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.