Best of the arts
Our picks for this year’s best music, movies, television, arts, classical music, dance, museums and theater.
Missoula, Mont. — I moved way out west to the mountains this year, far from home, for a few months. Life is different here. For starters, the woodsy condo I’ve been living in has a 70-inch high-def television in it (just like Lewis and Clark had), which receives its signal from Dish.
Yes, Dish, the oft-maligned but admirably resolute satellite service, which spent most of the year in a contractual standoff with AMC, which meant my three favorite shows of 2012 . . .
Hank Stuever
Hank Stuever is The Washington Post’s TV critic and author of two books, “Tinsel” and “Off Ramp.”
(Ron Jaffe/AP) - Jessica Pare plays Don Draper’s wife, Megan, in AMC’s “Mad Men.”
1. “Breaking Bad”
2. “Mad Men”
3. “The Walking Dead”
. . . might have been unavailable to me, were it not for the screener access privileges afforded to grumpy TV critics. The penultimate half-season of “Breaking Bad,” with Walter White’s hubristic attempt to run his own meth mini-cartel, continued to prove why it’s far and away TV’s best show. (Geez, just for that train robbery episode alone . . .)
“Mad Men,” meanwhile, finally found a newly devoted fan in me, thanks partly to Jessica Pare’s happy/sad turn as Don Draper’s new wife, Megan (zou bisou bisou!). She came on like a daisy applique affixed to a rainy window, brightening up the ’60s. Yes, I know she might be a fruitbat. I love her anyhow.
And once the survivors in “The Walking Dead” fled Hershel’s farm, the sociocultural zombie drama is going places again — and boldly shedding important characters. No one is safe from the walkers, not even Carl. (Get out of here, Carl!) Now, will the people who’ve read the comic books, please tell me — how much longer do we have to put up with “the Governor?”
There are plenty of other shows that made my job a lot easier this year:
4. Showtime’s “Homeland” veered smartly into a new arrangement (double agent!), and has me biting my nails every Sunday night; Carrie’s taking her meds, and so am I. We all could have lived without the teenage hit-and-run sideplot, though.
5. The funny and profane “Veep” (HBO) broke a long spell of boring Beltway-related TV shows by ignoring politics and deliciously chronicling the raw, ugly ego of Washington — starting with Julia-Louis Dreyfus’s Vice President Selina Meyer, and tapping the neuroses of her snipey, BlackBerry-preoccupied underlings. I feel like I know these people, and that someone has finally exposed them.
6. “Dallas” (TNT). Sometimes lowered expectations give way to a delicious bit of guilty pleasure. Such was my reaction to the faithfully fun “Dallas” update, which came on sharply and stylishly. Not sure what happens now, with the recent death of Larry Hagman just as the second season began filming. J.R. Ewing’s boots are impossible to fill, and John Ross (Josh Henderson) is clearly not up to the task.
7. “Girls” (HBO) got off to an annoying start for many readers, but built to a compelling and melancholy finish worthy of its hype. All the smartypants, post-hipster analysis of the show was worth enduring for that opening scene where Lena Dunham’s protagonist, Hannah, gets the financial cut-off from her fed-up parents. Everyone who hates entitled 24-year-olds (a group that includes entitled 24-year-olds, by the way) cheered.
They replace Britney Spears and LA Reid on the singing competition.
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It would have been his TV directorial debut, but ‘felt he didn’t have gas left in the tank’ after busy year.
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A repeat broadcast will run in the time period
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“Dome” will debut June 24 at 10 p.m.; “Siberia” will launch the following Monday.
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She becomes first woman to run a network news division in the United States,
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That should put TV critics at ease, who hated his performance this year.
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Five top moments from the 2013 Billboard Music Awards.
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A sampling of fine arts on television for the week of May 19-25.
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It’s not L.A. or New York, but Washington has a lot of companies whose shows are on your TV.
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The experienced designer talks about his long run with the sketch comedy show, Zoe Barnes' hoodies and styling for Washington.
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In a brisk ‘American Masters’ doc, the comedy genius explains himself.
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Remaining eps of ABC’s ‘Don’t Trust the B---’ put online and on mobile.
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‘Idol’ finale fumbles 34 percent of last year’s crowd.
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Like all real-life office workers, the characters in "The Office" may yet discover the real meaning of air family now that they are largely apart.
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