Entertainment Editorial: The 5 Best Shows You’re Not Watching

That title might be a little misleading, as only one of these shows is truly what I would consider “great” (you guessed it, Breaking Bad). Still, all of them are better than 95 percent of what’s on TV, and all of them could use a drastic uptick in viewership. To highlight what makes all of these shows so worth watching, I’m zeroing in on a recent episode to better explain the show’s quality…

5. Show: NBC’s “Community,” Recent Episode: “Remedial Chaos Theory.” Don’t let that episode title fool you. This ep is where the core characters in Community (friends who attend a community college together) play a game of Yahtzee at a party and–when the pizza guy comes–roll dice to see who has to go get it. Then the episode spins off into seven different stories showing what would happen depending on who the dice lands on. It’s brilliant, fast, inventive, and showcases all of Community’s best qualities. CBS’s The Big Bang Theory (which regularly monkey stomps Community in the ratings) wishes it was this good.

4. Show: CBS’s “A Gifted Man”, Episode: Doesn’t Matter, They’re All About the Same. This one takes the absolute grand prize of the decade for “Show I Cannot Believe I Like.” I seriously don’t like medical dramas, shows where ghosts talk to people earnestly, CBS, or Jennifer Ehle (who plays the ex-wife that can talk to Patrick Wilson’s title doctor), and yet somehow this show works more than it has any right to. I won’t say it’s the absolute best new show of the Fall (that very weak competition is between the ambitious but script challenged Terra Nova, the pretty good Up All Night, and the wonderfully mean Revenge) but it’s the only one of the “so-so” crop in danger of getting cancelled. So, I will cautiously say to give this show a try…at least if someone but me watches it, we can try to figure out why I like it together.

3. Show: Fox’s “Fringe,” Recent Episode: Also Doesn’t Really Matter. Fringe is one of those long suffering shows that has never really caught a break. It’s currently in its fourth season and has never enjoyed truly good ratings…placing most respectably in season 2 before Fox made the idiotic decision to move it to the ultra competitive Thursdays, then dump it on the dead zone Fridays. In a lot of ways, it’s surprising Fox has even allowed it to survive this long (I guess they fear something from sci-fi fans like the hipster backlash they got from canceling the obsessively loved Arrested Development), but it IS still on Friday nights at 9pm Eastern for all those that think the show has been cancelled. I feel certain that this will be the show’s final season and it deserves to at least go out with the ratings dignity bestowed on wildly overrated cult “faves” like Chuck, also coming to Fridays.

2. Show: NBC’s “Parks and Recreation,” Recent Episode: “Ron and Tammys.” This show is hands down the best sitcom on broadcast TV. Although to be fair, competition isn’t so stiff since CBS refuses to develop shows without laugh tracks and ABC (Last Man Standing) and NBC (Whitney) have both regressed to that as well. Forget the so-popular-it’s-become-lazy Modern Family, this show about ragtag government workers in Indiana is hilarious, humane, and smarter than the broad comedy would have you believe. Just take the episode “Ron and Tammys” where scene stealing man’s man Ron Swanson gets completely neutered by his first ex-wife Tammy (also featuring cameos from his second ex-wife Tammy and Tammy Zero, his mother). This show comes on after Community, and there are much, much worse ways you could spend the first hour of your Thursday nights.

1. Show: AMC’s “Breaking Bad.” Recent Episode: “Face-Off.” Okay, to be fair this show doesn’t need your patronage to stay on the air–it’s already been green lit for a 5th and final season just like the creator intended–and it isn’t on the brink of cancellation like these other shows. But “Breaking Bad” is hands down, undisputedly the best show on television. The fact that it takes in only about 2 million viewers an episode (about half the total of the far inferior, other criminal show “Sons of Anarchy”) is shameful.

Just take the season finale–also to be fair, I could have picked any episode from this note perfect fourth season–“Face-Off” which managed to be tense, darkly funny, shocking, and leave you craving more. You know, what TV is supposed to do. By unleashing TV’s greatest character–high school chemistry teacher turned half-sociopathic crystal meth cook Walter White–in his season long duel with the deceptively mild-mannered, equally ruthless drug kingpin Gus Fring (a major drug supplier from Chile hiding in plain sight as the owner of a fast food franchise), the show revealed a showdown for the ages. I’m not recommending you watch Breaking Bad because it’s good for the show, I’m recommending you watch it because it’s good for you.