What an incredible year of TV. In 2022, I watched so many high-caliber shows that felt like blockbuster movies. There were still a few hidden gems, but it felt like the high-profile shows just kept coming. Several of my favorite shows were based on popular IPs, of course, but beyond that, I also enjoyed a handful of smaller favorites of mine that are still hooking me.
While I watched quite a few shows this year, 22 actually felt like the perfect spot to cut off my "Best Of" list. I will try to get one posted per day as often as I can until the list is completed, so anticipate these blogs until early January. I'm also putting together a Honorable Mentions blog that will include a few others (more like dishonorable mentions, honestly).
To clarify my selection process, the shows I'm blogging about were brand new in the year 2022. To make the list, the entire season must have been started and completed in 2022 (Sorry to The Chosen S3, which doesn't finish until January, and The Mandalorian S2, which technically starting releasing at the end of 2021). The list can include both one-off limited series and ongoing shows that had a new season this year. I will not count shows I watched for the first time this year that were released in recent years (Bad Robot and Homecoming, both of which I highly recommend for sci-fi fans).
One thing to note: I may or may not include spoilers, but assume every one of them has spoilers in it just to be safe.
Without further ado, here's the show that just snuck into my list with the No. 22 spot:
No. 22 - Ms. Marvel
While there are certainly some redeeming qualities, Ms. Marvel was another in a growing list of bad examples of what makes a good superhero character.
The show centered around an average high school girl who happens to come across an artifact that bestows powers onto her. While there's some family heritage stuff going on there that offsets what I'm about to say, the fact that this girl just randomly becomes a superhero takes so much away from the journey that better superhero characters go through before settling into who they become the rest of the way. Watching this show did so little for the character in future projects because, hey, now that her origin story is out of the way, Marvel can focus on taking advantage of her powers in cool way. But rushing through - or ignoring entirely - character development to the point that she earns that superhero moniker renders the paper-thin character arc useless in any of her future projects.
Instead, all Marvel focused on (albeit in very subtle, unobtrusive ways) was a Islamic Muslim family living in the big city. As a Christian, I'm not offended by this whatsoever; it was cool to see some of their customs and fashions. But I guarantee you if there was a story told from a Christian perspective in that same manner, everyone would be up in arms about it. But whatever, I'm not trying to start some religious battle or debate. I'm actually a fan of the anti-racist messaging in the show when they showed how offensive racial profiling can feel. Besides, the character was written this way in the comics, even though a ton of the backstory was changed, including her superpowers.
On that note, the implementation of her superpowers was one of the weakest aspects of the show. The CG work was corny and overtly obtuse, though I suppose that's not the worst thing in the world. You don't always want the superpowers to have the same tone or colors or saturation. But I cringed virtually every time she used her powers, which always took me out of those moments. Also, the inevitable montage of her learning how to use her powers was ridiculous and not very believeable (or funny, for that matter).
Iman Vellani was mostly a forgettable actress as the title character, with moments of cringy facial expressions or fake toughness. She had to try too hard to be funny, and as a result, she just didn't deliver any believable moments of genuine humor. And I am not going to let the overly used "coming of age" phrase let her or this show off the hook. The show being geared towards a younger audience or having a central character learning how to become the superhero she turns into are not excuses for shallow, uninteresting, poorly delivered dialogue or scattered, underdeveloped stories. Kate Bishop and Peter Parker are two examples of how "coming of age" stories can be done quite well; Kamala Khan is outclassed by those two in every way.
One of the standout characters of the show was Kamala's mother. She drove the most compelling drama of the season, which was her relationship with her daughter. The emotions, the discoveries of family truths toward the end, and even the acting all made her the most believable character. She felt like the only one who had real skin in the game.
The time-travel storyline was a difficult pill to swallow in such small pieces that were getting slowly spoon-fed to us, but in the end, it made enough sense and had a good-enough reveal to make it mostly worthwhile. The generational connection between those women was a nice touch. But it was also hard to care a whole lot about the characters in the past considering we were teased, to a certain extent, a small bit of the outcome early on.
Had this been a movie, the plot point surrounding the red dagger people and that mystical power and ongoing war would have been fine, if not a little "off-the-factory-line." But the fact that the writers couldn't find more time to properly develop that story instead of rushing it actually left me frustrated, because those stories were some of the most interesting aspects of the show. Unfortunately, most of the show also felt like stretched-out ideas for what probably started as a movie script that made for a lousy TV script.
The post-credit scene was incredibly exciting. Not because of the specific character who appears, necessarily, but more because the character is completely confused as to what just happened. As with most things in Marvel in these days, I don't care about what just happened anymore. I'm just excited to see what happens next.