Best And Worst Of The 2017-18 TV Season

As another TV season ends, I've got some Netflix involvement in the rankings of my Best and Worst shows of the year, thanks to having finally joined that streaming service after such a long time of not being on it like everyone else. So, while the party typically don't stop till The Flash or the Agents of SHIELD walk out, it's time I put up the rankings and their reasonings, as has become my annual tradition.

As always, we're starting with the Bottom 5.

5. Jessica Jones

I admit, it's a tad unfair that I'm including the new season of Jessica Jones in this list, since I'm still only halfway through it as of this writing - only seven episodes out of thirteen. But those seven episodes are such a long, meandering mess, with almost entire episodes' worth of flashbacks to further disrupt the pacing, that it's become little more than glorified background viewing for me at this point. Even worse, there's no villain as memorable and despicable as Kilgrave, and it shows. Pretty much the only reason I want to finish now is so I can move on to the upcoming second season of Luke Cage as quickly as possible.

Not much of an excuse there, JJ.

4. The Magicians

I used to actually really like this Syfy show because I thought it was better than the original source material - Lev Grossman's grimdark "parody" of popular fantasy novels. This year, however, as The Magicians TV series outstripped the source material, it became painfully clear, for the first time, that the show really wasn't much better than the books. By this point, I really can't care for any of these characters, not even Quentin, whose depressed and disaffected and denied-all-the-love attitude was my main reason for relating to the show in the first place. Pretty much the only reason I'm not quitting the show entirely is because of the massive reinvention promised by this season's cliffhanger, but aside from that, I'm sick and tired of these poorly written millennial stereotypes.

Yeah, you heard me, Elliott. And frankly, you make me wanna gouge my eyes out.

3. Supergirl

Hard to believe this show, one of my favorites from last year - a previous Pinecone Award winner, too! - has fallen so hard from grace. Season 2, as far as I'm concerned, was Peak Supergirl for me, largely because of the lovely character development given to Mon-El and the naturally chemically effervescent Karamel ship. Unfortunately, it appears the writers have instead listened to Mon's haters this year, minimizing his strength (literal man-killing "omicron radiation," anyone?) and sinking Karamel in favor of the chemistry-free "SaturnValor" ship (and even worse, the highly problematic casting of Amy Jackson as Imra, or as I like to call her, "Superhomewrecker.") This, combined with an strong shift to visual and emotional darkness reminiscent of that of The Flash Season 3 (a season from which they still haven't fully recovered, and likely never will because of the neglect of Wally West and continued excessive focus on WestAllen), has made Supergirl now my least favorite Arrowverse show by far. Don't get me wrong, I still have my faves - Kara, Mon, Alex, Winn, J'onn, and all their actors (But especially my forever faves Melissa Benoist and Chris Wood.) But when multiple friends of mine in the fandom have quit watching the show because of the writers' betrayal, you know the show's in the toilet. Bringing in Stitchers creator Jeffrey Schechter for Season 4 might help because we'll get the very man responsible for Camsten hopefully helping reverse the damage this season's writers did to Karamel, but the antis are already working their evil magic on him, so that's got me super worried.

Kara, I love you, but without your better half, there's so much less sunshine in the world.

2. The Walking Dead

Not a surprise to see back in the Bottom 5 is another old favorite of mine - my least favorite show last season. Though they promised All Out War - specifically, an adaptation of that storyline from the Walking Dead comics - they really gave us yet another long, drawn-out, dreadful, piss-poor, horrible torture-fest of not enough going in the good guys' favor and too much going in the bad guys' favor. Even though the bad guys all but imploded in the end - and thank God too! - the very end of this eighth season of The Walking Dead denies us all proper closure, and is further proof that the writers have their heads firmly up Negan's ass at all times. Figuring in the death of one of my favorite characters, one whose death pretty much only pleases that bastard Scott Gimple and all the most hateful jerks in the fandom? I'm glad the ratings for this show have gone significantly down, and it's all Gimple's fault. But hey, Gimple's no longer going to be head writer going forward, so maybe this time next year, TWD won't be in the Bottom 5 again.

Pictured: the guy representing how much I'd love to personally assassinate Negan. Even though he never did himself.

1. Inhumans

Now that ABC finally did the right thing and cancelled this hot mess, we can finally, officially pretend this darkest hour of the MCU never happened.

Seriously. A coproduction between Marvel, ABC, and IMAX, and shit like this is where all the money went?

And now, the Top 5!

5. The 100

The one and only show to have made it into the Pinecone Awards every year since they began, The 100 is also looking to be the first-ever four-time winner as well. After the new apocalypse of Season 4's Praimfaya, Season 5 begins with a soft reboot, jumping ahead in time six years. Though there's far less of the world to inhabit now - the only safe places being in space, a single green valley on the ground, and the bunker under Polis - the new season has taken a different approach, spending entire episodes dealing with either Clarke and Madi in the valley and Bellamy and company up in space, or Octavia and Indra and all our old Skaikru and Grounder friends down in the bunker. It's a strangely Walking Dead-like approach, but here, it works because we're not following one or two characters for an entire episode. We're following a lot of people, and seeing them put through all the wringers, and it's proven some of the most fascinating viewing we've had on this show since the diabolical ALIE storyline in Season 3.

And here we see Clarke, that Mama Bear, with a little bit of red stripe like a throwback to her Wanheda days.

4. A Series of Unfortunate Events

I was able to finally watch the entire Season the First of this series in January, not long after joining Netflix for the first time. That first season was great because it adapted the first four books very faithfully, while incorporating the ongoing VFD mystery from the get-go not unlike the 2004 film (which still holds a special place in my heart.) But now, in Season the Second, we get ten episodes of such strong aesthetic variety (my favorite, though, is the Harry Potter-meets-The Hunger Games style of The Austere Academy, closely followed by the Art Deco Ersatz Elevator), and also more of the VFD mystery being unveiled with the early additions of Olivia Caliban and Jacques Snicket - bet you didn't see that coming! Though the new season does have its little flaws - The Ersatz Elevator gets a little too padded with Olaf's song and dance, and Mr. Poe feels a little awkwardly shoehorned into the plot at times where he wasn't there in the books - it's also very faithful to the books, and feels even more so like the second coming of Pushing Daisies, that I can't help but love what Snicket's given us.

Bit of a stretch to call Nero a villain, though - in this adaptation, they actually make him slightly nicer.

3. The Good Place

As always, I can never spoil exactly what makes this show super-duper fun, especially if you haven't started it yet.

If so, forking start already!

All I will spoil is that this shot ends Season 2. But it's evergreen for starting to watch any episode of this show.

2. Legends of Tomorrow

Rocketing its way up to the top of my Arrowverse TV series rankings now is this time-travel tale. Though Arrow won the Pinecone as recently as December 2017 due in large part to the presence of Michael Emerson as Cayden James, since then, Legends of Tomorrow has become the best of the bunch. And in this case, it's because of some new characters who've joined the show in the latter half of Season 3. I'm especially looking at my old fave Constantine, who's set to finally become a Legend himself as of Season 4, and also at Wally West, finally giving Keiynan Lonsdale the chance to be himself - and be awe and some - after months of neglect at the hands of the Flash writers. That, plus the season finale, in which Legends finally embraces its cheesiest awesome instincts and totally abandons the overdramatic shackles that plagued it from its beginning. Maybe a little too off the wall at times - like, really, telling teenage Barack Obama "Make America Grodd Again?" - but this will always be remembered in this house as the season of Mallus, John Noble (as himself, even!), Wally, Constantine, and of course, Beebo.

Do you accept Beebo as your Lord and Savior?

1. Agents of SHIELD

If I have to explain again why this is my favorite show, just check my Twitter page. It's practically a Daisy, Coulson, FitzSimmons, and Yo-Yo stan account anyway.

It's too bad we have to wait a year now for Season 6 in summer 2019 (!!!), but the fact that Season 6 is happening, it's a bloody godsend.

Daisy's gonna kick some names and take some ass. Though she's always got permission to take mine, of course.

And thus endeth, once again, my TV season rankings.

Till next time, Pinecones...

#FeedTheRightWolf

Remember: Denis Leary is always watching. Always.

Best And Worst Of The 2016-17 TV Season

Last year, I wanted to wait until the end of my favorite show's season to put out my Best and Worst list. This year, I'm doing so right after my favorite show ends its season. Because while it's become tradition that the party don't stop till The Flash walks out, I'm sorry to say that that show's writers have committed so many party fouls this year (mostly relating to their increasingly heavy focus on WestAllen, and also the interminable "Save Iris" arc) that I can no longer call The Flash my favorite show. I can no longer even count it in my Top 5, and I'm scared that, for the first time, it'll fail to win a Pinecone at year's end.

But while The Flash has disappointed me, it's been a great year elsewhere for five other shows. And there are also five shows (one of which is also a longtime fave) that have either annoyed me or made me want to rage against my viewing machine week after week because of their ongoing existence.

As usual, let's get my Five Worst out of the way first.

5. Powerless

I think it might've had something to do with the change in concept between the initial pilot's filming and the actual airing of the final pilot, but this DC Comics-based NBC sitcom proved shockingly low-quality. Really, given the presence of the likes of Danny Pudi and Alan Tudyk, I was expecting better. But then, I'm a little more forgiving of this show for its faults because, well, they couldn't help having trouble behind the scenes, could they? I only wish they could've stuck with the original insurance-agency idea, and maybe looked for a better lead actress than Vanessa Hudgens...but would it have helped the show last more than one season? Who knows.

Here's hoping for a stronger effort at a DC Comics comedy someday. A Vibe spinoff from The Flash, perhaps?

4. Taken

I literally only started watching this show because my dad saw the trailer for it and thought, "Hey, a spinoff of the Liam Neeson movies? Count me in!" Too bad the trailers for this reboot (it's a prequel, but it's still set in the present day) did such a good job of hiding the fact that this show, being the secret origin of Bryan Mills, pretty much lacks everything that makes the movies worth watching. It's nowhere near as intense or over-the-top as the movies, and with its desaturated color palette and standard plots for every episode, the show is so subdued as to fade into the background - and that's not getting into the fact that each episode suffers from erratic pacing and hole-filled plots. I was also very shocked that NBC renewed it for a second season - which, unless it manages to do well in its new Friday Night Death Slot, will probably be its last.

Personally, if you want more Clive Standen, I'd recommend Vikings. Still getting through their early seasons.

3. No Tomorrow

Maybe this show wasn't for me because it was more for the crowd that watches Jane the Virgin and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - both critically acclaimed out the wazoo, but also both with premises so absurd that it alienates me from the get-go for some reason. No Tomorrow, with its promise of potential apocalypse, sounded a little more up my alley, but one episode was all it took for me to realize that it was basically a John Green book for adults, with only a gender-swapping of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope (and Joshua Sasse's presence, creepy and douchey though his character was) to sell it. One and done for the CW, and hopefully next year they'll think twice before wasting The Flash lead-in on something so incompatible.

They should've given that lead-in to Frequency, which I won't forgive the CW for cancelling. EVER.

2. Conviction

It never fails to peeve me that ABC's spent the last few years either putting half their eggs in Shonda Rhimes' basket (am I the only one who simply can't get into any of her shows?) or putting another quarter of their eggs in the wastebaskets of ShondaLand's seemingly infinite imitators (Quantico, anyone?) while making me fear for the lives of my favorite genre shows on the network (as I especially did last year with Castle and Agent Carter.) Speaking of the latter, I really hope that Hayley Atwell's not totally done with the Marvel Cinematic Universe yet, as dirty as they did her in all the ways. But this year, they put her in as the lead on the legal drama Conviction, which, despite a fairly all-star cast, was so derivative of Scandal (and, again, I say this as a decided non-fan of that show) that it bored me to tears and made me feel so sorry for Hayley Atwell, saddled as she was with a piss-poor consolation prize of a job.

Come back soon, Ms. Atwell. Maybe in an Agents of SHIELD flashback? :)

1. The Walking Dead

Bet you didn't expect to see this bottoming my Bottom 5, did you? Well, if you've followed my Twitter anytime in the last seven months or so, you probably did. Honestly, I'm ashamed of what this show's become - torture porn for Robert Kirkman, Scott M. Gimple, et al. to beat off to while they laugh at how much we the viewers are scarred for life by the gratuitous physical and psychological violence of the Negan arc. It's gotten to the point where, because of this season, I've taken to telling people who haven't started watching the show to skip it. Not even to watch from the stellar beginning, because that's a surefire way to get you hooked - and therein lies the insidiousness of this show. You can't stop watching, even when you really, really want to. Even through the nihilistic valleys of Season 2, Season 4B, Season 5A...and now, all of Season 7, where all the show's worst flaws (too many characters, too many locations, glacial pacing because they spend entire episodes in one place, the writers blatantly plot-armoring the villain because they have such boners for him, and worst of all, forgetting that this is supposed to be a goddamn zombie show!) come out in full force. Bottom line, if you value your mental and emotional health, avoid The Walking Dead.

Also, that episode where Carl met Negan? Fiction has never made me so ragingly bloodthirsty.

And now for my Five Best!

5. The Good Place

I thought this show was a fun fantasy-comedy in the vein of Bryan Fuller's early days, before he started dabbling in the Gothic and back when he could see the funny side of death. But The Good Place is so much more than that - it's a skillful parody of all the best myth-arc kind of shows on TV. Lost, Fringe, Westworld, Breaking Bad, The X-Files...but to get into particulars of how wild and unexpectedly awesome this show's first season is would risk massive spoilers. Watch this show, love it to death, scream at the finale...then we'll talk.

And if, somehow, you don't like it, go fork yourself.

4. Timeless

Last week, I was scared that NBC had made the same epic mistake they pulled with Revolution and got trigger-happy on the ass of another underrated Eric Kripke show. But it took so little time for the fan outcry to convince the network that, hmm, maybe they had a potential hit on their hands? And after the cliffhanger ending to this terrific time-travel drama's first season, no resolution, ever, would have made me so incredibly raging mad at NBC, you wouldn't believe it. Though they had their pitfalls (God, could we please go back in time and wipe that Bonnie and Clyde episode from existence?), they were otherwise so awesome that I had to watch each episode twice - once live by myself, and the second time with my dad. Sixteen episodes in Season 1 were certainly not enough, and neither will be ten episodes for Season 2...but you know what? It's always worth it, because Kripke never fails.

All hail the all-awesome #TimeTeam. (And Garcia Flynn, that charismatic anti-villain.)

3. Lucifer

I was raised Catholic, but am so over religion. So I have that in common with the title character of this super-cool Fox paranormal crime drama, now ramping up to the end of its second season and with no end to the awesomeness in sight. I also have certain parental issues, trouble connecting with normal humans (and a tendency to balk at said connections when they're made only because I'm suddenly paranoid that something's wrong with it), bisexuality (though he's far more confident in expressing his own), and...and you know what? If you don't believe me, give this show a try. Forget Mark Pellegrino - Tom Ellis as a cuddly and adorably douchey Lucifer is always going to be my definitive version of the character.

You saucy boy, Luci.

2. Supergirl

Taking The Flash's place on my Top 5 list (roughly) is the true shining star of the Arrowverse these days - Kara Zor-El, Supergirl, the Angel From Krypton whose show I've had so much fun pairing with viewings of Lucifer (which will be a little harder to pull off next season if Supergirl stays on Mondays at 8, thus putting it on TV at the same time as Lucifer, but that's neither here nor there.) And as petty as it might be for me to say, the primary reason for this is because of shipping. While I'm so over the main ship on The Flash (and also bummed that Cisco continues to be one of the most relatable characters on that show because he's pretty much forever alone like me), Supergirl has ditched its chemistry-free canon ship as set up at the end of Season 1 in favor of pairing her with her love from the comics, Mon-El, played amazingly by Chris Wood. (It helps that he and Melissa Benoist are now dating in real life, lending Stonefield-level natural chemistry to their performances.) Unpopular opinion - I LOVE KARAMEL. Mon's character development has dovetailed so wonderfully into his and Kara's blossoming relationship, and alongside this emotional roller coaster, we've had Winn taking more of the spotlight being the DEO's resident inventor, and Alex's coming out and finding love in Maggie Sawyer. Oh, and some damn despicable villains in Lillian Luthor and Rhea, the truly monstrous Queen of Daxam. The season finale is next week, and with Tyler Hoechlin returning as Superman, that's just the tip of the iceberg of awesomeness.

Though I'm still shipping SuperFlash like nobody's business, I'm so in for Karamel, those sweet space bunnies.

1. Agents of SHIELD

My favorite show on TV right now isn't The Flash anymore - it's last year's second-place Pinecone winner, Agents of SHIELD. Last year brought the show to new heights with the white-knuckle "Fallen Agent" storyline that cut me deep in my Daisy Johnson-loving heart, but this year, they've taken the show higher and higher. Dividing the series into not two, but three "pods" tightened the writing and pacing to perfect degrees, and each pod serves up a totally different surprise and style that keeps you guessing at every turn. In order, we've got "Ghost Rider" (with Gabriel Luna kicking all the ass as Robbie Reyes), "LMD" (with Mallory Jansen creeping everyone the fuck out as AIDA), and "Agents of HYDRA" (a scary backwards world where SHIELD is dying, HYDRA rules the roost, and Brett Dalton is playing Grant Ward as we all want to remember him - Awesome McCoolguy.) The whole way, it's clear, now more than ever, that I had the right fave all along - Daisy is the true hero of this show now, with Yo-Yo and FitzSimmons not far behind. #ItsAllConnected - all of it. And let me tell you, now up there with The Flash's "Out Of Time" or Person of Interest's "If-Then-Else" or Fringe's "Over There" or The 100's "Perverse Instantiation" on my list of the best episodes of TV ever is Agents of SHIELD's "Self Control." Written and directed by Jed Whedon, it more than rivals anything Joss ever did, and is one of the most screamingly intense hours in TV history. I'm still sure I died watching it that night and came back as a ghost - or, perhaps, a Framework construct. (Huh...that might actually explain a lot about this shitty world, except we wound up in the Framework while the "Ghost Rider" pod was still happening.)

And thus endeth my Best and Worst lists...what do you guys think?

Till next time, Pinecones...

#FeedTheRightWolf

Remember: Denis Leary is always watching. Always.

Best And Worst Of The 2015-16 TV Season

This TV season may not be quite over yet (the party don't end till The Flash walks out, and even then there's still gonna be quite a few stragglers still keeping on going!) But now, in the wake of a truly epic season finale for one of my favorite shows, I think it's high time I put my thoughts out there on the shows I loved the most this season - and those that didn't impress me so much, for whatever reason.

So, let's get my Five Worst out of the way first.

5. Castle

Well, it pains me to start here, but I just have to get this out there...I love Castle. As a writer, I'm required by law to love it. But this season, they really just lost the plot with the annoying "Castle and Beckett separated for his own safety because LokSat" storyline, which dragged on and on and on and on...it alienated my dad as a viewer, and he quit the show about halfway through the season. I would have quit as well if Season 9 were to have been green-lit by ABC without Beckett - an unforgivable sin in the eyes of many, which, I think, is why it ultimately got canned.

Caskett forever. Always.

4. Game of Silence

Basically, if you hire Niels Arden Oplev as your pilot director, I'm guaranteed to at least try your show out. I got into Mr. Robot this way, and same goes for the highly-underrated Under The Dome. A pity the same couldn't be said for Game of Silence. Even before NBC cancelled this one due to low ratings, I sensed that this show wasn't going anywhere fast, with its ridiculously twisted plot - and not in a good way. At least the pilot was effective and powerful stuff, and also the second episode...but frankly, I had the horrible feeling that the ongoing arc with the "family values" politician and his dirty secret past (of course, and he's probably Republican too, no?) wasn't going to resolve itself anytime soon.

The real draw for this show: Bass Monroe from Revolution.

3. American Horror Story: Hotel

I love FX's super-popular dark anthology, even if it's oftentimes ridiculous and overwrought and borrows too much inspiration from schlocky scare-fests of yesteryear. Sadly, AHS: Hotel was a massive come-down of a season, harking back to the ultra-dark days of Murder House. Granted, there's something to be said for this season's primary themes being addiction and excess, but that doesn't make it any less hard to watch. And at least there were some likable people in this ensemble, unlike Murder House. But like Murder House, Hotel was saddled with ridiculously wall-to-wall sex and violence, a fairly predictable main plot, and too many dead-end subplots to count. Here's hoping this "return to form" is only temporary.

"I want your ugly, I want your disease..."

2. Scream Queens

Ryan Murphy hasn't been having a good year in terms of quality, I don't think. His other big project had promise for taking more modern inspiration (90s slasher movies like, duh, Scream!) than the obscure, even pretentious, historical and/or Old Hollywood references that have become bread-and-butter for AHS. Unfortunately, when Murphy's trying to go for laughs, it doesn't work nearly as well as the often-unintentional ones of AHS. At least Scream Queens had some memorable deaths in its early episodes (Ariana Grande live-tweeting hers, Nick Jonas getting crucified to the sounds of "Sunglasses at Night" - and later turning up alive again!) And, of course, Jamie Lee Curtis reenacting the shower scene from Psycho. But overall, the show was bogged down by its relentlessly detestable cast of characters and overabundance of disgusting, trying-too-hard-for-funny moments (that one guy who had such a death fetish that he would go to the cemetery and jerk off? Well, apart from giving a whole new meaning to "grave rubbing..." I mean, come on!) I'm still surprised Fox gave Season 2 the green light, and like with True Detective, I'm not coming back.

And Emma Roberts will still always be best-known
for the infamous "Surprise, bitch!" line from Coven.

1. Quantico

My parents and I were really looking forward to this one going into the start of the fall season, especially after seeing a pretty nice featurette for it while waiting to start Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation in the theater. As it turns out, though, ABC's timely, topical terrorism thriller started out with a strong, strong pilot, only to quickly dissolve into so much soap-opera drama (even pointing out its own soap-opera nature, so points for self-awareness) that it overshadowed the terrorist-plot elements completely. (It certainly didn't help that the story was told in a present-day timeline following the attack, as well as pervasive flashbacks, which were surprisingly hard to tell apart.) For me, red flags were also raised when I saw comparisons to Homeland and How To Get Away With Murder (both of which I can't stand), and when I learned that the show's creator was a former Gossip Girl writer (which explains the drama, at least.) My parents gave up after three episodes, and I gave up after seven, if only to see a little more of Rick Cosnett and remind myself of when he used to play Eddie Thawne. How people continued to eat this up enough for it to be renewed for Season 2 is a mystery to me.

As Cat Grant would say, "You look like the attractive, yet non-
threatening, racially diverse cast of a CW show."

And now for my Five Best!

5. Limitless

Oh, CBS. You have seriously, seriously dropped the ball by not renewing this show - and also, you may have possibly reignited the Tuesdays-at-10 curse that killed Threshold, Jericho (the second time), (almost) The Amazing Race, and, more recently, Person of Interest. At least it had the chance to run a full season, though. And it certainly did a great job of striking the balance between light and darkness. For instance, the pilot was pretty close in tone to the 2011 film to which the series is a sequel, but the second episode was far more lighthearted and funny and introduced the slick, cartoony sense of humor that really helped me appreciate the show much more. Being the product of a creative team that involved producers from Elementary, Sleepy Hollow, and The Amazing Spider-Man movies just made Limitless automatically awesome by association - and, apparently, too good for CBS despite being their second-highest-rated new drama. If CBS doesn't find this show a new home (preferably not on Netflix - not everyone has it, you know!), they'll really, truly have failed this fandom.

Part of its Elementary/Sleepy Hollow/TASM pedigree
also included a kick-ass theme tune. Just sayin'.

4. Supergirl

CBS proved themselves stupid this spring by not renewing their two highest-rated freshman dramas - although, unlike with Limitless, the decision to jettison Supergirl from the lineup makes a little more sense. Budget issues were the main culprit, but there was also the fact that Supergirl just plain didn't fit into the CBS lineup very well. The CW lineup, on the other hand, looks like it'll be a much, much better fit (and, happily, I'm already seeing the CW advertising the move!) I just really wish the CW had gotten the series from the get-go, although being on CBS instead for its first year helped make the Flash crossover a lot more special. (Also, I'm still happily shipping SuperFlash, or, as I like to call them, KareBear.) Still, changing networks shouldn't change Supergirl's core awesomeness, the fact that she's just a great big ball of amazing alien sunshine who, along with her friends and family (and fans!) carries a wide range of emotions.

Rock on, Angel From Krypton. <3

3. Colony

I just know Proxy Snyder would not appreciate it if his show weren't included in this list (and if you're not following him on Twitter, you should - @ProxySnyder is wickedly droll, take it from me!) Humor aside, though, this latest excellent USA series takes the ubiquitous dystopian thriller and presents it with a few surprising twists - chief among them, the fact that, even though we're pretty much conditioned to always root for the Resistance, here they're not really the good guys, just like the Transitional Authority isn't all bad (and some on both sides are worse than others, but let's not go there - spoilers, y'know.) Despite being set in the sunny LA Bloc, Colony is, morally, gray as a cloudy day - and that's just part of the excitement, because it makes for a highly unpredictable, ever-twisty plot.

And yes, it's got Lost in its DNA. That alone makes it one of the best.

2. The 100

Hoo boy...how this show went from internet darling to internet pariah so quickly, and all because of a couple of fan-favorite deaths. I can just imagine George R.R. Martin hearing of this from deep within his writing cave, laughing to himself, and adding another layer of violence to his own next fan-favorite death. Those of us who weren't daunted by the violence, however, were whipped into a different kind of fan frenzy this season - because as dark and bloody and heartbreaking and one-step-forward-three-goddamn-steps-back-for-our-poor-heroes as it got, we were so bound and determined that there would be some light at the end of the tunnel. And I don't mean the City of Light, people. I mean real light. Hope. Life. Survival. Endurance. That's the message of The 100 - because as much as Clarke might insist that "maybe there aren't any good guys," that's not true. As long as there's someone to root for...and this show boasts those in spades. It's just a shame that we won't be getting Season 4 in the fall...but we will be getting a Season 4, in spite of the anti-fan campaigns against the show. Ge smak daun, gyon op nodotaim. We, the fans, will be chomping at the bit for the return - and, in the meantime, hoping that Adina Porter can get us access to Indra's Grounder Strip Mall.

May we meet again.

Although I'll say this much - Wanheda Clarke's red hair?
I'm kinda glad she went back to blonde. It suits her better.

1. The Flash

My favorite show on TV right now, for so many reasons. All the Arrowverse shows are cool, but none as much as this, the second one to make its grand debut on the CW (hard to believe it was only two years ago, almost!) Thrills aplenty, tons of feels (I still tear up from so much as thinking of "The Runaway Dinosaur"), all the laughs (most of which are Cisco's fault), A-grade acting (we need to start a "For Your Consideration" campaign for Grant Gustin to get Best Actor for - what else? - "The Runaway Dinosaur!"), the general awesomeness of Barry's powers (if only I had them, because then I could have a stronger sense of freedom in my life) and did I mention the thrills? I'll never forget the episode that made this show my favorite, last season's "Out of Time." I mention it all the time (pun not intended), but seriously...not having read the comics beforehand really got me even more shocked at the ending of that one (and my DC-disdaining dad looked at me with a "What's wrong with you?" face when I was screaming what basically amounted to "OH MY GOD HOLY SHIT DID HE JUST RUN BACK IN TIME? FUCK YEAH!!!!") While this season's had its stumbles (a tendency to trip over itself on the time-travel plot threads, and also a few pretty clearly recycled elements from Season 1), they've more than made up for it with well-polished diamonds like the two-part Earth-2 episode, and of course "The Runaway Dinosaur" - and, this week, "Invincible," which again had a screamer of an ending. But not a happy scream, more of a devastated scream mimicking Barry's. Next week's finale...it's going to destroy me, I know it.

It's go time. Run, Barry. Run!

And thus endeth my Best and Worst lists...what do you guys think?

Till next time, Pinecones...

#FeedTheRightWolf

Remember - Denis Leary is always watching. Always.