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).

37: Flight of the Conchords

Finally, we again get to a show that I genuinely love. A cult show it certainly is - there's no chance more people watch it than Dancing with the Stars - but it would be silly to underestimate it's popularity - from firsthand experience I can tell how hard it is to get tickets to a Flight on the Conchords show - I got completely shut out the first time they came around New York before being able to land some while constantly hitting "refresh" on ticketmaster the next time a year later.

Flight of the Conchords is, of course, about two New Zealanders just come to America, New York in particular (I admit I have a bias towards shows that take place in New York) to succeed as a novelty folk duo. The show stars the duo - Brett and Jemaine as well as their manager Murray, who also works at the New Zealand consulate and their one fan, Mel who is creepily obsessed with them.

Flight achieves something very difficult with its songs - the rare ability to make songs that are both funny and that you actually want to listen to them over and over again. Songs like "If You're Into It" and "Business Time" actually make me laugh out loud multiple times, even when I hear the song again, but I want to listen to them because they're actually good songs, not just because they're humorous. (The funniest song might be one of the few in their repertoire not actually in the show, "Jenny." I can grant I suppose that the overall total quality of the songs maybe slipped a slight, slight bit from first to second season – but there remained some absolute classics - “Hurt Feelings” and “Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor” included.

Brett and Jemaine play a very strange role of not being truly stupid characters but rather being absurdly naive, which makes the whole show in some kind of surreal universe. In Flight of the Conchords – there is no straight man – all five main characters who appear in just about every episode, and all of them are suitably wacky – Murray, the manager is not entirely unreasonably compared to Ricky Gervais's David Brent from the Office – truly incompetent – though with his own mannerisms – the best may be the chart he made to show the progress of his friendship with Brett and Jemaine. Mel, Flight's one fan, makes bizarre comments about wanting to sleep with the two of them, although she is married to former professor Doug, who apparently she seduced as a student (fun fact: Doug's bizarre series of credits in addition to Doug include a recurring role on Damages and a fairly important role in the journalism plot of the fifth season of the Wire along with several commercials). The duo make a show of always both trying to be nice to her and carefully avoiding her - one major plot line involves her being jealous when two new people joint the fan club. Dave, the pair's best friend and a pawn shop owner, is a bit off himself and often has trouble comprehending where they are from – on Brett's budding romance with an Australian woman – he remarks “You're from Austria and you're from somewhere no one's ever heard of.”

Of course, making fun of New Zealand and the rivalry between New Zealand and Australia are ongoing themes throughout episodes. Ultimately it's bone dry humor that gains steam upon repeated viewings - many of the laugh lines almost take a second or two of silence to really pick up on.

Flight of the Conchords is one of my favorite comedies of the decade, and that alone should earn it its spot.

Minor complaint:

There is nothing more irritating when watching How I Met Your Mother than when they do the type of jokes where Ted says something on screen and then future Ted/narrator Bob Saget pauses the scene makes a comment saying the opposite - example - in yesterday's episode Ted said something like "I have a feeling things are going to work out," to which future Ted after pausing commented, "No they won't."

These jokes are incredibly unfunny and an entire waste of time. Please stop doing them.

-Andrew

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).

38: Dancing with the Stars

Celebreality was certainly one of the biggest genres to emerge out of the 2000s (or subgenres - out of the more encompassing reality genre). Starting with shows like The Surreal Life, which laughed at them, and reveled in their outright weirdness, these shows generally employed the Dist of D celebrities - maybe even F celebrities sometimes if that were a real term - is Shifty Shellshock, the lead singer of Crazy Town, and participant in Celebrity Rehab's first season -really a D celebrity? (really?)

Now I don't mean to suggest that Dancing with the Stars had A list celebrities - far from it (people are really clamoring to see more Rocco diSpirito on TV after the failure of The Restaurant (along with the failure of the actual restaurant featured on that show)) - but it changed two things - one, the show wasn't geared along the premise of simply laughing at celebs and thinking about how their life is pretty pathetic - sure it could be funny to see some of these people dancing ridiculous moves that their body types did not support, but in a far more innocuous way than laughing at someone on celebrity rehab. Second, there was one area where it really did get more or less A-list celebrities - the sports world - sure Mel B isn't exactly out there tearing up the music charts (though some of their music celebrities were legit - Mario has had hits through most of the decade) but Floyd Mayweather Jr. is generally considered one of the best fighters of the last decade - Emmitt Smith and Jerry Rice are the all-time leaders in rushing yards and receiving yards respectively and Jason Taylor and Warren Sapp are defensive stars in their own right. The Olympians they've used aren't random shot putters or equestrian stars (oxymoron?) that no one knows - they're gold medal winners from the big events that people actually care about - Kristi Yamaguchi, Maurine Greene, Shawn Johnson.

Now, I've been wrong before many, many times about shows. So maybe it's not a surprise that I was completely shocked by the success of Dancing with the Stars. Still, I don't think I was the only one - when Survivor came out - whether I liked it or not, I recognized it as something kind of new - and even when Apprentice came out I could understand what was buzzworthy - but with Dancing with the Stars - it seemed like a tiny twist on a similar theme - getting together retread celebrities for some random competition - something that could maybe hold its own on Saturday nights during summers but nothing groundbreaking. And yet the show was a giant, stupendous hit, and has more or less continued being a fairly big hit for almost five years now. I have total faith that its run is slowing now, but we're already far past being really impressive territory.

This show is the reason that networks continue to take those concepts that make you say "who greenlighted this?" and actually put them together ("Here's the pitch: We take the two things Americans love most - celebrities and dancing) . Sure, nine out of ten of them may bomb completely, but if one out of ten gets you a Dancing with the Stars, it's something you'd be foolish to ignore.

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).

39: The Shield

I honestly know very little about The Shield as well, though a fairly different show from Will and Grace. It always seemed like it had some things common with 24 - not so much that the shows were similar but that as there are certain things that give 24 its essential, uh, 24ness - things that you can count on watching any given episode or any given season, I felt like, based solely on commercials and what I read, there was a certain Shieldness, a style and specific things I could count on in any given episode of the Shield. That starts and ends with Michael Chiklis and Vic Mackey. From my made up assumptions about the show, though I think this one is true - he is the show - of course there are other characters, but like Jack Bauer, it's really about him, more than it is a true ensemble - he is the one character, without which it wouldn't be the same show.

Before The Shield, all I knew about Michael Chiklis was that he had starred as The Commish, though I had absolutely no clue what the hell The Commish was (and when I found out it was totally nothing like what I imagined it to be (which was kind of a Shield Jr.) - a comedy-drama about a small town police chief in upstate New York which lasted an amazing five seasons) (this is not to mention his work on the thankfully brief sitcom Daddio where he played a stay-at-home Dad.) The one thing about the Shield - it all seems so hard boiled - I don't think I ever saw Chikless speaking in any other tone between different grades of yelling. I've thought about watching it, the reviews I've seen have been mostly favorable. I don't want to read too specific into the plot details because I might potentially watch it, but basically it seems like it's pretty much about cops who do whatever it takes to put criminals away - even if that means resorting to illegal methods (you don't say!) and in turn conduction other illegal activities such as selling drugs or operating with organized crime.

The Shield more or less put FX on the map in terms of original shows. FX is up there with the USAs and the TNTs in terms of quantity and success of original series but it all started with The Shield. I'm honestly hesitant to read too much because I might want to watch it one day, but we'll just assume that Vic Mackey does a lot of bad things, some of which are in the ultimate goal of good things, and that a whole bunch of criminals and other cops try to take him down and possibly succeed by the end of the series.

It was definitely kind of a big deal though - it wasn't necessarily ground-breaking in its idea, but it was consisted lauded for its real-life portrayal of LA street gangs. Seems like good enough to make the list.

Someone needs to tell Train that they have no business with a hit single.

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).

40: Will and Grace

To be honest, and probably not all that surprisingly, I didn't see that much Will and Grace on TV. I saw it as more or less an ally of Friends in the war between Friends and Seinfeld to control NBC's Must See Thursday night TV, and with Will and Grace coming on the year Seinfeld was gone, it was clear who had won - the newer, younger Kobe (Friends) would stay and be the king of Thursday night, while the older, veteran Shaq (Seinfeld) would be traded (well, it finished, and of its own accord really - could have gone on for as long as it wanted). Friends was assembling allies now that Thursday night was its own and saw a potential strong ally in Will and Grace, and indeed Will and Grace held onto a Must See TV Thursday spot longer than anyone would besides Friends and Seinfeld (until maybe the Office beats it out eventually, maybe (and also is it as amazing to anyone else how long Thursday night has managed to last as the premier comedy programming night for NBC - wikipedia even has an entry about it - in almost thirty years, even as the shows changed, the night has lived on - and we all know about the legendary trouble NBC had during the 90s and early '00s NBC had trying to fill the night out around Seinfeld, Friends, and yes, later Will and Grace - sure we remember Jesse and Veronica's Closet - but what about Leah Remini in "Fired Up" with a winning tagline like "First she got fired, then she got fired up." or "Battery Park" starring Elizabeth Perkins of minor Weeds fame, about which all wiki has to say is that it's about a police department and that "Seven episodes are registered with the United States Copyright Office." and Leap of Faith, the midseason replacement for Inside Schwartz, which apparently stars a bunch of kind of famous people - Sarah Paulson, Tim Meadows, House's Lisa Edelstein, Veronica Mars/Party Down's Ken Marino, and Regina King and yet the best info IMDB has about the show is the User Comment tagline, "Finding this show funny would be a HUGE Leap of Faith!!!" along with lines from that comment such as - " I tried to be as open-minded and receptive as possible, but I think Schindler's List had more humor than this piece of schlock.")

So, back onto Will and Grace. Way back in my entry on Queer Eye I mentioned that Queer Eye and another show paved the way for gays into the television mainstream, and Will and Grace is indeed, that show. I honestly don't have all that much to say about it - like Queer Eye, it got mixed reception from the gay community - yay for putting gay characters at the center of a show on network TV, nay be still containing many of the same stereotypes, blah, blah, blah. When it started I didn't think there was any chance of it becoming the monster it became,
further devaluing the Emmys by not only winning one for best series, but also becoming one of three shows (impress your friends: Golden Girls and All in the Family are the others) where all the principals of the show - in this case, Debra Messing, Eric McCormack, Sean Hayes and Megan Mullaly all won at least one Emmy for acting.

Other than that, was is there really - it was a sitcom, it did especially well amongst the 18-49 crowd, it was the first TV success for Debra Messing after the failure of Ned and Stacey and the even more short-lived Prey (I think I'm the only one who even saw an episode of that show.) It also had to survive the incredibly annoying voice of Megan Mullaly (who has now been cast on my beloved Party Down, but I have faith that Rob Thomas will redeem her).

Also, apparently it has, what I find a really strange, and kind of depressing final episode. Apparently Will and Grace stop living together and don't talk for a period of about fifteen years while their respective kids grow up. Now, at the end of course, their kids somehow meet and marry, leading to a reconciliation, but still, that's fifteen years best friends and roommate didn't talk to each other. That qualifies as depressing in my book.

That's about all, #40.

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).

41: Firefly



Gone too soon - that can be said about many, many shows, but on this list, this is the probably the show I feel second or third strongest about it (yes, I can't decide whether I would have preferred this or another show on the list to continue more), and the other shows at least lasted more than one season. As I seem to have counted Buffy as more of a 90s show and Dollhouse is not making any list (I haven't seen it yet, so I can't comment on its quality, but certainly hasn't been all that successful or acclaimed), I can talk about my love for all things Joss Whedon in this entry.

Firefly is a member of an underused genre, the space western (probably joining Cowboy Bebop in the elite ranks). A crew of outlaws, the leaders of whom fought for the wrong side in a few years old civil war, traveling around the world fulfilling missions for hire, but not without helping out a few down and out people along the way. It's got all the Whedon staples - there's two ongoing on and off love interests (Captain Mal Reynolds and Inara, the companion and engineer Kaylee and doctor Simon Tam), strong female characters, twisting traditional things on their head - companion Inara, essentially a high class prostitute, is treated as in a position great respect, and the show is fulled with very distinctive dialogue, including some chinese because I think somewhere in the back story China was supposed to have played an important role in getting into space.

Although most episodes contained a single main plot, as in Buffy, the world of Firefly was rife with possibilities - exploring the background laid out within the universe - the civil war that had made Mal an outlaw, further the back stories of each of the characters, making Shepherd Book interesting by actually revealing whatever it was that was so mysterious about him.

To be honest, it took me a couple of episodes to really get into Firefly - I had to get a feel for the different characters and just the way the show goes - which I think is the way I felt about the beginning of Buffy as well, but when I got into it, I was hooked. The second half just flew by - even though the show was not particularly serial, each time one ended I wanted to see another one, and of course, as happens with a one season show, just when you're right in it, it's over.

I liked Serenity, I know some people who didn't. Basically, my view was that I'd take anything that was more Firefly, and it was, so I liked it, but it certainly does things that probably would not have happened had the show been renewed.

So there will always be a dream of what could have been. Alas, all I can do is wear a browncoats T-shirt and award it a place on the list for the cult value it generated and wonder if Fox gave Dollhouse a second year, why not Firefly?