This week marked the end of the first half of 2015. Which means we’re less than four months away from the events of Back to the Future 2. I’m starting to think that my down payment on that first hovercraft vehicle is not going to produce what I had hoped. (But perhaps the Cubs can still win the World Series!) In the meantime, I thought I’d share some of my favorite movies and TV shows thus far this year. I tried to rank these initially, but as we learned in Inside Out (yes, that made the movie list!), different emotions have their own strengths and importance in our lives, and in similar fashion different shows and episodes are simply better at different times in your life, depending on what’s going on. Sometimes we need a cry, sometimes we want to be thrilled with action, and sometimes we just can’t sleep until we figure out what’s going on in the town of Wayward Pines.
Without further ado… my five favorite television shows so far in 2015. (The move list can be found here.)
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
I’m typically a pretty mainstream guy, so I’m proud to start this list with a non-mainstream cult hit that I bet will pick up some major steam in the coming months as more and more people find it on Netflix. Ellie Kemper (Erin from The Office) absolutely shines as the way-too-cute-and-innocent title character who moves to New York City after living a dozen years with a deceiving pastor who talked her and a few others into joining him in an underground shelter to avoid the coming apocalypse. You’d think the jokes would get old concerning how Kimmy hasn’t caught up to the current pop culture yet (i.e., she say’s “hashbrown” instead of “hashtag”), but through twelve episodes, the writing remained as fun as the addictive theme song. (“Unbreakable! They alive!…”) When season 2 hits Netflix, I’m afraid my wife and I might end up pulling an all-nighter watching them all. It’s that good!
Parks and Recreation
Thank goodness for the Esquire network picking up the syndication of this now completed show. The way-too-short final season aired on NBC at the beginning of this year, and I miss it so much. I can’t think of another show that had more likable characters than Parks and Recreation. The always bubbly Leslie Knope; her genuinely loving husband Ben; the cutest married couple ever on television, Andy and April; and my favorite television character…ever…Ron Swanson. Just Google “Ron Swanson quotes.” You’ll laugh your heart out. One huge positive of this show that went largely unnoticed was the strength of all the marital relationships it displayed. There were no disrespectful Everybody Loves Raymond-type marriages. No divorces. Just husbands and wives working as the teams God intended them to be. Unfortunately, there is a lot about this show that we are unlikely to find again on primetime television. That’s why reruns are the best!
Wayward Pines
We’ve only seen six of the ten episodes so far, but the case for this being one of my top five shows of the year rests on the simple fact that my wife had no interest whatsoever in watching it after seeing the previews, but by the end of the first episode she was hooked. And so will you if you give it a try. At the very least, give it until the end of the fifth episode. If your jaw doesn’t drop, I’ll reimburse you every penny you spent on reading this article. (And don’t get attached to too many characters!)
The Returned
I add this show with caution. Because at the end of the first season of the similar Resurrection, I might’ve listed that as a top five show of mine. But then I lost interest halfway through the second season (as did many others apparently, since it was canceled). But there’s something this AMC show about dead people returning to life has that Resurrection didn’t that gives me great encouragement: Carlton Cuse, one of the minds behind Lost. Just like in Lost, I don’t need all the answers right away in season two, but we do need some. If they keep dragging everything out, adding even more questions, they risk going the way of Resurrection. So give us something…please! At least tell us why the Returned are always hungry!
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
If there is to be an adequate replacement for the already-missed comedy Parks and Recreation, it’s definitely Fox’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Through two seasons, the Andy Samberg-led ensemble cast continues to produce fresh, fun scripts with just as many likable characters as Parks and Recreation. Veteran actor Andre Braugher should be arrested by the team at the Nine-Nine for depriving us for so long of his comedic talents. I don’t believe there has been a single funny line written for Braugher’s straight-faced captain through two seasons, but his delivery of the simplest of lines rivals that of the best of history’s comedians. If for no other reason, tune in to Brooklyn Nine-Nine to see the nerdy, sometimes annoying soldier from 1989’s Glory become one of the funniest actors on television.
Honorable mentions are certainly due to Marvel’s Daredevil and Agent Carter, as well as the James Spader crime-mystery The Blacklist. As with Andre Braugher, James Spader also has proven in his later years the level of his comedic acting chops. Scorpion is fun, and Castle is, well, it’s Castle—it’s as good or as bad as it has always been, depending on your original opinion of the show. But what about you? What would make your top five list so far in 2015?
The Bible in Pop Culture 