James Poniewozik

An improved series' season finale wasn't so bad--if you pretended that it wasn't the finale.

Spoilers for the season four finale of Homeland below:

On Sunday’s Homeland, Carrie dealt with the aftermath of her father’s death and the re-appearance of her estranged mother–which not only raised old resentments but cast sharp light on her own efforts to adjust to motherhood. In the process, she struggled between her feelings for Quinn and her conviction that she wasn’t suited for a relationship, all of which was complicated by his disappearing on a dangerous mission in Syria. Meanwhile, her partnership with Saul was tested when she learned that he knew about Dar Adal’s deal with the terrorist Haqqani. It was a slow episode, but not a bad season premiere!

The problem, of course, was that it was actually the season finale.

If you can somehow manage to forget that, “Long Time Coming” looks much more promising. Say season four ended at the end of last week’s episode, with Dar Adal driving off alongside Haqqani, who’s cheated death again. Or even earlier, on the dark note of the U.S, cutting off relations with Pakistan after the Taliban massacre. Either might have been a fitting finish for a fourth season of a show that, after a shaky start, managed to rein in its worst silliness and become a focused, tight international thriller again.

If you play that mental game (or if you could travel back in time and tell yourself to simply wait nine months to watch the episode) you could see this as a perfectly good beginning episode for season five. Your mileage may vary on the pairing of Carrie and Quinn–I like them as colleagues but feel like the romance has been forced as a Brody replacement–but it keeps the Taliban conflict in place as the long game, while introducing tension between Carrie and Saul as he attempts his return and raises the legitimate question of when it’s justified to cut deal with the horrible likes of Haqqani.

For that matter, if you took out out a few plot points and used “Long Time Coming” as the premiere of season four, it’s really a better treatment of Carrie’s psychological and personal state than the actual first episodes of season four gave us. Rather than overdramatizing her fragile state by having her contemplate infanticide (on the apparent grounds that Carrie’s mental illness can justify any shocker scene), it shows motherhood as a task she truly has to work at–and shows us why by bringing her in contact with her absentee mom, who turns out to have some of the same runaway tendencies that Carrie does. Claire Danes rage/betrayal in their confrontation is arresting, and the storyline adds to our understanding of her character (all while taking care of the unfortunately necessary business of writing off actor James Rebhorn).

And it does that without assuming it has to constantly OMG us to keep our attention. (Oddly, the uneventfulness of the episode had me tense all the way through–at the point that Carrie’s sister had the baby wave “Bye-bye to Mommy,” I was sure something terrible would happen to both of them, and Carrie would never see Ginger Baby again.)

Maybe that assumption was wrong, since most of the reaction to the finale I saw on social media ranged from bored to pissed off. And sure, it was not exactly an episode for the record books. But given Homeland‘s crazy whiplash history in the past, I’ll actually take it as a somewhat positive sign that it’s showing too much restraint for once.

So I can live with Homeland‘s finale, as long as I pretend it wasn’t the finale. Sometimes success is just a matter of knowing when to stop.

"If this is your first time tuning into The Colbert Report, I have some terrible news"

James Poniewozik is TIME magazine's TV critic and writes the Tuned In column, about pop culture, media, and society. They always told him that TV would rot his brain, and this is the result. Follow his RSS feed here.

The Seth Rogen and James Franco flick is arguably America's first literal culture war — and free speech lost

The hacking of Sony and the threats against theaters planning to screen The Interview is arguably America’s first literal culture war. And the battle just claimed a big casualty: Sony announced, after several distributors pulled out, that it was canceling the Dec. 25 release of the Seth Rogen comedy, which depicts the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Plain and simple, free speech lost a battle here. It may have been inevitable, after the massive cyberattack on Sony’s computer data was followed by violent threats against theaters. The fear of violence and legal repercussions — and, maybe, the aura of danger created by the hacking — was enough for major theater chains to pull out. Sony, already in a corporate nightmare, was running out of places to screen the movie. None of this was especially brave, but it was corporations acting as corporations do, in their interest, not on principle.

But in a statement after the decision, Sony argued that there was a principle at stake: “We are deeply saddened at this brazen effort to suppress the distribution of a movie, and in the process do damage to our company, our employees, and the American public. We stand by our filmmakers and their right to free expression and are extremely disappointed by this outcome.”

O.K., then: if Sony supports the American public and its filmmakers’ right to free expression, then it should let the American people see their filmmakers’ work. In our living rooms, if necessary. If theaters are afraid to show The Interview, make it available, as soon as possible, through home streaming on demand.

The technology is in place. The legal and business arrangements may be more difficult (one reason that studios have avoided immediate VOD release, ironically, is resistance from theater chains), but reportedly Sony has considered it as an option.

Sony’s absolutely right that this is an effort to suppress a movie. And right now, after their action, it’s worked. Which gives angry parties — foreign states or anyone with an axe to grind — incentive to do it again. (Already, a Steve Carell thriller set in North Korea has been scuttled.)

Maybe Sony is waiting to see if it can put the film in theaters later; maybe it’s afraid of further cyberrepercussions. But if this is an issue of principle, then act like it. Americans have broadband, big-screen TVs, and plenty of free time around Christmas. Give us the chance to make our own statement, if we so choose, to show that we don’t want bullies squelching our expression.

Artists and audiences lost an unprecedented battle here. But we can still win the war, even if we have to do it in our living rooms.

Read next: U.S. Links North Korea to Hack

There may have been worse things that aired on TV in 2014. But if so, pray that you never see them.

Warning: This post contains spoilers, albeit of shows I do not recommend that you watch.

First, the usual disclaimer: these are not, necessarily, the 10 Worst TV Shows of 2014. If it’s hubris for me to declare that I have seen the best things that aired all year, it’s even more so to pretend I could isolate the worst, much less rank them.

It’s physically possible, at least, for a critic to screen enough of the year’s good TV to identify the best of the best. But millions of hours of TV is piped over cable a year. There must be awful, awful things that I have not seen–because they are awful, because I do not seek them out, because life is a gift that it is a sin to waste. There are probably many bad things I have seen and forgotten, because the human brain protects itself from trauma. And there are shows that began terribly and got better, or slightly less bad.

So the below are not the 10 Worst TV Shows of the Year. They are simply the worst things that someone who watches a lot of TV for a living can recall seeing. And for now, that is good, or rather bad, enough. Alphabetically:

The Brittany Murphy Story. It was a banner year for Lifetime movies, badness-wise; this was also the year the channel gave us The Unauthorized Saved By the Bell Story and Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever. But this poorly conceived, poorly cast, rubbernecking biopic had the bad taste to put it over the top.

How How I Met Your Mother Treated Its Mother. HIMYM itself wasn’t the worst comedy of the year, and for much of its run it was one of the best sitcoms on air. But its final story arc, which introduced, then killed off, a love interest in order to got Ted and Robin together, was an example of the danger of sticking to a show’s original plan no matter what.

I Wanna Marry “Harry.” I’ve defended reality TV more times than I can count. I even defended Joe Millionaire. But this crass, sexist Buckingsham, roping women into a dating show with a fake prince, was indefensible, unwatchable and quickly cancelled.

Marco Polo. If not the worst TV show of the year overall, at least the worst in terms of dollars-to-quality: Netflix’s reported $90 million budget bought sluggish drama, laughable nude martial arts, and a Silk Road caravan laden with embarrassing Orientalism.

Mixology. ABC’s dating comedy at least had an interesting concept–one night out at a bar, over the course of a season–but in practice, it was a tumblerful of singles-sitcom clichés shaken into a nasty cocktail.

The Mysteries of Laura. NBC’s detective drama was at heart an unremarkable, old-fashioned, corny whodunit. But the premise–she’s a cop and she has kids! can you believe it!–managed to have it all, in all the wrong ways.

The Newsroom, “Oh Shenandoah.” After a promising start to The Newsroom‘s final season, an episode focusing on campus rape and digital culture combined the worst of this show’s preachy tendencies into a perfect storm of hot air.

“The Simpsons Guy.” Introducing the Simpsons into a bloated episode of Family Guy was like having the Sistine Chapel repainted by the guy who draws Mallard Fillmore.

Stalker. Even by the standards of TV’s most exploitative crime stories, this lurid women-in-peril drama was slimy. Naturally, it’s been picked up for a full season.

Utopia. It was the fall’s most promising reality-show concept–a group of people spend a year building a society, in rural isolation–but, filled with irritating personalities for maximum conflict, it managed to be both depressing and dull. But it did at least get cancelled, leaving our own world a little bit closer to perfect.

Again, this is only an incomplete list, for the sake of my own sanity. Share the worst things you’ve seen on TV in 2014 in the comments–and better luck in 2015.

This tour of the Mongol Empire is a sprawling mess.

If there is an equivalent in today’s TV business to the Mongol horde and its cavalry, it may well be Netflix and its algorithms. Not only has the streaming service’s recommendation engine threatened long-standing TV empires and conquered our video habits by sending us from binge-watch to binge-watch–“If you like this, you might like this”–but also, so the company says, it has allowed Netflix to use its copious data to precision-target an audience for its original shows.

Marco Polo (first season debuts online Friday), the lush drama set in the 13th-century court of Kublai Khan, feels less like precision targeting than a flurry of wildly fired arrows, the scattershot, overstuffed result of a “You Might Like…” algorithm run amok. If you like Game of Thrones, and historical drama, and pay-cable softcore, and martial arts movies (like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, whose sequel Netflix is also making)–and you want them crammed together, narrative sense be damned–you might like this gorgeous but ludicrous saga.

But you might also wish Netflix and creator John Fusco had anticipated that you “might like” credible dialogue and characters as well.

The series begins with Italian explorer Marco (Lorenzo Richelmy) being left by his merchant father as a gift/servant/hostage for the Khan (Benedict Wong), in hopes of winning access to the Silk Road. Kublai rules a massive empire, but still has unfinished business: the holdout remnants of the Chinese Song dynasty, as well as fellow warlords who fear that conquest has softened the Mongol out of Genghis’ grandson. The Khan sees the quick-witted “Latin” Marco as a useful scout and spy, dispatching him on reconnaissance missions among enemies and frenemies.

Marco is the protagonist only in name; Richelmy is too bland to be more than the handsome camera through which we explore the empire. The imposing Wong, on the other hand, could be the show’s compelling star–a Mongol Al Swearengen–if the series didn’t make him such a growling B-movie tyrant. Early, he’s challenged as to whether he wants to be a Mongol or Chinese ruler. “Emperor of Mongolia, Emperor of China,” he roars, “I will be Emperor of the world!“–and impales a map with his sword. It’s a mission statement for the series, if that mission is to make you laugh unintentionally.

Mission accomplished, repeatedly. Mind you, this is no amateur production. Filmed in Kazakhstan, Malaysia and Venice, Marco Polo looks like it took the riches of east and west to make. (Reports put the season’s price tag at $90 million.) The vistas are stupendous, the sets and costumes gorgeous (and purportedly researched in detail). This would be a great show to watch on a new giant-screen TV you’re getting for Christmas.

And even more so if the sound doesn’t work. Marco Polo quickly becomes a travelogue of pulp clichés: the oily Song chancellor intoning proverbs about “the strike of the mantis break[ing] the back of the cricket”; the concubine-spy (Olivia Cheng) who leaps up fully nude in slo-mo to take down two armored soldiers in her bedchamber, as if in a Rated-Adults-Only video game; and Hundred Eyes (Tom Wu) the sightless martial-arts master who trains Marco with a stream of listen-carefully-grasshopper nuggets–“Untrue by an inch, untrue by a mile” and “Of the yin and the yang, you have an abundance of yang.”

The series’ problem, too, is how badly it balances its contrasts. Making Marco Polo dumb fun would be just as legitimate as making it weighty historical realism. But the show tries to be both (sort of, though producers freely admit to playing with facts and the timeline), lurching between modes without warning. Sometimes it’s a study of court intrigue, as when we see the Song leaders riven between diehards who want to fight the Khan and those who would sue for peace. Other times, it’s like someone watched the most caricatured Dothraki scenes in the first season of Game of Thrones and asked, “Could we have a show of just this?” Then there’s the obligatory sex, worked in a gracefully as pop-up ads; an orgy montage in the pilot, which intercuts naked, red-lit courtesans with images of Hundred Eyes kung-fu-posing with a cobra, is Orientalist hoohah as pure as the spun silk of distant Cathay.

You can’t say Marco Polo isn’t committed to spectacle and popcorn entertainment, and that may make it a hit worth its price tag. But it reminds me of the Simpsons episode in which Homer gets to design a car that has every feature he wants, and ends up with an expensive monstrosity that includes bubble domes, multiple horns and shag carpeting. It may be that Netflix really knows just what we want. With Marco Polo, it’s giving it to us good and hard.

The series died as it lived, as an emotional, excessive--and sometimes seemingly endless--classic-rock jam.

Spoilers for the series finale of Sons of Anarchy follow:

Did you know how Sons of Anarchy was going to end? If you’ve watched the show for any length of time, I bet you did. Maybe you didn’t know that Jax would arrange his exit from the club and from Charming, that he would die and that he would give himself up to death by crashing into a truck riven by Michael Chiklis’ Milo, a nod to Chiklis’ The Shield, which SoA creator Kurt Sutter once worked on. (See Melissa Locker’s recap for more details.)

But you knew it would end with a montage.

The montage would be long (around seven and a half minutes, scored to the original “Come Join the Murder” by house band The Forest Rangers). It would be mournful. It would intercut the series’ final actions with resolutions and goodbyes to cops and club members and family members, zipped up body bags and California landscapes, a presidential motorcade of police vehicles and a heavenly/hellish murder of crows flying an aerial salute to Jax before he raised his arms in a crucifixion pose and drifted into the path of Milo. (Who yelled, correctly, “Jesus!”)

If it was not a great ending, it was a fitting ending for Sons of Anarchy, which, for better and worse, was always an extended classic-rock song of a show. It was unedited and undisciplined, a colossal anthem taking up a whole vinyl album side, with cowbell and extended drum solos and a dozen guitarists lined up on stage to get a turn to riff over the coda. If it felt an emotion, it primal-screamed it. It threw in intrigues and complications like a jam band throwing in bridges and time changes. At its best it was “Sweet Child o’ Mine”; at its worst, “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida.”

This was the reason I drifted out of the show’s lane over the last few seasons, though I was a fan early on. There was a strong story at the core of it: J.T.’s legacy, Jax’s conflicts with Gemma and Clay and the question of whether Jax could change the club and himself. But as the show sustained itself over seven seasons, that became buried under a vast amount of gang wars and investigations and bloody machinations with the Irish and the neo-Nazis and black and brown and yellow and for all I know purple.

As the show got more and more popular, the complications only multiplied. It became clear that Sons of Anarchy the show was not going to give up its violent entanglements any more than Jax was going to get SAMCRO the club to do so: too many people were too invested in keeping the mayhem going. And at the same time, the show took an approach to storytelling that was emblemized by those montages and its growing episode run times. It left everything in: to SoA, everything was important, but that undercut the sense that anything was particularly important.

For all that, there were moments in the last few episodes that still hit me, as a longtime viewer. Katey Sagal’s final moments in the garden as Gemma were genuinely affecting as she accepted, even invited, her fate. In the finale Jax’s recognition that his only hope for his kids was that they grow up hating him was a simple, powerful admission. Both characters’ ends returned to the show’s tragic theme: these people knew they couldn’t really change their fates or their selves. But it was also diluted by the long, long walk of goodbyes and tying up loose ends.

Sutter, of course, was not interested in making a show for people who wanted less, and I assume he made the maximalist finale he wanted. There was enough talent and thoughtful provocation in SoA‘s best moments that I’ll watch with interest what he does next. But I’m hoping it’s a little more punk rock.

The TV awards, from a movie organization, show the breadth and strength of television in 2014.

Another hour, another best-TV-of-the-year honors. A while ago I posted about Fargo winning the Hitfix 2014 TV poll, in which I (and many other critics) participated. This year I also voted in another, quite different TV awards, from the American Film Institute (which apparently also honors some upstart genre known as “movies”).

Unlike the Hitfix poll, the AFI awards are decided by a jury of critics, academics and TV professionals. (Among our crew this year was Vince Gilligan, who had no dog in the fight a year in between Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.) Also unlike that poll, and most others, it doesn’t rank its finalists in order (which I wouldn’t either if TIME didn’t require it). We just watch our shows, argue for our favorites, complete a ballot, and publish a civilized, alphabetical list. This year, those ten shows were:

THE AMERICANS
FARGO
GAME OF THRONES
HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER
JANE THE VIRGIN
THE KNICK
MAD MEN
ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK
SILICON VALLEY
TRANSPARENT

Exactly half of those shows were on my own top ten list, and almost all the rest came close. (Except for How to Get Away With Murder, which I don’t think is quite there but is definitely a hell of a lot of fun.) The AFI also considers only scripted TV, so one of my picks for TIME, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, was ineligible. But even if I didn’t vote for each of these shows, I like the range they represent, in genre, style and format. (Though in a sign of the times, there are only two broadcast network shows–the same amount as shows from online streaming services.)

As usual, it was a fun process that helped me sort through my own feelings about the past year in TV. As for yours, feel free to quibble or offer up your own list in the comments. Alphabetization optional.

In a year with a lot of vote-splitting, the Minnesota saga pleased enough of the people enough of the time to win.

Entertainment site Hitfix today released the results of its annual TV critics’ poll, and this time it was Fargo that would go far. FX’s new series (miniseries? serial miniseries?) finished number one both for best show of the year and best new show, finishing ahead of The Good Wife and Transparent respectively. (True Detective‘s Matthew McConaughey won the separate Best Performance poll.)

As always, just because I vote in the polls doesn’t mean I agree with all the choices: I’ve already published my own top 10 of 2014 list, so you can compare these lists with mine if you want. But honestly, I don’t need a list like this to confirm my tastes–that’s what my own is for. It’s much more interesting to me to see how they reflect the averaged-out preferences of a particular group.

This year, it sheds a little light on what a wildly diverse group of top shows 2014 gave us. I don’t just mean there was a lot of good TV, but there was no one show dominating most critics’ lists as Breaking Bad did last year. (Even if I was one of a few dissenters in 2013, putting Enlightened #1 and Breaking Bad #2.) This year, a casual glance down the individual critics’ picks find many different, plausible top picks: Transparent (my choice), The Good Wife, The Americans, True Detective, Game of Thrones. Hitfix’s own Alan Sepinwall picked The Leftovers as his #1, and while I though its season was too uneven, I loved its high points so much I immediately regretted not ranking it higher.

As for Fargo, it would not have been my guess for the top spot, and yet in retrospect it seems obvious. The show has had its detractors–The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum, for instance. But in general it was a show a lot of critics loved or at least liked a lot, without a major backlash, which meant it was high enough on enough lists to rack up a lot of points. It stood up better over time and in memory (compare True Detective, which was an obsession for two months last winter but ended up #5 on the Hitfix list), and it didn’t run the risk, like The Good Wife, of running a fall season that didn’t quite measure up to its earlier winter season. Not everyone agreed one single shows was the best in 2014, but enough critics–myself included–believed that Fargo was one of the best to make it tops overall.

(A key factor here is that critics vote in the poll by ranking their top 10 picks; so even though Fargo tied The Good Wife and Transparent in #1 picks, it got enough close-to-#1 picks to make the difference.)

Agree or not, Hitfix provides enough data to make an interesting deep dive for TV geeks–not just each critic’s individual ranked lists, but how many votes each show got, from whom, and in what place. Go ahead and do some investigating of your own–that’s what Molly Solverson would want.