A year in which a British head of lettuce outlasted Britain’s head of government was a wild year to be a human on earth. But it was a great year to be a human on television.
I grew up in a time when people just watched what was airing on television. On sick days, that meant “Days of Our Lives” and “Sally Jesse Raphael” as well as “The Price is Right.” When I was a preteen, I mastered the art of switching between TBS and NBC to watch a solid block of “Saved by the Bell.” Now? I can stream episodes of Zach Morris and his high school antics on no less than ten different services.
I don’t get to watch too much television — I have friends who even with jobs and kids can get in 10+ hours of tv a week — but I still manage an hour at the end of the day. It’s nice to decompress, to watch my “stories,” as my grandmother would say. And in 2022, that one hour an evening added up to both a whole lot of television and somehow not enough.
There was comfort watching, of course, shows like “Abbott Elementary” and “Our Flag Means Death,” whose belief in the goodness of the world, even in the face of great odds, calmed me after a long day. Somehow “The Great North,” “Miracle Workers” and “Bob’s Burgers” fall into this category as well, great shows to watch just before bed that won’t give me weird nightmares.
I watched “Outlander” and “Grey’s Anatomy” out of an odd loyalty to how much time I’ve already invested in these crazy long shows. I might be a season behind, but still, I plug along, following the plucky female leads (let’s not discuss what’s happening on Grey’s just yet) through some truly unimaginable situations that require a skilled surgeon and deep suspension of disbelief.
Like most folks, I enjoy a good heist, caper, or murder mystery. Great tv shows in this genre can vary in tone, from the mostly-true crimes in “Inventing Anna” to the whimsical “Only Murders in the Building.”
“Andor” is probably the best thing I saw all year, an almost-genius offering in the Star Wars universe, but on any given day, I could replace it with “The Bear,” “Severance,” or “Starstruck.” Genius doesn’t seem a big enough word to describe “The Rehearsal,” but I have to figure out how real, or what exactly it is, and what it did to me before I can actually decide how I feel.
Obviously, reality tv cannot be ignored. “The Mole” and “Love is Blind” allow me to root for and hate on normalish people without any guilt. I’m sure they’re all lovely in real life, but getting to judge someone without repercussions is too much fun. In a world with immense suffering, watching two people fight over a block of ice can be a balm for the soul.
I haven’t gotten to “Yellowjackets,” “Pachinko,” “the White Lotus,” “Reservation Dogs,” “Wednesday,” or “House of the Dragon” yet. There’s just so much and I have a full time gig, some book writing to do, and, oh yeah, two kids and a husband and two dogs that sometimes require my attention.
Part of me misses the way it used to be, when I was a child. Everyone I knew watched the same shows, and there was a comfort to that — to a shared language of entertainment. Having similar cultural touchstones allowed us to talk about things in a shorthand — the way most people my age know what “I”m so excited, I’m so excited, I’m… so… scared” means (if you know, you know).
Niche culture was a good thing. But I wouldn’t go back. The insane amount of offerings on streaming services, even in the face of major cuts to what’s on HBO Max on any given day, mean that most of us can find something that makes us happy. I’m sure that’s a relief for anyone who really hated “Saved by the Bell.”
I love that there are so many television shows that came out this year, good ones, award-winning ones, that I’ll never have time to see. It means that an abundance of stories are being told, the kind of stories that can get everyone through the most wild of times.
Adriana E. Ramírez is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: aramirez@post-gazette.com. Her previous article was “What fossil fuel disaster will be the last one we tolerate?”.
First Published: December 29, 2022, 5:00 a.m.