My 20 Favorite Television Shows of 2022

 

Alexa, play "3 Peat" by Lil Wayne.

That's right, for the third year in a row, I've accomplished the arbitrary goal I started to shoot for a few years ago of trying to watch less than 100 shows in full this year.  Although I did cut it close with 98 series, compared to 87 in 2021 and 93 in 2020, a win is a win.  I initially gave this mission to myself in order to watch less TV and focus on other interests, but even though I watched 98 shows, my relationship to television feels pretty healthy these days.  Sure, I watch alot of shows, but I waste far less time on things that are mediocre than I used to.

There wasn't much of an overarching trend to explain the TV landscape in 2022.  It was more about the continuation of narratives we've been living through for a while now, most notably the persistent dominance of a few streaming services when it comes to the content that takes up space in the market.  Although I do wonder whether that bubble is on the verge of bursting, particularly with the outrage that sparked from HBO Max's decision to remove some of their original content from the service in the past few months.

For me the theme of 2022, like all years, is that there's alot of good TV.  Let's take a look at some of those shows.

The rules: In recent years I started this thing where I had separate eligibility windows for streaming shows that dropped the whole season at once and shows whose episodes premiered weekly, but I'm dropping that because it was too confusing and most streaming services have switched to weekly releases.  Nobody reads this part anyway.  Shows are considered for this list based on their episodes that aired between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022.

My 20 Favorite Films of 2022

Without a doubt, the biggest complaint about my film lists from the past few years was the choice to reduce the total amount of films from 20 to 15.  Who are these people that still read a Blogspot page in an age where everybody has moved over to Medium or Substack, and are engaged enough to lodge formal complaints?  Don't worry about it, just know that they're 100% real and numerous and pissed.

Well you can delete those death threats you were in the middle of writing for the third year in a row, because the top 20 is back!  I was surprised to learn when tallying up the 2022 films I watched that the total was less than what I watched in 2021, which was 65 compared to last year's 69.  Despite that decrease, I felt better about this year's output, which had enough quality cinema that I never felt like I had to waste much time with the streaming slop and second-tier blockbusters that we always get.  (Please ignore the fact that I saw Black Adam in theaters on its opening weekend.)

As has been the case for the last few years though, the future of cinema still seems pretty bleak.  Alot of films toward the top of my list barely made a dent at the box office -- with one of them being a flop of epic proportions -- so who knows how long we'll get the amount of interesting movies that we got in 2022.  Let's celebrate them while we can.

The rules: Any film that got their first non-festival release in 2022 -- whether that's theatrically, on VOD, or exclusively on a streaming service -- qualifies for this list.

My 20 Favorite Albums of 2022

 

Do you know what the sound of that fanfare rising from the distance means?  It's time for another rendition of my favorite albums of the year list.  I've been doing this list for years now and I just realized I've never detailed my odd listening habits, which might give a little insight into the amount of albums I can and can't get to in a year.  Alright, here it goes: Every Monday I make a new playlist that I tend to like to keep an hour long, usually containing one album that just came out that I'm interested in, and if that's less than an hour I'll include isolated songs from other albums I haven't been able to get around to.  And without fail, I listen to that playlist once a day for seven days straight, and then it's on to the next playlist.  Even if I don't end up liking the album on the given week's playlist, I stick with it or else it'll throw off my whole pattern.  Obviously, I listen to albums from years past and albums from previous playlists when I have free time elsewhere, but the weekly playlist is a constant.

Is this an overly rigid method, the work of someone who may have a few screws loose?  Yes, no question.  But it's been working for me for over a decade.  However, this year was the first time that I wondered if this method is untenable given the amount of music I want to listen to for contention on this list.  With the current process I use, I can only have around 60 total albums to which I can give an ample amount of listens, and there seems to be more records that intrigue me every year.  I don't know if 2022 was just an outlier, with everyone who's been holding on to releases due to the pandemic all deciding to drop material, or if this is the new normal.  That's a worry for next year though.  For now, let's dig into some of this year's best music.

The rules: Everything is the same as usual.  The window of eligibility for this list is anything released between January 1, 2022 and now.  This list can include albums, mixtapes, EPs, and anything in between.

100 Songs I Liked in 2022

As always, my official end of the year lists will start on December 29th with my 20 favorite albums of 2022.  But there's so much great music out there that my album post could never cover all of the things I enjoyed over the past 12 months.  So this list is an additional rundown, one that highlights songs from albums that won't be appearing on the top 20 in a few days.  I'm including songs from my five honorable mention albums, so if you see something on here from an album you love, who knows, maybe that album is ranked somewhere between 21 and 25 for me.  I keep expanding the amount of songs I do for this list, starting at 50 and then expanding to 75, before finally landing on 100 last year.  I doubt I'll ever increase it from there because I like my free time, but I did have to cut some songs to get it down to the 100 count.  Hopefully you enjoy these picks and find some new music to get into!