Top TV moments, from Trump to Beyoncé
I’m not sure we want to spend too much time looking back on this shaky year now ending. I do believe, though, that what we watch remains an accurate reflection of who we are. Here’s what I saw on TV — and in it — in 2016.
The U.S. election The three presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump shattered previous ratings. People may have tuned in to see who the two candidates were. Instead, they saw what they wanted to see. Democrats felt he was absurd and horrifying; Republicans found her a nasty woman. Saturday Night Live did some of its sharpest work ever (all hail Kate McKinnon and “Black Jeopardy”). John Oliver and Samantha Bee rose to brilliance.
Trevor Noah tried, but we missed Jon Stewart. Jimmy Fallon sold out; his chummy-with-Trump routine nauseated. On election night, the CNN anchors couldn’t hide the fact they looked flatly frightened; even the Trump supporters were pale.
But perhaps the most important story of 2016 is how effectively Trump kneecapped the mainstream media. Because he’ll control all three branches of the U.S. government, Americans will need a free and fair press more than ever. Yet he’s convinced half the country that they can ignore legitimate reporting; that there’s no difference between fact and opinion and that lying is OK if you get away with it.
Female comedians Speaking of Samantha Bee, she came hard out of the gate on Full Frontal and continued to get braver all year, with terrific screeds against guns and against NBC, which she chastised for pandering to Trump despite his hateful rhetoric.
Amy Schumer did an incendiary bit in which her gynecologist was replaced by the doddering old dudes of the House Committee on Women’s Health. The Broad City women hugged Hillary Clinton. Tig Notaro smacked down cancer on One Mississippi. The women creators of Fleabag, Insecure, Catastrophe, Divorce, Girls, Better Things and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt examined relationships (well, mainly sex) from the female point of view.
Series about people of colour Despite the fact that The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore was cancelled just when it was finding its voice there were other promising developments. Black-ish addressed the police shootings of unarmed black men and scored critical and commercial success on a mainstream network. In Master of None, Aziz Ansari created a character whose racial background both did and didn’t matter to him; so did Issa Rae on Insecure.
The Night Of, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story and O.J.: Made in America put race front and centre. And the coolest show of the year, Atlanta, gave us an Ivy League/hip-hop hybrid culture, an invisible car and a black Justin Bieber.
Prison shows Some of the best series about people of colour focused on the sad truth of how often, and how often unfairly, they’re incarcerated. The death (SPOILER ALERT) of Poussey (Samira Wiley) on Orange Is the New Black was doubly infuriating when we learned how paltry her crime was. The anti-Muslim slurs on The Night Of were dropped so casually and woven so completely into the rhetoric of the police, prisons and court as to seem “normal.”
On The People v. O.J. Simpson, O.J. (Cuba Gooding Jr.) was so enmeshed in white culture that his pal Robert Kardashian (David Schwimmer) was startled when his lawyer Johnnie Cochran (Courtney B. Vance) played the race card. In the documentary 13th, director Ava DuVernay makes a strong case that the disproportional incarceration of African Americans is a form of slavery. And the series Making a Murderer showed us the justice system fails low-income Americans, too.
Limited series The Brits have made brilliant use of this format for ages and this year Americans embraced it as well. Besides the many I’ve already men- tioned, I was wowed by London Spy, Stranger Things, American Crime, Horace and Pete and The Night Manager. The latter featured one of the most chilling scenes I saw this year, where a pregnant Olivia Colman explained why she would not rest until she nailed an amoral arms dealer.
Because limited series have fewer episodes, as well as set beginnings, middles and ends — and because they’re written and directed by a person or team with one vision — they deliver a rich, layered pleasure.
One more shout-out. Though these aren’t limited series, I must mention how much I enjoyed The Leftovers, The Crown, Westworld and The Americans. And my award for favourite single scene of the year goes to . . . the horse sex on Silicon Valley.
Beyoncé America’s shiniest star delivered a trilogy of her own this year. In February, she staged a takeover of the Super Bowl, where her performance of “Formation” featured a dancer in Black Panther gear holding a “Justice 4 Mario Woods” sign. In April, Bey stunned the world when she dropped Lemonade, her is-it-or-isn’t-it-autobiographical visual album. And in November, she not only seized the stage at the Country Music Association Awards (her first time), she also reclaimed it for the Dixie Chicks, who had been blackballed since 2003 when they made remarks critical of then-U.S. president George W. Bush. Just to bring this story full circle: as we tiptoe warily into 2017, Beyoncé’s performance at Barack Obama’s inaugural ball eight years ago was a star-dusted beginning to an era now ending.
Whatever happens next, at least it will be fodder for memorable TV. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop-culture moments. She will return Jan. 2.