I had a hard time narrowing the list down this year, and I rewrote it a few times before finally deciding to exclude a handful of favorites. The toughest cuts included: Mandy Patinkin’s wacky-yet-earnest judge in the fourth season of “The Good Fight,” Kate Winslet’s dogged detective in “Mare of Easttown,” Anthony Mackie’s soaring arc into Captain America in “Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” Michael Keaton’s country-doctor-turned-addict in “Dopesick,” and especially Michael C. Hall’s still compelling (and darkly hilarious) “Dexter.”
10. Billy McBride (Billy Bob Thornton) from “Goliath”…Part of this is just because it’s “Goliath”‘s final season, and this is the last chance to see crusading lawyer Billy McBride doing his thing. I truly believe McBride is the Perry Mason of the new millennium, and it’s thrilling to get one more chance to watch him shred a murderous white collar fiend like J.K. Simmons’s opioid tycoon or even just to watch Thornton soulfully gazing out at the rain-soaked streets of San Francisco. The final season is a twisty, atmospheric noir; a deep dive into open corruption that actually isn’t illegal (the FDA’s lax approval process and the idea of rigged settlements to prevent steeper ones later are explored), meaning the testy McBride is our trusted port in the storm. And the change of setting from sunny LA to a near-constantly soaked SF (Chinatown district) looks good on McBride; much more appropriate for his anguished psyche and brooding temperament.
9. Masha (Nicole Kidman) from “Nine Perfect Strangers”…I suspect this might be my most controversial selection, because not everyone was as intrigued by Kidman’s mysterious Russian guru as I was. Yet it’s her ambiguity that powers all the best moments of this (admittedly mediocre) miniseries. Is Masha dangerous or transcendent or maybe both? Is she trying to help these resort guests or irreparably break them or do you have to break them in order to truly help them? And what exactly happened to her in Russia (or a parking garage in America), and what’s with those freaky flashbacks? Kidman holds you with her power and sexuality in a way that makes you want to take the journey down the rabbit hole.
8. Ji Yoon-Kim (Sandra Oh) from “The Chair”…You can’t help but feel for Ji. She’s recently become “the first female chair of the English department” at a stuffy college in Vermont, and yet all the (self-conscious) fanfare of breaking that glass ceiling doesn’t in any way lessen how fragile her position actually is. The same colleagues and superiors who were happy to celebrate her achievement don’t hesitate at all to threaten it if she displeases them in any way, a good portrayal of just how tenuous a woman of color’s position actually is, talk of diversity be damned. Oh’s character also argues with her traditionalist Korean dad, raises her adopted daughter, fields ludicrous complaints from college students who use campus rage on trivialities to feel powerful (oblivious to how little really changes behind the scenes, as “Chair”‘s odious Bob Balaban character pulls real strings of power), and finds time for an endearing romance.
7. Abishola (Folake Olowofoyeku) from “Bob Hearts Abishola”…I don’t give a damn if I’m the only critic in America that isn’t sleeping on this series–and especially Abishola’s layered characterization–because what is the point of just repeating what everyone else is saying? Abishola is one of the most unusual, subtly revolutionary characters I’ve ever seen headline a sitcom. When you really think “TV comedy” in 2021, aren’t almost all characters kind-of the same (regardless of race or gender)? [Ava from “Hacks” and William Jackson Harper’s character from “Love Life” and Selena Gomez’s character from “Only Murders in the Building” are all supposed to be wildly different characters, but they basically say the same things.] They all seem to talk the same: quick, glib, hyper-educated, nothing of consequence sticking to them, vaguely outraged, extremely progressive (or a foolhardy punching bag for the show’s progressives), self-referential, and either ridiculous or self-aware.
Abishola isn’t really any of those things. She’s one TV’s finest odd ducks: a black woman that is neither a regressive stereotype (cough, BET, cough) or a young, Uber-liberal “Woke” stereotype that cannot exist in a scene without bringing up race (cough, almost all critically acclaimed comedies, cough). Instead, she feels just like a person, going about her day as a beautiful, pragmatic, middle-aged single mom and nurse who was already pretty happy with her job, family, friends, and church, and was shocked to find a new love. Abishola sometimes feels conflicted over what she’d like to do and the expectations placed on her (she’s scared of her mother, even though she’s an ocean away back in Nigeria), but never in a way that feels melodramatic or squeezed for maximum “drama.” She’s a working class black woman going about her life, and that is a character that has all but disappeared from modern television.
6. Elora (Devery Jacobs) from “Reservation Dogs”…Elora is the de facto leader of our core quartet (sorry Bear), and it’s easy to see from the beginning she stands the best chance at actually getting out of Oklahoma and into the fabled California the group have been dreaming about. Even if she seems like the least ethical of the group, flashbacks reveal more is going on, and why she’s so desperate to get out of an area haunted by personal ghosts. Elora even finds time to bond with Bill Burr’s spectacularly unhelpful driver’s ed teacher and her Sonic-scarfing uncle, a “local legend” the group looks up to merely because he punched out multiple men in a bar fight one night many, many years ago.
5. Lale (Narges Rashidi) from “Gangs of London”…”London” is chockful of double-crossing gangsters, ruthless mercenaries, completely-untrustworthy power brokers, and–perhaps worst of all–an undercover “cop” who thinks he’s making things better as he makes everything worse. And so the only character I really trusted was Lale, a Kurdish heroin kingpin who is only really interested in the weapons that drug money can buy in order to help the Kurds in their David vs. Goliath struggle for independence. She’s sexy, fierce, sharp, idealistic, and one of the only characters on the entire series I actually cared about. [Michelle Fairley is also great as another dangerous woman fighting for her own version of the “greater good,” aka her family.]
4. “The Old Man” Oh Il-Nam (O Yeong-Su) from “Squid Game”…I could pick several characters from “Game”‘s wild first season (I also loved HoYeon Jung as the North Korean defector who takes quite a while to trust someone), but “The Old Man” was my favorite, the wiliest player in the game. Even if you know the “twist,” every interaction he has only gets more ambiguous and interesting.
3. Josh Skinner (Keegan Michael-Key) and Melissa Gimble (Cecily Strong) from “Schmigadoon!”…There are so many wonderfully colorful and flashy characters in the six episodes that make up “Schmigadoon!”‘s first season, that it’s easy to miss just how crucial Josh and Melissa are to the series. If we didn’t care about them–or if they skewed too much into “we’re better than these dated fools we’re surrounded by” modernism–the series would’ve felt tedious (and parts of it almost do even with only six episodes).
But we’re rooting for Josh and Melissa more than they’re rooting for themselves throughout most of the season. Even during their charming flashbacks that are supposed to showcase their “problems” but really highlight a couple that is comfortably low-key with each other in contrast to the bombastic “LOVE!” musicals have taught them to covet. In particular, Josh has the greatest arc of the series, going from an emotionally stunted doctor to someone that can finally sing when called upon.
2. Patrick Sumner (Jack O’Connell) from “The North Water”…Colin Farrell may have the flashier role as “Water”‘s psychotic “id” Henry Drax, but Sumner’s is the more layered part as the show’s Ego. This is a doctor haunted by past failings–which he has wildly over paid for by bosses wanting to cover their own bad deeds–but his real struggle is in a system that doesn’t reward virtue. Sumner is torn between being repulsed by Drax (who is a same-sex rapist, a murderer, a lover of all debauchery, and possibly even a cannibal) and fascinated by what murky thoughts make him tick. In a way, he finds his answer in the show’s final scenes, when Sumner finally abandons all pretense of morality–which seems mostly to serve “North”‘s most wicked, yet high-born characters–and embraces something Drax would approve of. The miniseries’s final image of a now-wealthy Sumner looking at a trapped polar bear while at the zoo works on every level: how the battle between wild nature and civilization is just a place for humans to work out instincts or impulses that are unknowable.
Best of the Year: Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) from “Hacks”…This is a fantastic example of how the execution of a character makes all the difference. On paper, Vance could’ve easily wound up being one of the year’s worst characters: a very wealthy, famous white lady unconcerned with things like water use during a drought or much of anything besides her show dates and absurdly expensive possessions. Yet even from the first few interactions with her millennial-foil/comedic-soul-mate Ava, you can see something unexpected behind Deborah’s snarky facade, and it soon presents itself as searching intelligence (she knows exactly who everyone in the room is), fierce loyalty to those she employs, and even vulnerability. By the time Deborah finally begins to delve into her personal history and painful climb up the showbiz latter, you’re fully onboard with wherever the writers and Smart (a long-underrated actress in a career-best performance) want to take her.