Although my focus was primarily on movies, 2024 was a really solid year for shows as well. There were indubitably some real duds as well, but by the end of the year, Marvel and Star Wars seemed to be on better tracks.
Please note: I'm only considering shows whose seasons I finished in 2024. So while I've enjoyed Skeleton Crew so far, it won't get a culminating rating until I watch the finale, which means it'll be one of the first shows of 2025.
Now, without further pomp or circumstance, our 2024 shows, ranked!
- Arcane (seasons 1 and 2) - Arcane was an absolute monster. I don't normally go for animated shows, and it's been like a decade since I played League of Legends with any kind of regularity, but this show managed to overcome those hurdles and completely rock my world. The first season is stronger, with some of the most devastating and engrossing emotional beats I've seen in any show. The seconds season seems a little rushed, but the quality is still top-notch. I'm looking forward to more shows by this team.
- Twisted Metal - An amazing balance of action, humor, moderate gore, and the occasional mind-bender. I'll say this though: I would've liked to hear Samoa Joe's portrayal of Sweettooth. Will Arnett is a great actor with a great voice, but don't sleep on Samoa Joe (the physical actor in the show).
- The Queen's Gambit - Incredibly entertaining from start to finish. There's a certain formula to making a 'rags to riches' story, and this show nails it.
- Gen V - While The Boys gets less and less compelling, they managed to create an exceptional spin-off with more interesting characters. The helicopter assault scene is absolute prestige television. I can't spoil it, but you'll know it when you see it.
- The Penguin - There's a group of shows here that are all around the same quality in my mind, and breaking the tie was tough. The Penguin gets the nod for having the most rewarding finale, one that was both shocking and completely within the scope of the show. At the end, I was shaken, and eager for more of this world.
- Harley Quinn (Seasons 1-4) - If I were only considering the first season, Harley Quinn would be right there with Arcane at the top of my list. It's got an awesome combination of familiar characters in new stories, and the dynamic between Harley and Poison Ivy is amazing. Buuuuut, the show seems to get kind of unsure of itself after a couple seasons, and at this point while I'll watch subsequent seasons, I'm not exactly jonesin' for 'em.
- Bonding (season 2) - Not quite as good as the first season, but it's still a great show with some awesome humor, as well as confronting some more serious ideas. By the end of the show, I was totally out on Pete, but still very in on Tiff.
- Fallout - Fallout was a show that had some incredible highs, some great moments with a couple of our national treasures... err, wait Ella Purnell is British. Whatever, her and Walton Goggins were tremendous, and the story is really interesting overall. I think the show moves a little too slowly sometimes, and I feel like there's a little too much unresolved going into next season. But, overall, very good.
- Agatha All Along - While #9 might not seem very high, I really enjoyed Agatha as well. The finale seemed a liiiiiiittle slapdash, but other than that the characters were all expertly written and executed. And I'm very, very excited for the third part of this series, when we hopefully get Vision fully back in the MCU.
- Brooklyn Nine-Nine (seasons 7-8) - A very good sitcom, a well done culmination. Rest in peace Andre Braugher, underappreciated in our time.
- House of the Dragon (season 2) - In what's basically the opposite of The Penguin, House of the Dragon had a tremendous season leading up to the finale, but the finale was... just another episode? It was very much the deep breath before the plunge, and the last shots were really cool, with all the armies moving across Westeros. But I'm ready now, I don't want to wait!
- X-Men '97 - I did not expect to like this show much at all really. I tried watching the original series, and just wasn't drawn in at all. But for whatever reason, this new series caught me after the second or third episode, and I had a good, Saturday morning cartoon time. Also, I'm not sure if the original series was like this, but this show had some dark ass themes. Freakin' X-Men.
- Cowboy Bebop (Netflix live action) - It started with so much potential, but by the end of the show, I get why it wasn't renewed. The characters fall out in kind of a distasteful way, to where you don't really want them to get back together, and the "twists" at the end are just kind of... fine. But it was so fun at the beginning!
- Blue-Eyed Samurai - I still don't like when a show downplays the importance of getting stabbed by having their protagonist survive it all the time. Am I supposed to believe that everyone our protagonist stabbed died from every stabbing, but that their enemies couldn't nick the right artery one time? Anyways, the show is decent lol.
- The Acolyte - Unfortunately we won't get a second season of this show. While it wasn't perfect, there were a lot of compelling pieces to this show, and a couple of absolutely banger lightsaber fights. Maybe Manny Jacinto's character can work into some other show or movie or video game.
- Battlestar Galactica (seasons 3-4) - Speaking of disappointing after a promising beginning. While there's still good content in here, the show feels artificially extended towards the end, with not enough fresh juice to keep things rolling. The characters are strong, and the premise is great, but the 3rd and 4th seasons kind of drag, and the end of the story is disappointingly mystical.
- 3 Body Problem - This is a show that has some good acting and the beginnings of an interesting story, but god, it feels like we've gotten like 3% of the mystery revealed after an entire season. I can deal with some slow-developing stories, but there's a limit, dammit.
- The Boys (season 4) - It seems like The Boys' writers are ready for the show to be over, which is convenient, because so am I. I'm hopeful that the last season will ramp back up the fun and excitement, and then they can focus on telling new stories with new characters, like Gen V.
- What If (season 2) - One of the first shows I watched in 2024, thankfully it wasn't a sign of things to come. What If just doesn't have whatever it is that I like about mainstream Marvel content *or* the animated series towards the top of this list. I don't think there was a show that I fell asleep watching more often than What If.
- Echo - I really did not get into Echo. It stays out of the bottom slot because of the return of a more brutal Kingpin, and an awesome cameo by Charlie Cox as Daredevil. By the way, the confrontation between Echo and Daredevil was good enough that I would be game to see more of that. But for me, the character of Echo didn't have the gravitas to carry a whole show.
- Invincible (season 2, part 2) - Part of the reason this is at the bottom is because of a drastically ill-advised splitting of the season, stretching the emotional beats beyond their breaking points. And then on top of that, it was just... not that good television. The storylines felt only casually connected to each other, which isn't necessarily a disaster (see Game of Thrones), but none of them was good enough to keep me in on the show. It sounds like they've learned from the splitting mistake; we'll see if the show improves upon its actual content as well.
Last up: games of 2024!
No comments:
Post a Comment