Without a doubt, 2022 was the best TV Year I can remember, when the industry’s Other Streamers (i.e. not Netflix or Prime Video) truly mustered their creative resources and consistently showed us some phenomenal scripted programming. It was a year that saw the conclusion of at least one all-time classic show, the continuation of several others and, perhaps most impactful, the introduction of so many more.
You might note that more than a dozen of the shows detailed below have been around for fewer than two full seasons, and I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. For years, the bulk of television’s focus seemed to be on properties that had already shown themselves to be successful. Why risk losing viewers with new content, the logic went, when networks could just churn out a seventh season of True Blood? The advent of streaming services seemed to initially offer some hope, but much of the original productions found there often felt extremely second-rate.
Only in the last couple years have places like HBOMAX and Hulu (in partnership with FX) really begun to emphasize not just offering on-demand menus of their over-the-air content and legacy programming, but also improving the perception of their platforms overall through the inclusion of streaming-specific originals. Where just a few years ago you had to go to HBO or AMC themselves to see the best shows on television, now you don’t even need cable to have access to most of what’s out there.
This year, I’ve broken this summary into a few parts. In the first, I’ll provide brief overviews of my favorite television from 2022 without giving away any major plot points. I’ll then write a little more about why I loved each of these programs for anyone who has also seen them (or doesn’t care about spoilers).
Be forewarned, dear reader, that I watched precisely zero minutes of television in 2022 that takes place in the Marvel, DC, Tolkien, Star Wars or Game of Thrones universes, so if you’re expecting anything about those shows you’re going to be disappointed. I also tend to stay away from violent stuff about rival ranching families or brooding loners who are secretly ex-CIA or whatever, so I haven’t seen Yellowstone or The Old Man. There were also a few shows this year that were really well reviewed but I’m so behind on them that it would have taken forever to catch up, so unfortunately I haven’t yet seen The Handmaid’s Tale or the TV version of What We Do in the Shadows. Finally, I don’t really care to spend my free time watching stuff about “business intrigue” or about rich, depressed high school kids who seem to spend most of their waking lives getting into intense arguments while overdosing on drugs and putting their mouths on each other’s parts, so if you enjoy shows like Succession or Euphoria you might find my list of favorites somewhat lacking. I also did not watch Severance, just because it seemed … kinda sad? I don’t know.
That said, I was fortunate enough to see so many great shows in 2022 that I’m not even going to narrow them down to an ordered list – just a collection of recommendations from a guy with impeccable taste.
I hope you find something new and fun to watch. Thanks for reading!
First: Super-Brief, Spoiler-Free Synopses
The Bear (Hulu)
One of America’s best young chefs returns to his Chicago hometown to run his late brother’s Italian beef joint, and learns to work with the restaurant’s ragtag group of longtime staff.
Chad & JT Go Deep (Netflix)
Think Borat, but replace an eccentric reporter from Kazakhstan with Bill and Ted-type SoCal surfer dudes.
Mythic Quest (AppleTV+)
It’s like Silicon Valley, but with a lot more heart.
The English (Prime Video/BBC)
An English aristocrat travels to the American West in 1890 to get revenge on the man who killed her son.
Hacks (HBOMAX)
A Boomer comedienne hires a Gen-Z writer to help modernize her material.
South Side (HBOMAX)
The zany adventures of the staff of Rent-To-Own, their reluctant police liaisons and other members of the surrounding Chicago communities.
Reservation Dogs (FX/Hulu)
Following the day-to-day goings-on in the lives of four teenagers (and their families, friends and neighbors) who live on an Oklahoma tribal reservation.
I Love That for You (Showtime)
A young woman who successfully beat cancer as a child pretends to have it again in order to get a job on a television shopping network.
George & Tammy (Showtime)
A biographical miniseries about two of country music’s biggest (and most troubled) stars.
This Fool (Hulu)
A straight-laced Mexican thirtysomething has his life upended when his ne’er-do-well cousin is released from prison and moves in to his family’s Los Angeles home.
Somebody Somewhere (HBOMAX)
Life in Kansas’s ninth-largest city is just as interesting (and emotionally affecting) as anywhere else.
The Dropout (Hulu)
After a podcast and multiple documentaries, we now get the scripted miniseries telling the story of Theranos and its disgraced founder Elizabeth Holmes.
We Own This City (HBOMAX)
A group of Baltimore police officers violate their oaths in such heinous, ostentatious ways that they were eventually sentenced to a combined 112 years in prison.
Barry (HBOMAX)
Season three of Bill Hader’s venerated hitman/Hollywood series takes a very, very dark turn.
Abbott Elementary (ABC)
The fake-documentary sitcom model moves to a public grade-school in Philadelphia.
Under the Banner of Heaven (FX/Hulu)
An LDS homicide detective in suburban Utah investigates a brutal murder, and experiences a crisis of faith in the process.
Welcome to Flatch (FOX)
Another mockumentary-style comedy about the residents of Flatch, Ohio (population: 1,526).
The Righteous Gemstones (HBOMAX)
One of America’s most prominent televangelist families does its best to balance its perfectly manicured public image with the messy reality behind the scenes.
Minx (HBOMAX)
In the 1970s, there were plenty of “adult magazines” directed toward men. What would happen if somebody also tried to create one for women?
Almost Fly (HBOMAX)
Teenagers in early-’90s, post-Cold War West Germany discover hip-hop.
Tokyo Vice (HBOMAX)
An American reporter for a Japanese newspaper learns to navigate relationships among police, gangsters and everyone in between to get the stories he needs.
More Details, Organized by Category – **SPOILERS BELOW**
Workplace Comedies & Dramadies
The Bear (Hulu)
The Bear, like a number of other shows on this list, is sort of like Parks & Recreation with a bit of an edge. Not that it’s got the same fake-documentary style or that its about city government (see below for a couple more direct Parks analogs), but that all of its characters really seem to care about each other even though they also have their abrasive qualities on regular display.
Jeremy Allen White personifies poorly contained anxiety as Carmen Berzatto, an ultra-talented but also ultra-burnt-out young chef who leaves a job at a prestigious New York restaurant to run his late brother’s Chicago sandwich spot. He’s joined there by his brother’s longtime staff, who have no interest in running the kitchen any differently than in the haphazard, informal system the deceased former owner cobbled together. This includes Carmen’s brother’s coarse best friend Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), who simultaneously has no discernible skills and is also the lynchpin to solving so many of the restaurant’s challenges.
The Bear‘s main strength is this cast in the kitchen, who are quickly shown to be complete characters, alternating constantly between frustrating and endearing. Ayo Edebiri plays Sydney, an ambitious but inexperienced chef who shares Carmen’s vision for The Original Beef of Chicagoland, if not his pragmatism. Lionel Boyce in an earnest breath of fresh air as Marcus, the shop’s baker who becomes inspired to learn so much more about the art of the pastry once the new boss arrives. My favorite small character is Carmen’s brother-in-law Pete, played with doe-eyed aplomb by one of the guys from the Geico ads where young homeowners become their parents. I’d like to think I’m tough like some of The Bear‘s primary figures, but in real life I’m mostly like Pete.
Aside from these marvelous performances, The Bear also represents one of the best kitchen-centered programs ever made. Creator Christopher Storer enlisted his sister Courtney, a veteran real-life chef herself, as culinary producer, and his inclusion of Matty Matheson as both a consultant and a minor character also helped bolster the back-of-house realism. And then there’s the 21-minute episode that was all shot in one single take which … just wow.
Some shows take a few episodes to really hook me, and then there are shows like this, which gave me a very positive impression during the 30-second promo I saw on a sponsored Twitter ad a few weeks before it was released. I ended up watching all eight episodes in two sittings, and I’ve since re-watched the entire thing twice. If I absolutely had to name a single show on this list that I liked “the most,” it would be The Bear.
Mythic Quest: Season 3 (AppleTV+)
I didn’t really care for Rob McElhenney before this show, because I thought that he and his character from Sunny were not all that different from one another. I also didn’t really enjoy the episodes of Silicon Valley that I watched, because the tropes about the tech industry that were so accurately lampooned by Mike Judge hit a little too close to home for someone who has spent his entire professional career working for software companies.
All of this is to say that I didn’t expect to like Mythic Quest when I fired it up some time after the first season ended, and that I was so, so happy to be wrong. In addition to McElhenney, the show welcomed back Sunny alum David Hornsby and was co-created by Charlie Day, but where Mythic Quest still provides plenty of laughs, the more uncomfortable parts about the other show – the one about a bunch of irredeemable assholes – are largely absent.
Instead, McElhenney’s Ian Grimm is far from the main focus of the show, especially as it has progressed through its 30 episodes. The audience thusly gets to know the crew of co-workers at MQ‘s eponymous gaming company in much the same way they did during The Office – only, once again, without the mockumentary format. Among the best of these is Poppy Li (Charlotte Nicdao), the company’s brilliant/emotionally stunted lead designer, who serves as a perfect foil to Grimm’s swaggering/technically inferior charisma machine, and Brad Bakshi (Danny Pudi), MQ’s head of monetization who is continually reminding us all why successful video game companies exist in the first place.
Where Mythic Quest really shines, though, is in its handful of one-off episodes, which briefly take us away from the show’s main storylines to provide us with some important historical context, which allow us to understand the characters more deeply. The special “Quarantine” episode, filmed mostly over video chat and released in May 2020, made my bawl my eyes out, which was not something I ever expected to happen while watching a show made by the folks behind It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. While Grimm might have the same irrational confidence as Mac does, he also demonstrates the sort of empathy that is all but absent from the folks at Paddy’s Pub, and those doses of humanity have really allowed McElhenney the actor to show what he can do.
To put a finer point on all of this, I re-subscribed to AppleTV+ specifically so I could watch the third season of Mythic Quest, so you could definitely say this has also been one of my favorite shows from the last five years, and one of the best I’ve ever seen.
Hacks: Season 2 (HBOMAX)
While there is more than one show in this year’s list that reminds me of Parks & Rec, I think the closest comparison to Hacks would instead be another brightly lit HBO comedy about the entertainment industry. Of course, I’m talking about Entourage.
Deborah Vance (Smart) is Vincent Chase, only her career is on the opposite end of the Fame Bell Curve as we find his when Entourage begins. Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins), Deborah’s right-hand-man, is Eric Murphy, except handsome, tall, black, gay and an actual professional. Ava (Hannah Einbinder) is Turtle – occasionally helpful but also seems to be kept around mostly to occupy the bottom rung of the Deborah Vance Entertainment Empire. And since I’ve already come this far in the analogy, I’ll stretch it a bit to call Deborah’s daughter DJ (Kaitlin Olson) the Johnny Drama of the crew, as she perpetually tries to user her mother’s fame and success to further her own ill-advised business ventures. There’s also Deborah’s agent Jimmy, played to exasperated perfection by series co-creator Paul W. Downs, as a less aggressive/profane version of Ari Gold.
As I write this out, I’m realizing that this group of five (along with the show’s half-dozen or so other regulars) comprises my favorite group of characters of any show on this list, and its the meaningful interactions between these characters that make Hacks such a fun watch. Sure, Deborah puts forth many of the stereotypical traits we might associate with a longtime Vegas-showroom attraction, but we learn not only why that is as the series progresses, but we also come to understand how those traits impact the lives of the people around her (and how each of those people has learned to manage the challenge, or not).
When is the last time a television show made a real star out of a veteran female character-actress in her late 60s? While it’s true that Jean Smart has enjoyed a productive career as a supporting player for nearly four decades, Hacks is the first television project where she is the central focus, and her two consecutive Emmy wins for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series are well deserved.
I Love That for You (Showtime)
“Woman fakes cancer to get a job on TV” is not usually the sort of premise that hooks me for a half-hour comedy, but I decided to check this one out after seeing it appear on a number of mid-year Best Of lists. Like with The Bear, I ended up watching the first season’s eight episodes in just two or three sittings, so suffice it to say I’m glad I gave it a try!
I Love That for You has a way of subverting audience expectations by deliberately avoiding the sort of tired material we’ve seen in other similarly oriented programs. The best example of this is in how longtime shopping-network star Jackie Stilton (Molly Shannon, who deserves an Emmy nomination at the very least) is tasked with mentoring the channel’s newest presenter, Joanna Gold (Vanessa Bayer). In so many other shows, this would have been a device used to write a bunch of episodes where Jackie attempts to sabotage Joanna’s new career until the season finale when we learn that Jackie is just misunderstood and everyone magically starts to love each other.
In a very pleasant surprise, however, we find that Jackie is immediately and consistently supportive of Joanna, even after the latter’s health forgery has been revealed, and the two quickly develop a strong friendship based on their mutual love of their work and their kindred-spirit personalities. Molly Shannon and Vanessa Bayer are just a joy to watch on screen together, and they’re expertly backed by Ayden Mayeri, Johnno Wilson (who utters one of my favorite lines in TV history on this show) and acting legend Jenifer Lewis, among others.
There are definitely a few surprises on this list, mostly in that I really enjoyed a handful shows in 2022 that I initially thought might not be very good, but this was the biggest.
Abbott Elementary (ABC)
OK – I’ve mentioned how this show and that show are sort of like Parks & Recreation or The Office, but no other series from 2022 compares quite as well to that duo of all-time greats as Abbott Elementary. From its faux-doc style to its expansive cast of quirky co-workers, its clear that star/creator Quinta Brunson (age 33) is strongly influenced by the same shows I watched as younger adult, so her network television debut established a very early place in the “I Had a Good Feeling About This One” zone.
In less than two seasons, Brunson has already blazed a trail that’s seems destined to take her to the A List, but she’s not the only one whose star is shining a lot brighter thanks to Abbott. The show’s most recognized performance is obviously by Sheryl Lee Ralph, who received the most recent Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as longtime kindergarten teacher Barbara Howard, a reluctant but ultimately warm mentor figure for Brunson’s Janine Teagues. Abbott has also rejuvenated the career of Tyler James Williams, whom I will forever refer to as “Everybody Hates Chris” (which I’m sure he’d loooove) and who is very much the Jim Halpert to Brunson’s Pam Beesly. I like to think Quinta Brunson had a crush on Williams when she was growing up and specifically wrote the part of Gregory Eddie with him in mind, but who knows.
My favorite character on the show, however, has got to be questionably qualified school principal Ava Coleman, played by Janelle James in a part that had her competing with the aforementioned Sheryl Lee Ralph for that 2022 Emmy. James can effortlessly throw away hilarious one-liners in a way that’s second to few in all of television, and I have to imagine it’s only a matter of time before she becomes the centerpiece of another show or transitions fully into movies.
It certainly helps that I was raised by two people who spent decades in public education (even though I couldn’t get them to watch this show because of the “unsteady cameras”), but Abbott Elementary would be one of my top shows of the year no matter what.
Minx (HBOMAX)
The first thing you need to know about Minx is the penises.
There are a lot of penises in this show. Balls, too. A whole bunch of penises and balls. Like, more penises and balls than I’ve ever seen in a show before by at least a factor of ten. If seeing penises and balls to that degree is gonna gross you out, this show is not for you.
Now, if you’re less squeamish seeing the male anatomy in all of its varied forms and sizes, you might enjoy this warm-hearted dramady about a woman trying to break into the publishing industry during a time when it was even more dominated by men than it is today, and about the people she meets along the way who share her vision. That vision, of course, is to create a porno magazine marketed toward heterosexual women that will also contain the sort of news and commentary that would have been considered radically feminist in the 1970s, when Minx takes place.
For some reason I’ve really grown to love shows where the male and female leads aren’t forced into a romantic plotline with one another, and that’s exactly what Minx provides. It would have been too easy to try and create Cheers-style romantic tension between the perky, determined writer/editor Joyce Prigger (Ophelia Lovibond) and the rakish, sleaze-adjacent adult magazine magnate Doug Renetti (Jake Johnson), but the show keeps them as friends and business partners only, allowing the characters to explore other romantic interests while trying to see this risky new project through.
My only beef with Minx had really nothing to do with the show at all, but dammit, why isn’t Jessica Lowe way, way more famous? She was incredible here and also had a few dynamite appearances in The Righteous Gemstones, but she doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page! If she doesn’t have her own sitcom within two years, Hollywood has its head all the way inside its own bootyhole.
A Touch of Absurdity
Chad & JT Go Deep (Netflix)
One of my favorite styles of comedy is “Smart Person Pretending to Be a Dumb Person Trying to Be a Smart Person.” It’s a style that was mastered by guys like Fred Willard, Steve Martin and Steve Carell, and I’m pleased to report that there are two youngish inheritors of that style’s throne who got a show on Netflix last year.
Perhaps you’re already familiar with the antics of Chad (Tom Allen) & JT (JT Parr), either from their appearances on Fox News or from their regular activism at various city council meetings around Southern California. If not, just imagine the most sincere, approachable surfer bros you can think of making a Sacha Baron Cohen-style pseudo-doc.
I’m reluctant to write too much more about this show for fear of giving anything away, but Chad & JT each have a method actor’s ability to engage with strangers in absurd conversations while always maintaining their deadpan delivery. Just like The Bear, I knew I would love Chad & JT from the minute I saw the trailer, and not only did I blast through all six episodes in one sitting, but this is my most re-watched show from 2022, by far.
South Side: Season 3 (HBOMAX)
The inclusion of South Side on this list is more in recognition of the series as a whole, rather than season three specifically, though the “Spirit of Kwanzaa” and “Littlepalooza” episodes from the most recent batch were terrific. Simply put, while there are a lot of funny shows in this list, none average a higher number of big laughs per minute than South Side.
Created by former Tonight Show writers Diallo Riddle and Bashir Salahuddin (who you might recognize as Tom Cruise’s helpful earthbound sidekick from Top Gun: Maverick), South Side is a throwback to sitcoms where the episodes aren’t necessarily connected to one another, only without the corny laugh track. The series follows employees of a Chicago Rent-to-Own store, its two police contacts and other members of the Englewood community, though most the show’s best stuff doesn’t really involve the characters’ work lives.
Instead, we get to see a group of family and friends collaborate on a show where they’ve been given carte blanche with the scripts and production. In fact, South Side stars one set of twins (Kareme and Quincy Young) and another set of three real-life siblings (Sultan, Zuri and co-creator Bashir Salahuddin). The best behind-the-camera connection, though, is that Bashir Salahuddin and his wife, Chandra Russell, play bickering, mutually antagonistic police partners on the show, which I imagine is a lot like when best friends who are also pro wrestlers do an in-ring feud with each other.
If you’re from the Chicago area, like my own wife, there will be a number of city-specific references and guest stars peppered throughout South Side to make your smile extra big, but even if you’re not, this is a perfect show for a chuckle.
This Fool (Hulu)
While Hulu has certainly seen its share of acclaim this year, This Fool has mostly remained under the radar, even though it’s one of the funniest shows the streamer has ever put out. Julio Lopez (co-creator Chris Estrada) is a mild-mannered program manager at a gang rehabilitation center called Hugs Not Thugs. He still lives with his mother and grandmother, has an on-again, off-again relationship but has generally carved out a piece of happiness in his early 30s.
That all changes when Julio’s cousin Luis (Frankie Quiñones, who is the real star of the show) gets out of prison and starts including himself in more parts of Julio’s life. Luis is far rougher around the edges than Julio, and he immediately tries to Alpha Dog Julio around, but things don’t necessarily go like he think they will.
This Fool might not have wound up on my favorites list, though, if not for the regular weird touches the show employs, mostly in the way it’s filmed and edited. In the wrong hands, these seemingly random moments of high art would be out of place, but when Julio suddenly floats into his sister’s ex-boyfriend’s apartment as if guided by an other-worldly presence only to feel the same strange pull to smoke some crystal meth, for example, it all seems to fit.
Welcome to Flatch (FOX)
The other fake-documentary series on this year’s list hews much more closely to the work of Christopher Guest than to the more recent ultra-popular NBC programs mentioned earlier, mostly because it’s not a workplace comedy, and like Waiting for Guffman, it somehow manages to treat its characters with ample dignity, even as they routinely show how absurd they can all be.
More than any other show on this list, Welcome to Flatch has done the best job of introducing lesser-known actors as its primary characters while also casting a few established stars in ancillary roles. In the former category are Holmes and Sam Straley, who play main characters/cousins Kelly Mallet and “Shrub” Mallet, and Krystal Smith, who as Big Mandy provides the most laugh-lines in the series by a mile.
The cast is then rounded out by Seann William Scott and Jaime Pressly, who have both not only managed to remain working actors since their younger, more popular days at the turn of the century but somehow increased their appeal beyond the typecast roles they regularly locked down 20 years ago. Pressly only began appearing during Flatch‘s second season, and while I thought the writers might have to shoehorn this new character into the narrative in a way that took away from the other excellent performances, she’s fit right in.
The biggest surprise of this show, however, has got to be the complete metamorphosis that Aya Cash underwent between her role as Stormfront, the frigid, snarky embodiment of evil in The Boys, to her role as Cheryl Peterson, the cheerful, diligent editor of Flatch’s newspaper who speaks with a thick Minnesota accent. Where the former was one of my most hated characters a few years ago (to Cash’s enormous credit), the latter is one of the most delightful beams of sunlight that can grace one’s television. I had no idea that Aya Cash had such a massive range, though as a professional actress, I could have assumed as much, but now I’ll watch just about anything she’s in.
The Righteous Gemstones: Season 2 (HBOMAX)
Speaking of performers I’ll watch no mater what, I’ve had Danny McBride Season Tickets since right after I finished college. In that phase of my life, I thought there was pretty much nothing funnier than a fast-talking man-child brimming with the sort of unearned confidence that McBride’s usual on-screen persona exudes with such flair, so The Foot Fist Way and Eastbound & Down were right up my alley. And while McBride’s film career in the 15-odd years since has been prolific (and, frankly, a little humdrum), it’s the television shows he continues to make with the same group of writers, directors and performers that have shown that he’s a lot more than just a one-note loudmouth behind the scenes.
Vice Principals – the immediate successor to Eastbound – basically took Kenny Powers and dropped him into an administrative role at a high school. More importantly, though, those chaotic, hilarious two seasons introduced Walton Goggins and Edi Patterson to McBride’s repertory of actors, and both would become crucial parts of his next ambitious project.
Which brings us to The Righteous Gemstones, which focuses on a family of successful Christian faith-leaders, headed by Eli Gemstone (John Goodman) and supported by his three publicly devoted children (McBride, Patterson and Adam DeVine). Alas, however, a scandal involving some very non-Christian behavior by one of the family exposes the true tenuousness of the Gemstones’ enterprise, and of the their bonds to one another.
I could probably rattle off a long list of moments in Gemstones that had me either awestruck, grossed-out, rolling with laughter or a combination of all three, but that would be getting into some serious spoilies. So instead I’ll just say this is the show on this list with the greatest tonal contrast between the efforts the writers and producers took to craft an epic family saga and the efforts they also took to include a bunch of toilet humor and fast-twitch insults.
Unlike with I Love That for You, the premise of “John Goodman and Danny McBride play the leaders of a televangelist family” is all I needed to know before I added Gemstones to my mental watch-list, and the show has more than exceeded my expectations.
Coming of Age
Reservation Dogs: Season 2 (FX/Hulu)
I probably don’t need to write too much about this one, since it appears on nearly every other top television list from 2022. Nevertheless, Reservation Dogs deserves a little additional recognition for the simple reason that the show produced what I believe to be the year’s single greatest episode of television.
Reservation Dogs centers around a group of four teenagers living on an indigenous reservation in Oklahoma, and on the larger community that surrounds them. For three of these youngsters, their only real goal is to get to the mystical land of California, and any notions of idealism or even optimism beyond that have long since been considerably dimmed.
But not for Cheese.
For most the show’s first two seasons, Cheese (Lane Factor) tries his best to be an emotional guiding light, not only for his close friends but for anyone who happens to cross his path. Nowhere was this more evident than in the episode where he’s briefly sent to a group home after his uncle is arrested. Where some newbies in an environment like that might turn inward except to express themselves through attempts at intimidation, Cheese quickly formed strong, genuine bonds with his fellow residents, not unlike he’s done throughout Reservation Dogs. It could have been a frightening episode, both for Cheese and for us, and instead his dedication to virtue ethics not only completely turns things around but also results in his timely ouster from the facility.
This is just one example of the sort of wonderful television being shared by the people behind Reservation Dogs, and if I was actually listing these shows by order of enjoyment, it would for sure be in the top five.
Almost Fly (HBOMAX)
The only foreign-language entry on my list is also one I happened upon randomly while scrolling through some (at the time) recently added content to HBOMAX, and it seemed sort of like a German Freaks and Geeks that takes place in the early ’90s. Naturally, I had to give it shot.
Set against a backdrop of the very recently destroyed Berlin Wall, but not quite to the point where Germany was fully reunified, Almost Fly follows West German high schoolers as the influence of American culture (via a military base in their small town) begins to take hold on them. Specifically, they discover hip-hop and are totally enraptured. From there, they set out to recreate some of the newfound art they’ve heard on the records and tapes they’ve managed to scavenge.
I’ve always considered German to be a rather ugly language, with all of it harsh consonants and guttural noises, so I was curious to hear how rap lyrics would sound, especially coming from characters who were just starting to write them. I was not disappointed, then, when an early (and ultimately rejected) draft of one of the group’s songs contained a line that translated to “I copulate with your face with style and grace.”
Almost Fly was released in America with such little fanfare that the show doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, but I still found myself saying “Now that’s a good program” after every episode.
Somebody Somewhere (HBOMAX)
This last one is really more of an example of a coming-of-middle-age show, but it still fits.
I first saw Bridget Everett in 2018’s Camping, Lena Dunham’s considerably less acclaimed (and wildly underrated) follow-up to Girls, and she was instant magic. When I saw that she was finally getting a starring role, then, I knew I had to watch every episode. What I got from Somebody Somewhere wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but it was a perfect show for me during the middle of 2022.
Given Everett’s typically boisterous, sexualized presentation, I was very surprised right off the bat to see that she was playing more of a real person in her first acting showcase. In Camping, she played the weirdo proprietor of the outdoor vacation area where the show took place. She didn’t appear often, but she stole every scene she was in.
In Somebody Somewhere, by contrast, Everett is Sam Miller, a fortyish employee of an evaluation center for standardized tests in Manhattan, Kan. who recently moved back to her hometown following the untimely death of her sister. Her mom has a serious drinking problem that she’s barely hiding, her other sister’s husband is having an affair and when Sam briefly starts up her own flirtation with a neighbor, he’s quickly arrested after police discover he’s been dealing Fentanyl.
I don’t know if I could actually tell you what Somebody Somewhere is about, but that’s not really the point of the show. Sam tries to make the most out of the strange hand she’s been dealt, and in the process really gets to know the other people in her new/old life. These include local academic Fred Rococo (played wonderfully by modern Vaudevillian Murray Hill) and her boss, Joel (Jeff Hiller, the show’s MVP), and the toned-down interactions between all them serve as the perfect salve for the parade of caustic reality TV shows I often consume.
More Seriousness
The English (Prime Video/BBC)
“Can you shoot?” asks Sgt. Eli Whipp, an Army veteran and member of the Pawnee Nation recently freed from certain death.
“If I need to,” replies Lady Cornelia Locke, an English upper-cruster who nearly faced her own demise after arriving in America just days earlier.
“Oh, you’ll need to,” Whipp quickly confirms.
That brief exchange between the two main characters from The English that I saw in the show’s trailer was all I needed in order to know that I was going to enjoy it a lot, especially because Emily Blunt plays Cornelia Locke. What follows are six of the most exciting, dramatic and heartwarming/breaking episodes of television I’ve ever seen.
After Cornelia and Eli (Chaske Spencer) escape their would-be captors, they agree to travel together to Wyoming to find and exact revenge upon the man who killed Cornelia’s son. Like with Chad and JT, I don’t want to get into too much more detail, because it’s really best if you know as little as possible going in, but if you think you even might enjoy a Western miniseries starring one of Hollywood’s best actresses, The English is worth your time.
Under the Banner of Heaven (FX/Hulu)
Before 2021, I was mostly ambivalent toward Andrew Garfield, but since then he’s played two roles that have completely changed my mind.
First, he did a transformative turn as Jim Bakker in The Eyes of Tammy Faye that was outdone only by his co-star, Jessica Chastain, who won the damn Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of the movie’s central figure. This year, then, he took some of Bakker’s wide-eyed public-facing virtuousness and added a sprinkle of detective’s grit when he played Jeb Pyre, a homicide investigator trying to solve a gruesome murder in suburban Utah.
Partway through the first episode, I learned that this show was inspired by a book of the same name by Jon Krakauer, and I ended up racing through it (on Audible, mostly while doing chores) over the course of a few weeks. More than the details of the murder at the center of Under the Banner of Heaven, the parts of the show/book that focus on the history of the LDS Church are instead the most engrossing. As a major religion that was founded in America within the last 200 years, the development of the church is tied directly to the development of the country, and it was a very interesting lens through which to look at U.S. history.
But back to the point: from the murders that frame the show to the intensity of the characters to the details of the LDS Church’s founding and early years worked into the overall plot, Under the Banner of Heaven teaches us about America by baking history lessons into a true-crime story.
Tokyo Vice (HBOMAX)
In 2001, a prominent Japanese yakuza named Tadamasa Goto flew to Los Angeles to receive a liver transplant. First, though, he had to arrange a deal with the FBI in order to receive special permission to enter the U.S. and then donate $100,000 to the UCLA Medical Center. For this, he was able to jump the lengthy line of regular folks who also badly needed the procedure and get fixed right up before quickly returning to Japan.
That year, according to the Los Angeles Times, 186 people in the area died while waiting in that very line. Meanwhile, Goto is still allegedly wrapped up in Japanese organized crime, and the U.S. Department of Treasury put him on a watch-list in 2015, freezing all of his American assets and imposing other sanctions.
This story would not have come to light if not for the work of Jake Adelstein, an American journalist who spent 12 years working for one of Japan’s major newspapers and who subsequently composed the book upon which Tokyo Vice is based. In the show, Ansel Elgort plays Adelstein as a rookie reporter just trying to get his legs underneath him as the newspaper’s first non-Japanese staff writer. That, however, is where most similarities to the book stop.
While Adelstein’s memoir focuses mainly on his own experiences establishing sources and breaking through the significant cultural barriers he frequently encountered when trying to do his job, Tokyo Vice the show expands much further to add entire characters that are totally absent from the source material. It’s certainly not a bad thing, as the storylines involving fellow American expat Samantha (Rachel Keller) and especially the young yakuza Sato (the distractingly handsome Shō Kasamatsu) help fill out what would otherwise be a pretty straightforward journalism/crime drama.
I started this show because I’d previously read Adelstein’s book and because the pilot episode was directed by Michael Mann, but the expanded narrative kept my attention throughout, and the season’s multiple cliffhanger endings definitely whet my appetite for more.
Great Performances
George & Tammy (Showtime)
I thought I had my list of favorites all wrapped up, and then Showtime dropped this little six-episode gem right at the end of the year. Technically, George & Tammy extended into 2023, but I’m going to allow it.
When I saw that there was a miniseries about two of Country Music’s most legendary characters being played by two of Hollywood’s best actors who would also be singing all of their own stuff, I knew that George & Tammy was all but guaranteed to end up on this list, and boy did it earn its place. The two leads (Michael Shannon and the aforementioned Jessica Chastain) did their best to do justice to the legacies of George Jones and Tammy Wynette, respectively, bringing with them the much-documented tumult in the singers’ storied lives, in addition to their incredible vocals.
Sure, a lot of the real-life details are muddied or combined together or ignored entirely. Michael Shannon, for example, is eight inches taller than George Jones, and having a 6-foot-3 guy drunkenly destroying furniture and firing pistols probably brings a lot more fear to the room. The series is based on a memoir written by Jones and Wynette’s daughter, Georgette, so there was no doubt more than a little historical cleansing here as well, particularly as it pertains to Wynette’s relationship with her last husband, George Richey (played here by Steve Zahn at his scummiest).
For me, though, the real gold in this show comes from Shannon and Chastain’s studio and concert scenes, where we’re treated to (perhaps overdramatized, but whatever) recreations of the moments when some of America’s greatest songs were first recorded. I hadn’t cried during a television show since I started taking daily Lexapro last summer (before which I used to tear up at commercials with frequency), but watching Shannon-as-Jones deliver a devastating rendition of “He Stopped Loving Her Today” while Chastain-as-Wynette watched from the attached control room sure got ’em flowing.
Barry: Season 3 (HBOMAX)
For two seasons, Barry told the story of a burnt-out hitman who was trying to find his way as an acting student in Los Angeles while also cultivating a romantic relationship with a classmate. In fact (and has been previously observed by others when the show first aired), the killing parts of Barry were often the least tense, especially compared to some of the other considerably less violent situations in which the title character (Bill Hader) would find himself.
Barry Berkman clearly lives with a wide range of serious mental-health challenges, many of which are made considerably worse through his relationships with his girlfriend, Sally (Sarah Goldberg), who herself has significant trauma, and Fuches (Stephen Root), Barry’s on-again-off-again handler/business partner who absolutely does not have his best interests in mind. As Barry’s success in acting increases throughout the series, though, he is brought no relief. Quite the contrary, in fact.
This show has always carefully treaded the line between comedy and something much, much darker, but by the end of Season 3, it veered almost completely into horror. Barry’s public rage-meltdown, Sally’s somehow-more-public rage-meltdown, electro-shock therapy, some sort of large jungle cat and lots of death all contribute to the significant tonal shift here, though the show still maintains a lot of Hader’s signature humor as a writer.
Let’s put it this way: I decided to watch the third-season finale of Barry while eating my lunch. About three minutes into the episode, I set my sandwich back down and just left it there.
The Dropout (Hulu)
Over the last few years, I’ve noticed a pattern when it comes to producing true-crime content. First, we get the podcast, which details the scandal, conspiracy or heinous act(s) over the course of a handful of Spotify episodes. Next, we get the documentary, which adds some often-needed visual elements to the story. Finally, we get the dramatized retelling, which casts professional actors to play the roles of the perpetrators and victims and which are typically released either all at once or in weekly installments on a streaming service. (The next two events to generate this trio of content will be the University of Idaho killings and the Sarah Lawrence sex-cult thing, by the way.)
I mention this pattern because I didn’t think I’d watch The Dropout when it first came to Hulu – not because I wasn’t interested in the story, but rather because I’d already listened to the podcast and watched the HBO documentary about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, so I reasoned that I’d just be wasting my time with the scripted version. (Like I don’t already waste enough time with projects like this…)
Just like with I Love That for You, though, I saw The Dropout on a number of mid-year Top TV lists and figured I’d check it out. The show’s most striking performance comes from Amanda Seyfried, who won an Emmy for her role as the embattled health-tech entrepreneur recently sentenced to more than eleven years in prison for her part in defrauding her former company’s investors, and it’s really on the strength of Seyfried that the show holds one’s interest.
The Dropout also features the largest collection of “That Guys/Ladies” that I’ve seen in quite awhile. In every episode, at least one new character played by someone very recognizable pops into the show, including a number of actors and actresses sprinkled elsewhere in this list. Still, Seyfried outshines them all, and The Dropout is worth the watch for that alone.
We Own This City (HBOMAX)
If you’ve spoken to me for any length of time about television (or, really, about anything) as an adult, then you know damn well that I’m one of those people who really, really liked The Wire. Unlike so much of what preceded it on television, The Wire unflinchingly addressed so many of the systemic ills that our cities face but also left a little room for hope, largely through the existence of characters like Bunny Colvin, Cutty Wise and Ellis Carver who were going to keep trying to Make Things Better despite the long odds. A few months after The Wire ended, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States and it seemed like anything was possible, especially to a 24-year-old.
Then the economy cratered and brought with it the ascent of a new American right-wing. This all culminated with the election of a former Reality TV host as Obama’s successor, which was then followed by a global, society-altering pandemic and more financial uncertainty that has extended into the present-day. In other words, things are looking a lot less hopeful in 2023, and We Own This City encapsulates that dour shift perfectly.
Many police-centric television shows have been accused of being “cop-aganda,” which is to say that they portray their badged characters as universally heroic and ethically uncompromised. We Own This City is the opposite of that, and it could not have been aired at a more appropriate time in our modern history, as so many of America’s cities experienced extended protests and other collective action in the wake of several highly publicized police killings.
We Own This City, based on the book of the same name by longtime Baltimore journalist Justin Fenton, covers the city’s Gun Trace Task Force scandal where eight members of a specialized police unit were convicted on racketeering charges. The charges stemmed from the squad’s egregious misconduct and subsequent cover-up that included, but was not limited to, stealing money from arrested citizens and re-selling confiscated drugs. If you’re already wary of the amount of power that police seem to have, this show will upset you.
The only bright spot in this show – and one of the main reasons I kept coming back every week despite the repeated gut-punches – is the inclusion of so many Wire alumni as both major characters and bit parts. My favorite moment was where Det. Sean Suiter (played by Jamie Hector, who played Marlo in The Wire) and Ofc. Jaquan Dixon (played by Jermaine Crawford, who played Dukie in The Wire) share a scene to interview a potential witness. The two actors had virtually nothing to do with one another back in 2006, when they occupied social circles of The Wire that only barely overlapped, so it was such a treat to see them on-screen together.
I would also be doing us all a disservice if I didn’t mention the detestable turns by Jon Bernthal and Josh Charles as two of the more unabashedly corrupt members of the GTTF, but in general We Own This City is not something to watch if you want to walk away feeling good.
Better Call Saul
I decided to give Better Call Saul its own category, mostly because of its singular place on this list as an all-time classic television program. While there are certainly others that have a chance to approach the heights this show has reached (Reservation Dogs, Barry and Abbott Elementary immediately jump out), Better Call Saul‘s final season not only answered the question we were all asking during the show’s entire run, but also put a satisfying bow on the universe that Vince Gilligan crafted over the previous 14 years.
To be perfectly honest, I didn’t really think all that much of Breaking Bad, and I didn’t even watch the majority of the series until after the first season of Saul, because I occasionally have completist tendencies and wanted to make sure I had all the context for the prequel. Of the characters in Breaking Bad, however, the two that caught my interest the most were Professional Criminals Saul Goodman and Gus Fring, so a show focusing on those characters’ origin stories was at least worth a try.
It certainly helps that Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill was played by Bob Odenkirk, whose presence on screen was always welcome in my home. I’d been loosely following Odenkirk’s career since the late ’90s when a buddy of mine lent me a VHS tape of something called Mr. Show with Bob and David, and I soon learned that he had previously written for Saturday Night Live, The Ben Stiller Show and Late Night with Conan O’Brien. David Cross, Odenkirk’s partner on Mr. Show, would soon ascend to mainstream success thanks to his stand-up career and a starring role on Arrested Development. Until Breaking Bad, though, Odenkirk himself would largely be relegated to That Guy status for most people.
Speaking of, has any other franchise done more for actors in Middle Age than Gilligan’s Albuquerque Duet? Odenkirk went from a semi-known actor/writer who was maybe best known outside of Mr. Show for almost getting the role of Michael Scott in the American version of The Office to a bonafide star who got to make a Liam Neeson-style action film where he kills a lot of people. Giancarlo Esposito went from a prolific character- and voice-actor who had appeared in dozens of one-off parts on major network shows (in addition to being part of Spike Lee’s early ensemble) to finally getting a lead role in AMC’s upcoming Parish. This is, of course, to say nothing of how Breaking Bad turned Bryan Cranston into an A-Lister after age 50.
For many fans of the show, myself included, the best characters on Better Call Saul are the ones totally absent from its sequel. Rhea Seehorn was the most significant of these, playing Goodman’s partner Kim Wexler in a role that had everyone guessing right until the end of the show. Tony Dalton was all devilish charm as cartel lieutenant Lalo Salamanca, and Michael McKean’s haunting performance as Chuck McGill was especially memorable.
What sets Saul apart from Breaking Bad, though, is its avoidance of the crass sensationalism that so often punctuated the latter’s narratives (ATMs crushing skulls; choking to death on vomit; exploding wheelchairs). Better Call Saul, for lack of a better term, is a talkie. The show burns slower than damp firewood, and just when you think it’s all about to connect to Walter White, you get another season of build-up.
These days, it’s rare that I’ll not only watch a show as it comes out, but make sure to keep current on episodes as they air. Better Call Saul was worth the commitment.
Reality/Documentary TV
The Challenge: All Stars (Paramount+)
When the second season of The Challenge – Real World vs. Road Rules – aired in 1999, I had just started my freshman year of high school and was navigating the murky social waters of your average 15-year-old living in a smallish city. My parents didn’t have cable so I’m sure I caught this show at a friend’s house during one of MTV’s frequent marathons.
While I was dealing with the fallout from a weird Homecoming situation at Green Bay Southwest High School, Mark Long was a 28-year-old Road Rules veteran who was seeking to extend his 15 minutes of fame by appearing on this nifty-sounding gameshow spinoff. During that season of The Challenge, Mark and his five teammates outplayed their Real World opponents en route to a $50,000 prize.
Flash forward to 2022. I’m now 38, living in Portland with my wife and dog. I work from home, which is something I didn’t think was possible in 1999, and I still watch plenty of silly reality competition television. Mark Long, meanwhile, recently sought to capitalize on the need for inexpensive content for the Paramount+ streaming app and got the ball rolling on forming what is essentially The Challenge‘s Senior Tour (nabbing himself a nice little Executive Producer credit for his efforts).
The Challenge: All Stars held its third season in 2022, and like its previous two editions it brought back nearly every recognizable name from the last days that MTV still showed music videos. Like a high school reunion, we get to see who looks the same and who doesn’t, who has changed for the better and who hasn’t changed at all. It’s a great reminder that no matter who you are, you will get older (and you’ll probably get fatter), but that doesn’t mean you forget how to have a good time.
The MVP of the show thus far has got to be two-time (TWO-TIME) champion Jonna Mannion. Jonna first appeared on The Real World: Cancun in 2009, very much in the Hot Girl role. Like so many of her MTV reality cohort, she followed up her initial appearance with five seasons on the original Challenge, but never finished better than fourth place. In the six years between her final Challenge season and the advent of All Stars, Jonna had two children and had settled into a life free of cameras and adult bunk-beds.
Still, when the producers came calling, she answered. In the first season of All Stars, Jonna narrowly missed a chance at victory and placed third. She would not be discouraged, however, and has collected convincing victories (and a cool half-million dollars) in the process.
Are most of the contestants on All Stars moving a little slower than they were back in the day? You bet. Are the non-competition parts of All Stars way more boring because everyone is at least in their 30s and just trying to get a decent night’s sleep? Sure. Is Mark Long definitely on That Gas? Probably, but so what.
The Challenge: All Stars is just about the perfect streaming-exclusive reality program, and at this point it just might be better than the original.
Claim to Fame (ABC)
What do we want out of our summer TV? During those months when most people would probably rather be enjoying the weather than sitting in their living rooms, how do networks manage to produce the sort of low-stakes content that still might grab a decent audience?
“I don’t know,” I imagine an ABC executive suggesting early last year. “Uhh … what about … a reality show … where we bring in a bunch of celebrity relatives … and they have to guess who each other are?”
Genius.
In Claim to Fame, celebrity children, grandchildren, siblings, cousins and others lived in a house while trying to figure out the identities of their new roommates. It’s hosted by Kevin and Frankie Jonas (the oldest and youngest of the famous Brothers) and brings in family-members of people who are more famous that you’d assume.
The less said here the better for fear of giving away too much, but when I was accidentally spoiled on the ending of this show at my parents’ house this summer, I let out an audible and reflexive groan, so needless to say the show was pretty fun to watch.
Dancing with the Stars: Season 31 (Disney+)
In the early days of reality competition television, there was always at least one Asshole Judge. Something about us as an audience back in the early aughts demanded that hopeful chefs, musicians or whatever else be subject to some exceptionally harsh criticism, pretty much no matter how they performed. That’s the way it was for many, many years. Until 2016. When this character’s ne plus ultra was elected President of the United States.
Since then, reality shows seem to have taken a slightly more gentle tone in many cases. Gordon Ramsay, for example, is no longer the blustering bully whose Whole Thing is telling people how much they suck at making food, and he now seems to take a special joy in helping the young contestants on MasterChef Junior on a path to culinary success. This not-so-subtle shift is, I believe, directly attributable to the American public’s growing dissatisfaction with celebrity jerks, and now we see much more constructive criticism rather than wholesale takedowns.
One show that has embraced this trend more than most is Dancing with the Stars, which my wife and I only started watching in 2021 when Iman Shumpert showed everyone why NBA players are some of the world’s finest athletes. We enjoyed ourselves throughout that 30th season, certainly enough to come back for another. This was especially true when we learned that both Wayne Brady and Vinny from Jersey Shore were both revealed as contestants.
And yeah, the quotation marks around the word Stars in the show’s title continue to get larger and the scores are clearly inflated as the season goes on, but Derek Hough babyfacing his way through each episode is something I think we could all use and there might be no one who loves his job more than Bruno Tonioli. Call me Basic all you want, but seeing professional actors, musicians and other celebrities or quasi-celebrities step out of their comfort zone and, in most cases, give it their all to get just a little better at the Foxtrot makes for some entertaining, easy-to-watch television. Eff off.
The Great Imposter and Me (ESPN)
Throughout my life, my dad has been a pretty straight shooter. He worked hard, spent plenty of time with us and did the best he could to raise his son to be a Decent Man despite his own father having passed away when he was nine. In 38 years, I’ve never once seen my dad drunk (that I know of), for example. All in all, Mike Reinert follows the rules. With one exception.
For much of his life – and this absolutely extends into the time after my sister and I came along – my dad has gotten a real charge out of sneaking into places. Every year when I was a kid, he’d go to Florida with his buddies for a golf trip, and every year he’d sneak into Disney World. My dad snuck into the 1982 World Series by posing as a member of the media, which was the same tactic he later used to get on the sidelines at Lambeau Field during a Packer playoff game in 1997 and into the pool of Actual Journalists in the front row at a Trump rally in Green Bay in 2016. It’s just a thing that he does because he thinks it’s funny.
Anyway, I was sifting through ESPN’s vast library of documentary content one day when I happened upon a film about an insurance salesman named Barry Bremen who achieved minor fame by repeatedly sneaking his way into major events. Unlike my dad, though, he was not content to stand idly on the sidelines knowing he had put one past security.
In 1979, Bremen briefly took the floor at the NBA All-Star Game when he joined one of the pre-game layup lines while dressed in a Kansas City Kings uniform. In 1980, he dressed as a Major League Baseball umpire during the World Series and joined the actual officials on home plate before one game. In 1985, he accepted an Emmy Award on behalf of actress Betty Thomas, who had not asked him to do so.
These are just three of the wild stories from Bremen’s life, but they pale in comparison to the revelation that comes about halfway through The Great Imposter and Me.
Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, Bremen had also been a sperm donor while working, raising his own children and pulling off these elaborate public stunts. Long story short, Bremen (who passed away from cancer in 2011) is confirmed to have helped in the conception of more than 35 children. Some of these children had their DNA analyzed by one of those companies where you send them a tube of your spit and learned that they were biological half-siblings. From there, the group grew and the film ends with a family reunion of sorts, which not only included many of the people who had taken advantage of Bremen’s donations, but also the three of Bremen’s children who knew him best.
The Great Imposter and Me crossed my path just a few weeks before I met a whole bunch of my own biological family for the first time, so that factor in combination with my dad’s own sneaky proclivities surely impacted how I felt about this program, but I still give it a strong recommendation even if people don’t directly relate to the specifics in the same ways I do.
Antiques Road Trip (BBC/Pluto)
Do you know about Pluto? The streaming service, not the far-off dwarf planet.
Pluto is a free, ad-supported platform that shows a bunch of content currently owned or licensed by Paramount. There are dozens of movie channels, channels dedicated to entire series (Degrassi: The Next Generation has its own channel), channels that exclusively show older content like mid-century sitcoms or Johnny Carson interviews and a ton more.
It was while flipping through Pluto one night that my wife and I happened upon reruns of the BBC’s Antiques Road Trip. In each episode, two antiques experts visit small shops throughout the United Kingdom, haggling their way into good deals while trying to maximize their profits (which all to go charity) at auction. They’re always driving some sort of classic car and sometimes they’re paired with the sort of British celebrity that might also be found in recent seasons of Dancing with the Stars.
Add Antiques Road Trip to the list of shows you can put on as you fall asleep on the couch, and if that doesn’t work, there’s always Pluto’s Bob Ross channel.
Portland Food Content
Somebody Feed Phil (Netflix) / Street Food USA (Netflix) / Chef’s Table: Pizza (Netflix)
When I first moved to Portland in 2015, the city was seemingly at its most recent cultural apex. It was one of America’s “cool cities” where all the bands came to town and where there was always something to do. Thousands of people were moving to Portland every week back then, drawn to the city by the opportunity to spread their wings a little and embrace some of that “weirdness” displayed so prominently in Portlandia.
Then COVID happened, and the city’s long-festering problems were brought into sharp focus. In the three years since, the reaction I get from telling people where I live has gone from curious excitement to wary unease. This was especially true when sections of Downtown Portland were being vandalized on nearly a nightly basis starting in Summer 2020 and extending long past when other cities’ protest movements had mostly quieted down. Add to that a fourfold increase in the yearly number of homicides in the city since I moved here, a seeming explosion of auto-theft and gun crimes and a housing crisis that still shows very little signs of improving and it makes sense why people who don’t actually live here might suddenly think Portland is some sort of wasteland. Hell, a lot of people who do actually live here still don’t really want to go downtown (even though things have gotten marginally better in the last year or so).
So it was with abundant gratitude that I watched three programs this year focusing specifically on one aspect of Portland life that hasn’t gone anywhere: our amazing food.
Portland already had one of America’s best restaurant scenes before I moved here. It’s one of the reasons we chose Portland when we wanted to try something outside of Wisconsin. And while a lot of those places felt the brunt of Oregon’s rigid COVID-related restrictions in 2020 and 2021, those that were not already prepared to shift their focus to a carry-out model soon adapted to make it work.
What really sustained the Portland culinary environment during those dark times, though, were our food carts. Even before a dumb virus upended nearly every aspect of our lives, one could find a delicious meal at a reasonable price from one of the city’s hundreds of micro-restaurants dotting just about every neighborhood in the area. Some of the best sushi I’ve ever had is from a food cart. Cheeseburgers, too. In fact, most of the Portland-centric videos I made during my brief flirtation with creating no-budget YouTube videos highlighted delicious stuff from food carts.
It was great, therefore, to see Netflix do its own part to not only highlight this valuable part of Portland’s culture, but also maybe to remind the viewing audience that the city isn’t nearly as crummy as you might have heard on certain news channels.
I couldn’t think of a better person to take on that considerable task than Phil Rosenthal, who has built an entire second career as a Happy Food and Travel TV Guy despite already having made millions as the creator of Everybody Loves Raymond. In addition to showing love for some of Portland’s higher-concept restaurants, Rosenthal visits North Portland’s Prost Marketplace, a group of food carts surrounding a popular beer spot. The setup we see here (dedicated seating, available alcohol, multiple food-genre options) appears in cart-pods large and small throughout Portland, and many restaurants started from humble beginnings have grown to become successful brick-and-mortar operations.
One such place is Mama Đút, a vegan restaurant focusing on Vietnamese food in Southeast Portland that also serves as the centerpiece for the city’s episode of Street Food USA. Before 2020, owner/founder/chef Thuy Pham worked in the beauty industry, but needed to pivot very quickly when people were suddenly no longer allowed to get their hair done. With inspiration from her daughter, Pham began researching how to take the staples of the Vietnamese cuisine she grew up on and remove all animal products from the mix. She struck gold when she figured out how to make a convincing vegan “pork belly” and soon began selling it to followers she’d gained on social media. Things evolved from there, and Mama Đút became and still remains one of Portland’s most popular restaurants.
There’s also the Portland episode of Chef’s Table: Pizza, and I’m including it here mostly so I can share with you that some supposed experts rated my city as the best in the U.S. for pizza. To tell you the truth, I’m not really buying it (and I say that both as a lover of pizza and a staunch defender of Portland’s food reputation), because for all the neat styles and interesting varieties that can be found in the Rose City, there’s still no one doing it better either fresh or frozen than the good people of Northeastern Wisconsin. It’s still worth a watch, though.
Portland definitely has its share of problems, and frankly it’ll be a small miracle if some of them are alleviated in a lasting way in the near future, but this city still has plenty of bright spots too. When COVID first hit, we were worried that all of our favorite restaurants would close down forever, and while that was certainly the unfortunate case for some, even more have popped up in their place, further expanding the amazing opportunities for great food in Portland.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading and happy watching!
