I have ranked the top 68 television shows of the '00s, and will be presenting them, one-by-one, starting with 68 and working down. The rankings are more or less based on the show's popularity, it's cult status, it's critical acclaim, and my personal liking of it, with a heavy dose of arbitrariness added in. If a show was a big enough phenomena, I'll keep it on the list - but if I don't like it, I may drop it some spots. One other caveat - these are primetime shows (I apologize if I put a cable show that wasn't, I thought they were all primetime shows - the main point of this is just that no talk shows, no Colbert and Daily show that would be on otherwise).

42: 30 Rock

I amazingly made my feelings on 30 Rock to some extent clear on this blog before - it's a stellar, good overall, show, but for some reason there has developed around it this bizarre critical consensus that it is the best comedy on television (certainly as far as Emmy has to say about it). Like Steve Nash a few years back in the NBA, 30 Rock is good, sure, but the praise has become overwhelming that you can't help but think of something you like without also thinking of it being overrated (though I do think it's gotten to the point where Steve Nash is so overrated, he's underrated, but 30 Rock hasn't reached that point yet). 30 Rock was well-liked from the outset but it cemented its status and Tina Fey's as a critical darling with her extremely well-received take on Sarah Palin for Saturday Night Live, which may have revived any commercial fortunes for the show as well (probably Fey has more to thank Sarah Palin for, after maybe Barack Obama, maybe).

30 Rock took its time finding its way - for the first half dozen episodes or so, I thought it was pretty lacking, and it was not helped by my preconceived notions of it being overrated, before I even saw it, and none of this was helped by the multiple appearances of Rachel Dratch, who was originally cast to play Jenna, which would have been an absolute disaster. It found its sea legs though, helped by the likability of Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin's performance as Jack Donaghy, one of the only people in the show who can actually act, and whose role really is almost equal to Fey's. What I originally thought would be a true ensemble show is really tiered - Baldwin and Fey, then Jane Krakowski's Jenna Maroney and Tracy Morgan's Tracy Jordan, and then everyone else - there's always some Kenneth (Jack McBreyer) and sometimes some Pete (Scott Adsit) and Frank (Judah Friedlander) and maybe others.

There's sometimes a little too much Kenneth for my taste - he's a one-dimensional character who shouldn't really get plots, but rather have just a couple of lines an episode, but overall it's a solid show, and has been successful enough on occasion to get me to say a couple of its phrases repeatedly ("shut it down," "I want to go to there"). Unlike How I Met Your Mother, which I think is strongest with its gimmicks sometimes, I think 30 Rock is often weakest with its gimmicks - I was not a big fan for example, of the Jon Hamm episode in which the premise was that he was so handsome that he lived in a bubble, in which everyone would bend over backwards for him (my bigger problem with this episode, and I'd be fine if women told me that I was wrong, is that Jon Hamm didn't seem quite handsome enough to carry out that premise in a believable way for me).

I know this is the cliche answer for the highlight of 30 Rock, but for me, it probably is still the episode in which Alec Baldwin portrays Tracy Jordan's mother and father as well as several other people from his childhood. I couldn't stop cracking up watching it the first time, and though I certainly laugh bit watching 30 Rock, I don't crack up like that very often.

Also, 30 Rock are complete guest star whores - barely an episode goes by it seems without guest stars. I don't necessarily say this as either a good or bad thing but they really take advantage of their connections, and surprisingly, considering it would be so easy to fit the guest stars in as playing exaggerated versions of themselves as in Entourage or Extras, usually playing characters.

So, watch 30 Rock. It's good, it's funny - it's just not the best comedy on TV.

I have ranked the top 68 television shows of the '00s, and will be presenting them, one-by-one, starting with 68 and working down. The rankings are more or less based on the show's popularity, it's cult status, it's critical acclaim, and my personal liking of it, with a heavy dose of arbitrariness added in. If a show was a big enough phenomena, I'll keep it on the list - but if I don't like it, I may drop it some spots. One other caveat - these are primetime shows (I apologize if I put a cable show that wasn't, I thought they were all primetime shows - the main point of this is just that no talk shows, no Colbert and Daily show that would be on otherwise).

43: The Apprentice

Towards the beginning of this list, I covered the Weakest Link, and I noted that there was a short while where the phrase "You are the weakest link" was used and universally recognized. Well, cube that, and just maybe you have some approximation of what The Apprentice's signature catch phrase, "You're Fired" shouted by Donald Trump replete with a finger point for emphasis. There is nothing more Donald Trump seeks than fame, and he certainly had had his share over the years for his real estate, but more for his outsized personality and his divorces. By the early 2000s he was definitely still well known, but amplified his celebrity several fold, especially amongst younger viewers, with The Apprentice.

We all know how it works by now - the "ultimate job interview," as its advertisements proclaimed, starts when a group of contestants is split into two teams, and both assigned a task. The winning team goes through to the next week, while the losing team must go to the board room for a chat with Trump and his two associates, after which the project manager of the losing team - each team has a leader each week responsible for making sure their team completes the task - chooses up to the three people to go to the board with him or her and after more evaluation Trump fires one. Repeat next week, until all the contestants are eliminated except for one.

Oh, of course there are twists and turns along the way - sometimes multiple people are fired, or the winning team can help choose who to eliminate, but more or less it's the same thing. Unlike some other reality shows, the host, Trump was really the star of this one (that and the rampant product placement to be found throughout the show). No contestant generated all that much fame - Bill Rancic ring a bell? I doubt it - I only knew because my dad watched at the time, and maybe season 1 contestant Omarosa has some minority notoriety amongst seasoned celebreality fans.

Apprentice waned in popularity over the years - how much of Trump's schtick can America take? - and in its attempt to stay relevant, or even just on the air, hit upon two dependable reality TV tricks of last resort - a move in location, to LA, and the inevitable celebrity edition, which showcased the business acumen of such luminaries as Baldwin brother-turned conservative Christian Stephen Baldwin, country music star Trace Atkins, and the Sopranos' Big Pussy, Vincent Pastore. It clearly was on its last legs, but manages to continue ticking, at least for now - another celebrity apprentice is on its way in the spring of 2010.

I have ranked the top 68 television shows of the '00s, and will be presenting them, one-by-one, starting with 68 and working down. The rankings are more or less based on the show's popularity, it's cult status, it's critical acclaim, and my personal liking of it, with a heavy dose of arbitrariness added in. If a show was a big enough phenomena, I'll keep it on the list - but if I don't like it, I may drop it some spots. One other caveat - these are primetime shows (I apologize if I put a cable show that wasn't, I thought they were all primetime shows - the main point of this is just that no talk shows, no Colbert and Daily show that would be on otherwise).

44: Smallville

I'll admit it. I really haven't seen very much Smallville, and I'm constantly surprised every year when I find out that, yes, it is still on - it's covered almost every year of the decade, starting in 2001, and entering its 9th season in 2009. And to be honest, the only way I usually find it is because I figure out that the reason some hot chick is famous is because she was on the show - Laura Vandervoort (currently of ABC's '80s sci-fi remake V "fame") was Supergirl on Smallville, apparently.

I'd also be lying if I didn't say I really wanted to cheat and use the Smallville entry to talk about a major 00's phenomena of which Smallville is a part (and really the only live action television entry) - the revivial of the comic book on film and screen.

This was such a big deal in the decade that I felt it has to be mentioned just for a couple words at least - starting with the first X-Men movie in 2000 and the first Spider-man movie in 2002, that basically spent film executives everywhere scurrying off to find comic movies to make - be they revival of huge classic heroes, Superman and Batman style, or nonclassic heroes at all in Sin City, or 300, or perhaps most ambitiously, with Watchman, the race was off. The sheer number of comic book films that have been produced is astounding, and with often decades of character biography, they're ready made for sequels if they do well, which most have - Daredevil, The Punisher and multiple Hulk movies are the exception (not a surprise - the Hulk sucks).

And unlike some of the other trends - this one's not ending any time soon - the existing successful franchises are likely continuing - more Spider-mans, Batmans, Ironmans - and more are on their way - Green Lantern and the Avengers seem on the horizon.

I suppose I should go back to the show for at least a brief moment, but I don't have much to say about it - it's always been kind of popular enough to keep it on for this long which is certainly an impressive achievement but it's really never rose to any mainstream or big time cult status, at least any that I've seen. I don't have any strong feelings about it - I find it minorly interesting - I might consider reading the wikipedia character pages in the future, but I highly doubt I will end up watching many episodes. But yeah, they picked no better time to come out with the show, and whether they were a cause or a symptom of the comic book revival, credit to them, it's a good thing.

I have ranked the top 68 television shows of the '00s, and will be presenting them, one-by-one, starting with 68 and working down. The rankings are more or less based on the show's popularity, it's cult status, it's critical acclaim, and my personal liking of it, with a heavy dose of arbitrariness added in. If a show was a big enough phenomena, I'll keep it on the list - but if I don't like it, I may drop it some spots. One other caveat - these are primetime shows (I apologize if I put a cable show that wasn't, I thought they were all primetime shows - the main point of this is just that no talk shows, no Colbert and Daily show that would be on otherwise).

45: Mythbusters

I gradually became aware of the minor Mythbusters phenomena amongst a certain demographic, notably my demographic - 15-35 year old guys who like to watch people blow stuff up, but feel classy about it, because it's in the name of science - science turned cool, like the Bill Nye of the 00s.

It's a great idea - test popular myths to see if they can really happen - and there's something pleasingly definitive result - Busted, Comfirmed, or the always disappointingly undefinitive Plausible. It started out testing pretty well-known myths - early episodes inlcluded solving "Can Pop Rocks & Soda, when eaten simultaneously, cause the eater's stomach to rupture? "(Busted) and "Will using a cell phone near a gas pump cause an explosion?" (Busted). Of course, most of them are busted - but there's just enough confirmed and plausible to make you hold out hope at every opportunity, just like every once in a while, there will be a not guilty verdict in Law & Order to let you know it could happen, and enjoy the guilty verdicts each even more.

It stars Adam Savage, also known as the cool one with glasses, and Jamie Hyneman, also known as the walrus, the dude with the beret, or simply, the lame one. Adam Savage, it should be noted had a brief acting career before Mythbusters - most not remembered for his appearance as drowning man in Billy Joel's video to You're Only Human (Second Wind). Along to help them out, later on in the show, was their B team who matured and were eventually empowered to work on mythbusting themselves (I assume mythbusting is a verb). They were in - Jamie and Adam were even big enough for a guest appearance on CSI.

The best parts of course, were when they had competitions between the two, such as when they had a hovercraft racing contest.

By now - that they're stretching for myths is clear - 2009 episodes test such "myths" as "Can a person swim faster in syrup than in water?" (Plausible) and "Can popcorn be cooked with lasers or explosions? ," (Busted) myths, that at least in my part of the country I had never heard of - and such clearly non-literal expressions as "Can someone really be knocked out of their socks? "

Mythbusters is one of those shows that gets the benefit of the doubt because it's on a high cable channel, that has maybe four show as flagship programming (Discovery Channel - Deadliest Catch? Dirty Jobs? Man vs. Wild? Maybe Cash Cab?) and can show episodes over and over again to fill up its air time. But, that being said, I have to worry if its fifteen minutes as a minor phenomena is just about up.

I have ranked the top 68 television shows of the '00s, and will be presenting them, one-by-one, starting with 68 and working down. The rankings are more or less based on the show's popularity, it's cult status, it's critical acclaim, and my personal liking of it, with a heavy dose of arbitrariness added in. If a show was a big enough phenomena, I'll keep it on the list - but if I don't like it, I may drop it some spots. One other caveat - these are primetime shows (I apologize if I put a cable show that wasn't, I thought they were all primetime shows - the main point of this is just that no talk shows, no Colbert and Daily show that would be on otherwise).

46: Friends

Ah, one of the great things about this being an '00s list and not a '90s list, is that Friends which I'd be forced to put likely in the top 10 of the '90s list, I can move all the way down here for the '00s. I had originally thought about leaving it out altogether, but it was on for almost half the decade, longer than I realized, and the finale was kind of a big deal. Still, it wasn't the cultural benchmark it was in the '90s, thankfully.

I have a couple of different things to say about Friends - first, as one can probably tell from that first paragraph, I'm not much of a Friends fan. I've honestly only seen a handful of episodes, which were not particularly good, and I've long believed that as far as mid-to-late 90's sitcoms go, you really have to be either a Friends or a Seinfeld person, and not both, and I've been a longtime resident of the Seinfeld camp. It's like being a cat or a dog person. You can like both, maybe, but you really only identify with one.

My friend Lisa has a longtime theory on why Friends is worse than The Nanny. Basically, according to her, neither Friends or the Nanny are good. The Nanny, or maybe its fans, or the network, realizes this - no one claims the Nanny to be otherwise - it was never water cooler conversation, its phrases never wormed their way in to the pop culture lexicon. If you came here from another country, you could easily avoid knowing the Nanny existed. With Friends, it's the opposite - you couldn't escape Friends - whether it was the constant talk of the on-again, off-again Ross and Rachel relationship, or Joey's oft-repeated phrase "How you doin'", Friends was everywhere during its run. You couldn't get out of it way.

Friends finale was literally the most watched entertainment programming since the Seinfeld finale, perhaps again reinforcing their bitter (well, perhaps not so bitter) rivalry. Of course, Rachel and Ross end up together, and everyone's happy, except I suppose for Joey who later goes off to star in a far less successful spin-off in LA - either no one liked him as much as the others, or time was just up for the Friends-verse.

Friends-mania has largely subsided since then, but if nothing else, it represents, in a way, the part of one decade that always sort of ebbs its way into the next - decades are not stand alone, but rather a continuously changing series of pop culture norms - Friends is the representative of the 90s that managed to creep rather successfully into almost half of the previous decade, as I suppose, I owe Friends to at least tip my hat at it for that.

I have ranked the top 68 television shows of the '00s, and will be presenting them, one-by-one, starting with 68 and working down. The rankings are more or less based on the show's popularity, it's cult status, it's critical acclaim, and my personal liking of it, with a heavy dose of arbitrariness added in. If a show was a big enough phenomena, I'll keep it on the list - but if I don't like it, I may drop it some spots. One other caveat - these are primetime shows (I apologize if I put a cable show that wasn't, I thought they were all primetime shows - the main point of this is just that no talk shows, no Colbert and Daily show that would be on otherwise).

47: Gossip Girl

In terms of the overall amount of scripted televsion on in any given year, there's only a far smaller number of shows that I actually even consider starting to watch on a consistent basis. I choose this obviously by seeing them once that happens, but before that I consult friends, and read about the shows online both to figure out what they're about and to see how they're reviewed, and what people whose opinions I value think about them. Gossip Girl is one of the few shows that fell right on that line - and as someone who never quite got on the OC bandwagon, I didn't know how to feel, and ultimately ended up not watching it, but in certain circles it was talked about as water cooler fodder trashy TV of the year. Was it ironic, trashy, trashy ironic - I'm not sure. I decided to watch an episode and I started with the first.

First, I'll throw out what I know about the show before watching it, through what I hear, and a quick perusal of the wikipedia page - it's a show about the trail and tribulations between upper crust high school students in Manhattan's ritzy social scene, and it stars Blake Lively, Leighton Meester and some other people.

Now after watching...

It was more or less a fairly enjoyable primetime soap. I finally truly understand the gimmick, which is that Kristen Bell, narrating, is the voice of the anonymous "Gossip Girl" a website which reports on the doings of these high schools - who has been seen fighting who whom, what big social events are coming up, and seems to be giving different characters nicknames - S and B for the main two, Serena (Lively) and Blair (Meester). Apparently Serena has just returned from a mysterious year at boarding school, but has trouble reuniting with her former best friend, Blair, and it is revealed that just before her trip away, Serena hooked up with Blair's longtime boyfriend who now seems to be in love with her. Intrigue, drama, catfights, hot chicks - a classic set up.

Honestly, I wish I had more to say about the show. I went in expecting either to hate it or love it, either to see the brilliant cult value shine through or to see what utter filth it was, but I wasn't particularly moved either way. I kind of enjoyed it, and I suppose I would consider watching it again. Perhaps if I watched further I would get to see if it earns its slightly over sized place in pop culture's hierarchy aside from its second season advertisements which mockingly cut quotes saying how inappropriate the show was.

Quickly, I would be remiss not to say that the show had an excellent soundtrack. Definitely a factor that wouldn't make a show, but could put it over the top.

Clearly, it's been far too long since I posted.

I can't help it though, I feel the need to end the streak to post yet again about Top Chef.

The show is addictive, there's really no other way to describe it. I don't want reality TV, I tell myself - I watch scripted shows, yet perhaps no other show immediately makes me want to have the next episode right there more than Top Chef. This of course, as a general rule, depends every season on the contestants, and Top Chef season 6 has the great fortune of my favorite chefs pretty much being the best contestants which makes it all the more easier to enjoy - Top Chef is perhaps like sports in the way that I am much more interested in watching when my favorite players are still in the competition.

This season is a little bit unusual to me in that the top four chefs have been crystal clear from almost week 1, just a clear, clear cut above every other chef there. Michael and Brian Voltaggio, the pair of brothers who were broad aboard this year, Kevin and Jennifer C are far and away the best chefs out there. The four of them have combined to win every elimination challenge, and have been in the top 3 or 4 more times between the four of them well more than for every other chef combined.

All of them are likeable, and I would be very disappointed if they weren't the final four. Each of the past two weeks, when Jennifer has been struggled I've been nervous for her and outraged when the judges call her out. Sure, she's had her issues, but really is there even a chance she'd be considered worse than Robin? Come on! You know she cooks a better game than that.

Also, what other show could have the season's villain be a cancer patient?

Robin, whose big story in the show is that shes a cancer patient/so far survivor (I meant that to be descriptive and not callous - I'm not exactly sure of her current status), is clearly the villain and it's not even close - she's the oldest contestant left by far, and none of the other contestants can stand her - she's the Sanjaya of Top Chef (please let me know if this comparison is not apt fans of both American Idol and Top Chef) - she someone continues to stay in the competition no matter how bad she is week in and week out.

Every week in Top Chef, about two thirds of the way through the show, there's about a 30 second segment between commercials showing some random personal story, and about half of them involve people getting into fights with Robin, or people complaining that she talks too much and what shut up. At least one interview segment per episode involves a contestant alluding to the fact that Robin shouldn't be here, and any time there are teams she invariably gets picked last - she's both terrible and despised, a worthless combination. At first, I felt a little guilty - she's been through a lot of obstacles, she's earned a little benefit of the doubt. But not anymore - I revel in my utter hatred for her - her fellow contestants have shown me the way.

I look forward to what the rest of the season has to offer, unless Robin wins.

Nothing is more infuriating than Mad Men : on the next episode clips at the end of an episode. Basically, all they are is people saying serious-minded and potential conflict-causing quotes, while never seeing what the response is. Betty says something into the telephone. Cut to Roger saying something at a meeting, we can't see to whom. Next, Joan Holloway says something to an unpictured character. I really need to stop watching these.

Yesterday was one of the most interesting sports nights I've had in quite a while.



First of all, I realized for real that I really, I don't want to say hate, because that's harsh and uncalled for, but strongly root against Roger Federer, and I'm not exactly sure why. During the final, I was becoming angry and irritable at the likelihood of him winning when he went up 2 sets to 1 and becoming extremely pumped up to the point of loudly exclaiming "YES!" at the TV when Juan Martin del Potro broke Federer in the fourth set. I was so involved that I was doing what I do when I'm really frustrated by a sporting event I care about - instead of just leaving it on and watching it all the way through like a normal person, I keep changing the channel every time I see something that frustrates me because I don't want to see anymore, only to change it back a second later because I'm curious again and can't stay away for long. I realize this is neither the normal nor sensible way to watch sporting events, but I can't help it. Every once in a while when it hits me, I take my sports really seriously.

Now, Federer seems like a nice enough guy and extremely gracious champion so if I do say I hate him I mean sports hate in that I root against him on the court but that I hate him personally the way I even hate say, Derek Jeter (personally's a little strong for anyone you don't know, but a little more hate at least). Of course, as I've said many times, the wonderful thing about sports is that you can hate anyone irrationally, which you can't get away with in real life. Still, I'll try to semi-rationally try to figure out what I don't like about Federer.

- He's a huge favorite - Many people tend to pull for the underdog, but I think I feel this way as strong if not stronger than most. There's generally nothing worse than single domination of a sport. I generally root against Tiger - I root against Lance Armstrong (though for slightly some other reasons than simply his dominance, and credit for the scene in Dodgeball). I hate the Yankees and the Patriots and the Lakers and when my friend and I picked English Premier League teams to root for we ended up choosing a team closer to relegation in Blackburn Rovers rather than one of the big four that has any real chance of winning the league most years. That said, I'm a Nadal person, and I'd like to think that I'd root for him to win as majors as possible, but perhaps that's just to catch up to Federer - but really that should be the second bullet point.

- I'm a Nadal person - Over the last two or three years, we've had a worthy rival to Federer for essentially the first time in Fed's career of winning slams. Rafa actually has a winning record against Federer, and unlike pretty much everyone else, he doesn't cower against Federer and you don't get that sick feeling of inevitability when you watch him play Federer that Fed's going to find a way to pull it out no matter what. I'm not sure when and why I chose Rafa in the battle - it could be simply because I was looking for an alternative to Fed dominance or because I just liked Rafa better, and probably was a combination of the two. Rafa's a lefty which definitely helps, plus I think I like his demeanor and look better. And yeah, I at least say this now and mean to keep with it, I do want him to continue winning as many slams as possible, albeit he needs to get healthy and fast to do it. And Roger looks so, well, country club, as will lead into my next point...



- Roger looks so country club. Let's not kid ourselves, tennis is a country club sport. Not every but almost every tennis player grow up at least fairly wealthy, partly because in order to be a competitive tennis player you need to start playing at something like the age of four, and need to be able to afford not just the equipment but the type of coaching a young player needs. But seriously, can you appear more country club than Federer? I read an article recently about Fed's US Open suite in some hotel, and one of the panels it showed his monogrammed pillowcases that the hotel provides him. I mean, I'm not kidding myself, I know the top players all live a life of luxury and they should, but are you kidding me? How do you get more country club than that? (I don't mean to bash all country clubs, as a rule, necessarily, just as picking someone to root for in a sporting event, I can certainly consider it.)

There's got to be even more to it, and I'm still working on figuring that out, but that's certainly a start.

Anyway, now that he lost I can be gracious to Federer. He is an amazing tennis player and has always been a good interview, and I will be thankful that he played the game so well and for so long. Once he loses the next couple of majors, at least.



And yet, that was only half of my exciting sports day. I was then subjected to over three quarters of a near huge upset by the Bills, only to be devastated by a incredibly ill-advised fumble with two minutes left by Leodis McKelvin, who in classic Bills fashion couldn't simply avoid doing the one thing he needed to avoid doing which more than likely would have led to a Bills win. This is the type of thing that happens to the Bills routinely. The Bills haven't made the playoffs in a decade, which I think is longer than any other team (after checking, it's tied for longest with the Lions). For the most part, they haven't been truly awful during the stretch - only three times have they had double digit losses, 13 once, 11 once and 10 once.

The way I look at it of course, is that they couldn't even manage to get a top pick. I'm almost at the point where the most fun thing to root for as a Bills fan is four a fourth 7-9 season in a row, which has to be some sort of record, certainly for consecutive 7-9 seasons, but at least possibly for consecutive seasons with the same record. Dick Jauron is now, after the first game, the longest tenured Bills head coach since Marv Levy, and they've pretty much all deserved what they got, a fate Jauron probably deserves as well, and will likely get if they finish below .500 again this year.

It's just probably another humdrum year of Bills losses, at least a few of which are guaranteed to be of the last-minute stunner variety as happened against the Patriots. I like the no huddle, though I think there's a good chance they don't have the personnel to execute it, at least it's something interesting to watch. But that was a rough one, to start off the year, before their season is already over.

Honorary Mention: True Blood

Okay, this didn't get on to the list because - frankly, the second season hadn't aired yet, so there was really only one season to work with, I didn't realize how big it really was - it's HBO's highest rated program in ages, and its DVDs sold better than any other TV show this year, and I hadn't watched it yet. But now I have realized, the second season has aired, and I have watched. So while I don't want to bump anybody off an already constructed list, I'll just interrupt here to give True Blood an honorary mention and say my piece about it.

For whatever reason, as I mentioned, I didn't realize how much of a thing it had become, and somewhere around halfway through the second season, I realized that just about two thirds of my friends have been watching it, which of course, if I hadn't considered it yet, made me want to catch up all the more.

I'm not going to lie. It started out a bit slow. You probably all the know the premise by now, but here it is in short form - vampires have been around for thousand of years, and have needed to feast on human blood, but now that a synthetic or "true" blood has been invented, vampires can come out of the closet and live in mainstream America - but of course, some don't want to. Anyway, the beginning few episodes of the show are basically about setting up the love story between vampire Bill (Stephen Moyer) and telepathic waitress Sookie (Anna Paquin) in small town Louisiana and about slowly laying down some rules of the show in terms of what vampires can and can't do, and such. There's a couple of other storylines that are generally not too interesting, except for the set up for the main season plot, a whodunit about the mysterious murderer of a number of waitresses associated with vampires who appears to be coming next for Sookie. The season improves greatly over the last few episodes when that plot begins to build steadily and we get introduced to interesting characters like Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) the vampire sheriff of the area (who runs the fantastically named vampire bar Fangtasia).

The second season is a lot more interesting from the start - there's simply more going on, and they don't waste time with the preliminaries which slightly plagued the start of season 1. Immediately there are three potential villains and each of them is not entirely straightforward - we don't know their complete motives - Eric (who well into the season continues to be one of the more interesting characters and best characters on the show), the Reverend Steve Newlin and his Fellowship of the Sun church, devoted to the total destruction of vampires, and Maryanne Forrester who volunteers to help Tara but soon appears to be far from human. In addition to al this, we have a minor whodunit with a couple of bodies found with their hearts tore out, though this mystery is more or less solved by halfway through the season.

Along with (and in no small part due to) Twilight, True Blood seems more or less responsible for the vampire revival in current pop culture (though who knows how long a revival focused on one supernatural creature can last), and not without reason. The show is a serious show in many ways, but it doesn't take itself too seriously (like Lost (at least two seasons in) always feeling a little trashy and featuring comic relief from Sookie's brother Jason (great lines include something like "it's from the bible, or the constitution"(Lost has Hurley I know, but the show takes itself too seriously - but that's a conversation for another time)). Partly because I wanted to catch up in time for the finale, but also partially because it does get you caught up, I found myself wanted to start the next episode right after I finished the previous even late at night (it should be noted that the show does feature my most hated practice of finishing each episode with a needless cliffhanger). I do want to note as well, I appreciate shows with serious seasonal storylines, and I often think it's the best compromise between the limitations of only single episode stories and the too unrestricted series long stories.

Over the course of the two seasons, my opinions of many characters changed, some of the better, some for the worse (it is impossible to stand Sookie at some points in the second season) but that happens with almost any show. It's too early for me to rank True Blood among my list of dramas, but I'm certainly glad to be watching.

48: Gilmore Girls

Honestly, I've never seen more than maybe 15 minutes of a Gilmore Girls episode, and that's being generous - it's probably more like 10. Here's what I know about it, more or less, and forgive me if I'm wrong. The two main characters are a mother and daughter, both named Laureli, but one goes by Rory (the younger I think). The mother, Lauren Graham, had the daughter, Alexis Bleidel when she was young, maybe 17 or so, so she's still relatively young and single herself, and her men are part of the story, one of whom is maybe Luke, owner of a diner, or something. The daughter maybe goes to Yale. I remember once I was at a big box electronics store looking on the DVD racks and I noticed the Gilmore Girls DVDs on the shelf in order, and feeling really weirded out about looking at how Alexis Bleidel has gone from something like 12 to 20, right in a row - like a strange flipbook of her growing up.

So that's the basics. The show was never incredibly broadly popular. But the show is here because of the niche cultural touchstone it has become - even though I've never seen it, I've considered watching it because somehow some things about the show have become pervastive in discussion - its characters fast talking, it's offhand pop-culture references. You can reference that something sounds or is like Gilmore Girls, and it means something - not just specific in that it fits in exact facts, but broader - there is enough that there is a Gilmore Girls way of sounding, or doing something.

Earlier in this list, contrary to the thought process of a couple of my friends, I have not committed to watching at least a little of every show on the list before writing about it - and I still stand by that - it's not essential to what the list is all about - which is the impact on culture rather than simply my favorite shows - and any shows I haven't seen are obviously here because of the impact, not my love of them. That said, for this show and the next (and maybe more, but who can say?) I have actually at points in my life been mildly curious about them, and thus decided to at least watch a few minutes of episodes. My choice of which episode to watch was determined by what was available on the WB website and it was a second season episode in which Lorelai is scheduled to get married to some Max, which obviously doesn't take.

It's still weird for me to see Alexis Bleidel so young, I suppose since most of the roles I've seen her in, she's far older, and she still seems to talk and act as if she is older is this. They really do keep talking (I don't mean that in a bad way - there's nothing wrong with talking) - perhaps the writers get paid by the word Charles Dickens-style. And my first seriously important revelation is that recurring character Kirk, portrayed by Sean Gunn is the guy from the endlessly-running KGB commercials. I'm pleased to say that otherwise though, the show is pretty much, exactly what I expected it to be. That is to say, I show I would have considered watching if I had gotten on the bandwagon at the time, but it's total episode count of 153 makes it extremely prohibitive unless I completely run out of other shows. But, more power to it.

I have ranked the top 68 television shows of the '00s, and will be presenting them, one-by-one, starting with 68 and working down. The rankings are more or less based on the show's popularity, it's cult status, it's critical acclaim, and my personal liking of it, with a heavy dose of arbitrariness added in. If a show was a big enough phenomena, I'll keep it on the list - but if I don't like it, I may drop it some spots. One other caveat - these are primetime shows (I apologize if I put a cable show that wasn't, I thought they were all primetime shows - the main point of this is just that no talk shows, no Colbert and Daily show that would be on otherwise).

49: The Amazing Race

The Amazing Race has an (amazing) distinction in my mind amongst traditional (barely a tradition, I know - but I mean Survivor-style general interest contests - not profession specific contests, or shows where there's no winner) reality shows - it's the only one I'd ever really want to consider being on (maybe the short-lived Mole would be the other exception, maybe) and the only one that I'd really consider watching (without someone else having turned it on).

The first part is because it's essentially an old-style Race Around the World (a la It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Cannonball Run meets reality TV type of genre). There are certainly tough parts that ultimately I might not want to do - especially the particuarly outdoorsy things like going down cliffs, or the freakout Fear Factor-y things like walking through a temple of rats with no shoes on to find a clue. That said, overall it's a pretty amazing deal - you travel across the world to all sorts of crazy locations you'd probably never go to - both cities and scenic locales for free, and more than that they give you money before each leg. You get all sorts of culture, and the events that are not ones I wouldn't like are ones I would love - mapping activities, figuring out where places are in a city and the fastest way to get there, random challenges tailored to unique cultures - eating beatle larvae (I guess that could be considered on the gross out side, but real people eat it, so), following a series of clues written in Australian slang, or playing viking sports, and just straight out crazy things like riding an elephant - making the Amazing Race feel like some sort of bizarre real life combination version of a logic puzzle and an RPG.

The second part is because what normally makes reality TV go is the cattiness of the contestants, and their social interaction, sometimes working together, but more often in the negative planning and conniving against one another, as well as just screaming and yelling. Not that social interaction is devoid of any entertainment value, but the Amazing Race is about the challenges, and the sights - the same things I'd enjoy doing are interesting to watch. Half of the Amazing Race is liking watching a travel show, but with random people competing and a few tedious counting games (ie where contestants have to count some large number of some item, which seems to happen every once in a while). The random signs are fun to - Detours choose teams to pick one of two tasks to complete, and often their choice can be the difference between where they finish, and there is no voting, so the amount for the most part one team can negatively influence another is limited to signs like U-turn, with which one team forces another to do the other Detour option after they had already finished their chosen one. There's solid drama to be had as well from waiting and seeing who finishes in what order on the mat at the check point at the end of each episode, and if the episode will be one of the couple non-elimination legs in which the last team is safe.

That said, I probably still won't watch it, but it's no coincidence it has won every single Outstanding Reality Competition Program Emmy (I know, it's a ridiculous category, but still). Amazing Race has become a veritable institution amongst reality shows with Amazing Race 15 airing this fall.

I have ranked the top 68 television shows of the '00s, and will be presenting them, one-by-one, starting with 68 and working down. The rankings are more or less based on the show's popularity, it's cult status, it's critical acclaim, and my personal liking of it, with a heavy dose of arbitrariness added in. If a show was a big enough phenomena, I'll keep it on the list - but if I don't like it, I may drop it some spots. One other caveat - these are primetime shows (I apologize if I put a cable show that wasn't, I thought they were all primetime shows - the main point of this is just that no talk shows, no Colbert and Daily show that would be on otherwise).

50: Weeds

So apparently, according to Wikipedia, anyway, the MILF phenomenon became popular due to American Pie, which came out in 1999. I'd say, though, that MILF has lasted long enough to mostly be a '00s thing. And no TV show is better representative of the trend than Mary Louise Parker in Weeds, both within the show and outside of it. In advertisements for this year's fifth season of Weeds, Parker was declared the "Hemptress" with photos of her seductively posed in front of a spiderweb, and on the show, the widowed Nancy Botwin (Parker's character) is all about sleeping with dudes, being far more sexualized than traditional (often married) "mom" characters on television, and obsessed over by her college age helper who is of course obviously gay (Maulik Pancholy - who it is absolutely worth nothing plays the EXACT same character on 30 Rock -a neurotic assistant eager to please and in love with his boss - did Tina Fey watch Weeds and determine that was exactly what she wanted? - please don't let this become a common role). Not to mention of course, that the marijuana she produced in the second season of the show was referred to as MILF weed.

MILF angle aside (or included, I suppose), Parker's character is a good one for the most part, and she's a good actress. Overall, however, my feelings on Weeds are quite mixed. I have self-selecting filter when I choose TV shows to watch by virtue of asking friends for recommendations and reading reviews, and thus normally most shows I watch I expect to be, and are, at the least, pretty good. If I had just randomly come across Weeds on TV, it wouldn't have been so bad, but based on the buzz I had heard about, I was rather disappointed in the show itself. It tries to be some sort of meaningful scathing commentary about modern suburbia which I don't think it succeeds it, and its entertainment value is questionable as well. It's not a bad show, it's just an okay show that I expected more from.

What additionally bothers me, is that approximately half the characters are useless. The
Also, I know I mentioned this before, but the satire doesn't really work - I don't need a show to be satire of course, but constantly trying and not working doesn't help. The children are completely annoying, and I never completely got Celia, Nancy's featured frienemy's role in the show.

I've only watched the first two seasons, and although since I'm a completionist, and it's a comedy and thus fast to watch, I will probably get around to watching the rest, but by the time I was getting into the second half of the second season, I really didn't feel like watching the rest, and had to kind of force myself, which is exactly the opposite reaction I expect myself to have towards a tv show that I really get into. And it wasn't a so-afraid-for-the-main-character's-sake fear of watching like in the second season of Dexter, or a funny-but-so-awkward-I'm-afraid-to-watch feeling like the second season of the British Office, but rather a simply, I am not particularly enjoying this show type of feeling, which was honestly very disappointing.

That said, a lot of people seem to like it - it's the most watched show ever on Showtime, and that's kind of an honor, anyway.

I have ranked the top 68 television shows of the '00s, and will be presenting them, one-by-one, starting with 68 and working down. The rankings are more or less based on the show's popularity, it's cult status, it's critical acclaim, and my personal liking of it, with a heavy dose of arbitrariness added in. If a show was a big enough phenomena, I'll keep it on the list - but if I don't like it, I may drop it some spots. One other caveat - these are primetime shows (I apologize if I put a cable show that wasn't, I thought they were all primetime shows - the main point of this is just that no talk shows, no Colbert and Daily show that would be on otherwise).

Last week was the busiest I have been in quite some time so not much an excuse but at least an explanation for my lack of posts in that time period. Anyway, onwards and upwards, and always twirling, twirling towards freedom.

51: Dexter

Sometimes, consciously or not, I put shows near each other on this list that have some relationship to one another. The only two Showtime shows on this list are back to back, and it starts with the one I prefer, but has probably made slightly less of a dent on the pop culture, landscape, Dexter. That said, Dexter has been critically acclaimed and has accrued a sizable cult audience, and for good reason.

Long before I started watching Dexter, which was while the second season was airing (though I didn't watch it as it aired, as I was still behind and didn't have Showtime), I saw ads for the show all over the subway and was intrigued when I found out the premise - it's one of those ideas that sound great for about a minute after you hear it, but usually seems incredibly stupid after that when you realize you need to make thirteen hour long episodes based on it - in this case, a serial killer who kills other serial killers - a serial killer you could root for. It's easy to see how it could get old and fast.

Basically, in order for this premise to work over multiple seasons, a number of things have to all go right, and Dexter manages to pull them off. Most important, Dexter needs to be interesting - a boring and bad Dexter kills the show from day one (I realize you can say this for many main characters, but as much as any of them, Dexter's casting and character is important, particularly as his supporting cast tends to be less important than in many other shows and because the premise is so gimmicky) - and luckily Michael C. Hall is phenomenal and the character itself is relatively complex without being too emo, or chilling - someone you could believe as a serial killer, while also gaining your sympathy.

After each season, I have wondered - how will they go on from here? They've already introduced each of the couple of natural possibilities for Dexter over the course of a season - Dexter has friends, Dexter has enemies, Dexter struggles to maintain his normal life. Each season they've managed to put something together which made the season worth watching - in the third season, Jimmy Smits' character is the component that makes the show different but compelling.

Dexter doesn't really haven't the strongest supporting characters - not that they're bad as much as they're boring - they don't really do a lot - they're just kind of side pieces in the war between Dexter and the serial killer of the season or those trying to catch Dexter - those who are convinced that something's up with him, like Doakes, in the first two seasons, who don't know who Dexter is but are on to him, like Keith Carradine's character in season 2, or who are trying to use him, like Jimmy Smits' character in season 3.

Also, I couldn't write a piece on Dexter without at least mentioning how extremely weird it is for fans that the actors who played Dexter and his sister, Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Carpenter got married last year. Gross.

52: The Osbournes

Ozzy Osbourne was already famous in 2002. He was, of course, the vocalist for the legendary Black Sabbath and had numerous solo hits as well, particularly in the '80s and early '90s, and enhanced his fame amongst a younger generation in the '90s with Ozzfest, which became, I suppose (after apparently Lollapalooza would not allow Ozzy play - the joke was on them, as aside from the one-off revivals, Ozzfest lasted a lot longer and must have made a ton more money), the premier metal festival touring the country, and was incredibly financially successful. He wasn't just a one-hit wonder, or a moderately successful mediocre band, he was a full-fledged legend. And yet, for a certain generation, none of this is what he will be remembered for.

Ozzy already had a certain reputation when The Osbournes debuted. He was one of rock's legendary wildman - his biting off a bat's head, though it reminds unclear if it was alive or dead, is one of rock's craziest myth's that's really true, pissed on an Alamo tribute, getting him banned from San Antonio for about a decade and he got into many a drug-assisted fight, most notably attempting to kill his wife Sharon, which she apparently forgave him for. But a new Ozzy persona essentially came from the show. A softer, more mildly drug-addled Ozzy (he later claimed he refuses to watch episodes of the show because he was stoned the whole time, and though I'm not sure how those two things connect, I would say surely he was better off stoned than on other drugs from his past?) It was a more mature Ozzy who could father his two children (well, two with Sharon who were on the show - the third declined to participate and had to be creepily erased from their MTV lives - even blurred out of photos). His incredibly incoherent mumbling, his constant stream of curses, these have become the images of Ozzy we have now. He was mocked whether in good fun or not in outlets everywhere, as kind of the mumbling, crazy, but relatively safe character who you could laugh at and enjoy his dysfunctional family life vicariously from your own home.

The show was, perhaps improbably, big. It was MTV's highest rated program, and an instant sensation. How else could one explain Kelly Osbourne's inexplicable appearance on the Hot 100 (and #3 in Britain, who had even more love for Kelly's tunes than the US - a duet of her and her pop redoing Sabbath's "Changes" was Ozzy's first chart topper in the UK) with her cover of Papa Don't Preach. It propelled Sharon Osbourne to a short-lived talk show, and later to her current gig as a judge, alongside David Hasselhoff on America's Got Talent. Jack even got in on the act, starring in his own reality show, Jack Osbourne: Adrenaline Junkie, and making an appearance in the prestigious Olsen twins vehicle New York Minute. And of course, Ozzy got a prestigious spot on a World of Warcraft commercial, along with other WoW pitchmen like Stevie Van Zant and Mr. T.

You don't get to be on equal footing with Mr. T and not earn a spot on the list.

53: Heroes

You don't see all that many breakout hits on TV every year. If you're lucky as a network maybe you get one or two and you find a couple of new shows that did just well enough you can keep them around another year and develop a following. At least as often as not, the one hit is one of a couple shows you could have guessed it would come from. And maybe that was the case for Heroes, and I just didn't realize it - but when Heroes garnered ridiculous ratings right from the get go in the fall of 2006, it came out of nowhere to me. Heroes became no less than a phenomenon, becoming the highest ranked new NBC drama in five years, and sparking the minds of serial TV fans everywhere with the possibility for a whole world of theories based on Heroes' mythology.

The Heroes were a bunch of normal people who discovered they had some crazy powers, from the ability to fly, to the ability to read minds, to stop time, to be pretty much invincible, and lots of others. These Heroes were faced with a few intriguing villains, from Sylar, a sociopath who had the power to steal other Heroes' powers after killing them, a mysterious organization in which the man with the Horn Rimmed Glasses who turned out later on to be the not evil and the best character Mr. Bennett and a mysterious organized crime leader known as Linderman who turned out to be later played by Malcolm McDowell. Along with all this, were suggestions of webs of intrigue that the show had in-store - the parents of several of the Heroes had been involved in some type of organization in the past, and each of the mysterious organizations good and evil seemed to have lots of secrets which would slowly spill out as the seasons went on. And it was good.

And then, well, it wasn't. Heroes basically said fuck you to all the promise it had, and started doing stupid things with all the characters, and ruining any intrigue and mystery it had built up - anything that was revealed was anticlimactic - what seemed like a giant mysterious organization for which Mr. Benett worked turned out to be basically run by Stephen Tobolowsky and maybe three others people. Linderman, who could have been a mysterious character carried on through a couple of seasons, was revealed, thoroughly boring, and killed off in a boring manner, while Sylar, who was a great temporary villain, in that, while he was intriguing, there was a limit to the amount he could do without either getting boring and repetitive and/or overpowered, was allowed to keep going, even when he, sensically appeared to be dead. Then of course, there was time travel, which at least as often as not is a sign a show is going downhill (look out, Lost). Every time a character decision was made, you wish it had gone the other way. The second season was terrible, and while sometimes I'm alone on thoughts like this, it was pretty universal in this case - the ratings went down, and fans and critics alike trashed the new direction.

There are very, very few shows I start watching, watch at least a season, and then stop watching the show entirely. I'm a completist and I hate watching something halfway and not finishing it. That said, it was not lightly that I made the decision to stop watching Heroes, starting with the third season. I'm not saying I need to agree with every creative decision made on a show - but if I hate every single one made, it's probably a good idea not to watch anymore. Apparently fans again agreed with me, as the ratings continued to slip further. Heroes was still renewed on the basis of its decent 18-49 numbers, but without an uptick next year, its time may be fading and with good reason.

It's just a sad episode in what could have been, but during that first season alone it earned its place.

54: Friday Night Lights

Okay, so it's not particularly popular - in fact it's come perilously close to cancellation after just about every season that has aired, and not without cause - no one has watched it, though not helped by its constantly moving time slots and relative lack of promotion. And it certainly has a cult, but not a cult like, say Battlestar Galactica. That said, it's been incredibly critically well reviewed, falling all over critics top ten lists after its first season, still its best, and hell, I like it a lot, and it could still desperately use the promotion as it's somehow still on the air, albeit in an incredibly bizarre airing first on DirecTV, and then re-airing on NBC later fashion, so it's here.

The show is loosely based on a movie, which is based on a book, by Buzz Bissinger (I mention his name because if you haven't seen him make a fool out of himself in this episode of Bob Costas Now where he irrationally bashes blogs - also if you watch this - ask yourself why is Braylan Edwards there?). While I have yet to read the book, the movie is not bad, but far inferior to the television show, which pretty much starts at the premise of the movie - football crazed Texas town where the star player - quarterback in the television show, running back in the movie, gets critically injured, ending their respective careers, and there is lots of pressure on the coach to win now even without his star, or risk both the harassment of his family and losing his job.

What it is essentially is kind of a football soap, with, with the glaring exception of a second season plot of a character accidentally murdering (can it still be murder if it's accidental? I don't remember from criminal law, though I suppose I should) someone, most things being within the realm of realism - hard to believe all of these things would happen to the same people over the course of a year, but any one of them could and it wouldn't be too far fetched, or at least I assume not in Texas, since a character would definitely not drop out of high school to travel the rodeo circuit with a boy up north. Characters get together, break up and make up, and Coach Taylor has to deal with every possible scandal a high school coach could possibly deal with - steroids, ineligibility, quarterback controversies, a racist remark by an assistant head coach and many more, all while, along with his wife, just about managing to be the perfect parent.

I wrote a bunch of my opinions about FNL after finishing it (well, catching up to where it is now) so in the spirit of not repeating too much from it, I'll say that as cheesy and just TV as the show is (Coach Taylor seems to have just the right words to say at a critical point in every episode - whether to motivate his wife, drive his players, or apologize to his daughter), it does work because the characters are good, and the actors portraying them do a good job, generally, and I suppose you get that warm tingly exciting feeling when say, Matt and Julie are getting back together, which is why you need TV sometimes I suppose, cause if it were The Wire, Matt would get killed and Julie would be addicted to heroin.

But do do the show a favor and actually watch it, it needs as many viewers as it can get.

55: The Hills

There is no show on this list whose demographic is more opposite my won than the Hills. It's aimed at I don't know, I assume teenage to twenty something girls, but even the girls who it's aimed at aren't the ones with whom I usually associate (I don't say that as a judgment - I've watched plenty of bad TV, just an observation). I can't think of anyone I know who watches The Hills, or has even watched it at all, as far as I know. Yet, it seems to have a been a bit of a big deal, and I feel I'd be remiss not to give it a shout out, to its demographic as well (Yeah, Laguna Beach is counting in this entry as well - one's a spin off of their other, and even if they were big enough to deserve two entries, which I'm not sold on, I definitely wouldn't have enough to say about both of them).

The only thing I know about The Hills without looking it up is the names of the girls (or at least some of them) - Lauren Conrad, Heidi, Whitney, Audrina whose names I suppose have just showed up too many places for me to avoid. That, and they live somewhere in southern california and at least one of them works in fashion and I think one has a boyfriend named Spencer.

I honestly have as little to say about this as I do about anything else on this list. I suppose I should view at least one episode before I say this (maybe it's creepily addictive - it's happened before) but it doesn't seem like the type of show I'd normally watch and I don't really understand the appeal (I don't mean this in an old-person-luddite I don't understand people and their technology these days - I'm not saying it as a putdown or in a sarcastic manner - I really would like to know what people like about it and what makes it a big hit). I once had a drunken conversation with a girl at a bar somewhere and at some point she started talking about Laguna Beach and I realized I had nothing to say on the matter (a rarity with me on TV, clearly).

What I will say, is, and this is true about a lot of what's on TV, but perhaps none more than this one on this list - The Hills straddles that strange line between what is really "reality" in reality TV. There's actually a whole section of their wikipedia page devoted to how "real" the show is (I know I keep using it in quotes, but I feel like it's apt that way - it's obviously real without quotes in that it exists and is not imaginary). It's more real than scripted TV, in that, well, there's no script, but it's not entirely real either, even more so than just by employing selective editing - while the dialogue is not written out beforehand, scenes are planned out and set up by MTV, and Heidi's wedding was merely symbolic and didn't actually happen. Real life is clearly too boring to be in TV, but I suppose it's cheaper to have people play themselves, or they're just not good enough actors, or I don't even know.

But yeah, it's kind of a big deal. So here it is.

56: Monk

I believe Monk is the only original USA program on my list, so I'll use this entry to talk both about Monk and my theory on USA shows. Unlike TNT, USA had a little success with original programming before the 21st century, but it really wasn't all that much, more or less limited to the extremely mild successes of La Femme Nikita and Duckman (also, while looking through original USA programming I discovered the ridiculous sounding Lost on Earth, which will have to be a subject for a future entry). Monk, which debuted in 2002, more or less has laid the blueprint for many of USA's future successes (and seemingly beginning successes) such as Psych, Burn Notice, Out of Sight and Royal Pains.

Monk, of course, is the story of Tony Shalhoub as an obsessive-compulsive detective, who worked for the police, but suffered a breakdown after his wife was killed in a car bombing, and then only now has gotten his life together enough to help out the police on particularly troubling cases - assisted of course by his two assistants, first, the vastly inferior Sharona, and then the superior Natalie. He is brought in by the police chief played by Ted Levine who still creepily reminds me of Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs, who is assisted by the incredibly bumbling sidekick Randy Disher (about whom the wikipedia article lists a bizarre character detail which apparently appears in a few episodes I haven't seen in which Disher is part of a band "The Randy Disher Project" which has recorded such songs as "Don't Need a Badge").

All USA shows, I had always thought followed some type of formula (since been edited from not all - I've never see 4400, and there are others, but several of the shows at least). They're mostly non serial, with a small touch of recurring plot in every episode, and they are all some middle ground between straight drama and comedy - some are more dramatic than others, but they don't take themselves too seriously (Burn Notice is a lot more serious than Psych but there's plenty of levity there that might well not be if it was produced by another network). It makes these shows generally ideal for watching late at night, or for a Sunday afternoon marathon, but less likely to convince me to marathon through a season on DVD. My theory was comfirmed wholeheartedly when I came up an interesting New York Times article, which basically talks about how the new head of USA (new as of a few years ago) wanted to keep up in following the success of USA's biggest hit, Monk, with shows that aren't, you know, too dark. As hinted at in my prior Burn Notice parenthesis - Burn Notice was originally to be set in Newark, but USA wanted them to lighten it up a little - and Miami seemed a hell of a lot more appealing to them. This approach seems to me to have both positive and negative consequences - there's sometimes when it's nice to walk a show with a little bit of comedy, a little bit on the lighter side, when you're not in the mood for say, a Six Feet Under. On the other hand, it runs the risk of not making a show as it good as it can be, and probably making it difficult to make great shows (certainly not impossible - some shows may be pitch perfect at this type, as they are - it's just when you go into a script already looking to tinker it a certain one, I think it's often to its detriment).

Either way, Monk was the originator of this whole school of programming, and it certainly gets credit for that, as well it should.

57: The Closer

Celebrity marriage requires a careful balance - changes in the level of fame can either strengthen or disturb a marriage (or at least my image of them, which is really all that matters) - sure, at one time Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers were equal, but Tom Cruise had to shoot higher (Well, Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers were never equal. But you get the point). For years, though, the bedrock fo the Kevin Bacon-Kyra Sedgwick marriage was that Kevin Bacon was a successful actor and star of his own parlor game, while Sedgwick was essentially a relatively anonymous actress whose main claim to fame may have been her role as love interest in Phenomenon. That all changed surprisingly not long after 2005 when TNT debuted The Closer (sharing names with a very short-lived Tom Selleck show where he was an ad exec), when soon she has risen, to possibly equal status with Kevin - he's still more outright famous from his long career of movie work, but what has he done lately? The marriage, at least from what we know, doesn't seem to have suffered for it, but Sedgwick's now a star.

This was not just a success story for Kyra, but for original programming on TNT. Sure, now TNT has no problem showing hundreds of commercials for a new show, and has its share of successes, but before 2005, there were extremely few original series shown on TNT, and none of them successful. They included the short run of Witchblade, and the even shorter run of Bull, which featured Stanley Tucci and a pre-Law & Order Elisabeth Rohm, and which I'm fairly certain my parents and I were the only people who watched.

The Closer stars Sedgwick as Branda Johnson - the suave and ultra-competent head of the Homicide unit in the Los Angeles, who at the beginning of the show, is just starting in this role, having come through the police departments in both Washington DC and her hometown Atlanta, from which she sports a notable southern accent. In the beginning, her underlings are weary of the new chief with the down home manner, but as she proves her meddle, they learn to trust her. She is, of course, called the Closer for her ability to close cases, which she has done with aplomb in the few epiodes I've seen, and commercials for the show show people so ready to confess to her, that regular civilians on the street seem eager to admit minor moral sins to her out of nowhere. Thoughout all of her case solving of course, she tries to forge a personal life as well, which eventually culminates with her marriage to an FBI agent played by Jon Tenney, who is best known perhaps for being married to far-more-famous-than-him Teri Hatcher. Plus, her boss is JK Simmons, who I would watch doing anything (yes, I'm not sure what you're thinking, but anything).

Also, it should be mentioned - maybe I'm missing something, but as far as I can think of Kyra Sedgwick is the first and only female lead in a procedural. Sure, nearly every procedural has a female second-in-command, but that's hardly the same thing. Maybe one can argue Mariska Hargitay is co-lead in SVU, but that's equal at best. Sedgwick is far and away, front and center the clear lead of her show, so that's worth something in female groundbreaking firsts.

And from these simple and humble beginnings we get what is c urrently highest rated series ever on ad-supported cable (not HBO). Amazing.

58: Scrubs

I have a theory that at any time during the day, a Scrubs episode is on. I knew it was syndicated on a couple of different local channels here, and on Comedy Central, but only very recently did a I randomly come across it on MTV. Also it never seems like it's shown one episode at a time - it's always paired up with at least one more episode for an hour block. I had never seen any Scrubs and honestly didn't know much about it at all until after the fourth season or so, at which point it entered into syndication, and I watched two episodes a day until I was just about all caught up. I then started watching the show when it was on, and combined with reruns drove me to a point where I had about a year period where I didn't want to see Scrubs ever again. I've now just about come back into the middle territory.

I think Scrubs is similar in a lot of ways to How I Met Your Mother, which partly explains why I've put them relatively close together. Scrubs has been on a few seasons longer, which explains why it's ranked higher. However, Scrubs is another show which I like overall, but does things that drive me crazy that prevent me from ranking it up as a great show.

Scrubs gets credit for being one of the first single camera sitcoms of the current era -predating Arrested Development, The Office and 30 Rock among others (to be fair Malcolm in the Middle did it first and was one of the first sitcoms to incorporate tons of Family Guy-style flashbacks and dream sequences. And, yeah, it's funny. The characters are wacky, and a lot of those sequences inside JD's head are good, and the wackiness which could easily go too far and become intolerable, is usually reigned in, and a welcome part of the show.

My nitpicky problems of course, like in How I Met Your Mother, come from simple things that are relatively small but for some reason I can't always just ignore. The show oozes in way more sentimentality than I'm comfortable with. Every episode has to contain two or three storylines that dovetail together to have some GREATER MEANING that JD will narrate for us throughout the episode, reaching a climax towards the end "Whether, it's making a new friend (shows two characters), facing up to your fears (shows another character) or dealing with family (shows another character) life is about making all the little sacrifices that make you better for it in the end" (or something like that, more or less).

Some of the side characters are used too much - Ted and the Todd in particular, and frankly, Dr. Cox is just a dick. Yeah, I know - he's a dick on the outside because he has trouble dealing with emotions and whatnot, and really inside he's a huge teddy bear who just cares too much about helping people and doing things right. I'm sorry, I know I'm suppose to believe that. And believe me, I know JD is very annoying and probably somewhat deserves what he gets by constantly going back to Dr. Cox even though Cox is constantly hostile to him. And when I first started watching the show, I bought into that, and I laughed away at Cox. But it's just so fucking mean and it really did wear on me after watching for a while. There's making fun of someone, there's giving someone a hard time, and there's harassing an employee constantly during every moment of his employment.

Anyway, yeah, I guess I seem to manage to look past that to award it this prestigious spot.

59: The Bachelor/Bachelorette

The Bachelor may not have been the first program to offer a way to find a mate on national television by slowly winnowing out potential mates, one or so each episode, until left with a final choice of two, but it seemed to be to have the most legs over the long term, and perhaps the most influence to other shows of its format. This of course has become uberpopular, particularly on VH1 - from Flavor of Love, to Rock of Love, to I Love New York. Even with all this, without having looked ip, the only person I know associated with the bachelor is Trista Rehn, who was the runner up the first season of the Bachelor and became the Bacholette (yeah, that counts as part of the same show entry - it's the same show with four letters added to the end) and had her wedding broadcast on TV. That's it - one person's name I remember. From just the Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire special from a couple years before Bachelor started I still somehow remember both participants - Rick Rockwell and Darva Conger. I had to look up on wikipedia to see who the host of The Bachelor was - Chris Harrison - and the name didn't even ring a bell (a couple of the bachelors have more familiar names and I remember in hindsight I knew former Giants backup QB (and former Florida Gator) Jesse Palmer was Bachelor).

When I remember best, aside from people, is the rose ceremony, during which, at the end of each episode. The Bachelor would present a rose to each contestant he intended to keep - slowly going through one by one until it was down to two, raising the tension to see who he would be eliminating. Those ceremonies became ripe fodder for mockery - the definitive incredibly over-serious moment of tension which probably went on to represent the show more than anything else.

While others did it before, the Bachelor became the definitive love reality show, and it's a wonder that the idea even took this long to put together - you have all the cattiness and competitive spirit of Survivor with the mystery element of love thrown in the mix (Survivor got enough legs from the love stories and potential love stories that emerged in its midst - who doesn't remember Rob and Amber?). It's a combination that seems to provide at least 14 seasons worth of intrigue. People like love, and people like to see other people fight with each other, and if the Bachelor was never as big as certain other shows at any one time, it's managed to grind out successfully season after season for almost the entire decade which is definitely woth something.

60: How I Met Your Mother

I have a great love/hate relationship with How I Met Your Mother - which sits around here on the clist, because it has a little bit of each of my arbitrary criteria, but not a lot - it's kind of popular, it's kind of critically liked, it's kind of notable pop-culture wise, and and I kind of like it.

How I Met Your Mother is a retro-sitcom in some ways - when all the cool kids (and most of the better shows) are going to single camera sitcoms without laugh tracks, How I Met Your Mother has the courage to be multiple camera and with a laugh track. While it's not quite Two and a Half Men, it's far more like a traditional sitcom than just about any show I've regularly watched in the last decade or so.

There are several very distinctive How I Met Your Mother-isms. There's a running gimmick where they'll all be sitting at the bar and someone will say something and the gang will go around each making a remark while they all laugh at each other. Also, How I Met Your Mother tries desperately to produce, well, I don't really have a good word for it - we'll say "things (it means absolutely written down but something one (me) would say in conversation - examples - "is that a thing?", "I didn't know that was a thing") - terms and quotes that people who are watching might repeat in conversation. I'll explain what I mean. In one episode, some guy goes on a date with Robin and gets her to sleep with him by getting naked when she goes to the bathroom - something he calls the "Naked Man." The characters say "naked man" at least a dozen more times in the episode. There's another episode based around the concept, that when someone tells someone about another character's annoying habit, they had never noticed before, a sound like glass breaking goes off in their head, and they can't help noticing it from then on. Many of the gimmicks revolve around Barney, played by Neil Patrick Harris, who, I would not be writing a fair entry about the show, if I didn't mention is by far the best part of the show. Such gimmicks include the "crazy/hot scale" in which to go out with a girl who is crazy, she has to be at least as hot as she is crazy, and the "lemon law," a principle by which you can walk out during the first five minutes of a day. There's at least 10 more similar ploys which are repeated and over and over through episodes.

I've complained about the show a lot to my friends who love it, and I could on for a while, but I'll make it short. The gimmick is terrible - in my mind, it both kills of a lot of the tension when you learn that certain characters aren't his mother, and the weakest part of the show, albeit a minor part is the narration and the flashforward sequences (well I guess the actual time sequences if the show is just a flashback, but easier to think about this way) with Bob Saget talking to his kids, which they have mostly gotten rid of (of course there is still the question of why Ted would have a different voice 20 years in the future). The narration and the show is also filled with all these life-lessons which I hate - if the show wants to impart a message it can do it through
Anyway, I can go on for a while, and my criticism might sound really nit-picky but it's the kind of little things that can drive me up a wall.

It's a funny show - it just irritates me because I think it could be a better show, and it will have to top out as being good, and never great.

61: Prison Break

Prison Break, my friends, is a tale of the potential problems with serial TV. In fact, Prison Break itself sat on the shelf until the rise of serial TV, mostly at the hands of Lost and 24, when Fox decided to ride the trend and found it sitting on the back burner. It was a brilliant idea for serial show - a man's brother is framed and put into prison for a crime he didn't commit - the man must have himself incarcerated in the prison for the sole person of breaking his brother out. It's compelling, and what on earth can be more exciting than a prison break and fighting for the innocence of a wrongly convicted man when everyone's out to get them? (Why do you think the Fugitive was so successful?) Audiences thought so also - turning out in droves, initially, anyway.

The problem with serial TV is this - you have an initial premise, and that's great - trying to get out of prison. And if you know it's going to be a certain amount of time - like a miniseries, or one of those british series with six episodes - you can plan for that - you have four hours in which to work out your plot from start to finish, more or less and work from there. But when you're making American TV, if people like it - studios want to make more of it, more sequels, more seasons, whatever. Basically, the choice your faced with is, do you drag out the show and make it potentially take five incredibly dull and slow seasons to break out of prison, or do you break out after the first few episodes, or first season, and realize that the whole reason d'etre of the show is finished with, and you have to invent something else compelling, that will likely seem hackneyed or forced if you can think of something good enough. Plus, never knowing when you're going to be cancelled, you want to always be in a position to end it. In addition from the resolution of the main plot, you have another potential complication. In shows like this, you want to be able to kill characters off, and make other major plot-affecting decisions - but once you make those decisions, if you have to go on for seasons after, it can be very limiting - if you've already killed off a character, you might wish you hadn't after you realize there's more than three episodes left and you could really use him back.

Prison Break suffered this fate. It was originally planned as a 14 part miniseries, until Fox decided they want a series. They had originally planned the series for 13 episodes - when people liked it, 9 more were ordered, leading to them to make the first season finish with the brothers and others escape from prison. Then of course the next season was a grand Fugitive-style chase from federal agents (including my East Meadow hometown native William Fichtner), followed again by a year attempting to get out of a new and different prison. After the first season, the second season remained strong, but as seem to happen often in these serial shows, by the third season viewer interest was clearly waning - I don't know why exactly, but maybe being caught in a second prison seemed repetitive. Anyway, they got one more season that drew even worse raitings, and that was about it. But frankly, in my mind, that's impressive - a show built on a simple premise, that was used up by the end of the first season manages to go on for four years - worth applauding in and off itself.

I long debated watching Prison Break and maybe I will one day. Until then it will have to make do with appearing on this prestigious list.

62: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

In my mind, this show, and a scripted counterpart which will appear later on the list, were the two shows that were most important in the opening up of television to gay characters and personalities. Obviously there had been gay characters before, and there was niche gay television starting around the same time, but Queer Eye became a national sensation, and took gay stereotypes of being better at fashion and such and turned them on TV into a badge of honor - these gays were better than you at fashion, culture and style, and they were going to use their gay style powers to help you get women, or at the least not look like a total slob. Of course, naturally this led to a backlash - you know, not all gays really are great with fashion - there are plenty of gay slobs, just like you and me, but I think overall, it helped spread positive images of gay culture more than hurt it, and I think the reception was as such.

The set up was simple and brilliant in a way - you take the makeover show, which had been a popular stable of channels like Bravo and TLC before and after (What Not to Wear, Trading Spaces (which is not on the list, it counts as the makeover show - I debated putting it on, as there was a time I totally forgot about where it was big, but I decided I was finished adding shows), Extreme Home Makeover) and made it into a gimmicky team - each Queer Eye had a different specialty - fashion, interior design, food and drink, grooming, and culture (I never really got what the culture guy did, seemed to me like they were really stretching because they wanted to have five instead of four). Voila - audiences loved it.

At the height of the show's power, the five (Queer Eyes? Though I guess there's ten of those...) were huge celebrities appearing on talk shows, endorsing products, but remained on those groups that are far more famous as a group than as individuals (see how many Boyz II Men members you can name). It was big enough that Comedy Central came out with a parody show "Straight Plan for the Gay Man" which predictably quickly flopped. It was big enough it attracted a lawsuit from Queer Eye's Pete Best equivalent, Blair Boone, who was culture guy for two episodes, before being replaced by Jai Rodriguez, for not being paid for the entire season he had contracted to do. It was big enough that it prompted the making of a very short-lived spin-off Queer Eye for the Straight Girl.

It wasn't easy for the five to come back after the program eventually lost steam - as much as people enjoyed it, there was definitely a serious air of novelty to it. The default for next job after a project like this is pretty must hosting another cable TV show. After, the final episode, if it was a movie, there would be that text on the screen that comes on over a show of each guy's face during a defining moment from the show telling you what they went on to do. Ted Allen,the food and wine guy, hosts a couple of food network shows. Jai Rodriguez, the culture guy, did some theater, and hosts shows on the Style channel (not sure I knew that was a channel) and Animal Planet. Carson Kressley, fashion guy, hosts his show on Lifetime. Thom Filicia, interior design guy, hosts his on Style network, and the odd man out is Kyan Douglas, the grooming guy, who somehow didn't get a show out of it.