2022 Television Year in Review
As long-time readers know, the Television Year in Review is a relatively new addition to my summaries. It started midway through 2020 as the pandemic kept me home and I couldn't ride my bike ALL the time. Then it really hit a new gear in 2021 when the combination of "new baby" and "ongoing pandemic" kept us home even more.
I'm pleased to say that in 2022, with the pandemic slowing down and the new baby being promoted to new toddler, the amount of television that I watched leveled off substantially from the 2021 peak of 38 seasons of 18 different shows. In 2022, I watched 18 seasons of television of a combined 8 different shows. 14 of those seasons were watched jointly with M, so I only watched 4 seasons on my own, the first of which I was about 80% done with in 2021. This seems a lot healthier and more sustainable than 2021 was.
Here's the complete list. Everything with an * was watched with M. The date is the day I finished watching the season in question.
TV - *14 + 4 = 18
*Archer, Season 5 - Su 1/02 - Hulu
The Tick (2016), Season 2- Su 1/09 - Prime
Animaniacs (2020), Season 2 - F 3/04 - Hulu
*The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Season 4 - S 3/12 - Prime
*Archer, Season 6 - M 3/14 - Hulu
*Brockmire, Season 3 - F 3/25 - Hulu
*Archer, Season 7 - F 5/06 - Hulu
*Brockmire, Season 4 - S 6/25 - Hulu
*Obi-Wan Kenobi, Season 1 - M 6/27 - Disney+
Gravity Falls, Season 1 - Su 7/03 - Hulu
*Archer, Season 8 - R 7/14 - Hulu
*Archer, Season 9 - M 8/15 - Hulu
Gravity Falls, Season 2 - S 8/20 - Hulu
*Only Murders in the Building, Season 2 - T 8/23 - Hulu
*Archer, Season 10 - Su 9/11 - Hulu
*Archer, Season 11 - R 10/06 - Hulu
*Archer, Season 12 - S 11/05 - Hulu
*Archer, Season 13 - W 12/08 - Hulu
Breakdown by streaming service:
Hulu - 15 seasons - Far and away the service we use the most.
Prime - 2 seasons - M has a Prime membership, but they don't have much that has caught my interest.
Disney+ - 1 seasons - We watched Obi-Wan Kenobi on vacation in PA. It wasn't good, but I learned that M has a serious crush on Ewan McGregor at all ages, but particularly scruffy middle-aged Ewan.
Netflix - 0 seasons - I'm not sure I even launched Netflix once in 2022. Which is fine, we aren't paying for it.
None of this includes any of the television that M turns on in the evenings to provide her with background noise. I don't watch any of that. She sometimes does and sometimes doesn't. Of the shows that I actually watched:
- We finished watching Archer. Leaving aside the dreck that is season Season 10, it sustained quality fairly well even as it went into double-digit seasons. I'm dubious that it can continue with the loss of Jessica Walter, but on the other hand if you told me that it was going to have another 13 seasons, I wouldn't disbelieve you... and if the quality of the median season stays at the same level, I'll probably watch them.
- Season 2 of The Tick was fantastic, much better than the very uneven season 1, and I really wish that the Season 3 it set up had actually happened. Oh well. It might have even better better than the animated show, although they are trying to do two different things and don't lend themselves easily to comparison. I still want to watch the single season of the 2001 series
- Animaniacs was... fine. There were hits and misses, and if it felt like there were more misses than in Season 1, it was still really good at times. The callbacks to beloved segments from the original series never got old, but on the whole I don't feel a burning need to watch another season of this or to revisit the existing seasons.
- Season 4 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel started bad, got worse, and never really recovered. If it had been up to me I would have stopped watching it. We are watching Season 5 right now, and I'm pleased to say that it's dramatically better.
- Obi-Wan Kenobi was pretty meh. It's weird how much they are willing to assume that people watched all sorts of other lower profile Star Wars television to have even a vague chance of understanding some of what's going on here, or at least how it fits into the movies. Mostly, it didn't do a good job. Didn't look good, didn't make sense, wasn't very enjoyable. Take Ewan McGregor out of this and it's nigh-unwatchable.
- The progression of Brockmire can be described thusly: in season 1, we have an announcer do every absurd thing you can imagine, largely due to alcohol and drug abuse. In season 2, he does all of that but even more so because he's in New Orleans. In season 3, they flip it around and make Brockmire go sober, which actually works surprising well. My guess is that they didn't expect to have a season 4, because they throw in a kid from left field and put it into a dystopian future AND make Brockmire the commissioner of baseball. Somehow this all works far better than it has any right to but is definitely a step below the other seasons. I enjoyed most of it, which I'm a little tiny bit embarrassed about given how genuinely horrible a person Brockmire starts out as and how much the show leans on "I can't believe they actually said / did that" as a writing crutch. Also, I cannot imagine watching this with my parents. If you don't like baseball, I'm not sure it would resonate, but if you do and aren't easily shocked, it's worth watching. Also, I want to know what blackmail material they had on Joe Buck.
- I personally thought that Season 2 of Only Murders in the Building was not that great, and at one point I think I actually said the words "jumped the shark" in reference to a specific episode. However, it doesn't matter because M still loves Steve Martin and Martin Short though, so I expect we'll watch Season 3.
- Which brings us to Gravity Falls. I don't remember who recommended this show to me, but thank you. I loved every minute of it. Gravity Falls is arguably the best forty episodes of television I have ever watched. I'll grant you that's a low bar for me to get over given how little television I've watched, but even the "monster of the week" episodes were consistently fun and fed into the larger mythos. The overall plot held together really well. I'm not sure I can think of an "adult" show that did such a good job, and I hope to watch Gravity Falls with my daughter one day.
As I write this, I've only completed two seasons of shows in 2023, and am part way through one more. There's another show that I stalled out on but will likely come back to. I think it's a safe bet that my 2023 totals will be even less than they were for 2022, and I don't have a problem with that. There's nothing wrong with television, but I like reading better.
I'm pleased to say that in 2022, with the pandemic slowing down and the new baby being promoted to new toddler, the amount of television that I watched leveled off substantially from the 2021 peak of 38 seasons of 18 different shows. In 2022, I watched 18 seasons of television of a combined 8 different shows. 14 of those seasons were watched jointly with M, so I only watched 4 seasons on my own, the first of which I was about 80% done with in 2021. This seems a lot healthier and more sustainable than 2021 was.
Here's the complete list. Everything with an * was watched with M. The date is the day I finished watching the season in question.
TV - *14 + 4 = 18
*Archer, Season 5 - Su 1/02 - Hulu
The Tick (2016), Season 2- Su 1/09 - Prime
Animaniacs (2020), Season 2 - F 3/04 - Hulu
*The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Season 4 - S 3/12 - Prime
*Archer, Season 6 - M 3/14 - Hulu
*Brockmire, Season 3 - F 3/25 - Hulu
*Archer, Season 7 - F 5/06 - Hulu
*Brockmire, Season 4 - S 6/25 - Hulu
*Obi-Wan Kenobi, Season 1 - M 6/27 - Disney+
Gravity Falls, Season 1 - Su 7/03 - Hulu
*Archer, Season 8 - R 7/14 - Hulu
*Archer, Season 9 - M 8/15 - Hulu
Gravity Falls, Season 2 - S 8/20 - Hulu
*Only Murders in the Building, Season 2 - T 8/23 - Hulu
*Archer, Season 10 - Su 9/11 - Hulu
*Archer, Season 11 - R 10/06 - Hulu
*Archer, Season 12 - S 11/05 - Hulu
*Archer, Season 13 - W 12/08 - Hulu
Breakdown by streaming service:
Hulu - 15 seasons - Far and away the service we use the most.
Prime - 2 seasons - M has a Prime membership, but they don't have much that has caught my interest.
Disney+ - 1 seasons - We watched Obi-Wan Kenobi on vacation in PA. It wasn't good, but I learned that M has a serious crush on Ewan McGregor at all ages, but particularly scruffy middle-aged Ewan.
Netflix - 0 seasons - I'm not sure I even launched Netflix once in 2022. Which is fine, we aren't paying for it.
None of this includes any of the television that M turns on in the evenings to provide her with background noise. I don't watch any of that. She sometimes does and sometimes doesn't. Of the shows that I actually watched:
- We finished watching Archer. Leaving aside the dreck that is season Season 10, it sustained quality fairly well even as it went into double-digit seasons. I'm dubious that it can continue with the loss of Jessica Walter, but on the other hand if you told me that it was going to have another 13 seasons, I wouldn't disbelieve you... and if the quality of the median season stays at the same level, I'll probably watch them.
- Season 2 of The Tick was fantastic, much better than the very uneven season 1, and I really wish that the Season 3 it set up had actually happened. Oh well. It might have even better better than the animated show, although they are trying to do two different things and don't lend themselves easily to comparison. I still want to watch the single season of the 2001 series
- Animaniacs was... fine. There were hits and misses, and if it felt like there were more misses than in Season 1, it was still really good at times. The callbacks to beloved segments from the original series never got old, but on the whole I don't feel a burning need to watch another season of this or to revisit the existing seasons.
- Season 4 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel started bad, got worse, and never really recovered. If it had been up to me I would have stopped watching it. We are watching Season 5 right now, and I'm pleased to say that it's dramatically better.
- Obi-Wan Kenobi was pretty meh. It's weird how much they are willing to assume that people watched all sorts of other lower profile Star Wars television to have even a vague chance of understanding some of what's going on here, or at least how it fits into the movies. Mostly, it didn't do a good job. Didn't look good, didn't make sense, wasn't very enjoyable. Take Ewan McGregor out of this and it's nigh-unwatchable.
- The progression of Brockmire can be described thusly: in season 1, we have an announcer do every absurd thing you can imagine, largely due to alcohol and drug abuse. In season 2, he does all of that but even more so because he's in New Orleans. In season 3, they flip it around and make Brockmire go sober, which actually works surprising well. My guess is that they didn't expect to have a season 4, because they throw in a kid from left field and put it into a dystopian future AND make Brockmire the commissioner of baseball. Somehow this all works far better than it has any right to but is definitely a step below the other seasons. I enjoyed most of it, which I'm a little tiny bit embarrassed about given how genuinely horrible a person Brockmire starts out as and how much the show leans on "I can't believe they actually said / did that" as a writing crutch. Also, I cannot imagine watching this with my parents. If you don't like baseball, I'm not sure it would resonate, but if you do and aren't easily shocked, it's worth watching. Also, I want to know what blackmail material they had on Joe Buck.
- I personally thought that Season 2 of Only Murders in the Building was not that great, and at one point I think I actually said the words "jumped the shark" in reference to a specific episode. However, it doesn't matter because M still loves Steve Martin and Martin Short though, so I expect we'll watch Season 3.
- Which brings us to Gravity Falls. I don't remember who recommended this show to me, but thank you. I loved every minute of it. Gravity Falls is arguably the best forty episodes of television I have ever watched. I'll grant you that's a low bar for me to get over given how little television I've watched, but even the "monster of the week" episodes were consistently fun and fed into the larger mythos. The overall plot held together really well. I'm not sure I can think of an "adult" show that did such a good job, and I hope to watch Gravity Falls with my daughter one day.
As I write this, I've only completed two seasons of shows in 2023, and am part way through one more. There's another show that I stalled out on but will likely come back to. I think it's a safe bet that my 2023 totals will be even less than they were for 2022, and I don't have a problem with that. There's nothing wrong with television, but I like reading better.