Outside of work, most of my adult life has been split between social events and watching television, so you can probably imagine how I’ve spent my time since last March. As I pass 12 full months without hanging out inside a bar, here’s a recap of my favorite programs from a year when I spent more time with the cast of Friends than I did with my actual friends.

Keep in mind that my personal television preferences tend to diverge a bit from the folks who usually compose these sorts of lists, so you won’t be seeing too much here about whether someone did or did not feed someone else to a tiger, nor about why a show about chess is a can’t-miss viewing experience.

We’ll get to my Top Ten shortly, but first, some worthwhile mentions.

BE WARNED: This whole thing obviously contains a lot of spoilers.

Shows I Started, and Want to Finish

The Good Place – Season 4 (NBC)
OK, technically this one debuted in 2019 and actually just barely stretched into 2020, so already I’m bending the rules. Starting this show in 2016 was a no-brainer, considering its creator was also involved in the American version of The Office and its spiritual successor, Parks & Recreation, and I really loved how the narrative wove in relatively complex philosophical concepts in a way that still made them accessible to a large television audience, and that the show introduced many of us to some dynamite performers like Manny Jacinto and D’Arcy Carden.

At a certain point in Season 4, however, I got it in my head that the show was going too deeply down the romantic rabbit hole in exploring the relationship between Eleanor and Chidi and got several episodes behind. And then COVID took over the world and in the months since I decided that my television attention would be better spent watching programs that don’t deal largely in questions about the afterlife and heavyish topics of that nature, hidden behind jokes though they might be.

At this point, I’m like six episodes from finishing the series, and after a year without in-person socialization I think I’ve moderated my feelings about our current global health situation and accompanying restrictions enough to probably be able to get through it without just crying the entire time. Maybe.

Moonbase 8 (Showtime)
I didn’t even know this show existed until I saw the promotional image in my On Demand lineup, but I made note of its cast and immediately fired up the pilot. Through the first few episodes, the things that stand out to me are how well the three series leads play off of one another and how the show balances offbeat humor with earnestness. It would be easy to assume that a show that stars Fred Armisen, Tim Heidecker and John C. Reilly would lean hard into absurdity (and perhaps things go more in that direction as the series goes on), but thus far the storytelling and character portrayals have been pretty widely accessible and kept a smile on my face.

Ted Lasso (AppleTV)
In my years of watching TV and having friends, few other shows have created the sort of “Eric: You, specifically, need to watch this show” buzz from my friends as Ted Lasso. I caught the pilot a few months ago, and thought it seemed like the sort of sincere brand of comedy that I love so much, but then I haven’t watched any other episodes since. I didn’t really have a strong opinion about Jason Sudeikis when he was on SNL, and to be honest, most of the roles he’s taken on in the years since have been in movies I haven’t seen. That said, though, he was largely responsible for Detroiters making its way to Comedy Central for two glorious seasons in 2017 and 2018, and that’s an all-timer for me, so I should have at least considered Sudeikis’s latest project sooner.

It’s entirely possible that I’ll have finished Ted Lasso‘s first season by the time you read this, but just in case I haven’t, I thought it belonged here. Thus far, my strongest take here is that Brett Goldstein (who plays A.F.C. Richmond’s gruff captain Roy Kent, and who also serves as the show’s Executive Story Editor) should immediately be shoe-horned into the same action-movie roles that made Jason Statham famous in the U.S.

Shows I Started, but Probably Won’t Finish

The Right Stuff (Disney+)
I really enjoy programs about space travel. I don’t so much enjoy programs about a bunch of morose Don Draper clones who lament their existence and try to find ways to step out on their wives. Loved the movie; stopped watching the series adaptation after an episode and a half. Maybe For All Mankind is better?

Succession (HBO)
I watched the first season of this one when it came out, and the performances are outstanding. My problem, and the reason I haven’t continued this show, is that all of those performances are conducted in the service of being a bunch of real assholes, and in 2020 I needed a little more ironic removal from folks like that in order to actually enjoy watching something. (See the Bravo section below.)

The Boys (Amazon Prime)
Similar to Succession, I made my way through this program’s entire first season (and, in this case, even a lot of the second) before deciding I just didn’t want to spend my free time in this universe. The concept behind the show was great before the pandemic made everything at least 35% less fun, and Jack Quaid is pure Hollywood charisma, so I expect he’ll experience similar levels of success to his A-lister parents. In a year whose defining characteristics were a serious worldwide illness and a contentious election, though, The Boys was just a little too nihilistic, even for me.

Popular Stuff I Didn’t Watch

Mandolorian (Disney+)
Also: WandaVision (Disney+)
Here’s the one that might make you stop reading.

I’ll be honest: I’m sort of over the Star Wars universe. I’ll always have a certain nostalgic love for the Original Trilogy, but almost everything I’ve seen since has been profoundly average and often super-corny in a not fun way, especially the latest stuff. Like, a whole bunch of shots and lines specifically designed to make a theater audience react like this. All of this could also be said about the Marvel universe, into which I most recently stepped in 2014 for Guardians of the Galaxy.

And hey, great. Star Wars is one of the most popular and lucrative franchises since moving pictures became a thing. I even tried watching the first episode of Mandolorian, but I think that ship has sailed … or jumped to hyperspace or whatever.

Pro Wrestling

AEW Dynamite (TNT)
Also: Being the Elite (YouTube)
For nearly 20 years, one company reigned supreme over the professional wrestling industry. Like the NFL, NBA and similarly monopolistic sports leagues, the WWE was universally seen as the highest level of achievement (and financial compensation) that performers could attain while still practicing their chosen craft. Sure, wrestlers outside of the WWE could cobble together enough independent bookings to make a decent living, especially in an era where social media has made the promotional playing field a bit more level, or they could sign a longer-term contract with a company whose lack of prominent American television presence would inherently limit their earning potential, if also providing them some small measure of workplace stability.

Competition breeds innovation, so you can imagine what happened to the WWE’s on-air product as the company continued to cement its place atop the ladder. I won’t bore you with complaints about how that company’s leadership force-fed its fans content featuring performers who many of them had no interest in watching, and that one can only see Brock Lesnar randomly appear in a big match and ruin months of buildup so many times before deciding that maybe getting emotionally invested in violent ballet even a little bit isn’t worth it. I won’t.

Fortunately, though, there was a group of industry veterans who gained just enough popularity to try something on their own, and they found the financing to make their dream a reality by partnering with the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars. After that, it was just a matter of securing a broadcasting agreement, and when TNT (the home of WWE’s erstwhile late-20th century competitors, WCW) came calling, all the pieces fell into place.

Just over a year since All Elite Wrestling’s weekly Dynamite program debuted on basic cable, the upstart company has done more to reinvigorate pro wrestling as a performance art than the WWE has done in the previous two decades. And, let me tell you, most of the creative choices the WWE made during their boom period from 1998-2001 have aged very poorly.

What’s more, AEW’s main YouTube program (which members of the AEW roster have been producing since before the promotion had even been considered) serves as a welcome creative contrast to the tired tropes the WWE has continued to roll out in the same time. The low-budget, often absurd vignettes are exactly the sorts of things my dad used to make with his own friends (see more about that later), and clearly demonstrate that professional wrestling’s greatest assets are the performers themselves, not the lights and pyrotechnics that accompany them.

Bravo
Before the last year, the only Bravo show I spent much time watching was Top Chef, but then a serious global illness arrived and consequently made the world a much sadder, lonelier place. While some people decided to marinate in that feeling by watching things like Outbreak or Pandemic, I desperately wanted the tonal opposite from my content. Fortunately, the good people at Bravo have been preparing for Our Current Moment for the last decade-plus by accumulating the exact sort of programming that almost makes you forget about what’s actually going on in the world. This year, I couldn’t get enough.

Below Deck / Below Deck: Mediterranean / Below Deck: Sailing Yacht
Someone once tried to test my reality TV bona fides by asking what my favorite Bravo show was. When I quickly responded “Below Deck, no question about it,” she became convinced that I wasn’t just blowing smoke.

The Below Deck franchise has been around since 2013, so there was nearly 1,000 hours of content to distract me from the fact that going to the grocery store could potentially send my wife to the hospital. And I watched every single one. It is perhaps the most bingeable show I’ve ever encountered. I’d write a whole lot more about the joys of Below Deck, but America’s pre-eminent news source already took care of that for me this past summer. I might never have even considered it if not for the fact that all of my socialization options disappeared at once last March, and now I’m hooked.

Real Housewives of New Jersey
When it comes to the Real Housewives, you have a lot of choices, but New Jersey is the best, by far. I caught up on the entire run of RHONJ when I was drinking beer and eating bacon every single night while trying to avoid thinking about the news – right around mid-April.

Did it totally work? No, but like the beer and the bacon, getting myself emotionally involved from a safe distance in the petty conflicts between Teresa Giudice and anyone who enters her ecosystem made me feel a little better for a few hours at a time.

Watch What Happens Live
You can’t get into any Bravo reality content without also having Andy Cohen become a regular presence on your television, and as a result I’ve become convinced that he’s actually one of America’s finest interviewers. He’s equally adept speaking with U.S. Senators as he is extracting the latest gossip from the Vanderpump Rules gang, and I love watching him.

A Show I Wish Was in the Top Ten

Gangs of London (Sky Atlantic/AMC+)
When I first learned that the creator of this show was the same person who directed the remarkable Raid duology, I started Gangs of London that same day. My enthusiasm was rewarded, at least initially, with the sort of hyperkinetic fight sequence in the pilot that I’d come to expect from Gareth Evans’s work. But that enthusiasm quickly waned as I watched each succeeding episode with nary a kick thrown nor person flipped.

Instead, most of the action sequences were of the automatic-weapons-and-big-explosions variety, and while that’s all fine and good, it’s not what I wanted nor was expecting from a show whose central creative force was responsible for two of the most incredible martial arts films ever produced. In addition, this show is without a doubt the most violent on this list (and one of the most violent I’ve ever seen), so it’s definitely not for the squeamish, and I had to shield my eyes for a few more gruesome parts. Then again, if you’ve seen any of Gareth Evans’s other films, you’ve probably assumed that already.

The Actual Top 10(ish)

10. The Unicorn (CBS)
For years, Walton Goggins has been one of my favorite shit-heel character actors. For better or worse, he’s a guy who just sort of looks like a jerk, and he’s used that to his tremendous advantage to further his career in Hollywood. You might have first seen Goggins playing one of Deputy U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens’s primary foils in Justified, or maybe you’re more familiar with his work in the Danny McBride Television Universe. (His role in Vice Principals is one of my all-time favorites). You’d definitely recognize his face, if only to say “oh, that guy.”

Because of his tremendous talents playing an asshole, I was shocked to see that CBS was making him the star of an ensemble comedy focused on a single father trying to figure out life with two daughters after the unexpected death of his wife. It took a few episodes to get past the fact that a Walton By-God Goggins was playing a character who wasn’t constantly spouting profanities, and it’s a CBS comedy, so by nature it’s going to be pretty saccharine, but Goggins’s abundant charm in combination with a wonderful cast of other well-known supporting performers has made The Unicorn one of television’s most reliable half-hours.

9. Space Force (Netflix)
Since the late-aughts, Steve Carell has been my favorite famous person in the world, so I’ll watch literally anything he’s in. This commitment has often been rewarded and has occasionally backfired, but nevertheless I’ll keep watching. For this reason alone, I began watching Space Force as soon as it was released on Netflix in May.

Of course I was initially a little skeptical. After all, the last time Steve Carell starred in a show that Greg Daniels developed, it resulted in my favorite television program of all time. Surely I would be disappointed by this made-for-streaming follow-up.

Instead, I was treated to outstanding performances not only by Carell, but also (and especially) by John Malkovich, Ben Schwartz, Tawny Newsome and Jimmy O. Yang. The supporting cast is filled out by a who’s who of recognizable comic actors, including the legendary Fred Willard, who passed away just two weeks before the show was released, and theirs was a welcome presence in my home during the first bleak months of social distancing.

8. The Reagans (Showtime)
The period of American history that interests me most is that window between the Vietnam War and 9/11. It’s recent enough where I was alive for a lot of it, but because I was so young I didn’t really have a firm grasp on events beyond the walls of my school. In particular, American deindustrialization and the parallel rise of the New Right (or whatever you want to label it) that occurred in the 1970s and ’80s is especially interesting to me. This ascent was, of course, accompanied in close proximity by the rise of Ronald Reagan in American politics.

Showtime’s four-part documiniseries features a wealth of archival footage tracing Reagan’s journey from Golden Era film and television actor to ultra-popular two-term American President, and features interviews with a number of important figures who were along for the ride. Particularly illuminating were the conversations with Ron Reagan – the former President’s youngest and decidedly more liberal son – who shared stories of many moments when he attempted to sway his father’s policy decisions through lengthy and passionate discussions, only to be rebuffed by the elder Reagan’s selective know-nothingness when it came to issues of, for example, structural social inequality or the specifics of disease-transmission. It’s a situation many of us have found ourselves in with our older relatives over the years, I’m sure.

The program also places a lot of its attention on First Lady Nancy Reagan, whose influence grew considerably as her husband’s mental state was apparently impacted by the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease during his second term. Her close relationship with astrologer Joan Quigley was an especially controversial focus, as was the “Just Say No” anti-drug-use initiative she spearheaded. As portions of America were crumbling due to a significant degradation of economic opportunities coupled with the proliferation of drugs, violence and deadly illness in those communities, the notion was that the people in the White House were far more concerned with the curtains in the Oval Office.

To be fair, the documentary does highlight the 40th President’s negotiations with Soviet leaders in the lead-up to the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., and Nancy Reagan became a well known proponent for the expansion of stem-cell research after her life in politics ended. Overall, though, The Reagans is far from a praise-piece, and in the final months of the Trump Administration (the direct result of the rise of the New Right), that sort of critical eye was just what I wanted.

7. Dave (FX)
Aside from being forced to hang out mostly at home due to a global pandemic, the last thing that I would have predicted at the beginning of 2020 would be that a show created by and starring Lil Dicky would make me cry.

I didn’t really listen to Lil Dicky’s music before Dave premiered about a week before everything in the world shut down, but I figured I’d give the show a try since its promotional material hinted at a strong dose of self-deprecating humor, rather than the sort of party-centric, trying-to-make-it-in-the-industry sitcom in the vein of Entourage. After watching all of the debut season’s 10 episodes, I can safely say that it delivers on that promise and then some.

To be clear, there are plenty of fun interactions throughout the series between Dave Burd (Lil Dicky’s real-person name) and a number of the music industry’s heaviest hitters, and obviously a show starring a professional rapper is going to feature some impressive displays of lyricism. Where Dave differentiates itself, though, is in its more sincere conversations between its star and his supporting cast, covering all manner of topics from bipolar disorder to sexual insecurity to imposter syndrome, and the range of strong emotions that these conversations elicited from me is why the show is on this list.

6. The Last Dance (ESPN)
I first saw a trailer for ESPN’s Michael Jordan epic in late 2019, and I remember saying, out loud, “TEN parts? My goodness.” At the time, the notion of producing and presenting nearly a dozen hours of content on a single figure seemed inconceivable, even if he is one of the most important professional athletes in American history. The series wasn’t even slated for release until June 2020, so I adopted a wait-and-see approach.

And then COVID-19 started its relentless spread across the world, forcing many Americans to abandon their previous lives and spend a lot more time at home. Shortly thereafter, it became clear that reducing our ability to socialize would dramatically increase our appetite for distraction content, which I think is the only way we can explain the popularity of Tiger King (released March 20, 2020). ESPN sensed this, and at the end of March they made what I believe was the first piece of positive news, however inconsequential, that many of us had heard in weeks when they announced The Last Dance would now premiere in mid-April.

If the decision to move it up two months did anything to reduce its overall quality, I’d never know. For my money, The Last Dance more than lives up to the greatness of its primary subject, and is absolutely one of the best sports documentaries that ESPN has ever produced (and I’ve watched a ton of them). When I was a kid in the 1990s, Michael Jordan had an air of inevitability that few other pro athletes have since been able to generate. Like, even if his team was down by 10 in the 4th quarter in the playoffs, it always seemed like they’d somehow find a way to beat the Knicks, usually on the strength of some sort of incredible Jordan performance.

The Last Dance captures this and many other facets of the peak-era Chicago Bulls, who still stand out above all other sports dynasties in my lifetime, and it was exactly what I needed to see when things otherwise looked pretty grim.

5. Pen15 (Hulu)
Gen X had Freaks and Geeks. My generation has this.

I’m a couple years older than the women who created Pen15, which seems like an incredible gulf when you’re in middle school, but the cringy accuracy with which they portrayed the fever-dream of early teenagehood at the beginning of the 21st century cannot be overstated. I’m sure this show is ranked as highly as it is here because of the increasing appeal of Nostalgia TV as I enter my late 30s, and the big dumb grin I had on my face when the two main characters were choosing their AIM handles supports that thesis well, I think.

To put a finer point on it: When two middle-school boy characters in the year 2000 greeted each other in the hallway with the “suck it” gesture while wearing ultra-wide-leg jeans and size XL T-shirts despite weighing like 120 lbs., I knew this show was for me.

Like Dave, though, Pen15 isn’t all gross-out humor and awkward flirtations between the two main characters (played by the thirtysomething creators) and their respective crushes (played by actual children). A handful of episodes, particularly the show’s most recent, address some pretty serious issues a lot of teenagers have to confront outside of school, and their tone was decidedly heavier by comparison. For a program whose title is a literal dick joke, it sure runs the gamut of emotions. I guess that’s being a teenager.

4. The Vow (HBO)
I remember first learning about Keith Raniere, Alison Mack and the NXIVM group after a New York Times exposé that, due to its bizarre and salacious nature, rocketed to the top of the publication’s Most Viewed Articles list. I read it, reacted with a brow-arched “hmm,” and didn’t think much else about it until a few months later, when I listened to the Escaping NXIVM podcast, which featured a number of detailed interviews with former members of the group. This story fell directly into the same content category as The Dream, a podcast which traced the sordid history of the multilevel marketing industry, and Wild Wild Country, Netflix’s exploration of Rajneeshpuram community in Oregon. I don’t particularly enjoy the more violent varieties of True Crime content, but I do have a certain fascination with cults and con artists, so the NXIVM story lit up that whole area of my brain.

But then I finished that podcast, and sort of forgot about everything again, especially as more pressing and immediate concerns began to emerge in all of our lives. A few months ago, I saw that HBO was also telling the NXIVM story, but I mostly ignored The Vow until one day recently when I was looking for something new to check out. I pressed play on the first episode, thinking maybe I’d absently half-watch as I futzed around on my phone.

Podcasts are great forms of passive entertainment, but a multipart television program fills in all the visual details that the podcast broadcast medium functionally lacks. I heard the voices of the women who dedicated years of their lives as part of this organization, but that’s not the same as seeing the anguish on their faces when they recount their decision to leave. The podcast’s narrator described the brand that was cauterized into these women’s skin, and how its purported symbolism was actually a cover for a design comprised of the initials of Raniere and Mack, but that’s not the same as seeing the gnarly pelvic scars left by the crudely performed procedure.

It’s an old cliche to say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but The Vow illustrates in harrowing detail how much a visual component enhances the narrative experience.

3. Love Island U.S. – Season 2 (CBS)
OK – if you didn’t stop reading when I said that I wasn’t really into The Mandolorian, this one should put you over the edge, right?

“Are you serious, Eric?” you must be thinking as you see a CBS reality program listed as my third-favorite show from the last year, and yeah, I gave it a lot of thought. At the end of the day, though, I looked forward to episodes of Love Island more than any other show in 2020, and it delivered night after night.

I’m sure some of this enthusiasm was circumstantial. The show premiered in late August, which was right around when I finally let go of the notion that a normal social life would resume anytime soon. It was among the first reality TV content produced after COVID shut everything down in the spring and it was paired with a particularly disappointing season of Big Brother, so it looked even better by comparison. What’s more, the show moved from its usual tropical setting to the rooftop of a Las Vegas resort that had been forced to close, providing me with picturesque views of one of my favorite American cities multiple times each week, because Love Island dominated CBS’s nighttime lineup for about a month.

My favorite part of this show, though, and probably the real reason it’s ranked so highly, is that it’s one of the first reality dating shows I’ve seen where the men are actively supporting each other from an emotional standpoint as they begin to form and deepen romantic connections with the women on the show. Flip on any similar program from the last 20 years of reality TV, and most of the conversational footage between men focus on whether and how much they want to get into bed with the women on the show. These dudes shed tears in front of each other as they tried to work out their feelings, and it was tremendous television.

(Some of the men on the show were, in fact, trash, so let’s not paint with too broad a brush.)

2. How To with John Wilson (HBO)
When it comes to stuff that makes me laugh, my dad has shaped my taste more than anyone else. Yeah, we watched a lot of Three Stooges shorts, Mel Brooks movies and other broader comedies when I was growing up, but he also introduced me to Peter Sellers and to Christopher Guest and to Steve Martin’s collaborations with Carl Reiner. He’s the one who rented Drop Dead Gorgeous when I was like 16 years old and insisted that I watch it. He’s the one who watched How High in a movie theater specifically because Fred Willard was part of the cast. More recently, he recommended The D Train, which is easily one of the funniest, most uncomfortable movies I’ve seen in my life.

My dad is a pretty straight-laced fellow, but one of the ways he liked to get his jollies when he was younger was by sneaking into places he wasn’t supposed to go by pretending he was part of the newsmedia. He’d bring his Super 8 camera along with him and follow a gaggle of reporters through the side entrance of, say, Milwaukee County Stadium during the 1982 World Series. From there, he’d watch the game and try to maintain a low profile before, of course, taking it one step further and asking members of the St. Louis Cardinals coaching staff for interviews after the ninth inning.

It’s this same adventurous spirit that John Wilson embodies in his series of HBO docu-shorts as he wanders through New York, Cancun, Idaho and elsewhere filming what he sees and talking to people he meets along the way. These conversations often lead Wilson, and therefore the audience, quite a rhetorical and/or physical distance away from the simple-sounding episode titles, but they’re always very rewarding. Wilson seems to take a genuine interest in the lives of the people who cross his path, and we usually find out way, way more about them than we bargained for.

One of my most emotionally invested moments in all of television occurred during the “How to Cook the Perfect Risotto” episode, the production for which butted directly up against New York’s dire early COVID days. One small change to that episode has a significant impact on the entire show, and that’s all I’ll say about that.

This comparative seriousness stands out even more so against the tone of the previous episode, which addressed how to … er … protect your valuables. Wilson’s fearless approach to storytelling and willingness to stick a microphone in anyone’s face would make my dad proud, though the show’s occasional random footage of male genitalia would probably sour his opinion some.

1. Texas 6 (Paramount+)
Also: Last Chance U – Season 5 (Netflix)
As an anti-climactic end to a protracted television summary that took me way too long to put together – I had the idea for this back in December, which tells you something about my motivation recently – you get two top choices for Best COVID Show.

My most-watched genre of television is almost certainly Sports Documentary, mainly because I like to watch that sort of stuff when I’m eating lunch. Sports docs are entertaining without usually having a ton of emotional intensity, and there’s almost a zero percent chance that you’ll randomly see something that makes you lose your appetite, so I’ll often try to find something under this umbrella to accompany my midday break from work.

I’d watched the first four seasons of Last Chance U with a certain detached amusement. Sure, I wanted to see if people like Ronald Ollie would reach their football potential beyond the junior college level, but that’s about where my interest ended. Then the fifth season moved to Oakland, where Laney College isn’t so much a campus as it is a small cluster of buildings near Lake Merritt. Unlike in previous editions of the series, Laney’s student-athletes don’t have dorms to live in, and the cost of living in Oakland is a hell of a lot higher than it is in Independence, Kansas or Scooba, Mississippi, so the hoops these young men must jump through simply to take the field are much larger and more extensive than anything we’d previously seen. It’s exactly this sort of perseverance that makes the season’s conclusion so rewarding, but I’ll let you watch to see what I mean.

I might have ranked Last Chance U alone at the top of this list if not for an even more compelling meditation on football and growing up that appeared on the Paramount+ streaming service toward the end of 2020. Many of the athletes featured in Last Chance U were angling for something bigger with their football lives, and their time at Laney was meant to transition them into that next phase at a larger university. In Texas 6, the teenagers from Strawn, Texas (population: 653) held no such hopes.

In broad terms, Texas 6 is like Friday Night Lights but much, much smaller. Again, many of the boys from Odessa play at stadiums that would make some colleges jealous, and find themselves under the watchful eyes of elite scouts before they can legally drive a car. Kids from Strawn play in fields that could charitably be described as “making the best of what they have,” and if they’re really lucky they might generate a little interest from college football programs that you and I have never heard of.

As with many sports documentaries, though, the most compelling parts stem from the people themselves, rather than any sort of thrilling football footage. In Last Chance U, we follow Nu’u Taugavau as he balances the responsibilities of being a student-athlete with being a father of two young daughters, and we get to meet his wife, Tia, who during all of this is attending cosmetology school. Tia ends up being perhaps the most engaging person we meet outside of the Laney football program, and watching her meet her own goals was just as emotionally rewarding as any of the Where Are They Now success stories that wrapped up the season.

In Texas 6, we follow J.W. Montgomery and Blaze Duncan, two of the Strawn Greyhounds’ key players from the previous season’s state championship campaign, as they navigate their way through their senior years of high school. Montgomery is the quintessential all-star athlete who is just a little too small to get any scholarship offers from major college programs. He’s the team’s best player by a mile, and if he wasn’t 5’6″ he’d have attracted interest from schools all across the state. Duncan, by contrast, plays football because he’s a boy who goes to high school in Strawn, and that’s what you do if you’re a boy who goes to high school in Strawn. His dream is to go to culinary school and, with any luck, get to somewhere bigger for awhile.

But the two central characters in both of these programs are the head coaches. Laney College is led by John Beam, a bit of an Oakland coaching legend who built a reputation for not only putting together successful football programs, but also for getting many of his players prepared athletically, academically and emotionally for the Next Level. The walls of his office are adorned with the college and NFL jerseys of his former players, and it becomes immediately clear why he’s had this sort of impact.

One of Last Chance U‘s other more prominent figures is Dior Scott, another undersized skill-position player trying his best to use football to make his life a little better. When we meet Scott, he’s working at Wingstop and sleeping in his SUV, all while trying to be a functional college student. Understanding Scott’s extremely challenging situation, Coach Beam is relentless in his efforts to help his wide receiver make it to the next week, the next month. When Scott experiences a serious mental-health episode, it’s Beam’s wife (a licensed, practicing therapist) who helps bring him back around. College football coaches are often (correctly) pigeonholed as callous taskmasters whose only concern is victory, and don’t get me wrong, John Beam wants to win just as badly as anyone. Where he stands apart from other coaches – and this very much includes his two Last Chance U predecessors – is in his demonstrated desire to help his players grow into adults during a crucial time in their lives.

Strawn’s head coach demonstrates that same desire when it comes to the kids who occupy his universe. Dewayne Lee is known to everyone in town as though he’s a celebrity, and he embraces that role with abundant zeal. He’s made himself as accessible as possible to the community’s old-timers, many of whom gather in Lee’s office each week to watch game film and offer their thoughts on defensive strategy. He takes a few minutes to chat with the area’s various coffee klatches, each of whom naturally have questions about how J.W. Montgomery is going to do this week. He takes a special sort of pride in his yearly Halloween costumes, which have become a must-see tradition for Strawn’s younger children.

For some of his players, including Blaze Duncan, Coach Lee is the closest thing to a father figure they’ll have in their lives, and he fully understands the profound influence that comes with that role. Yes, he’ll crack down on his players if they’re not executing his preferred game-plan, but he’ll also shed tears on camera when his players are arrested after a party in a nearby town, and he’ll be among their primary sources of steadfast support off the field, where things really matter.

Maybe there’s something to be said for the power of community and of positive thinking, especially in the midst of all this stupid shit, and that’s why the shows featuring Coach Beam and Coach Lee resonated with me so much. I love sports documentaries, but largely in the same way that I like Bravo shows – as low-stakes distraction content – and in most years maybe How To would have occupied this top spot. In These Dumb Times, though, it was nice to experience some sustained emotional encouragement, even if it was mostly about football.

Something Else
This isn’t technically a television series, so I didn’t feel comfortable including it in my official Top Ten, but it nevertheless deserves specific attention here.

In and Of Itself (Hulu)
In the same way that I’ve always loved professional wrestling, I’ve always loved magic, and just like with pro wrestling, the tenets of that love have evolved as I’ve gotten older. When I was a kid, I was thrilled by the sheer spectacle of both types of performance. The Ultimate Warrior’s costume, face-paint, superhero musculature and in-ring energy created in me the same sort of wide-eyed reaction that I got when I watched David Copperfield’s big-stage illusions during his network television specials. (Wow, remember when professional magicians regularly got hourlong slots on primetime TV?)

Into adulthood, the love comes more from an appreciation for the craft itself. In pro wrestling, I enjoyed learning more about the business’s history and technical minutiae, and having watched nearly 35 years of this sort of performance, it’s now much clearer when a particular wrestler is obviously destined for stardom. In magic, David Blaine changed everything for me. Where many of the most famous magicians in the late 20th century were flying across the stage or making the Statue of Liberty disappear, Blaine’s magic involved a deck of cards or some other small object and took place right in front of two or three people, but was no less awe-inspiring. It’s clear that there’s some sort of intensely honed techniques at play here, and my appreciation for his ability to flawlessly execute them while maintaining the demeanor of someone under the influence of oxycontin could not be higher.

Which bring us to Derek DelGaudio.

I’d only seen passing references to In and Of Itself on social media after it was released on Hulu. One trusted source gave it a strong recommend, but also directly advised against reading anything about it beforehand. With that in mind, I won’t divulge any more details, other than to say that this presentation had me crying silent tears for most of its second half, and I hope it has a strong emotional impact on you, too.

YouTube
Until a few years ago, I thought YouTube was a place you mostly went to watch a random music video or the top ten best kick returns in NFL history or whatever, and didn’t understand that it was also a place that people regularly posted content on their own channels. To celebrate a few of my more recent discoveries, I thought I’d close this piece with a few YouTube channel recommendations.

Harry Mack
At some point, every person who listens to a certain amount of hip-hop becomes convinced they can freestyle. Then they turn on a beat, start with “Yo…here I am on the mic” before their brains turn off and they never try again. Harry Mack was not discouraged by those early struggles, and over the last 20 years has transformed himself into one of the world’s premiere unscripted rappers. He first came to prominence after creating content where he’d stroll through random spots around Los Angeles and flawlessly rap for several nonstop minutes about the stuff he observed. As COVID made in-person interaction a more tenuous proposition, he took his talents to Omegle (one of those random video chat platforms) where he’s racked up nearly a million subscribers. If you need a smile, and you like hip-hop even a little bit, check out a Harry Mack video.

Bill & Lisa’s Food and Travel
There sure is a lot of performative ennui on the internet, so I always appreciate a healthy dose of sincerity in my YouTube content. Bill and Lisa are a middle-aged married couple from Orange County, California who have the opportunity to travel at an extremely reduced rate since Bill’s works for Delta Airlines. They’ll backpack travel for a night or two to Las Vegas, spend a week in Atlanta or Minneapolis when Bill attends professional trainings and even fly to San Francisco or other nearby locations for a day-trip, returning to Los Angeles later that evening. Wherever they go, they make the sort of no-frills food and travel content that’s perfect for accompanying a quick dinner or for evening programming that’s light on emotional gravity.

M Gdd
Most people know about the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest and Man vs. Food, but there are literally thousands of local food challenges at restaurants all around America, and a whole bunch of people who like to film themselves trying to best them. On this channel, a former U.S. Marine visits these restaurants to take on their challenges, and with a remarkable success rate. There are a lot of flashier “professional eater” videos that feature sponsored content and higher production values, but M Gdd provides impressive, enthusiastic content that features a wide variety of locations and cuisines. To borrow from the channel’s description: “If you like to see a guy eat a bunch of food then subscribe and you will get just that.” Yep!

Pompsie
I love Las Vegas. If there’s something you want to do there, you can probably find it, and I look forward very much to going there at least three times in the 18 months after I’m fully vaccinated. In the meantime, I’m content to watch this Vegas vlogger’s hotel tours and livestreams. He first came to my attention after his review of the Venetian (one of my favorite Las Vegas properties) and his channel really took off after the Cosmopolitan kicked him out when he was in the middle of filming because they thought he was there to shoot porn. If you’re thinking of visiting Las Vegas but you’re not quite sure where to stay, Pompsie has the info you need.

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If you’ve made it this far, thanks so much for reading. I’ve tried to count my blessings over the last year, having remained employed, healthy and in a marriage that has been able to sustain all these months of quarantine. Still, I’m a big-time extrovert, so being forced out of my social life has not been easy. I can continue to distract myself with television, but it’s absolutely no substitute for seeing my friends in person, and I’m very much looking forward to doing that again.