If forcefully compelled to describe the state of television in 2023 in one word, it would be . . . serviceable. Past years would have demanded a term lamenting Peak TV's glut, but that blimp is contracting. Sadly, this decrease isn't happening in time for people to discover some outstanding shows that were canceled along with the dreck, one of which made this year-end list.
We're going to be hungry for the rich creativity powering those series next year, when we won't have "Barry" or "Succession" to consider anymore — or, really, many great shows that strove to extend the so-called Platinum era of prestige TV.
But to push aside my highfalutin' critics spectacles for a moment, there are still plenty of fine crowd-pleasers around, many of which are enjoyable as a whole without turning out any single episode that distinguishes it as extraordinary. "Drops of God" on Apple TV+ is not for everyone, but it's a gorgeously chilled masterwork focused on a contest to inherit the legacy of an oenophile. "Survival of the Thickest" is a lot more accessible, and isn't on this list either but I am not ashamed to say I rewatched the full season twice. "What We Do in the Shadows" is still reliably entertaining. The last season of "Picard" slaps, "The Gilded Age" is a glittery, vapid delight, and "Reacher" is a solid ride. None of those made my top 10.
Then again, a lot of other great shows didn't either. "Yellowjackets" fans, don't get mad — there's a certain episode that's popped up on a lot of other year-end lists, but I am behind. Maybe I'll catch up over winter break.
That brings us to the usual annual disclaimers: Evaluations like this are highly subjective and must acknowledge that one person can't see every show. If your favorite episode doesn't show up here, that doesn't negate its greatness. Maybe I haven't watched it yet. Maybe I forgot about it. Maybe we simply disagree. It's allowed!
At least I was able to pull out a Top 10 that includes a few rogue selections along with the episode fellow critics likely crowned 2023 TV's finest. So enjoy. Or be horrified. Either way, watch a few of these for yourself — you (probably) won't be sorry you did.
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"Succession" Season 3, Episode 3 "Connor's Wedding," HBO (Max)
Jeremy Strong and Sarah Snook on "Succession" (HBO)
Some episodes blindside the viewer with unexpected turns that change everything. This one's brilliance is in the way it takes something the audience was assured was going to happen in the first episode of the series and buries it in the batter of his least loved child's wedding cake.
"Succession" frequently cloaks consequential twists in grand social events, so we should have guessed something huge would derail Connor's big day — but not Logan Roy's death. More devastating is the way series creator Jesse Armstrong doesn't even devote a full quarter of the episode to the wedding, cutting into whatever passes for joy in this family with the terrible news that transforms all of Logan's backbiting adult children into helpless whelps.
Kieran Culkin, Jeremy Strong and Sarah Snook do some of their best work here, turning their emotions from blissful social fakery into absolute devastation in a heartbeat. Shiv, Kendall and Roman are not serious people, as their father tells them shortly before he died, but the cyclone of grief these actors spin lets us see them, ever so briefly, as frail humans worthy of our sympathy. That was unexpected.
Sarah Ramos as Jessica, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Richard “Richie” Jerimovich and Andrew Lopez as Garret in "The Bear" (Chuck Hodes/FX)
The second season of this show is ostensibly about a journey to transform a decaying sandwich joint into a Michelin star-worthy bistro. Only after we digest a few episodes do we come to understand what it's really about — discovering your purpose and calling.
Every character embarks on a journey to hone their natural craft, but what about the one who has no outwardly apparent natural talent or ability? Cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is the crewmember with no real role, an unmanageable manager who insists on sticking to an old "system" that amounts to chaos. But Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) needs all hands on deck, so Carmy sends Richie to apprentice at one of the places where the chef made his bones to be humbled, humiliated . . . and slowly but surely forged into a man who understands precision, the art of service and a man who intimately understands that Every Second Counts.
"Fishes," the episode preceding "Forks," is a cinematic, star-studded tour de force in its own right, but this one taps into the heart of what make "The Bear" one of the best TV shows in any season, setting up not just Richie's triumph but one for the entire crew in the season finale.
"The Last of Us" Season 1, Episode 3 "Long, Long Time," HBO (Max)
Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett in "The Last of Us" (Liane Hentscher/HBO)
As I wrote when this episode first aired, "The Last of Us" doesn't pretend people aren't a threat. But this hour also insists we're the cure, yielding stunningly gorgeous performances by Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett as Bill and Frank, two characters who appear in the zombie apocalypse video game from which this drama is adapted. What the game didn't do was depict the nature of their relationship, only inferring what these two were to each other.
The bulk of "Long, Long Time" is spent with Bill and Frank's relationship, allowing us to not merely meet them but know them. More than this Craig Mazin, the series co-creator who wrote the hour, uses their burgeoning romance and eventual marriage to demonstrate the ways our supposed vulnerabilites make us stronger. Bill is the survivalist of the two. But Frank expands his walled-in world, giving him plenty to live for.
The episode is named for a Linda Ronstadt song Frank performs for Bill, lowering his emotional barriers in the process, but the moment that tells the story of what this episode is about shows the men sitting beside a strawberry patch Frank plants for Bill as a surprise. They enjoy the first fruits, laughing, before Bill tells their story, and the singularly human story of true love, in one line: "I was never afraid before you showed up."
"Reservation Dogs" Season 3, Episode 3 "Deer Lady," FX (Hulu)
Reservation Dogs (FX)
We wish this show continued beyond three seasons, but its last one sends it off aptly with a number of well-played cinematic references alongside stirring arcs for each main character. But one episode takes the opportunity presented by Bear (D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) and his decision to wander home to bring back Kaniehtiio Horn's Deer Lady for one more haunting.
Only this time, the story isn't about what she did to a wicked man, but what wicked people did to her. Series creator Sterlin Harjo forges the legendary figure's origin story in a horror tale based on the appalling true history of government-sanctioned Native boarding schools. Director Danis Goulet sets us inside that terror using cinematic flourishes inspired by films such as "Suspiria."
Darkness envelops the scenes from Deer Lady's past, and the abusive nuns running the school where she's taken are made more alien by the show transforming their dialogue into incomprehensible babble, making them the other instead of the children. When Deer Lady takes her vengeance at the climax, it's sadder more than anything . . . but it's that the way things go for every misunderstood hero?
"Swagger" Season 2, Episode 5 "Are We Free?" (Apple TV+)
John Carlos and Isaiah Hill in "Swagger" (Apple TV+)
In a just world, shows like "Swagger" would naturally get the respect and large viewership it deserves. But with age of Peak TV deflating and streamers carelessly tossing out the tin artificially bulking up their schedules it was inevitable that a few platinum bars would be swept up in that purge. This show, miserably, is one of those.
But Reggie Rock Bythewood's creation leaves a legacy of kinetic cinematography and thoughtful meditations on masculinity, class discrimination, abuse and race, all of which fold together precisely in this episode demonstrating how many of Coach Ikon Edwards' star players are one poor decision away from being pulled into the school to prison pipeline.
Season 2 shows his star player Jace Carson (Isaiah Hill) contending with the fallout of assault he and other players visited on an abusive coach to avenge his best friend Crystal (Quvenzhané Wallis). As they wait to hear whether they'll be charged, Ikon takes his Swagger DMV team to a local youth prison where they meet activist John Carlos, who along with fellow American sprinter and gold medalist Tommie Smith, made history by holding up a black gloved fist while standing on the winners' podium at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Carlos plays himself as the prison basketball team's coach. He's also their Virgil as each kid crosses paths with a version of themselves who is equally as talented but whose futures are now blighted by their convictions.
But this episode leans into joy instead of tragedy, showing all these boys as young men seeing themselves in each other and taking pride in that collective vision. “Winners are made on the court. Champions are made off the court,” Carlos tells them, explaining what a raised fist means at the end of day: Unification. Togetherness.
Steven Yeun as Danny and Ali Wong as Amy in "Beef" (Andrew Cooper/Netflix)
It wasn't supposed to go this far. It was inevitable things would go so badly. Sealing its role as a bizarre allegory about love and hate being opposite sides of the coin called obsession, Ali Wong's Amy Lau and Steven Yeun's Danny Cho crash the cars they're driving and sail off a cliff. Miraculously they both live. Miserably they're stranded together in a desert purgatory with no reception, no food and pestered by a murder of crows taking delight in their misery.
They feast on berries that end up being poisonous, sending them into a hallucinogenic state in which they realize what the audience has seen all along, that even when we are at our worst, we are not so unlike our perceived enemies. Amy's violent animus toward Danny was more about her dissatisfaction with life than it was about him, in the same way Amy gave Danny a convenient direction at which to lob all of his frustrations.
No wonder that when they limp out of that valley of death together they look like partners, solidified in a final scene in which Amy curls up beside a comotose Danny in his hospital bed.
“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" Season 2, Episode 9 "Subspace Rhapsody" (Paramount+)
Christina Chong as La’an in "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" (Paramount+)
Musical episodes are common. Terrific musical episodes come along once in a great while. What they don't tend to do is emerge in a series' second season – but TV longevity is so uncertain; why wait?
Wisely, the writers took inspiration from one of the best musical episode in modern television, 2001's "Once More, With Feeling" from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Recruiting "Letters to Cleo" bandmates Kay Hanley and Tom Polce to write the songbook, the episode borrowed from the "Buffy" thesis of musical numbers forcing characters to betray their true emotions. In Starfleet, however, that poses a security risk — along with unmasking truths that break a few hearts, including Ethan Peck's Spock, who gets his own solo tune titled "I'm the X."
The climactic showstopper, though, is an unwilling performance by an aggressive Klingon captain forced to sing and dance their rage at the Federation into a K-pop style tune. What else can we say except . . . this one hit it.
"Abbott Elementary" Season 2, Episode 16 "Teacher Conference," ABC (Hulu)
Quinta Brunson and Tyler James Williams in "Abbott Elementary" (ABC)
The best "Abbott" episodes bring out the essence of who these characters are while surprising us. At a weekend-long professional conference held in Allentown, Penn., the almost-always responsible Barbara and the rule-bending Melissa get lit on math-a-ritas and squashing the beef Melissa has with her sister Kristen Marie. Jacob finds his people — as in, over-the-top white saviors devoted to teaching children of color.
But the big gasp was that thing we all saw coming — and maybe wished didn't, but were kind of jazzed about anyway — the drunken kiss Gregory shares with Janine, one that Janine returns. He had just been dumped; she was nerding out over a "living classroom" made of flowers. How was that lip lock not inevitable? They aren't the only teachers who pretend to regret their weekend actions after sobering up, but what happened in Allentown does not stay in Allentown ("Sexy place!" Janine says unconvincingly) heightening the rest of the season's comedic tension.
"Barry" Season 4, Episode 5 "Tricky Legacies," HBO (Max)
Bill Hader and Zachary Golinger in "Barry" (Merrick Morton/HBO)
"Barry" star Bill Hader directed all of the fourth and final season's episodes, taking cinematic leaps throughout in the smallest moments, bleeding Barry's fantasy about a life with Sally (Sarah Goldberg) into his dour prison reality, taking an eight-year leap in a future where he and Sally are married, living in a colorless prairie town under new identities and have a son.
But if a great episode comes down to a few sequences that tells us exactly where the story is headed with as little dialogue as possible, it has to be this, where everyone's lives start to definitively unravel one last time. Stephen Root's Monroe Fuches emerges from prison and picks up a lover on his way to meeting NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan). Hader's Barry, claimed to have found God and washed all of his mortal sins away, arrives in Los Angeles for a deadly date with Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler), set on profiting from the story of their soured friendship.
Sally, however, survives a slasher flick when, she drunkenly fends off home invaders. Or it's implied she does; we're with Sally as she's locked in her and Barry's bedroom as other attackers knock their home off its foundations, screaming along with her as the walls and floor shake her around like a helpless mannequin. In one fell 30-minute swoop, Hader gives us a horror movie, a black comedy and a tragedy to contemplate. Whatever he does next as a director, we should all watch closely.
Mekki Leeper and Edy Modica in "Jury Duty" (Amazon Freevee)
More than a practical joke stretched over, "Jury Duty" is an experiment to test the limits of Ronald Gladden's patience and empathy. As the only person in the show who isn't an actor – and doesn't realize the civil case he believes he's considering is fake – Gladden is tested by his fellow jurors' ridiculous behavior each day that court is in session.
But what James Marden (playing the worst version of himself) inflicts on Ronald on their day off is stupendous. Left to their own devices at the hotel where half the jury is sequestered, Marsden ropes in Ronald to help him read for a role he's aching to land in the nonexistent neo-Western "Lone Pine." Each take exceeds the melodrama of the previous, made worse by Marsden pretending to drop a King Kong deuce that supposedly jams up the commode and requires profession intervention . . . which Marsden persuades Ronald to cop to out of fear that his ample turd will somehow be reported on gossip sites.
Improbably, this is topped by holy roller fellow juror Noah Price (Mekki Leeper) hooking up with devilish prankster Jeannie Abruzzo (Edy Modica) who persuades Noah to have not-sex with her by "soaking" (look it up) as Marsden facilitates by jumping on their bed. Unscripted reality showed some true human craziness this year, but this episode's cross between jaw-slackening lunacy and Ronald's genuine sensitivity and forbearance is inspired.
Jeremy Strong and Sarah Snook on "Succession" (HBO)
Sarah Ramos as Jessica, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Richard “Richie” Jerimovich and Andrew Lopez as Garret in "The Bear" (Chuck Hodes/FX)
Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett in "The Last of Us" (Liane Hentscher/HBO)
Reservation Dogs (FX)
John Carlos and Isaiah Hill in "Swagger" (Apple TV+)
Steven Yeun as Danny and Ali Wong as Amy in "Beef" (Andrew Cooper/Netflix)
Christina Chong as La’an in "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" (Paramount+)
Quinta Brunson and Tyler James Williams in "Abbott Elementary" (ABC)
Bill Hader and Zachary Golinger in "Barry" (Merrick Morton/HBO)
Mekki Leeper and Edy Modica in "Jury Duty" (Amazon Freevee)
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