It was the best of TV, it was the worst of TV. For the most part, 2015 was a very good year for the tube. There were at least 20 scripted series that were really fine and reminded us of how much TV has changed, going from something to sneer at to something to laud, anticipate and celebrate.
We've listed our top 20 in alphabetical order because no show is perfect, and some of these shows have no LGBT content, but are still fabulous. Some (Hannibal, Mad Men) also had their final seasons this year, regrettably, as we think Mad Men still had places to go (and oh, Elisabeth Moss' Peggy Olson, what a send-off!), and Hannibal could have run another five seasons (and may come back for one more).
We have written about all 20 of these shows this year, though some (Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder, Orange Is the New Black, Transparent, Hannibal, Empire, American Horror Story: Hotel ) more than others because of their consistent LGBT storylines and characters and the often groundbreaking work being done with regard to LGBT characterization.
Here are, in our opinion, the 20 best shows for 2015: The Americans, American Crime (not to be confused with the upcoming American Crime Story ), American Horror Story: Hotel, black-ish, Broad City, Empire, Fargo, Fresh Off the Boat, The Good Wife, Hannibal, How to Get Away with Murder, The Leftovers, Mad Men, Master of None, Mr. Robot, Orange Is the New Black, Scandal, Transparent, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, The Walking Dead.
Some shows are simply captivating, luring us with a confluence of great writing and great acting. If that were the sole litmus, American Crime and The Americans would be tied for first place. There's not a wasted minute in either of these superb dramas, and each speaks to aspects of the current American landscape in different ways, even though The Americans is a period drama set in the 1980s during the Cold War. The first one, as it appears we are in a new one, thanks to Donald Trump's buddy Vladimir Putin. But the complexities of identity and fealty to nation? Could not be timelier.
If there was one show that resonated with us throughout the year well after we had watched, it was American Crime. Created by Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley (12 Years a Slave), this show addressed race in ways not previously seen on TV, except perhaps in David Simon's The Wire. The performances were breathtakingly good, as evidenced by the fact nearly every member of this anthology-series cast was nominated for an Emmy. Regina King won. American Crime will take on homosexuality and male rape in January in season two, while also folding in class and race issues. We can't wait for this.
Mr. Robot, which has significant gay content, and The Leftovers, which doesn't, are both series we find tremendously compelling. Both these series ask questions about the world we live in now. The impact of alienation and loss, and the suspicions engendered by both are vivid in these two series, presented quite differently. The second season of The Leftovers has a depth to it that makes us feel connected to the characters. We can envision our own sense of loss at their predicament, and what kind of fear it might provoke. These two shows aren't like anything else on the tube. Are they sci-fi? Thrillers? Both? We aren't quite sure, but what we are sure of is how great writing about the intricacies of the world today can be mesmerizing, and understated performances read best when such scripts are write large. This last is why Blindspot just missed being on our best-of list.
If there were a best list for showrunners, we'd have to put Shonda Rhimes in the top spot. More so even than gay showrunners Ryan Murphy and Greg Berlanti, Rhimes has made space for LGBT storylines. Her lesbian characters on Grey's Anatomy are the longest-running in prime time, and as one of the longest-running series, Grey's Anatomy has brought depth to those characterizations These women have been to hell and back, and we have gone there with them. None of the characters has backed away from her lesbianism. While Callie (Sara Ramirez) asserts her bisexuality, we've only seen her with women for the past seven seasons, which we prefer. This year we have watched Arizona (Jessica Capshaw) and Callie break up, meet other women, try to forge a friendship in spite of their breakup for the sake of their daughter. It's been real. Which is what Rhimes does. She gives us powerful women who have vulnerabilities, yet never cease to be strong. Scandal 's Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) is such a character, a fierce black woman who is smarter than everyone else in the room (any room) and not afraid to go to the dark side on occasion in defense of justice.
Compare these women with Dick Wolf's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which could have (and should have) made Olivia Benson (Emmy winner Mariska Hartigay) a lesbian from its inception, who we believe in Rhimes' hands would have come out in season two, like Callie did on GA. Nothing about Olivia's character reads as heterosexual, yet every other season she's forced into some unbelievable and borderline abusive straight relationship that leaves us shaking our heads. She's been involved with a series of corrupt men. How can we be expected to believe her judgment is sound on the job when it's incredibly screwed up in her personal life? The contrast between this character (the longest-running in prime time) and Rhimes' women, who have been around for almost as long, is astonishing. It makes us frustrated about Olivia, but it's the reason we are still watching GA 12 seasons later. And why Rhimes tops our best of showrunner list.
It's not just women Rhimes has done right by, although her shows certainly showcase strong women. But where else on the TV landscape are there gay male characters like the ones on Scandal? Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry) has been brilliant in the role of the president's Chief of Staff, and Rhimes has moved him around the chess board expertly this year. Now in its fifth season, Scandal does not get enough play with critics. It's as good a political drama as House of Cards, Kevin Spacey notwithstanding. It's in our top 20 for a reason. It's this decade's The West Wing. We can't help wondering if the reason it doesn't get situated where it belongs is because unlike that show, the predominance of people of color in the casting skews it off the white-male-dominated political grid. Just saying.
We weren't sure about putting AHS: Hotel on our best list. It's a problematic season, with the violence distinctly over-the-top. But this show is the gayest thing you will see on the tube outside of Ru Paul's Drag Race, and some of the performances are spectacular. Critics are mixed on Lady Gaga's performance. We like it, finding it in the style of early John Waters as a supremely gay casting. We would have to put it on our list for the beauty of Matt Bomer and the range of Denis O'Hare, and their both being out gay actors. Also, Angela Bassett, Sarah Paulson, Kathy Bates? These are Oscar-nominated/winning actresses, and they make every scene they are in riveting to watch. Bassett's willingness to take on such a complex role (has she played lesbian before? Has anyone played this kind of lesbian before?) impressed us.
Anyone arguing with our placement of HTGAWM on this list hasn't watched the show. While we weren't crazy about the flashback styling, this season gave us one of the best actresses of our time, Viola Davis, in a lesbian sex scene that blew our minds, between Davis, 49, and Famke Jansen, 51. Yes, Davis and Jansen rolling around together. Wow. That scene topped our best scene of the year list. Talk about memorable!
HTGAWM also has an almost 50/50 ratio of people of color to white people, which is fabulous. Gay showrunner Peter Nowalk is a prot�g� of Rhimes, having worked on GA (Rhimes exec-produces HTGAWM ). What he took away from her is priceless. Then he added on his own gay take, which gave us one of the best gay storylines of 2015: Oliver discovering he was HIV+, and Connor committing to the relationship regardless. Yes, PrEP featured. Nowalk's show is consistently balanced racially, has stunning gay storylines (and real gay sex), and the mega-star at the center, Davis' character Dr. Annalise Keating, might be a monster, but we cannot help loving her.
Gay showrunner Bryan Fuller's dark, darker, darkest cannibalism drama Hannibal ended this year, for which we are sorry. Mads Mikkelsen gave a performance like none we can remember seeing as the cannibalistic, serial-killing, homoerotic, music-loving aesthete Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Now that all three seasons are available on DVD (Fuller remains in negotiation with Amazon and Netflix to stream a fourth season), binge if you missed this. Mikkelsen is amazing, and the rest of the cast, including Hugh Dancy, Caroline Dhavernas, Gillian Anderson, Laurence Fishburne, and Eddie Izzard, is compelling. The lesbian storyline this year was as unexpected as it was intriguing, and provided one of the most beautiful lesbian sex scenes we've seen on screen.
Sitcoms changed it up this year. We could have a Top 10 sitcoms of 2015 list, but we do prefer dramas. Nevertheless, one of the things that happened in 2015 is women and people of color really smashed through the white male comedy ceiling. Tina Fey, Amy Schumer, Ellie Kemper, Tituss Burgess, Ilana Glazer, Abby Jacobson, Tracee Ellis Ross, Nahnatchka Kahn, Constance Wu, Aziz Ansari, Alan Yang: these comedians are in our top 20 because they have really changed things up this year on the tube. While Donald Trump was busy trying to marginalize women and every ethnic group, these comedians and comic writers were doing subversive comedy about gender, race, ethnicity, homosexuality, class.
While Nahnatchka Kahn presented fabulous Asian comedy in Fresh Off the Boat, a show that is hilarious (and has lesbian characters, because when we are behind the camera we are in front of the camera), Dr. Ken stereotyped Asians and made us cringe.
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was the best comedy this year, and the most complex. Should we really be laughing? Oh okay, we should. Tituss Burgess as Titus Andromedon, Kimmy's black gay male foil, was nominated for an Emmy for a reason: he's amazing. If you haven't seen this Netflix original series created by Tina Fey, put it on your binge list.
Black-ish deserves to be seen by everyone. As consistently hilarious as Seinfeld or Modern Family, the addition of gay characters this year was just icing on this comedy cake. Out lesbian comedian Wanda Sykes joining the cast? Oh yes.
Master of None is not a gay show, but it is a show about race and ethnicity that will resonate for all LGBT people regardless of color, because regrettably, marginalization is a thing we share. This Netflix series was released last month, and it's close to perfect. Aziz Ansari is charming, rueful, funny, and isn't it time for an Asian leading man in hipster world?
Although 2015 was not so great for representation of lesbians and gay men, bisexuals and especially trans people had their best year ever on the tube. For trans persons, Amazon's Emmy-winning Transparent and ABC Family's Becoming Us presented thoughtful and thought-provoking TV focusing on trans lives. Those shows and Janet Mock's So POPular on MSNBC helped offset the problematic I Am Cait, which is best described as a Keeping Up with the Kardashians spin-off with more make-up, way more cosmetic surgery, even more shallowness and at least one cringeworthy gaffe from self-styled activist Caitlyn Jenner each episode.
Also problematic is I Am Jazz on TLC (the network is a clue). The show isn't problematic for its star, trans girl Jazz Jennings, but for the concept, which is a fish-eye lens on the 14-year-old's life, sans editing by grown-ups. Unlike Becoming Us, which presents two trans adults and their teenage kids coming to terms with their fathers' transition, I Am Jazz feels exploitative. We try not to judge parents, but you have one main job: protect your kids. We're not seeing that on this show.
Several TV series had solid episodes with trans storylines this year, notably ABC's Grey's Anatomy, NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and CBS' The Bold & the Beautiful. The latter soap was exceptional for its portrayal of Maya Avant (Karla Mosley) as a trans woman. This was a groundbreaking storyline, and Mosley (who is not transgender) is superb in the role.
In August, B&B made history with the first trans wedding on TV, as Maya wed her longtime love, scion of Forrester Creations, Rick Forrester (Jacob Young). This was also the first interracial wedding on the show (yes, TV has carried the longtime unstated tradition of making lesbian and gay characters people of color into representation of trans persons). We loved Maya when she first hit the soap, although we were surprised when the storyline shifted to her being trans (the show never did address the issue of that baby she had who died when she first appeared on the B&B landscape). Mosley deserves every accolade, and B&B has stepped it up by putting this storyline on the front-burner.
Pretty much everyone is agreed on the worst shows of 2015. Two that stand out for us are Wicked City, which was a misogynistic and sadistic torture fest, and Truth Be Told, which we thought would be another black-ish with some gay thrown in. Both shows were terrible disappointments, misusing good actors with bad-to-worst story. Another worst? Neil Patrick Harris' Best Time Ever. It was not.
But the Worst Thing on the Tube in 2015? Hands down, Donald Trump. Hate-mongering, misogynist, racist, Islamophobic, mud-slinging, homophobic, vile, fill in the adjective, Trump began his presidential campaign calling Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers, slagged off Rosie O'Donnell to cheers at the first GOP debate, and ended the year saying Hillary Clinton had been "schlonged" (that is, raped) by Barack Obama in 2008. At press time, Trump was leading in the polls among Republican candidates by nearly 30 points. Trump didn't get there alone. The networks, CNN and Fox all deserve equal responsibility for giving him more airtime than all the Democratic and other Republican candidates combined.
The role of the Fourth Estate is not to fawn, but to illumine. There has never been a point in this presidential campaign where any TV pundit or commentator has held Trump to account, except, perhaps, for Fox's Megyn Kelly at that first debate. So: Worst TV of 2015? The pundit class bowing and scraping to a reality-TV billionaire no matter how vile his actions, how profound his lies.
So for the best of the best and the worst of the worst, and to a New Year filled with promise (and hopefully a trouncing of Trump in Iowa), you really must stay tuned.