2021 TV Faves: Comedy, Now With Feelings!

2021 in TV: Comedy–Now With Feelings!

I watched a LOT of serialized programs (can I still call it television if I didn’t watch a single episode live or over airwaves?) this year. Because I’m an actual nerd and tracking spreadsheets are my second-favorite love language besides Spotify playlists, and because there is SO MUCH TV to watch, especially now in the pandemic end-times, I started keeping track of new shows, returning shows, did-not-finish shows, and rewatches in 2021.

High level breakdown? I watched 20 new shows from start to finish, and 24 returning shows. I started but did not finish 16 new and returning shows (almost all new, but I don’t knew who thought it would be a good idea to set the Dexter reboot in a sad wintry tundra vs. gorgeous & glossy Miami, and Michael C. Hall is also no longer uncomfortably hot), and I have 8 in progress that I’m carrying over into 2022 tracking, including Yellowjackets which I so far enthusiastically recommend 100%.

Am I sad or bummed about how much TV I watched last year? Not in the least — I love TV, and I always have. I remember more cartoon theme songs and commercial jingles than I do of most of the first decade of my life. But if you had told me in like, 2011, when I prided myself on watching all of the critically-lauded prestige TV and also RuPaul’s Drag Race when the sets were made of poster board and cameras coated in Vaseline, that my favorite shows in 10 years would be mostly half-hour comedies, I would have scoffed in secretly self-conscious dismay.

Game of Thrones, American Horror Story, Black Mirror, Homeland and The Killing all debuted in 2011, and I was still in the midst of Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, Justified, and close to reaching my limit on the relentlessly violent misery-fests Sons of Anarchy and later, The Walking Dead. I actually never finished Game of Thrones (not after they did Sansa so dirty, and I’m eternally glad I didn’t stick with it to what sounded like a truly terrible ending) and Homeland, and I stopped American Horror Story after the absolute travesty that was the Roanoke finale.

Most of what I started and didn’t finish in 2021 were in fact dramas: I tried so hard with Physical, Kevin Can F*ck Himself, Nine Perfect Strangers, and Midnight Mass and just couldn’t muster enough interest to really make it more than halfway through any of them. I’m saving up Station Eleven to try out this year, but I have zero interest in Mare of Easttown, Squid Game, Wandavision or Succession — and I did put in some effort on those last two.

So it’s actually not surprising, I guess, that most of my favorite shows of 2021 were comedies, at least on the surface; many of these comedies involve deeper and more important themes & relationships than the standard sitcom, but still manage to be incredibly funny without getting preachy or cliché. Let’s get to it:

HBO was the source for most of my faves in 2021, especially new shows. I’ve already written about The White Lotus, but I feel like Made for Love didn’t get the love it deserved this year, as a weird little hybrid of recent tech dystopia and relationship drama that somehow also functions as a comedy in its uncomfortable examinations of dating, marriage, parenting, and all of the sticky, awkward human stuff that it seems like so much tech is still trying to separate us from. If the thought of Ray Romano taking a RealDoll out to dinner makes you squicky, you’re not wrong, but trust me on this one — context is everything. I’ll be intrigued to see where subsequent seasons of both of these shows are headed.

And if you haven’t been paying attention to the Jean Smart renaissance happening over the last few years, let Hacks be the show that reintroduces to just how marvelous she really is (then go watch her on season two of Fargo). The setup has the potential to be completely cringe: entitled Millennial pays her dues writing for a declining Boomer standup, miscommunication and hijinks ensue, etc., but it’s so much more than that. It’s about the career and personal challenges and roadblocks women face at pretty much every stage of life, the hoops we still have to jump through just to be acknowledged, the sacrifices that must be made to get to a certain level before you’re inevitably cut down, online or in real life. It’s so good and so funny and so smart, and if you haven’t watched it, you should do yourself a solid right now and give it a go.

Another thing I loved about TV in 2021 was seeing more people with marginalized identities and communities getting to tell their own stories, and just how incredible the results can be without being reduced to trauma porn for the White gaze. I knew before I even watched it that I would love We Are Ladyparts — a ragtag crew of Muslimahs create a punk band? Sign me ALL the way up — and it did not disappoint. According to my husband, it’s also an homage to The Monkees(I’ve never seen an episode), which speaks to its comedic strengths, but beyond that quirkiness, it also shows so much of the complexities of modern life for Muslim women without flattening them into brainwashed victims. And the songs are good too! Girls5Eva was a very close second for me in terms of musical comedies this year, but Ladyparts is a little less on-the-nose.

And then there’s Reservation Dogs, which could probably actually be considered a drama if it weren’t so damn funny. The main characters are dealing with all the fun trappings of centuries of attempted genocide and ensuing oppression, which the show addresses point-blank in most situations, but also fully embody the sheer ordinariness of being a teenager in regular degular schmegular flyover America: your weird hermit uncle who smokes weed he’s been hoarding since the 70’s, small-town cops who think they know and run so much more than they actually do, shitty dads, overworked moms, nosy small-town gossips, hanging out with your friends but not actually doing anything, learning to drive, the simple joys of flaming hot Cheetos.

The non-othering of these characters & their community is a direct result of the show being created and run by Indigenous folks, and it also so perfectly skewers the gross “noble savage” tropes that’s been key to almost all media about and featuring Native Americans since the dawn of the country. Elora Danan (yes, exactly like you think) and Willie Jack are truly excellent, but my favorite character is the majestic ancestor Spirit Guide played by Dallas Goldtooth (also a writer on the show), who first appears to Bear after he gets his ass kicked and who happens to be a big doofus just like anyone else’s goofy relatives.

Rutherford Falls was another great Native-run and -starring show this year, but it didn’t have the emotional depth and extreme dryness of Reservation Dogs, which also didn’t feature or need a white lead actor (sorry Ed Helms).

No, no, no, my favorite TV white guy of 2021 was the same as everyone else: Roy Kent.

I legit didn’t understand or pay much attention to the Great Ted Lasso Backlash and Subsequent Re-Embracing of 2021, because the show is great, and more importantly, Ted is the least important character on the show, despite his necessary character growth & overall arc in season two. I watch Ted Lasso first and foremost for Roy and Keely, for Rebecca and Sam, and for Sam Richardson’s cameo wooing him as an African techbro and Anthony Michael Head as her nefarious ex; for Beard’s solo bender (one of the best standalone episodes of TV since Barry S02E05 “ronny/lily”); for Dani’s hair and smile and redemption on the pitch, a word I did not know before watching this show; for Higgins the Unashamed Wife Guy, and maybe even for Jamie, who is undoubtedly a bastard, coming off the reality show and back to Richmond and working out his relationship to toxic masculinity. I was not a fan of Nate’s whole arc by the end of this season, but I do think it was inevitable and it will be interesting to see how Ted & the rest of the Team and Back Office react in season three. Basically: Ted Lasso is objectively good, but if you don’t like it, you don’t have to watch it, okay? Okay.

Brooklyn 99 ended this year after bouncing around networks/platforms, and even though there’s a lot more it could have done to address the problem of policing in the United States, I think they at least put in some work and ended up with a final season that wrapped everything up and gave the characters (and us!) closure. I will forever stan Andre Braugher as the Chief and Stephanie Beatriz as Lieutenant Rosa Diaz, the bicon of visibility we latent bisexuals never knew we needed.

Speaking of bisexuals (or maybe they’re just horny? Idk, they’re vampires), What Do in the Shadows continued to be one of the best shows of any genre on TV right now, continuing to get more absurd and also somehow more relatable for a show about vampire roommates, their vampire hunter thrall/personal assistant, the talking doll possessed by one of their human souls, and all the petty drama and bureaucracy they deal with as part of their ancient vampire council. I loved the movie long before it became a show, but the transition has been absolutely seamless and if anything, the show has been funnier than the movie from the jump. If Nandor trying to live his best culty life to a montage of Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week,” doesn’t make you chuckle, you might have to check to see if you’re Colin Robinson’s long-lost energy vampire cousin.

I don’t watch a lot of adult animated comedies (Archer has gotten a little perfunctory-feeling, especially now that Jessica Walter has passed away, and I’m almost a full season behind on Bob’s Burgers), so Tuca & Bertie was a pleasant little surprise for me a couple years that I thought might never again see the light of day after the first season. The second season switched platforms and once again gave us the most emotionally resonant and painfully honest storytelling about women’s friendships and relationships despite being set in a bizarre parallel world of animal- and plant-human hybrids. Honestly, T&B might actually be impossible to watch with human actors because of its rawness disguised as manic surrealism, and I’m consistently amazed at the showrunners’ deftness in finding and maintaining such a delicate balance.

And then there were the drag shows. Drag Internet has been vacillating between complaining about drag overload and queer gatekeeping, both of which are valid but again: don’t watch something if you don’t enjoy it! It’s okay to quit consuming entertainment you’re not enjoying! In 2021 I watched season 13 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, season 3 of RPDR UK, season 6 of All-Stars, season 2 of Canada’s Drag Race, the atrocious debut season of Drag Race Down Under, Queen of the Universe, season 4 of Boulet Brothers’ Dragula and its lead-up quarantine special Resurrection — which also meant I was slacking for not watching Drag Race España, Italia, or Holland because I can’t get into reality TV with subtitles. That is a lot of drag in 365 days, for anyone keeping score.

I’ve also been a fan of drag since To Wong Foo (which still holds up) and RuPaul’s old VH1 talk show, have watching the OG Drag Race since 2010, and have seen every season, every Untucked, every All-Stars, every ill-advised spin-off (justice for Drag U!). I’ve seen Jujubee, Alyssa Edwards, Raven, Roxxy Andrews, Jade Jolie, and Bianca Del Rio live (twice for BDR) and I’m a Bob & Monet Patreon subscriber.

All of this is to say: I fucking love drag, and We’re Here is hands down the absolute best drag show on television today. Maybe it’s just that I’m exhausted by all that discourse around what is “real” drag and who can be a “drag queen/king/artist/performer” (honestly, just listen to Dracmorda “Drag is art and art is subjective” Boulet and call it a day, y’all) as well as being able to tell who Ru will pick for a winner within the first three episodes of a given season, but with We’re Here you’ve got everything you love about three of biggest and best queens to come from the RPDR Universe and the time-honored To Wong Foo tradition of bringing drag to the people instead of making it about who is the prettiest seamstress/comedian/dancer/actor/influencer with the most expensive wardrobe and expansive makeup palettes.

The franchise is too big to fail at this point, and we clearly have Ru to thank for giving Shangela, Bob, and Eureka the visibility and platform to go above and beyond, but they’re by far doing the absolute most of any RPDR alumni to create and cultivate queer culture in corners of this country where it’s all but hidden away. There are uncomfortable moments on the show, too — blurred out faces of people cursing the queens as they hand out fliers, protest prayer groups outside their performance venues — but these are the realities that queer people still face in the United States today, and We’re Here holds them up for the rest of the world to see. This season’s episode in Selma, Alabama, was probably the best hour of anything I watched all year: important, intersectional, and ultimately, joyful.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about entertainment and media in general over the last several years, it’s this: why watch something that makes you sad and might even be actively harmful, to yourself and potentially others? I quit forcing myself to finish books I don’t enjoy years ago, and the same principle applies to shows, movies, music, content, whatever. You don’t have to like everything, and it’s okay to realize that something just might not be for you. There’s more content out there now than any single person can consume in a year — you’ll be able to find something else, I promise.