The Top Dad Shows Posts of 2024
It's nice when the most-read posts are also the best ones
In lieu of a new post this holiday week, I’m instead doing the standard year-end thing of taking a look back at my year in posts. Since I launched Dad Shows in March, I’ve published 41 installments. (You could also say I sent 41 emails, if you don’t want to be highfalutin about it.) The five posts I’m highlighting here are what I consider the “top” ones, either in terms of execution, readership, or both. It’s nice when it’s both.
The earliest top post is from August, which is when I really started to figure out what I want to do here. This essay about Denis Leary’s career and public image pegged to the 20th anniversary of Rescue Me is the kind of goofy angle on something that’s of interest to me that I don’t get to write anywhere else. I would want to read this if someone else wrote it, which is a good barometer for if something is worth writing to me.
When Was the Last Time You Thought About Denis Leary?
Leary is a self-described “Jack Kennedy Democrat” who always took pride in being an equal-opportunity offender. His audience consisted of liberals and conservatives, because in the less polarized climate he got famous in, being an angry white guy was a nonpartisan identity. But there are fewer slots now for guys like Denis Leary, and being one requires a willingness to navigate culture war minefields. And Leary, who’s a “let’s find common ground in how Democrats and Republicans both suck” guy, doesn’t seem interested in navigating. He did the “nonpartisan angry Democrat who hates both Trump and P.C. culture” thing into the Trump years a little bit — he published a book in 2017 called 'Why We Don't Suck: And How All of Us Need to Stop Being Such Partisan Little B*tches' — but it seems like at a certain point he decided it wasn’t worth it. It’s hard to be a centrist Democrat boomer with a big mouth and a history of plagiarism in the social media era if you don’t want people yelling at you from both sides on Twitter all day. He keeps his social media feeds professional, promoting things like his recurring role on 'Law & Order: Organized Crime,' his wife’s novels, and his admirable, meaningful work raising money for firefighters.
Sometimes I write about shows that aren’t technically Dad Shows if I have something I want to say about them. That’s what happened with Disclaimer, Alfonso Cuarón’s unsuccessful limited series that’s the worst show of the year, if “worst” is measured by the gulf between what could have been and what we got. This review sparked passionate responses, which is one of my favorite parts of Substack.
'Disclaimer' Is a "Seven Hour Movie," Which Is a Bad Thing for a TV Show to Be
When Alfonso Cuarón’s Apple TV+ limited series 'Disclaimer' premiered at the Venice Film Festival in August, the director said “I don’t know how to direct TV. Probably at this stage of my life it’s too late to learn how to direct TV. We approached this whole thing as a film. There was never a conversation where we were doing something different.”
After watching four episodes of the show, I can tell Cuarón wasn’t being flippant. He really doesn’t know how to direct TV (even though he has directed TV before; he co-created and directed the pilot of 2014 NBC series called 'Awake,' which I would like to watch but probably never will). Although he’s one of the best film directors in the game — I remember where I was when I found out Baby Diego died in 'Children of Men' — Cuarón commits the cardinal sin of filmmakers slumming it in television: Stretching a movie-length story beyond its breaking point while trying to fit a TV runtime. The most annoying cliche that people making TV use to describe their shows is “It’s a ten-hour movie” (or however long their show happens to be). Most of the time they’re trying to say that their show tells a continuing story over the course of its season and has some cinematic qualities. That’s not what Cuarón is doing, though. 'Disclaimer' shows the perils of what happens when someone actually tries to make a seven-hour movie.
My top three posts this year, though, both in terms of readership and quality, are all about my muse, Taylor Sheridan, and his empire of macho soap operas. The Sheridanverse is a bounty of rich texts for Dad Shows, and I’m excited to keep writing about them in 2025. 1923 Season 2 is going to be my Super Bowl.
In October, I wrote about Lioness, which is pound for pound the best of Sheridan’s shows so far, I think. I just rewatched a few episodes of Season 1 with my parents, and it’s even better than I remember it being. It took a leap in Season 2, though, especially in its action sequences. It’s also one of his most politically inviting shows.
'Lioness' Is a Good Gateway Show for Taylor Sheridan-Curious Liberals
Joe is a bad hombre, a member of the most lethal fighting force in the world, a Big Swinging Dick who has to be the most alpha person in the room not just because she has to but also because she wants to. We see the world in a way that’s sympathetic to her point of view even if she’s not always right, which is a thing in every Sheridan show but is treated with more nuance here than it is in the cognitively dissonant 'Yellowstone,' where the characters are terrible people who are portrayed with admiration. Sheridan, who writes every episode, takes a more morally gray approach to the CIA than is common in Hollywood, which has historically been a willing partner in pushing CIA propaganda. But Sheridan is an ideological nonconformist independent who clearly has mixed feelings about the Deep State and its role in propping up American financial interests around the world. He’s a true American, in that his politics are a constellation of disparate ideas mashed together by personal experience. In general, politics as they present in his work do not neatly align with either side.
This essay about Peak Taylor Sheridan identifies the moment when Sheridan had four shows on TV at the same time, one of which, Yellowstone, was the biggest show on TV and will not be replaced in popularity by any of Sheridan’s other shows. This is the kind of post I created Dad Shows for.
It’s the most-read Dad Shows post to date, and the vast majority of traffic came from Google, which is very unusual for Substack. So if Google brought you to Dad Shows and you stuck around, thank you. I’m glad you’re here.
I Think We’ve Finally, Actually Reached Peak Taylor Sheridan
Taylor Sheridan is one of the most important producers in TV right now. His only peer in terms of prolificacy and influence is Ryan Murphy, and Murphy doesn’t write every line of dialogue on his shows. The cowboy is singlehandedly keeping Paramount+ in business. The “+” in stands for “+aylor Sheridan.” He’s on an all-time great run.
I think this is the peak, though.
That’s not a bad thing. The Taylor Sheridan empire is not showing signs of decline yet, and won’t anytime soon. He’s going to stay major for years to come. But I dont’t think his empire will get any bigger than it is right now. And that’s because of what’s happening with 'Yellowstone.'
And finally, there’s my take on the final season of Yellowstone. I have written about Yellowstone since Season 1, when I was telling anyone who would listen “There’s something really special happening with this show.” Those were the days. Yellowstone devolved, but it remained interesting from a cultural perspective.
It’s Actually Pretty Weird That a Show as Batshit Insane as 'Yellowstone' Is So Popular
Sheridan’s character-over-plot style means that characters pretty much do whatever they want at any given moment. Traditional TV cause-and-effect is boring to him. This sounds cooler than it actually is. In practice, it can be challenging to watch. Scenes will happen that have little connection to the larger story, which is confusing, as my TV-trained brain expects them to matter in some way later on, but they don’t. Plotlines get introduced and discarded at the drop of a Stetson. There are no consequences for any character except Jamie, who will probably get drowned in an outhouse in the finale. The plot is incoherent in a way that’s almost psychedelic to experience. When are we? Who are these people? Why is this happening? Have I died and gone to Cowboy Hell?
Thank you for reading Dad Shows this year. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it. Stick around for 2025, because Dad Shows is only getting better, even if TV isn’t. Happy New Year, and I’ll see you in January.