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.

63: Law and Order: SVU

"In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories."

It doesn't quite have the same ring as the title sequence for the original Law & Order - it's clearly SVU's attempt to make it sound as similar as possible while mentioning sexually based offenses. And yeah, I know the original's been on the whole decade also, but I think of it as more of a '90s show, and SVU is close enough to cover for both of them. And while I like original recipe better, I've watched plenty of SVU in my day as well, and it's one of the few shows here (I could count, but there's only one other offhand I can think of) that's been on the entire decade, so it has that going for it.

Law & Order has its own place in the canon of procedurals for its focus on stories over characterization, and its relative lack of ridiculous amounts of empathy on the part of every detective towards every single case, though this is far less in SVU than in the original, particularly with Elliot Stabler, Chris Meloni's character who goes through the show constantly angry and enraged at every criminal who prays on woman, yelling his way towards justice. Far more restrained are Richard Belzer's John Munch (who holds some sort of record for appearing as the same character played by the same actor in eight different TV shows) and Ice T's Fin Tutuola. Stadler's partner Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) is somewhere in the middle, and B.D. Wong is generally cool and collected as one would expect as the squad's psychiatrist who often gives reports of what's mentally wrong with the perps, and Dann Florek as Captain Cragen, the unit's captain, who is relatively boring and who served for the first three years on the original Law & Order before S. Epatha Merkerson started her never ending reign.

As I wrote when talking about Without a Trace, I normally find procedurals tolerable but not incredibly enjoyable. Law & Orders, however are different (at least original and SVU - I still haven't really gotten into CI - maybe when I'm done with the others I'll make another attempt). The genius technique used on USA and TNT when showing episodes in a row in syndication (I'm sure this is used on other shows as well but it doesn't work on me) is that one episode will smoothly blend into the next without a commercial in between, and with only about ten seconds of credits to turn it off before the classic L&O cold open where a random couple of people are talking about something totally irrelevant and run into a body or a rape victim, and it's too late - I need to know what happened. Perhaps it is not so coincidentally then, that SVU draws huge ratings in syndication.

Someone told me once of a comedy routine they saw with the comedian making fun of all the stock characters in Law & Order (I haven't seen the routine and don't know the name of the comedian - I wish I could credit the comedian for a great idea) and it's really true and part of the reason to watch, rather than something that turns me off - the deadpan medical examiner - the scummy witness unloading his truck who doesn't have time to stop while answering the detectives' questions - the rookie beat cop at the scene of the crime who says something stupid which earns him a harsh response from the detectives - the judge who snarls at both attorneys and makes a witty comment as he suppresses the use of evidence - and many more. And of course I can't wait to see whether the case has been "ripped from the headlines" as the commercials love to say - what real life incident the episode is based on, as well as what crazy celebrity (or non-celebrity niche TV actors) will show up as defendants or lawyers or witnesses. It should get tired, but it never does, no show has been able to master the set up as well as Law & Order yet.

64: The Weakest Link

A handful of the programs on this list are there because, while they didn't have great staying power, they seemed especially dominant over a period of time. The Weakest Link is on the list because it was everywhere, but this low because it was only everywhere for an extremely short period of time.

If you were cognizant during the spring of 2001, you remember the Weakest Link. It's best remembered for the chilling asexual British host Anne Robinson who captivated audiences across both sides of the Atlantic with her catch phrase, to be heard everywhere, "You are the weakest link...goodbye!" and her refusal to smile, which I had just assumed was a standard British characteristic. What I also remember about the show were the arcane and confusing rules - one of several factors that separated the originator the Great Game Show Comeback, Who Wants to Be A Millionaire and its largely almost painfully simple rules with its imitators, of which the Weakest Link was by far the most successful. Basically, from what I remember, somehow there'd be a bunch of contestants who would get asked a bunch of questions in some sort of seemingly random order, the money values increasing depending on how many in a row they got right, and then they could bank the money at some point, or if someone got one wrong they would lose it all. And then I guess the contestants vote someone off. I'm really not sure who or how many people win. I don't think I even understood it when I was watching (Come on, I watched a couple. You probably saw it once also.)

Briefly, this was popular enough to convince a studio that people wanted to see it more than once a week, and a syndicated version aired, hosted by George Gray, of whom the most interesting wiki fact is that he was best known at the time for hosting Extreme Gong, which I thought I had never heard of, but upon reading the wikipedia entry, realize I vaguely remember. Wikipedia has a map of countries in which had their own edition of the Weakest Link - it would make Hitler jealous (it's not too soon for Hitler-taking-over-the-world jokes right?).



Either way, the ultimate failure of the show probably spoke to several factors. One was general game show fatigue - clearly there was an overreaction to the American people's full-fledged embrace of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire (I'll try to limit the direct talk about that to its own entry - clearly no list of '00s TV shows would be complete without it), and Weakest Link didn't have some of the things that helped Millionaire last at least a little longer, and in syndication - one of these things being the confusing rules. I think maybe something has to do with the host - over the short term, Americans were attracted to the icy and foreboding Robinson - but in the long term she could be grating - people maybe got tired of her attitude, the way she dismissed contestants ruthlessly, and ran back into Regin Philbin's (and later Meredeth Viera, same attitude type) welcoming sympathetic arms - American wants to date the bad boy (or girl) game show host, but comes back to marry the nice guy host in the end. In the end, there also just wasn't that much of a show to go on aside from these things - it relied on its host more than any other game show. I'd love to say it was because the quality of the trivia was lacking, but no one but real trivia freaks like myself care about that.

For all the quick demise in America, there will always have been a time where The Weakest Link ruled the world.

A quick laundry lists of non-TV show related thoughts of late...

- I'm not exactly much of a dreamsmith (I'm fairly sure that's not a word but I'm going to write it anyway - and mean someone who is an expert on dreams, or talks about their dreams, or something) but I had a couple of mildly amusing dreams recently

- First, there is a program (this part is real) Birthright which pays for college age to mid-20s jews to go to Israel. In my dream, a new corollary to this program had been added called Birthright: Moon in which rich jews paid for other jews to take a trip to the moon. Probably a glimpse into the future, though I'm not sure whether that means the moon will be the new jewish homeland or something.

- If that wasn't a glimpse into the future, surely this must be - I was watching TV (okay, I can't even escape TV in my dreams (for that matter baseball either - in the lamest dream of all time a few weeks ago I was reading about an argument comparing Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson before I woke up)), Lost in particular - and the new outrageous plot twist was that the island was somehow inhabitied by zombies, who had already turned a couple members of the island. I remember even being disgusted in the dream - Lost has a lot of ridiculous shit - time travel, etc. - but I remember thinking that even they wouldn't go to zombies. But they did.

- I just watched King Kong a few days ago (the Peter Jackson 2005 one) and during the last half hour of the movie or so King Kong has picked up Naomi Watts and climbed up to the top of the Empire State Building. At some point Adrian Brody finds out she's up there and decides to go in and help her out, at which time he runs into the building past the police and gets into the elevator. He then proceeds to spend something like 20 minutes on the elevator. It's ridiculous. I mean, I know elevators must have been slow back then - but what's the point of building an incredibly tall building if it's going to take 20 minutes to get from one floor to another. While he's riding, planes are attacking Kong, and even though it barely started by the time he got on, Kong is dead by the time he gets there.

- I'm tired of these anti smoking ads that air constantly, particularly during baseball games. I have tried in vain to find the commercials on youtube, but basically there are three that repeat a lot. One just shows a bunch of organs and some surgery, and frankly is quite disgusting. The second is an ambush commercial - it pretends to be a scene out of a romantic comedy, only to tell you that the father who should be walking his daughter down the aisle is instead in a hospital. The third features a doctor who opens a door and gives several potential diagnosises to a patient - "You have lung cancer" and many more like that. They make viewing unpleasant. Here's a deal - if I don't smoke I shouldn't have to watch these commercials (I mean clearly if you do you shouldn't either, but I'm trying to comprimise) - it's really not fair to non-smokers to make them suffer.

- I got an e-mail randomly that was from Yahoo and told me that Geocities is closing, for good. While I was under the impression geocities was already gone (someone I can't remember who had passed along the theory that whenever you typed in a geocities address you'd get a 404 file not found) a word deserves to be said in memory if not of just merely geocities, of an era. A time when whether it was on geocities, angelfire, tripod, or whatever, every middle schooler had their own extremely poorly constructed website with a counter and a scrolling bar on the side. What a time to be alive.

65: Boston Legal

Oh, David E. Kelley, you've given us so much, and received, well, so much (Michelle Pfeiffer - not bad at all). But still. I am not proud to say (though not particularly un-proud either) I watched a lot of The Practice (I grew up watching law shows with my parents but could never get into their medical dramas) but I left for college and left the show more or less by the time James Spader entered (my mind was blown by the decisions to basically fire more than half of the main cast in a desperate bid to restart whatever it is that made the Practice successful to begin with - it's as if the Suns didn't just package Marion for Shaq a few years ago, but also traded away Diaw and Bell for Jason Richardson at the exact same time). At that point, I suppose maybe he wasn't so much working on extending the Practice as much as setting up Boston Legal - a complete rebuilding effort.

Boston Legal never was in some ways the success of the Practice - it was never as popular as The Practice was during its short peak, but it was very successful in a narrow way - amongst affluent viewers it was, for whatever reason, one of the most popular shows on television during its run.

I've never seen Boston Legal (I think this list will probably work out to something like half and half on shows I've seen - or maybe a little less than that for shows I haven't), but I once read a New York Times article about the show and so it seems that a major part of the ending of every episode more or less involves James Spader and William Shatner sharing a scotch and ruminating on the law, their lives, and the greater world. I don't know much else about the show, aside from what wiki is telling me, but I can certainly sympathize with that (can you sympathize with good things?). I'm not sure it's enough to make me watch the show, but if it at least makes me appreciate it.

The show of course, most importantly, will likely go down as the one that earned an Emmy for Willian Shatner. An ignominious honor indeed.

66: Man vs. Wild

Another representative here - for the kinds of shows that seem to litter the Discovery Channels and National Geographics - Survivorman and I Shouldn't Be Alive come to mind, but there's a ton more (Deadliest Catch, I'm pretty sure there are a few about other non-fishing professions), that are more or less about people surviving (usually) grave danger due to nature - animals, plants, weather, whatever. In my mind, Man vs. Wild is the most well-known, and around the last year and a half or so has really begun to pick up some steam - I've heard a bunch of talk shows mentioning it just offhandedly. Plus, it is the show with the coolest named host - Bear Grylls (sure, Bear is not his given name, but still, it's not like he made it up for the show), and that ought to count for something.

What makes these shows so popular I don't have a clear beat on - basically, the premise of the show is that Grylls goes out into nature, with only the bare necessities (pardon the weak pun) and shows John Q. Public how he goes about surivving - and points out different ways people can die. Part of it I think might be a Nascar reflex - like those who watch to see drivers crash, some people probably watch these shows consciously or subconcsiously with the idea that maybe something will happen to them - nature will bite back. Or maybe it's the other way - man's constant quest to subdue nature - a conquering for one man is victory for all men. Maybe it's in the middle - people want to see people pushed to the brink - to see how far they can go towards death, before just coming back to a last minute victory. Or, hell, maybe people just like seeing nature and hear about it from a guy with a British accent.

I think part of it is also the fun in seeing how extreme nature can be - unlike reality shows like Survivor which focus more on how extreme people can be, sort of Lord of the Flies-style, Man vs. Wild is about the setting and the nature and plants and animals more than it is about the host (though the host certainly counts for something, as its the only voice you hear the whole program). Last year, I read Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, all about the great Everest disaster in 1996, and I surprised how fascinated I was by the entire situation of mountain danger - it was riveting the tale of what it took to climb, and how many different opportunities there were for injury to life or limb on the way. I think part of that thrill is what makes it amazing to see Bear walk away from a lava field, or escape from a crevice in a mountain pass.
The stark reality of these landscapes is especially jarring as most viewers (of television in general, not just these shows) are urban or suburban and have less of an understanding of what seeing these things in real life are like - tall mountains sound more like from Lord of the Rings than something you'd ever see in real life, outside of maybe a plane window.

There was a bit of controversy last year over how "real" Man vs. Wild's survivalism was - one might think it would be obvious that since he has different camera angles and he addresses his production crew, there are people with him, but apparently people were horrified that he wasn't really off on his own. It's interesting how important it is for people to see how real the situations are - somehow danger just isn't the same if the risk wasn't there the whole time (I'm not saying I can't understand it - it's just that it's not sports, there's no competition - would people rather him be more likely to die?).

67: Without a Trace

Let's face it. This list wouldn't be accurate with at least a few police procedurals, as boring as they may be to write about, as, while they have always existed, they've been a huge part of television of the last decade. There are certainly a couple more coming up higher on the list, but since I didn't want to put 15 on the list, as they tend to have so much in common (probably part of what makes them both easy to produce and successful) Without a Trace will have to stand in for the Cold Cases, the Numb3rs's, the Criminal Minds's and some others, partly because it's a bit more popular ratings-wise than the rest of its lot, and partially because I've actually seen a couple of episodes.

As this is the first procedural, and because honestly Without a Trace is not all that exciting a show to talk about, I'll talk a bit about the genre in general. Police procedurals in a way capture one of the big duel trends of scripted TV of the decade - the revival of serial tv in the forms of Lost and others, and the huge success of the single-case-per-episode police procedurals. Police procedurals are in a way the fast food franchises of television shows - CSI is the McDonalds, maybe Without a Trace is the Wendys - they all have advertisements touting you watch their product, but they're all pretty similar with minor differences, and they guarentee that no matter which episode of the series you watch you'll get a standardized product - a fascinating case, some witty banter, empathy and a reminding that each case is super important, and smart detective work, following by an enlightening conclusion - case is solved, missing person is found, etc, etc. Very little personal happens in any one episode, but in the course of several seasons, as much personal drama as would happen in, say, one episode of Bevery Hills 90210 unfolds. It sounds terrible, but it's really not as bad as all that. Unlike certain shows which I find unwatchable, maybe thanks to being around my dad who loves these shows, (by the way, I kind of assume this is the demographic responsible for these big numbers - I can't imagine the numbers for viewers under 40 are particuarly kind - maybe why CBS has so many of them) I've picked up if not a love, a gentle like of them, like that towards a nephew who you see once a year and you don't need to see more often, but you honestly enjoy seeing for that time. There's far too many, as there always are when one genre blows up and other networks decide they want to copy it as fast as they can, but all said, for the most part the shows are eminently watchable television - some are absolutely better than others (Wendy's chicken sandwich is better than McDonalds' is (not saying Without a Trace is better than CSI - new and separate analogy)) but there's a comfort in knowing what you'll get and most of them do at least a passable job of making the case interesting.

Without a Trace is somewhere in the middle. I've seen it just a couple of times, and it's mildly interesting, it's characters kind of boring, and of course they care too much - they always care too much. I like Anthony LaPaglia (by the way if you've ever seen the short-lived series Seven Days, Anthony's brother Jonathan is on it, and he really looks just like Anthony), and I don't remember enough specific details from watching (so don't sue me, any huge Without a Trace fans, if I've poorly characterized your show (can that exist? a huge Without a Trace fan?)), but yeah, it's really hard to get worked up over. I have a feeling that's going to be the case for a few of these shows towards the bottom.

Also quick random props to Without a Trace for, for better or worse, helping weaken the ER juggernaut during the Thursday 10:00 PM spot, though both shows ultimately met their end in the same year - ER's very long term revenge I suppose.

Okay, so this post marks the start of the largest series in this blog's existence. 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).

Why 68, you may ask? A incredibly arbitrary number, yes. Basically, I ranked shows until I ran out of ones that either were notable or I could possibly think of anything to say about. Honestly, there are a few on the bottom that just as well could have been left out, but I figured the more the merrier, and I pretty much kept thinking of new ones as I was making the list, and didn't feel like taking any out, just rearranging the order. Don't worry, there's no According to Jim.

Edit: If I do miss some super obvious show over the course of the list, I apologize. Either I had a good reason for it, or I forgot about it until I had already formulated my list.

That said, it's time to begin, with number 68.

68: Top Chef

I draw the line here at Top Chef. Around the bottom of this list, there's a number of different shows where I could have drawn the line, which all kind of represent the bare minimum in some combination of genre and criteria. In addition, some of them will be in a way placeholders for all of their ilk which couldn't quite make the cut - there is only so much to say about certain things. And in that way, Top Chef represents some reality shows. It wouldn't be an accurate list of the '00s if I didn't have at least a few reality shows, but Top Chef stands for those of perhaps similar prestige and fame which represent more combined as a genre than any of them as one show - the America's Next Top Models and Project Runways and probably a few other similar but even a tier lower - the Next Food Network Stars. These shows have clogged up cable channels over the last 6 or 7 years.

That said, Top Chef, to me ranks ahead of most reality shows, and most of these types of reality shows in particular, and is the main chosen representative of the genre because it's just about the only reality show I watch on my own with any regularity. Part of this is undoubtedly because I like food, and watching shows about food, and any reality show featuring food is going to have a leg up on any reality show featuring something I don't like as much. But even accounting for that, Top Chef contains many aspects I appreciate.

I like the way the people have personalities on the show, but they're both real personalities - no one is too cartoonishly evil or catty or anything (they seem like real people - maybe some you wouldn't like, but no one you can't believe exists), and that the personalities fall squarely behind the food in importance (and in a way become intertwined - some chefs get reputations for being only able to make asian foods for example, or not being able to bake). The challenges remain interesting and engaging - they force the contestants to go outside of their comfortable food preparation range, without generally being so ridiculous as to produce no good food, and the judges are very fair and even-minded, starting with the head judge Tom Colicchio - they will both praise or criticize any or all of the competitors based on their performance, and their criticism (with the exception of Toby Young - the guy who Simon Pegg portrayed in the flop How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, who tried a bit too hard to be clever) is just muted enough (though don't they don't get angry sometimes) not to make them the stars of the show.

Of course, what makes or breaks any seasons is the quality of the chefs, both foodwise and personality wise, and that makes one season better or worse than another - it's far harder to watch when you don't like any of the contestants, or after your favorite contestsants get eliminated - Season 5 for example contained a lot more chefs I liked towards than end than season 4.

What Top Chef is to me, is the one show that opens the door to see why other people might like reality shows - it kind of has some of the aspects of sports, if you don't actually like sports - competition, being pleased when your favorite contestants win, disappointed when they get kicked off, you can yell at the refs/judges if you feel they did you wrong. It's like the marijuana of reality shows - while it doesn't make me want to do anything harder, at least it lets me see the appeal.

So, to sum up, it's not that special, it's not that popular, but I like it, and that's why it's the bottom - it's impossible get to 68 with all 24 carat gold.

The Reserves from my 1999 Fantasy Baseball team begin now (these aren't listed by position, they're just kind of in a random order, I assume the order I drafted them in):



Pat Hentgen - only three years removed from his fluke 1996 Cy Young, and already the glow had worn off. Hentgen was never a great, nor a very good pitcher. However, he was reasonably competent starter, and that's what he would be in 1999, and he threw 199 innings - he would never get to 2000 again after getting worked to the bone leading the league in both 1996 and 1997, far and away his best years. His 4.79 era was actually very slightly above average considering the park and league, but his other numbers certainly earned him a place on the bench - 11 wins, 118 Ks, and a 1.457 WHIP. At least he'll always have a Cy Young and two world championships, and no one can take that away from him.



Dave Justice - Justice had what I think will be a forgotten kind of underrated career. He had a 129 OPS+ in 14 seasons and was a 3-time all star, but what I always remember him first for is his acrimonious marriage with Halle Berry, and the chants of her name that would follow him in ballparks around the country. He was in the second half of his career by 1999, but he could still hit a little bit - he hit 21 home runs and drove in 88, amazingly identical to his 1998 totals, and scored 75, 19 less than in '98, though this is with missing 29 games. He also had the good fortune to play on essentially the three best teams of the '90s, the Braves, Indians (well, they didn't win a series, so maybe they're not the third - but they won the AL central for every year in the last half of the decade and came so close to winning 2 titles) and the Yankees, and made the playoffs every year he played after 1990.



Alex Gonzalez - one of the most confusing players, along with his doppleganger (the other Alex Gonzalez) who both played roughly at the same time and were both regarded roughly as good fielding shortstops who can't hit a lick. I mean, I know it must be a common name, but still. I didn't note which one it is, and I can't fathom why in the world I would have taken either - shortstop could not possibly have been that baron, but I'm guessing I took Alex S. Gonzalez, the Blue Jays shortstop who would later be traded to the Cubs for a couple of seasons, as opposed the Alex Gonzalez who doesn't have a middle name (at least according to baseball reference). That's because the un-S Gonzalez only had 98 PAs in 1998, and hit .151 in them, though maybe there was somehow buzz around him, and I thought he had potential. I'm going to stick with the other one though. Interesting fact - both Gonzalez's have nearly the same OPS+ - 79 for Alex S and 78 for Alex, with a chance to make it even if Alex can play a little better this year.

Ray Durham - Durham had played just about four full seasons before 1999, but for whatever reason, suddenly learned how to hit better in 1998, his age 26 season, and would, more or less keep up that level of for the most part not great but quite decent hitting for a decade. He more or less stopped stealing bases after age 30, but had 34 in 1999, to go along with 109 runs, 60 RBI and 13 home runs. He, along with Brian Jordan (and later Juan Encarnacion), became part of my stable of incredibly mediocre players who I would reliably return to in later rounds of fantasy drafts because I felt like I knew them somehow.


Darrin Fletcher - mediocre catcher, Fletcher spent most of his career in Canada - six years in Montreal and his last five in Toronto. 1999 was his second in Toronto and one of his better years period. He only scored 48 but drove in 80 and hit 18 home runs (his career high would come the next year with 20 - late career power surge). For some reason, I remember him having at least one better year than he ever had, but he had a career than Greg Zaun would be proud of, and actually was an all-star when anybody in Montreal could be, the cruel year of 1994, when Expos fans can only wonder what if.


Todd Helton - he wasn't yet Todd Helton, national Coors field superstar, but I'm still not sure how he lasted to the reserve round - maybe there was some sort of thought that his first full year in 1998 was seriously fluky. It of course turned out not to me, and Helton nearly symetrically scored 114 and drove in 113, hitting 35 home runs, hitting .320 and somehow stealing 7 bags (well, he got caught six times, but didn't hurt me, anyway). I'd take those numbers any day, and they're actually better fantasy-wise than some of those he got later on, when he didn't score or drive in as many sometimes, but learned to walk forty more times a season.



Billy Wagner - another guy picked up at the beginning of his excellent and what I'd even call underrated closing career. Even early in his career, he was coming off two full campaigns as closer for the 'stros, and even though he didn't rack up too many saves, I'd think he would have gone earlier - the main reason I'm guessing he didn't is because we had few enough people in the league that closers were simply not at a premium, and people with their eventual selections just went with more experienced arms, knowing they could probably easily pick up one or two on the waiver wire. Wagner responded in '99 with probably the year of his career - a starter-like 124 strikeouts in just 74 innings, with 39 saves, an 1.57 ERA and a .777 WHIP. Just doesn't get much better for closers.



John Valentin - Valentin had a pretty decent, if short, run as shortstop and then third baseman for the Red Sox in the mid-to-late '90s but was nearing the end of his run, coming off an average season, but one in which he hit a mere .247. If that was a forecast of the end, the dropoff game in 1999, when although his RBI only dropped from 73 to 70, his runs fell from 113 to 58, even though he was actually batting 2nd both years. His home runs fell from 23 to 12, though his average rose 6 points to .253, and although he was no speed threat, he had no stolen bases for the first time in his career. The other major problem for Valentin was that he missed about 30 games a year, and he played just 113 in 1999, though it may have been better for the Red Sox that way.



Shannon Stewart - the last, following Durham, of who would be my future mediocre fantasy stalwarts, in my mind I remember Stewart having significantly better seasons than he had, but maybe that's 'cause he hit .300, scored 100 runs and stole some bases and that seemed like the ideal leadoff man to me at the time. He stopped stealing bases, maybe because he wasn't all that great at it, after 2001, but still picked up a nice 37 in 1999, albeit while caught 14 times, but what was that to me in fantasy. Even though his OPS+ was down a few points from 1998, he had a better year fantasy wise, hitting 25 points higher at .304, and scoring and driving in 12 more runs, while hitting just one less bomb.



Francisco Cordova - this appears to have been my last pick, and on whole of his career it makes sense, but he was actually going off a fairly decent season in 1998 - a 3.31 ERA and a fairly decent K/BB ratio. He disappointed big time of course, racking up just 8 wins wins (not that surprising no matter the ERA in Pittsburgh) but with a 4.43 ERA, a 1.400 WHIP and 98 strikeouts, 27 less than reliever Wagner. Another very brief what could have been, but was extremely unlikely to have been - but isn't that what last picks are about?

Sometimes, as I'm sure everyone does, in today's internet, I end up coming upon articles I would never have sought out but that randomly interest me.

Anyway, so, on the New Yorks Times website I come along an article about an incident that happened in Las Vegas, and referencing a similar incident in New Orleans in January, in which Patti LuPone (who can be seen here and there in TV and film, but is essentially more or less a big time theater actress) stops a show (Gypsy) while she's in the middle of a song, and berates an audience member, one time for using an electronic device, and one time for taking photos of her during the performance. Amazingly, the New Orleans incident was captured on youtube.




A first Times article poked fun at her for stopping the show, which apparently led to a huge insane backlash from fans, and from Patti herself, promptimg that second article which I listed above, which in turn led to huge support for Patti from 90% or so of the commenters.

I was a little mystified at the outrage myself. I mean, no one endorses interrupting a theater performance with a camera or blackberry or what not - if it's against the rules, it's against the rules (whether those rules are reasonable always could be another story, but not for today) - so setting this up as LuPone against the interrupters is not really right - the interrupters are more of a strawman. What this really should be framed as is - who should be dealing with these interrupters - and the answer to me, and I really can't see it any other way, is the ushers or other theater security personal whose job descriptions specifically include dealing with people interrupting. LuPone's job is to sing, everything else be damned. I'm sure it can be a distraction, but I'm also sure that she's a professional - she's been doing this for a long time and she can go on through it. If she has had problems with people interrupting, she can address the quality of the ushers in between performances, or mention it to someone during the intermission. Did she ever consider for one second her stopping might be ruining it for everyone else who didn't interrupt?

Anyway, I thought that feeling was fairly reasonable, but once I read some of these comments, the contrarian in me really came out. What I saw in some of these comments is the snootiness of many theater goers - sure, there are plenty of reasonable people who just happen to be wrong in their support of her, but some people went as far as to say they wished ticket prices were more expensive to keep out the riff-raff (I'm not sure they said riff-raff, but they were very clear on their disdain for the types of people who now afford theater tickets). Also, there was general rage at the decline of civilization into one with television, and people talking at films, and debasement of human culture that is represented at its best by the high and mighty theater.

Imagine at a baseball game if, when a fan taunts repeatedly a player's family, the fan himself stopped the at bat and went, interrupting the game for everyone, to tell off the fan. That player would be seen as out of line, as well as someone who couldn't take a little razzing - it would look pretty pathetic. If he had a problem, he could have a stadium official talk to the fans. I'm sure the theater snobs out there would say baseball is a sport and base in nature and thus nothing compared to theater, but how can you argue with people who think that. I'll just say it's simply inappropriate to stop the show because of one person. Let other people do their jobs, and if you have a problem with the job they're doing, take it up with them or their supervisors.