There was a lot to celebrate on TV in 2013. But we’ll get to that over the next couple of weeks. Today, let’s talk about the worst that TV had to offer this year, the moments, shows, and people that made us want to cancel our cable subscription and throw our laptops and TV sets into the same pile of twisted garbage where the world’s only copy of Work It: The Complete Series resides. It truly was the best but mostly blurst of times.
1. Lumberjack Dexter
Has any once-great show ever fallen as far as Dexter did during its final season? The short answer is, DEAR GOD NO. It was sloppy, lazy fan fiction with no consequences for Lumberjack Dexter’s sh*tty actions. He lived; Deb died. To quote Dustin, “Dexter couldn’t stick the landing. It couldn’t even find the runway. The Dexter series finale crashed and burned into a giant bowl of dicks 100 miles from the airport.” At least we got some great memes.
2. No Curb Your Enthusiasm
A year without Curb Your Enthusiasm? Prett-ay, prett-ay, prett-ay, pretty bad. Every season of Curb has been great, but the last two, a.k.a. the Seinfeld and New York ones, might have been the best. Larry David hasn’t committed to doing another season, but it’d be a damn shame if we don’t get to see Danny Duberstein at least one more.
3. Dads
There were a lot of great new shows that premiered in 2013: Rectify, Top of the Lake, The Returned, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Orphan Black, Trophy Wife, The Americans, Master of Sex, Orange Is the New Black (if that counts), The Bridge, and Broadchurch. But there was also Dads…2013 WAS THE WORST YEAR FOR TV EVER. Critics hated Dads from the get-go, when it screened at the TCAs; us normal people had to wait until September to join in on the fun. It was crass, racist, and unfunny, and that’s just the first episode. Now Dads has settled into a dull, tiring mess of cheap nothing. Martin Mull deserves better. The comedic dynamo known as Giovanni Ribisi? Eh.
4. ABC Replaces Happy Endings and Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 with The Taste
Does it seem like forever ago that Raising Hope, Ben and Kate, New Girl, Happy Endings, and Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 all aired on the same night? That’s because of all those shows, only one (New Girl) still remains in its Tuesday timeslot. The others have either been cancelled or were left to die in the used diaper pile known as “Friday night primetime lineup.” The very promising Ben and Kate barely made it into 2013, which is a damn shame, though not as egregious as ABC putting the kibosh on Happy Endings and Don’t Trust in January, and replacing them with The Taste. Happy Endings eventually reappeared on Sunday nights, then Fridays, but the damage had already been done. It was put in permanent hibernation.
5. The Man With the 132 Lb. Scrotum
Or, The Guy with the Garbage Bag Full of Leaves for Nards. When TLC lost the last shred of its credibility many years ago, it also lost its ability to shock. Until Wesley Warren and his bowling ball balls came along. Warren’s story is actually rather sad — he has scrotal lymphedema, which is a very real, very rare medical condition — but the second TLC decided on The Man With the 132 Lb. Scrotum as a title, he became less a man with sad problem than a freak show with a big ol’ sack.
6. The Sound of Music Live!
We had our fun. We made our Nazi jokes. We laughed at Vampire Bill doing his best impression of Russell Crowe as Javert. But we figured that we were the only ones doing it, that outside the very small world of Twitter, no one was actually watching and enjoying this dribble. Then the numbers came out, and now The Sound of Music Live! is the first of MANY musicals, not just NBC but on every network, probably. Serves us right for having fun.