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The most underrated, overrated and debatable TV shows of 2016
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Dec 28, 2016
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The most underrated, overrated and debatable TV shows of 2016
Looking back at 2016, what were the New York Times's Margaret Lyons gives us the highs and lows of the small screen.
"Stranger Things," "This Is Us," "Last Chance U."
"Stranger Things," "This Is Us," "Last Chance U."
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Looking back at 2016, what were the New York Times's Margaret Lyons gives us the highs and lows of the small screen.

There were over 450 scripted shows on American television in 2016 – that’s an all-time high.

This era of “peak TV” might seem stressful for critics, but

, who writes for the New York Times’ Watching section, says that it’s actually the best time be doing what she does.

"Every time there’s more TV, I feel happy," she said. "As a TV fan I think feeling like there’s too much TV is not a bad feeling– that’s like walking into a library and being like, ‘there’s too many books!"

And she even makes an argument for the shows that aren't so great.

"There’s plenty of bad TV that goes a long with all of the good TV," Lyons said. "I don’t think you can just have great stuff, there has to be this sort of comical buffet and there’s always a dish that is not to your liking."

Lyons joins the Frame to talk about that buffet– the underrated, the overrated and the hotly debated shows of 2016.

THE BEST SHOW THAT NO ONE’S WATCHING



"Last Chance U." It's a Netflix documentary series about a Junior College Football Team, where a lot of the players go on to play Division 1 and many go on to the NFL. I thought it was fascinating– it’s in some ways like a real life "Friday Night Lights, but also very different in the hopeful-versus-hopelessness of the series. I was obsessed. It was one of my favorite shows of the year, and I still don’t think I’ve met anyone else who’s watched all of it.



I’m not a football fan in general, and it still completely held my interest. So don’t be put off if you’re not generally a sports person.


THE SHOW THAT DESERVES THE HYPE



"The Americans" is one of the most fascinating dramas I’ve seen, ever.  I think it's a show that got better and better as it went on, and it started out extremely good. The most recent season, which aired early this year, blew me away. It’s patient and thoughtful and yeah, it is very dark and there’s a lot of violence and horrific acts that occur within the show. But at its beating heart, it is about who would know you the best, how would you even realize that someone knew you well. And that kind of crosses beyond the stories of Soviet espionage into the nature of the human condition.


THE SHOW THAT DOESN'T



"This is Us." I think there are strong performances but I’m not sure if any of its ideas are actually special or interesting. I think the idea that someone who is fat, and the only thing they think about or identify with or care about is fatness, is short-sighted and unfair. That’s not a characteristic – that’s not an idea and it’s not an emotion.



I think when the show tries to reveal stuff in its flashbacks, it couldn’t be more obvious. It’s like, ‘Oh how did we get this Thanksgiving Tradition’ and then the flashback is like ‘Well, it’s what you think. We did it that way. And now we still do.” That doesn’t strike me as all that resonant. I understand the appeal and look, I watch it too. I like shows where no one is a murderer and no one is a vampire and we ultimately are affirming the dignity of the human spirit. I’m interested in shows like that and I also miss Parenthood, but I’m stunned by how rapturous other critics have been about "This is Us", when I think that it is an ok show that just came along at the right time.


REVIVALS THAT DELIVERED



Re-boots and revivals are such a fraught concept. But I actually was thrilled with the "Gilmore Girls" revival. I had a lot of beefs with it as well. But ultimately, I felt like it was more episodes of a show I loved and that’s kind of the dream, right? That a show would come back and be about how you remembered it. I’m a big Gilmore Girls fan and enjoyed it even though I had some complaints, but that’s sort of the nature of being that kind of a fan of that kind of a show.


REVIVALS THAT DIDN’T

"Fuller House?" Not so much. In her review of the show for Vulture, Lyons wrote that the first four minutes of the "Full House" Revival "are four of the most excruciating TV minutes ever broadcast."



Yes, that was about season one of "Fuller House." I have not subjected myself to Season Two of "Fuller House" yet.



But the truth is I don’t have young kids, so I’m not looking for a show we can watch together– I am not its target demographic.


THE WATER COOLER SHOWS



"Stranger Things," definitely. I feel like over the summer there was just this moment where everyone was kind of hungering for this shared experience. And Stranger Things is pretty good--it’s a good show, I enjoyed it. But I think the sort of grasp it had on the collective imagination was so huge, especially compared to how good it was, that it was just a fun cultural phenomenon.



But "Game of Thrones" –you know, I think Monday morning, while "Game of Thrones" airs, we still do get some of that water cooler stuff.



And then more recently, "Westworld"– maybe not to the extent of the other two, but that was a show that, every time I was at a cocktail party, a lot of people wanted to ask me about "Westworld," so you can kind of take the temperature on stuff like that every once and awhile.


WHERE TV STILL NEEDS TO DIVERSIFY



It’s always exciting when TV takes steps to better reflect the actual make-up of a society. I think we have a long, long way to go. I’m excited for that path– I think there are more and more interesting shows coming out from lots of different voices that that have here-too-for been under or not at all represented in television.



But I’m wary of too much back-patting on how diverse TV has become when the truth is that it’s still not very diverse at all. And I think especially when we expand those ideas to queer representation and you know, I think TV is almost all people who are able-bodied, certainly. There’s a lot of voices that we’re still not hearing stories from and stories about and I hope that continues to change.

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