Home > Dangerous Universe > Best TV of 10/11 season

Best TV of 10/11 season

By Bert Ehrmann

Check out The Dangerous Universe Website!

Fort Wayne Reader

2011-12-19

The best TV series of the 2010/11 season is the NBC series Community.

It's heart-wrenching to watch a series as funny, compelling and brilliant as Community and to know that very few other people are watching. Very, very few. So few that NBC has decided that after the first of the year it will temporarily pull Community from the schedule in the new year so they can air other shows in their timeslot.

What stinks is that the last few years of Community have been great. From last year's Halloween episode where zombies literally invade the Greendale campus, to another where the entire episode is told flashback clip-show style, except the clips shown were from things that never actually happened in any of the Community episodes and even an episode where events of the show are played out over and over again with differences when one character rolls dice and sends each character out of the room and we see what happens in their absence.

But the best Community episode, so far that is, has got to be the Christmas episode last season entitled “Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas.” In that episode, the entire show was animated claymation style, with the actors of the Community voicing their claymated selves. The episode, though hilarious and unique was also strangely moving.

With Community, I keep telling myself, “Six seasons and a movie, six seasons and a movie…”

The Walking Dead: With only a measly 13 episodes of AMC series The Walking Dead having aired over the first two seasons of the show, the series feels more like a longish miniseries than a traditional TV show. And I think that's a good thing. The story of each episode of the series feels extremely focused and every second of screen time is treated with importance with nothing wasted. And though some fans of the series might complain that The Walking Dead is moving more slowly now than it did in the first season, I'd argue that if a series like this moves too fast it's apt to burn out in a year or two rather than becoming a long, enjoyable, show.

American Horror Story: I almost didn't watch American Horror on FX when it first came out. I wasn't really a fan of series creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk's previous shows Glee and Nip/Tuck and only ended up checking out American Horror because a friend was excited about the show. And I'm glad I tried it out; American Horror is one of the most disturbing/out of control/scary shows that I've ever seen. Each week I'm amazed at what happens and can't believe how much backstory is revealed in each episode of the show. If you're planning on checking out American Horror let me fill you in on a little secret; don't watch the show alone and in the dark. You have been warned!

A Game of Thrones: I'm not much a fan of the fantasy genre and when HBO announced they were going to air the fantasy series A Game of Thrones I wasn't interested. But another friend of mine told me how much she liked the books and was extremely excited about the show, so I decided to check it out. After seeing it, not only did I become hooked on the TV series, I also ended up reading the first novel the series was based on and plan to go through the second book before the start of the second season.

Falling Skies: Much like with The Walking Dead, Falling Skies presents a bleak look at a world after the apocalypse. In this TNT series, aliens have invaded the earth and it's up to the last few remnants of humanity to fight them off and win the planet back. But, unlike the dour and depressing The Walking Dead, the creators of Falling Skies are somehow able to inject an upbeat thread into a story about the end of the world.

Young Justice: Not only does this animated Cartoon Network series have enough action to appeal to kids, it also has deep and complex storylines that also appeals to adult viewers like how does someone grow up in the shadow of a guy like Superman?

Honorable mentions go to Happy Endings on ABC and the already defunct Sym-Bionic Titan on Cartoon Network.

Visit me online at DangerousUniverse.com.