The Young Folks team has come together to list the very best in entertainment and pop culture for the year 2016!
Every year we write about how TV has hit its peak status, which is crazy because it keeps going up and it somehow keeps getting better. A lot went down on TV this year, probably stuff that is arguably more important and representative of where we are as a society. As much as some of it was purely entertaining (who else is still reeling over Game of Thrones or the World Series?) or disheartening (politics, great shows coming to an end), it was as diverse a year of television in its history.
Click next to see select staff writers favorite shows of 2016.
Gabrielle Bondi’s Top 10 TV Shows of 2016
What another great year for television. It was extra hard this year coming up with a list of my favorite shows, there are so many that I loved that didn’t quite make this list. Maybe in hindsight this list will change dramatically, but there is still no doubt that these shows made an impact this year, telling incredible stories with compelling performances and direction. As always, I’m looking forward to what 2017 brings.
- Game of Thrones
- The Night Of
- The People vs. O.J. Simpson
- Insecure
- Outlander
- Atlanta
- Transparent
- Stranger Things
- This Is Us
- Superstore
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Allyson Johnson’s Top 10 TV Shows of 2016
1. Bojack Horseman – Bojack Horseman is doing something revolutionary when it comes to how storytelling in television is presented and it’s time for more people to stand up and notice. Having mastered the ability to to blend introspective drama and farcical comedy, the Netflix original series has no shortage of laughs while also allowing a peak into a wildly dysfunctional mental state. It’s masterful, and its third season offered up just the right amount of comedy and tragedy to create something that from each end of the spectrum is something enlightening.
2. iZombie – People don’t seem to take notice of iZombie. That, or they purposefully ignore it based on the title alone, and either option is a disservice both to the show and the viewer. Season two was even better than its first with clever, pun heavy scripts, a wonderful leading lady and stellar supporting cast and relationships that feel real and lived in, creating even high tensions than there might have been otherwise.
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3. Catastrophe – Rather than losing its bite in its second season, British import Catastrophe grew only more toxic as Rob and Sharon were forced to deal with parenthood, suspected infidelity and aimlessness that comes with not loving your job. Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney are remarkable as the leading couple, allowing us as the audience to both understand their attraction to one another but also the forces that could drive them apart.
4. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend – Few shows have jumped into audiences’ screens with as much energizing urgency as Rachel Bloom’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. A musical, a dramedy, a critical look at incessant sexism, the show has it all, and season two has only continued to improve.
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5. Superstore – Long gone it seems of the workplace comedies for blue collar America, with shows such as Malcom in the Middle seemingly increasingly far away. This is just one of the reasons why Superstore has become such a must-watch. With a diverse, incredibly funny ensemble cast, the show understands the ratio of jokes to storylines while also introducing a will-they-won’t-they dynamic that doesn’t feel trite or tired.
6. Brooklyn Nine-Nine – I have long been talking and/or writing about just how consistently amazing Brooklyn Nine-Nine is, and if people aren’t fans yet, they likely will miss the train all together. However, four seasons in, Brooklyn Nine-Nine shows no signs of stopping or even slowing down. With the best ensemble cast on television as well as the best cold opens, Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s greatest asset is its longevity.
7. Supergirl – After season one, despite my general enjoyment of the series, I never would’ve guessed it would end up on my end of the year best of list, especially above The Flash (which doesn’t even make an appearance). Yet here we are, and Supergirl isn’t just the best superhero show currently on air, but one of the best period. Melissa Benoist continues to shine as the titular character, but the real highlight comes with her sister Alex, who is going through a beautifully portrayed coming out storyline.
8. Game of Thrones – After a few seasons where annoyance was the most commonly attributed emotion towards the HBO series, season six of Game of Thrones reminded viewers (book fans and otherwise alike) just why the series was so addicting in the first place. Jon Snow took a more monumental stance on the shows standing, Cersei lived up to her villainous potential, while Arya and Sansa reminded us why the Starks will always be the family to root for.
9. Casual – Despite debuting in a time where the “dramedy” is at its peak popularity, Hulu’s Casual hasn’t seemed to be able to catch on like its counterparts. A shame, since season two was a wonderfully introspective look at three damaged, funny, people and how their lives turned out to be as royally messed up as they did.
10. The 100 – I, like the majority of its viewers, had a lot to complain about for season three of The 100 – and a lot of legitimate complaints including the death of a LGBTQ character and POC. It’s something that going forward the show is going to have to pay greater attention to in order to rectify their wrongs. However, it still handles a wonderfully diverse cast, a bi-sexual leading lady and the type of science fiction antics that are so widely appealing and are far and few in-between these days on television.
(Note: I’m still catching up on Atlanta, Better Things and Horace and Pete, if that sways people’s opinions of me…)
Amanda Hayman’s Top 10 TV Shows of 2016
What a year for television. While every year has its standout moments in television, 2016 hit the mark when it comes to spectacular performances, memorable seasons and breakout shows. It was challenging to pick a top 10, but here are my picks for this year’s best TV shows and I’m looking forward to what television brings to our screens next year.
- Westworld
- Stranger Things
- Game of Thrones
- House of Cards
- Penny Dreadful
- American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson
- Bates Motel
- Marco Polo
- Vikings
- The Grand Tour
Cristina Moreano’s Top 10 TV Shows of 2016
What a great time to be alive! Watching TV has never been easier! You have your regular shows on local television, then you have the ones on cable, and those that you binge watch online every weekend on your computer. This year, I’ve felt I’ve been bombarded with new series every week! It was hard to pick just 10, but the choice has been made. Stranger Things had to be on my number one spot. For me, the series as a whole did everything right: cast, music, plot, characters, themes, etc. Looking forward to next year TV surprises!
1. Stranger Things
2. Veep
3. Atlanta
4. Game of Thrones
5. The Night Of
6. The Crown
7. Mr. Robot
8. Luke Cage
9. Westworld
10. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Justin Carreiro’s Top 10 TV Shows of 2016
1. The Crown (Season 1)
This is an absolutely beautiful and stunning show. I’m not one to be passionate about historical dramas, but The Crown is easily one of the best of the year, especially everything from its acting to its locations. I NEED a second season of this show to come back.
2. Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X (Season 33)
After 16 years of watching Survivor, it’s hard not to expect certain moments or moves in a season. But this Millennials vs. Gen X season kept me on my toes and biting my nails down to the Final Tribal Council.
3. Stranger Things (Season 1)
I initially was unsure about Stranger Things in its first episode, but it hooked me right in after. I’m crossing my fingers the second season is equally as amazing.
4. Orphan Black (Season 4)
The fourth season is easily one of its best: the plot/backstory has been sorted out, the clones are on their game, and Tatiana Maslany was finally recognized with an Emmy!
5. Black Mirror (Season 3)
Each episode felt like its own mini movie. The only downside? I wish I could get more episodes from certain stories, like “Nosedive,” “Playtest” and “Hated in the Nation.”
6. American Horror Story: Roanoke (Season 6)
I love a story that’s very Meta and while the first half is alright, the second half makes up for it as one of the best in AHS overall.
7. Bojack Horseman (Season 3)
Emotionally deep plots, real development for the characters, and one of the saddest cartoon episodes I’ve ever seen – this was a great season.
8. How To Get Away With Murder (Season 3A)
After a bumpy second season, the drama picked right back up for the third season. The show cannot return fast enough.
9. Salem (Season 2 & 3A)
Salem is so overlooked, but it’s a guilty-pleasure supernatural drama that found its groove in the second year.
10. Supergirl (Season 1)
Supergirl has a great cast of characters and plot. I enjoyed the sisterly bond and every GIF-worthy one-liner that Cat Grant/Calista Flockhart bestowed upon the world.
Leigh-Ann Brodber’s Top TV Shows of 2016
As someone who dedicates most of my time to sitting in front of a screen and binge-watching series after series, I can’t help but say that 2016 has been a spectacular year for television. More and more these days television shows are surpassing movies in terms of production quality, epic storylines and multi-dimensional characters. I’m hoping that 2017 will be a year that TV shows will not only uphold these newly set standards but exceed them. Until then, here are my carefully selected list of top TV shows for 2016:
- Westworld
- Game of Thrones
- Stranger Things
- Timeless
- Shameless
- Luke Cage
- Incorporated
- Red Oaks
- Star vs. the Forces of Evil
- Outlander
Travis Hymas’ Top 10 TV Shows of 2016
Spoiler: I really like animation, especially this year.
Star Wars: Rebels (Season 3) – The surprising thing about Rebels this season is its commitment to the slow burn. After season two’s giant finale featuring Darths Vader and Maul, this season has been focused on taking steps backward to establish exactly how far Phoenix Squadron has come and how far they need to go still.
Archer (Season 7) – Honest to god, Archer’s main conceit-espionage via incompetence-should be more than old by now. Taking the cast out of the spy business once more for a riff on P.I. shows gives enough material for new ideas without going too far off the farm.
Gravity Falls (Weirdmageddon 3) – Only one (technically a two-parter) episode of Gravity Falls aired in 2016. That one episode is still worth including alone. Weirdmageddon 3 managed to deliver on Gravity Falls’ recurring themes without being preachy and pays off on a lot of lingering jokes.
Adam Ruins Everything – Easily television’s smartest show, in which host Adam Conover debunks common misconceptions. This year, Adam ruined wedding traditions, shopping culture, the DARE program, and inevitably the election. There really isn’t anything like this on TV right now.
Supergirl (Season 2) – Supergirl did with genre TV what $475 million and two movies couldn’t accomplish: properly adapt Superman. Supergirl’s second season takes on various themes, such as the struggles of refugees finding a place to fit in and for locals to look past their bias and accept them; to a well done coming out story that actually helped save a life. Oh, and Superman’s actually in this season too.
Stranger Things – A lot of the focus is on the nostalgia-factor that is being traded on, but I don’t think that’s the key to why this all works. Things doesn’t constantly lean back on 80’s references to artificially create emotion. What we have here is a well done period drama that also happens to be science fiction.
Luke Cage – I’ve been in love with the Cage since he resurged in early 2000’s Marvel comics, but Luke Cage feels just as relevant (if not moreso) now. But is it any wonder that with the culture in play, that Cage has the MCU’s best music, one of the best villain turns, and some of the strongest characters?
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee – I’ve already lauded praise on Sammy B, but it bears repeating. Having a female voice and a diverse staff of writers also gives way to segments that wouldn’t fly anywhere else, including Bee’s previous employer The Daily Show.
Agent Carter (Season 2) – Straight to the point: it’s a crime that ABC pulled the plug on this show. Hayley Atwell was one of the MCU’s best discoveries. In a noir-style mystery, Iron Man villain Madame Masque is retooled into a scientific genius forced to play Hollywood starlet was inspired and a great foil to Peggy and the previous season’s message of “I Know My Worth.”
BoJack Horseman (Season 3) – When film editor Allyson Johnson asked the staff here to pick the better of two episodes, I couldn’t. This season starts to head exactly in the direction I expected, but a last second plot twist in the season finale once again makes me hope for the best. BoJack Horseman is very much a melancholy show, but it’s those glimmers of fleeting hope that keeps me thinking about it.
Evan Griffin’s Top 10 TV Shows of 2016
10. Something DC Related Because I Watch Those Every Week
I watch four DC shows every week… I review two of them. They all are blending together. Not just the seasons, but the four individual programs. Flashpoint. GUH.
9. Stranger Things
While it didn’t grasp me in the same way it phenomenally blew up in the web-culture this summer, I massively appreciate the nodding it did towards the 80’s films and culture it was influenced by, but not winking too hard in it’s general direction. I appreciate Stranger Things as a prime example in discussing how entertainment can achieve being derivative without trying so hard it becomes a cheap imitation. Plus, it’s short and sweet, and I think that the shot episode orders should be taken note of from Stranger Thing’s success (meaning, you, Marvel).
8. Daredevil (Season 2)
Despite that snide comment at Marvel’s streaming TV series being too long per season, I still find that this season’s Daredevil entries were some of the most enthralling moments of building the Marvel Universe so far with a finally good introduction of Elektra, a conflict both with fists and ideals between Matt Murdock and The Punisher, and a believable inclusion of The Hand.
7. Luke Cage
On that same note, Luke Cage, the first lead person of color for a Marvel Studios franchise is played by Mike Colter as the returning power man that made his introduction in last fall’s Jessica Jones. Because the man with unbreakable skin has an entirely different set of motives and way of seeking out justice in New York, the show he stars in is wholly different in tone in contrast to Daredevil’s grimdark story plodding. Luke Cage is a superhero character that, much like Captain America, feels more uplifting in his day to day heroics and in his larger efforts to remove the corruption from Harlem. Also, Mahershala Ali as Cottonmouth was easily one of the most compelling villain characters for Marvel since Loki.
6. Better Call Saul (Season 2)
The story about the evolution of Jimmy McGill into the scammin’ lawyer we already knew becomes a bit more recognizable in its second season to it’s predecessor series, and yet feels like a piece entirely its own as Jimmy’s encounters vary from personal to extraneous, and characters like Mike, Tuco and the rest of the Salamanca family provide roles in the chess game throughout Better Call Saul’s second season.
5. Atlanta
The fever dream, existentially strange comedy by Donald Glover, entirely inspired by the local rap scene in the city of Atlanta, Georgia. The tone of the show, described by some as a Twin Peaks for Rappers garners a weird sense of style from Glover’s comedy routines but also from his own experiences on the music scene in the city. Atlanta has moments of tackling issues of racism, all the while it can be telling zany and eccentric plots in the same episode, and I believe the balance found between the two is what has garnered so much adoration for the show from audiences this year.
4. Westworld
First Jurassic Park, now this. Michael Crichton must hate amusement parks. Westworld borrows those ideas struck open by Philip K Dick and Isaac Asimov, but now hit a little too close to home in the advent of smart homes and lifelike sex robots, and Westworld twists those ideas of existential crises in sci-fi and in virtual reality with an “amusing twist” by keeping the focus on certain characters as opposed to any singular overarching plot through its pilot season. Audiences find themselves caring just as much for android characters played by the likes of James Marsden and Evan Rachel Wood as they do the goings on of Ed Harris and Anthony Hopkins. This show contains a level of talent that it’s shocking how it’s accumulated here despite being hosted by HBO.
3. Terrace House (Netflix Series 2)
On my list last year, I got some flack for including a reality show like the Great British Bake Off as one of 2015’s crowning jewels of television. I can guarantee you, I hate reality television. But for a second year in a row, a non-american reality tv show has enamored me, and this time it’s one that aired in Japan that was saved for another installment by Netflix. Terrace House is a japanese take on Real World and Big Brother where several strangers in their 20’s of varying personality live in an unnecessarily gorgeous apartment together, and that’s about it. There is very little to no drama in this show, but it’s more a window into a culture, and they were open enough to show the world how they can grow as a human being in such scenarios. It’s not edited to be wildly frustrating or agonizing or awkward. Just simple, relaxing, sometimes it’s even enlightening, and that puts it on par with the Great British Bake Off in the spectrum of quality reality tv.
2. Black Mirror (Season 3)
Sure, it’s not for everybody, but I personally welcome our robot overlords. Well, maybe not welcome, but in the same way that people watched Twilight Zone for insight into human psyche and fear, I watch Black Mirror to feel strangely guilty that the awful habits I take part in assist our technologically driven culture knee deep into cold, lonely insanity.
1. Mr Robot (Season 2)
I knew that Sam Esmail was going to take his time to tell a story throughout Season 2 of Mr. Robot, but I didn’t realize how much time he actually meant. This truly was a character driven season of USA’s new flagship drama, and it had much less to do with hacking and social engineering as it did the way this culture, and a metaphorically atomic reset of America’s debt crisis, would affect this cast of characters. The controlled doses of Eliot’s struggle after the 5/9 attack was well rendered, Darleen’s attempt to seize command of FSociety was strenuous, and Angel quickly became a favorite in a cast of characters, a few of whom we lost very early on in some surprising turns of events. Mr. Robot, I can foresee, will be the best show on TV every summer it airs unless something else truly masterful comes along.
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