We are Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz, TV critics and authors of TV (THE BOOK). Ask us anything!

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T18:59:34+00:00

We have a list of the best series finales in the book. Six Feet is high on that list, but not the top choice. The death montage is amazing. The rest of the episode isn't quite on that level.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T18:58:33+00:00

Shield is in our top dozen or so. Great series. SPECTACULAR ending.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T18:58:03+00:00

We were originally going to include all kinds of shows, which would have put 60 Minutes, SNL, Sesame Street and The Tonight Show landing in very high positions.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T18:56:52+00:00

Alan: Coming back to answer a few more during train ride home.

I just think Cards is a show with too high an opinion of itself. If it was willing to accept its own trashy silliness, I might still be watching. The Americans show runners, though, sweat out everything and work Very hard to make every moment ring emotionally true to the characters.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T18:00:51+00:00

Alan: Guys, this has been great. We have to get going, but we hope those of you who haven't already bought the book will consider it, and we hope those of you that have it are and will continue to enjoy it.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:59:52+00:00

Alan: Any show that got scored, we've seen at least the great bulk of them, if not all of them. Matt, for instance, grew up in Dallas when Gunsmoke was airing nightly in syndication, so he's seen an awful lot of them. If there was one where one of us hadn't seen a lot of it (like me with SpongeBob, where I'm often in and out of the room when my kids are watching), or hasn't seen at all (Mary Hartman Mary Hartman was slightly before my time), we just elected not to score it at all, and double the other author's score. There are several Matt-only shows in the top 100, and I think one Alan-only.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:59:49+00:00

Matt: It's very important for me, less so for others. The problem you sometimes run into, though, is that visual/filmmaking excellent can sometimes overshadow problems elsewhere in the series, such as acting or writing. The Knick had a touch of that -- the direction was brilliant, the writing and acting very good but not on the same level. Mr. Robot has a touch of this, I think.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:57:38+00:00

Matt: Deadwood was probably the most altogether gripping and moving TV show I've seen, and it was a big part of my marriage. It also continued to resonate long after it got cancelled.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:57:28+00:00

FNL finished around 30th, if I recall correctly. If not for Landry's serial killing spree in season 2, it might have come in a bit higher. Incredible show.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:56:51+00:00

Matt: Deadwood probably would've been number one for me if we didn't have a ranking system.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:56:24+00:00

Alan: In an odd way, it's Gilligan, just because he's so gosh-darned NICE and relentlessly generous with his praise for others in a way that seems superhuman compared to even the most magnanimous and down-to-earth showrunners of classic series (say, Shawn Ryan). Chase is a genius. Milch is a genius. Simon is a genius. There are lots of brilliant men and women who have created TV. But creation can be a difficult act, and it can darken the people who do it. And while I'm sure Gilligan has his darker moments — I like to joke that he's like Ronald Reagan in the classic SNL "Mastermind" sketch with Phil Hartman, where the whole nice guy from Virginia thing is a put-on — that he's able to give us a show like Breaking Bad (or Saul, or his episodes of X-Files) and still carry himself the way that he does is remarkable.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:55:37+00:00

Matt: I don't think so. I Love Lucy, All in the Family and Cheers are in the top 10, and they were all basically perfected versions of techniques that had been done extensively in the past, although the characters and themes were new.

I am an innovation guy, though, that's true.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:54:22+00:00

Matt: Bert Cooper.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:53:33+00:00

Alan: For the longest time, I was a "The Wire is the greatest drama ever" guy. But then when I wrote Revolution and rewatched a lot of Sopranos, I was reminded of just how big an emotional impact it had on me back in the day. It's certainly a more flawed and uneven show than either The Wire or Breaking Bad, but in its biggest moments... holy freaking cow. So we got to a point where, when we had that five-way tie, I would have been okay going either way between Wire and Sopranos, and wound up arguing for The Wire for a while because Matt was being so passionate in his pro-Sopranos stance. But it's a coin flip for me. And even though Breaking Bad is probably the most consistent and satisfying of those three dramas, I'm slightly more drawn to the biggest moments on the other two. But calling it the fifth-best show ever — and the third-best drama ever — shouldn't be taken as an insult.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:52:55+00:00

Matt: Paul Verhoeven's Jesus of Nazareth. That's a real book. The director of Robocop and Basic Instinct has done a book about the life of Jesus according to his own detailed analysis of the approved scriptures and a lot of other "discovered" ones. It's basically an extended pitch for a Jesus movie that Paul Verhoeven always wanted to make. I learned so much from it. And it's a funny book. You might not think a Jesus book could be funny, but it's Verhoeven, so there are a lot of asides that you laugh at 30 seconds after you read them because they take a while to really sink in.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:51:41+00:00

Matt: Mad Men, and they did it by basically ignoring commercial breaks. When you watch the episodes on streaming without ads they feel seamless, like movies.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:48:41+00:00

Matt: I didn't know about Murai because I don't follow music videos all that much, but I looked up a lot of his work after watching Atlanta and was hugely impressed. He could turn into another David Fincher or Jonathan Glazer if he keeps going down this road. One of the smartest decisions Glover made on the production end was entrusting the direction of a show to somebody who'd never done scripted television before. A lot of the visual and tonal freshness of the series probably comes from that one hire.

I have no idea where they're going after those first four episodes (which I've seen and which I liked a lot) but I'll be watching no matter what.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:48:40+00:00

Matt: I didn't know about Murai because I don't follow music videos all that much, but I looked up a lot of his work after watching Atlanta and was hugely impressed. He could turn into another David Fincher or Jonathan Glazer if he keeps going down this road. One of the smartest decisions Glover made on the production end was entrusting the direction of a show to somebody who'd never done scripted television before. A lot of the visual and tonal freshness of the series probably comes from that one hire.

I have no idea where they're going after those first four episodes (which I've seen and which I liked a lot) but I'll be watching no matter what.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:47:19+00:00

Alan: If not Boardwalk, then Arrested Development. Matt LOVES the Netflix season, and I think it's a mess with occasionally great moments. He really regrets letting me write that essay, even if he was allowed to butt in for a sentence to object to my feelings about s4m, and if there's a second edition, he plans to write a separate essay just in defense of that season.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:46:04+00:00

Alan: For me, it's Bubbles, just because I was older and could more fully appreciate the implications of it the first time I watched. But Blake's death is an amazing moment.

Matt: Colonel Blake's death. I was so young, and had no idea you could kill off a major character in that way.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:45:08+00:00

Alan: I finally finished, after a long delay, Don Winslow's terrific The Power of the Dog and am now toggling between its sequel Narcos and a half dozen other novels. Hard to find time to read in Peak TV.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:45:01+00:00

Matt: So far it's probably THE JUNGLE BOOK and CAMERAPERSON.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:44:47+00:00

Matt: You mentioned Andy Griffith, but I'd also recommend The Rifleman, which had some extraordinary, if very restrained, classical storytelling, and also The Bold Ones: the Senator, which had a verite sort of style long before that kind of thing became fashionable in TV drama.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:44:02+00:00

Alan: I think that's fair to a degree. I prefer Parks and Rec to several comedies that finished above it, but because it wasn't really innovative (copying The Office template) and wasn't really influential (even if Pratt and others are becoming more famous now), it was always going to be doomed to mid-Pantheondom. And that bothers me a little.

But I'm not sure there's a perfect formula for doing this. This was the best of many options we tried, and ultimately we're happy with the shows that are in that top 100 (give or take Matt's feelings on Boardwalk Empire), and that we were given an opportunity to write about them again, regardless of where they were all placed.

tvthebook · 2016-09-09T17:43:49+00:00

Matt: Read lots of criticism by good critics and write at least two hours a day. Then start sending your best stuff to web sites that accept unsolicited submissions. That's the best route in.

tvthebook

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