of the best films in the entire series.  Beyond even the quality of the episodes (installments?) is how diverse they are.  30 for 30 is capable of playing somber (if a little naïve) in Requiem for the Big East (and its look at how television and the quest for cash both created and destroyed college's premier basketball conference), introspective in Brian and the Boz and Rand University (chronicling the careers of bigger-than-life stars Brian Bosworth and Randy Moss), serious and political in Brothers in Exile (which followed the lives of Cuban immigrants Orlando and Lívan Hernandez), and even light-hearted and comedic in discussing the flamboyant era of the NBA in Bad Boys and When the Garden Was Eden.

The two pieces that stuck with me most this year, however, were two that covered topics I’d never been familiar with: Hillsborough and Slaying the Badger.  The latter surprised me in its ability to make me care about a sport for which I have no affinity at all: cycling.  Additionally, in a film about the rivalry between American cyclist Greg LeMond and the Frenchman Bernard Hinault, it would have been so easy to paint the pair as hero and villain, as was done so often when they were competing.  But Slaying the Badger effectively humanizes both men and made me care about the Tour de France for an hour, something not even the tour itself can usually do.

Hillsborough, meanwhile, was, outside of the Ferguson protest coverage, the single most important piece of news journalism this year.  Airing in concert with the World Cup as part of 30 for 30’s “Soccer Stories” series this summer, this feature-length documentary explored the Hillsborough disaster, still the worst stadium-related disaster in British history.  For decades, the official story, bolstered by doctored police reports, was that drunken fans had forced their way into an already over-filled stadium pen, leading to a crush that ultimately killed 96 people.  Only after twenty years of dogged efforts by the families of the dead was the truth ultimately revealed: that an understaffed, unprepared police force, in response to malfunctioning entrance turnstiles, opened an exit gate, which ultimately led to the mayhem.  Hillsborough is important television for reminding us how fragile the public trust is and how easily it can be violated by those in power.  And it was only one of many excellent episodes 30 for 30 produced in 2014.

Most 30 for 30 documentaries are currently available to stream on Netflix.

The Americans (FX) –

I really wanted to put The Americans in my Top Ten.  If you pressed me, I would probably say it came in at #11 or #12.  In terms of overall production value, it easily could have come in at #1.  The writing, directing, and acting were all top notch and the show took a huge leap forward in 2014.  But something about the show just doesn’t connect with me personally the way so many shows did this year.  I love all of the at-home stuff with the Jenningses and their children, but the spycraft often leaves me cold, especially anything involving Phillip’s alter-ego “Clark” and Martha.

Still, while I don’t personally react to The Americans, it is an extraordinarily well-made show and might feature one of the most complex, nuanced, and fascinating marriages on television.  It also happens to be the sexiest show on television, even without any nudity.  It may not have ended up in my personal top ten, but that’s more an indication of my particularly tastes right now than the quality of the show, which was one of the best dramas of 2014.

Season three of The Americans began on January 28^th while the previous two seasons are available on Amazon Prime.

Arrow (CW) –

While Marvel has spent the last decade building a film empire, DC has found its success in the world of television, with Gotham one of the year’s top new shows, The Flash and Arrow holding down the CW’s best ratings (not a high bar I know), and a Supergirl series in development.  What’s been most surprising is how, while most of the Marvel’s films have turned out roughly the same (there’s a maguffin, the bad guys want the maguffin, the good guys want to stop the bad guys from getting the maguffin), DC has found success in diversity.  Gotham is a period cop show and, while Arrow and The Flash share a universe, the former is more clearly a drama while the latter is an action comedy much of the time.

While I enjoyed the first season of Arrow, it was really this past spring when the show kicked in to high gear, fueled by great guest stars, a strong and remarkably affecting revenge plot, and some of the best action on television.  For a year-and-a-half the show struggled integrating the island flashbacks into the main storyline in any meaningful way (and really have struggled again at the beginning of season three), but bringing together the two stories in the form of Slade Wilson/Deathstroke worked perfectly, giving the season’s big bad ample personal stakes.  The show also played the “nobody’s safe” card perfectly keeping the specter of death just around every corner.  Even though I never want to hear the word “Mirakuru” ever again, the second season of Arrow was action television at its best.

The first two seasons of Arrow are currently available on Netflix while the third season is currently airing on the CW.  The five most recent episodes are available on Hulu.

Banshee (Cinemax) –

Speaking of action television, Banshee returned for its second season as pulpy and over-the-top as ever.  But, buried deep in the blood, broken bones, explosions, and T&A was a turn to the serious and, at least once, a step into the realm of “serious television.” 

It’s easy to write Banshee off as a guilty pleasure, especially for the young, heterosexual male demographic, but it runs a tad bit deeper than that.  There are questions of loyalty, love, and family and which will ultimately triumph.  And the show can, at times, make legitimately beautiful television.  It’s not a show for everybody, but if you can get on Banshee’s wavelength, it offers a hell of a ride.

The third season of Banshee just finished airing on Cinemax with the first two seasons available on Max Go.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Fox) –

2014 was a huge year for comedy, as my top ten list will soon show, so that the following three shows all end up as also-rans instead of big winners should be seen as a sign of strength, not weakness.  Brooklyn Nine-Nine was celebrated, perhaps a bit prematurely, in early 2014 when, after only eleven episodes had aired, both it and star Andy Samberg were honored with Golden Globes.  The show had not yet found its footing so the awards came off more as hopeful than as reflective but, thankfully, the final half its first season and the first half of the second elevated Nine-Nine to becoming one of the best comedies on television.

Most pleasant to see in 2014 was how Nine-Nine developed each character and relationship.  It’s so easy for sitcoms to find one funny aspect of a character and then lean on that characteristic until all of the humor has been squeezed out of it (just look at how Modern Family treats basically all of its adults).  Nine-Nine, on the other hand, is able to constantly find new humor in its characters.  Andre Braugher’s Captain Holt, once mostly used as the straight man for Samberg’s antics, has become the master of the out-of-nowhere punchline (“Hot damn!”) or the steadily building running joke (his pronunciation of “Kwazy Kupcakes” is just delightful).  Samberg’s Jake has been toned down and allowed to develop real relationships with the other characters and the supporting cast has been fleshed out nicely as well.  It started a bit slow, but Brooklyn Nine-Nine has turned into a solid comedy.

The current season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine is currently airing on Fox and all previous episodes are available on Hulu Plus.

Key & Peele (Comedy Central) –

Last year coming in at #6 in my overall Top Ten, Key & Peele falls down the list this year, again, not because of anything they did particularly wrong, but because of the overall strength of comedy this past year.  True, there were a few times this year when it felt like the show was coasting and I wasn’t a huge fan of the decision to abandon the live studio audience bits used to introduce each sketch in favor of the more tied-together driving interstitials.  But as with any sketch comedy show, the whole can only be as good or bad as its parts and this year featured numerous brilliant sketches. 

There was Meagan’s return in the finale, desperately trying to find her boyfriend in the darkened movie theatre.  Yes, it’s an old joke that’s been done many, many times before.  But it is the specificity of the character (asking Siri to call her boyfriend instead of just pulling up the number, walking the long way down the row) that sets this piece apart.  There was also the ‘80s fitness video (again, startling in its specificity) that turns into a black comedy.  But probably my favorite sketch of this season involved Jordan Peele’s spot-on Reginald VelJohnson and the evil that is Steve Urkel.

The first three seasons of Key & Peele are available on Hulu Plus

Louie (FX) –

After taking a year off to recharge creatively, 2014 was a year of experimentation for Louie.  Granted, the show has never been one to make a straight comedy, so to speak, but its fourth season saw even crazier things than usual.  There was the six part “Elevator”: essentially a feature-length movie told in installments.  There was the two-part (really three when you consider the hour-and-a-half extended running time) “In the Woods,” which was almost entirely a flashback to Louie’s childhood.  Even the “normal” episodes found ways to be different and interesting.

I don’t know that Louie was as funny in 2014 as it has been in the past, but then Louie has never been a show that relies on setups and punchlines.  It is a show capable of finding comedy in the mundane but also heart, love, and passion.  The freedom that FX has given Louis CK in making his show has helped build what is probably television’s most unique creation.

The first three seasons of Louie are currently available for streaming on Hulu Plus.  To my knowledge, season four is not yet available anywhere.

Mad Men (AMC) –

It feels kind of weird to leave Mad Men off of my Top Ten list because, truth be told, I don’t think it was any less successful in 2014 than it was in the past.  But the truncated seventh season (spanning only seven episodes of a planned 14-episode final season) felt a bit like it was performing a lot of setup work for the eventual payoffs to come in the final 2015 episodes. 

To be clear, there were some great pieces here: “The Strategy” was a masterpiece, pure and simple; Robert Morse’s song and dance routine in the finale was beautiful; and, for as much as some people complained, I actually enjoyed seeing Don fail in the same ways again. 

Mad Men had a strong half-season, but it was only a half-season, and a half-season that felt like it was setting up something bigger.  I feel like I have to see they payoff before I can appropriately rate the setup.

The first six seasons of Mad Men are currently available on Neflix while episodes 3-7 of season seven are available at AMCtv.com.  Final episodes debut on AMC on April 5^th.

Person of Interest (CBS) –

An inconsistent fall kept me from considering Person of Interest for my Top Ten list, but this past spring, the show put on a run that elevated the show from one of the best science fiction shows on television to simply one of the best shows on television.

The show has always had a difficult time balancing between its procedural elements and the serial science fiction story it occasionally wants to tell, but in the wake of a main character’s death, Person of Interest threw itself headlong into a plot involving competing artificial intelligences, the shadowy government organization wanting to control them, and the anarchic group that wants take them all down.  Expanding the cast has worked wonders, bringing a new energy to the cast, even if it did serve to make some characters redundant.  They seem to have done a good job of identifying those redundancies, however, and have been able to keep the show fresh and always changing.

It’s not a perfect show by any means, but at times, Person of Interest is capable of some masterful storytelling.  This most recent season has been a little lacking in that regard, but the episodes from last spring were simply fantastic.

Person of Interest is currently airing on CBS and unavailable for streaming, but the first three seasons will be coming to Netflix this fall.

So those are my picks for the best continuing shows on television in 2014.  Up next (hopefully sooner than this post), my Top Ten for 2014.

Tyler Williams is a professional librarian and an amateur television critic.  You can reach him at TyTalksTV AT gmail DOT com or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.