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).

19: Survivor

Another absolutely first year sensation, but one that lasted pretty well to this day, albeit in a less popular form, but still - longevity counts for a lot.

Besides being a sensation, Survivor gets bonus for pretty much creating the reality show as we know it today - the forbearer of The Apprentice, The Amazing Race and countless other second tier shows (anyone remember the other Lost?). By now, they've faded back into the second tier behind a couple of other styles of reality shows - talent contests like American Idol or Top Chef, and watching-people-live like Jon and Kate Plus Eight and Keeping up with the Kardashians. Still, Survivor's brand of reality television dominated much of the '00s.

For a show that was this big, there'a s surprising lack of famous contestants - about all there is, and it's minor at best, is first season winner Richard Hatch, known for being a pudgy guy who was later arrested for tax evasion, and shares the same name as an actor who appeared on both editions of Battlestar Galactica. More famous, but one of those things that everyone who knew it at the time remembers, but anyone who doesn't would say "What the fuck are you talking about?" is the "rat and snake" speech which Susan gave to Kelly towards the end of the first season. Just watch it. The most lasting contribution to pop culture is probably the notion of being voted "off the island" which is in reference to the fact that that first season actually took place on an island, and of course, people were voted off one-by-one - even though later seasons took place on non-islands, the catchphrase stuck.

I have a particular personal connection to the beginning of this phenomenon (a word I feel like I'm using a lot on this list, but so it goes) as my dad got thoroughly caught up in the season. Even when we were on vacation in West Virginia (if I remember correctly) we all gathered around the TV in our room when it came time for Survivor - we held out breaths through each immunity challenge, each vote at the end of an episode. I remember Rudy, the elderly former navy seal and Kelly (subject of the rat and snake speech), the whitewater rafting guide who won four straight challenges to make it to the final two and eventual winner Richard Hatch admitting premature defeat on the final immunity challenge - holding your hand on a statute for as long as possible - hoping that the winner would think they would fare better against him in the finale and thus not vote him off.

My dad has continued to follow the show through its constant rule changes in attempts to keep it fresh - different forms of challenges, immunities, ways of splitting tribes, but I haven't seen much since (Though of course I couldn't manage to totally avoid Boston Rob and Amber who appeared on Survivor, got married and then appeared on the Amazing Race (and yes, you can just type "Boston Rob" into wikipedia and it will lead to him)).

As the granddaddy of its form of reality TV, Survivor will not be forgotten like so many other shows of its genre will be (and already have).

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).

20: South Park

I've seen tons of episodes of South Park and still have seen fewer than almost anyone else I know and I've never truly watched it religiously (and seriously, there are two hundred fucking episodes).

The bit I remembered most about the early seasons of South Park (as someone who didn't actually see the show, due to not having cable before the glorious summer of 1999) is the fact that Kenny died every episode leading to the statement, "Oh my God, they killed Kenny" - a bit that thankfully creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone realized eventually was getting tired, and that now that the show was a bona fide success, was unneeded anymore.

It's absolutely a good show, and a funny show overall, but there are a couple things about it that prevent it from being in my absolute upper echelon of comedies (I often say it's shows like this that come in for the most criticism from me - not the Two and a Half Mens of the world, whose reasons for my dislike are fairly obvious, and which could not be easily fixed - they'd have to be entirely different shows - rather shows that are oh so close to being great but come a little bit short for specific reasons - like Battlestar Galactica).

Here's my issue with South Park - at it's best it's uproarious but I think these happen the most when it's been silly and absurd rather than trying to make some sort of serious point and coming off as self-righteous and pretentious. So many episodes are pretty much written as - saw news story or major trend, must make immediate comment on how stupid it is or outlandish people are being, and for me, those just don't work. It's obviously not as if this type of humor can't work - political or critical humor can be hilarious - I think Daily Show and Colbert Report do a great job of it, I just don't think South Park does. For example, I watched the episode "Whale Whores" which was basically a half hour episode on how stupid the TV show Whale Wars is (I didn't know anything about the show, but I'll chalk it up to my lack of knowledge of non-scripted television, rather than it necessarily not being noteworthy) and I wanted to scream, as I often do at South Park, "I get it! You hate fucking [whatever they're bashing - in this case Whale Wars!]" But smack in the middle of the episode is a montage with a rendition of Poker Face sung by Cartman. And it's absolutely hilarious. You know they just put it in because they thought it would be funny to have Cartman sing Poker Face, and you know what, they were right - it was silly and it was wonderful.

Scott Tenorman must die, generally regarded as one of, if not the best episode of the series has no ax to grind with any political topic - it's basically a giant revenge scheme from Cartman who has been wronged by Scott Tenorman, who sold pubes to Cartman amongst other things, ending with Cartman feeding Tenorman his parents in a chili, and having Radiohead, his favorite band, call him a crybaby. The episode is vulgor and ludicrous but never serious and full of itself.

Everybody who is anybody knows essentially the two best characters are Cartman and Randy Marsh. I really don't have much else to say about that, but it has to be said.

South Park is a pretty essential show to my generation - if you had asked me without thinking I probably would have ascribed it more to the '90s than the '00s, but it's not at all - it started in 1997, and while it was an absolute sensation that first year, which counts for something it's been going strong all decade, one of not many shows to do so.

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).

21. Curb Your Enthusiasm

HBO shows are popping up all over this list, and HBO's signature comedy (well one of two - this and Sex and the City - but this is more of a comedy with a capital C - it's about the laughs and nothing but) is one of those shows that is all about the laughs (see earlier parenthesis) - like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, it's not interested in you really investing in the characters, or feeling any pathos in the story or plot. It's essentially Seinfeld in Los Angeles, but without the straight man to point out how absolutely insane either Larry is being, saying what the viewer is thinking (Larry's wife, Sheryl, sort of gets that role to an extent, surely but her role is so thoroughly dominated by Larry, where Jerry's is at the least equal to the rest of the Seinfeld characters). It's slightly inferior to Seinfeld because of this, but it's mostly more of the same, and gets the laughs that a show like that needs to succeed (Entourage, ostensibly a comedy isn't very funny but makes up for it with a serial more or less interesting plot).

An interesting game (if one can call it that) I play when watching episodes is trying to pick in each situation that comes up whether Larry is right and everyone else is insane (example: the rule of the dry cleaners - in one episode, Larry loses his jersey in the dry cleaner's - another customer gets it by accident - and everyone (including guest star Senator Barbara Boxer) claims it's part of the great rule of the dry cleaner's - sometimes you win, sometimes you lose) or Larry is wrong (example: Larry gets into a fight with a bunch of children when he pays them for some lemonade and then tries to demand his money back when the lemonade stinks). It's honestly about half and half.

Praise should certainly be generously given to the supporting characters - Jeff Garland as Larry's agent is great, as well as numerous recurring guests such as Richard Lewis and Ted Dansen (part of the great Ted Dansen revival along with Damages and Bored to Death, a topic for another day), but the show is really about Larry himself (some people absolutely love Susie Essman as Jeff's wife who curses constantly and kicks Larry out of her house almost every other episode for some reason, but she, for the most part, doesn't do it for me - it's just too much, even by Curb standards). Larry has his share of catchphrases - "prett-ay good" (you really have to hear it to understand how he says it, "Let me ask you something" generally preceding a particularly inane question, and his long-form stare (go to 42 seconds for the stare, and keep watching to hear the "prett-ay good.").

The guest stars are too numerous to name and each season has a loose plotline, the best of which may be the seventh season in which Larry arranges a Seinfeld reunion, all as a ploy to get his ex-wife back, which allows the possibility of having a Seinfeld reunion, without ever having to have one officially (George struck it rich with the iToilet - a mobile phone application letting you know where the nearest free toilet was, but lost all his money to Bernie Madoff).

I would be remiss to mention the strangest random fact about Curb Your Enthusiasm which is incidental to the show itself, but fascinating - a man was cleared of a murder charge because he was caught in the outtakes for a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode (the one where Larry picks up a prostitute to take the HOV lane to the game) at Dodger Stadium. So Curb has contributed to society.

It took me way to long to watch this show for someone who loves Seinfeld, and yes, it's not going to blow your mind - it's exactly what you expect, but it's funny, and you can't ask that much more from something.

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).

22: The OC

Here's one of the great Moment shows. We've had a few so far - Heroes comes to mind - and I know there's at least another if not more coming - but this is one of those shows that had the equivalent of music's first album syndrome (I'm looking at you, Strokes) - it came out and set the world on fire - it was the absolute hottest show for a short period of time but just found it impossible to maintain its level of success and petered out way faster than you would guess by the way the show came out of the gate (this is in parallel to say the Everybody Loves Raymond, White Stripes strategy - no one watches you first season, listens to your first album, but the right people have faith, and you have room to build).

The O.C. came out in 2003 as one of those soaps that are smart and cool, trend-setters like (unsurprisingly, Josh Schwartz, the creator later went on to create Gossip Girl - which fits pretty much the exact same description). The show performed the rare feat of gaining viewers week to week at the beginning of its run - a sure sign of a hit - and was the highest rated network drama its first year among viewers 18-24, and although that sounds needlessly specific and thus less impressive, it's kind of a big deal. It did a couple of things that are peripheral signs of a hit in the making - it made at least relative stars of some of its cast members - Misha Barton probably most of all, but also somewhat of Adam Brody and Rachel Bilson. Seth Cohen, Adam Brody's character - the lovable nerd and bringer of all things pop culture to the show's universe - (Death Cab for Cutie, his favorite band is featured prominently) came up with with the buzzwordy holiday of Chrismukkah (yes it has its own wikipedia page, albeit it's only the second most popular fake Christmas holiday after Seinfeld's Festivus). It featured music prominently and sent sales by artists appearing on the show skyrocketing - Rooney's sales doubled immediately after their appearance, and most impressively, Imogen Heap's Hide and Seek became an instant classic after appearing in the Season 2 finale.

The show absolutely fell apart by the fourth season, and some people I know who watch it religiously have said, more or less by the third, and maybe was on an inevitable path down from the beginning of the second. Generally, the third season is regarded as the worst, and the fourth a bit of a step up, but it was too little too late by that part - bad ratings coupled perhaps with the shocking death of Marisa Cooper (Barton) had the show all but over somewhere through the middle of the fourth season (One of the only episodes I've seen is that death episode - I was so confused if she was really dead as it seemed like a big fucking deal to kill off a main character). It would be also unfair to leave out that the show falls into the classic graduating from high school trap - very few shows can make the leap from high school to college or whatever else successfully.

It's the sad reality in a way - it's just hard to keep up with that first burst, and what a burst it was - in college, the OC was everywhere.

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).

23: Two and a Half Men

Oh, Two and a Half Men. TV's biggest comedy has been running now for an unbelievable 8 years and shows no signs of slowing down (Yes - shouldn't it now be called 3 men? Phew, needed to get that joke out of the way). Charlie Sheen might be regarded as something of a genius and an argument for TV over movies - who needs film when he makes 1.78 million an episode - about 40 million a year, and pretty much a guarantee of not flopping.

My friends and I have a minor inside joke that went on for a while where we were going to start a blog called the 2.5ers and dissect every Two and a Half Men episode joke by joke explaining how each one is funny and consequently why the show is so great. It could have been a thing.

You probably know the premise, they're not all that much to it. Recently divorced fairly pathetic man (Emmy award winner Jon Cryer) moves in, along with his son, to his ladies' man brother's (Sheen, of course) swank Malibu house. Honestly, there's a whole lot more characters than I realized - I've seen a couple of episodes, but there's eight seasons worth - and I'm sure loads of backstory and loves gained and lost, but really what it is, love it or hate it, is the standard bearer for Classic American Sitcom on TV right now (Big Bang Theory might be making a push sadly but it's still a ways away).

What I didn't know is that apparently there was a CSI/Two and a Half Men crossover which sounds absolutely insane - in the Two and a Half Men part of the crossover apparently a man is found dead, assumed to be murdered, but actually was a con artists and died of a heart attack (sure that's a super incomplete description of the episode - but be honest - do you really care? And if you do, and you haven't seen it, I'm sorry I ruined it for you.)

I feel like I may be out of touch with a certain demographic - Two and a Half Men has long been my go to for a stupid, but super popular show (amazingly - the "Critical Reception" section on wikipedia is two lines - the daily news calls it "solid, well-acted and occasionally funny" and some Australian calls it a "sometimes creepy, misogynistic comedy" - pretty much all one needs to say about the show I guess - metacritic does't have any reviews in its database either). Now, I had long assumed the show's audience to be limited to people twenty years older than me and in the fly-over states, but I ended up engaged in a conversation with two people around my own age, one of whom began a sentence, "you know what show actually has really good writing?" and answered her own question with Two and a Half Men, with which the other person wholeheartedly agreed. I couldn't keep silent, but I was outnumbered.

What else is there to say though - you know what it is, there's nothing particularly interesting about it - you either enjoy watching it, or you don't, and against my preference, more of America is in the former than the latter. Oh well, there are worse things.

This minor story happened a couple of weeks ago, but as a Bills fan in particular and someone who once had a AIM profile (yeah, remember those?) feature about athletes thanking god for their feats, I wanted to take a moment to comment on it.

After dropping a perfect touchdown pass by Ryan Fitzpatrick, which would have beaten the Steelers in overtime, Bills receiver Steve Johnson did the impossible - he - more or less - blamed God for his drop in his twitter feed:

I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO...

This is amazing. Steve Johnson, though he may not appreciate this, should be commended. It's about time if God's getting credit for athlete's success, he also accepts blame. Previously, I've said that it's silly at best, insulting at worst to credit God with success on the playing field/court/ice/whatever - and I don't even mean thanking him for just being here or getting you through, or whatever, but really particularly victories or particular plays - as if God has a rooting interest, or that sports is what he has time to focus on, or some such, but I have a new rule. You can thank God all you want for whatever you want as long as you're willing to blame him when things go wrong. Take it or leave it.

Time to return the Luke Scott jersey I bought.

I've not spoken of politics in my few posts on this blog, but if you don't think Obama was born in this country, you're a complete and total moron. There, stand taken.

PS. I lied about having ever bought the Luke Scott jersey.

Some particularly egregious nerd face can be found in the fourth season of Six Feet Under, episode nine "Grinding the Corn."

My friend created the idea of nerd face when referring to Big Bang Theory - the current time's foremost purveyor of the phenomenon - basically treating television (or film, I suppose) nerds with the most stereotypical brush possible - they don't know how to dress themselves, they have glasses, they're socially awkward and can't function in society, they collect action figures, they love Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.

In this episode, the death of the week is a comic book store employee, who dies while trying to reach on top of a series of shelves for a rare comic, only to have the shelves fall on him, crushing him to death. His friends who set up his funeral are shown as total outcasts - weirdly explaining the origin story of superhero Blue Tornado when it comes out to Nate and David, and later ineptly breaking in to steal the issue the deceased wants buried with him, folding immediately when the more masculine Nate and Rico threaten them. At the funeral itself, it's a room full of carbon copies of the two characters, glasses, t-shirt with strange reference on them, who are subject to mockery by David for their alleged inability to fit into society.

Anyway - you get the idea - sure, all of these things exist, but isn't it time we got some actually well developed nerd characters who might like Lord of the Rings and or superheros but aren't total freaks

It's just one episode, but someone needs to call it out when it appears, on behalf of the Anti-Nerd Defamation League, or somesuch.

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).

24: Deal or No Deal

Of all the absolute crazes over a show, the craze that emerged at the beginning of the run of Deal or No Deal is possibly (probably?) the stupidest. Not so much because it's the worst show, so to speak, but because, and I honestly mean this in the least pejorative way possible, it's really stupid. Just about never before has so little happened over the course of an hour of TV programming (maybe some of those super stretched out American Idol elimination hours, but you get the point). The premise was relatively simple - there are women holding 26 suitcases, each worth an amount of money, between one cent and one million dollars. The contestant slowly eliminates cases, with the idea that if he or she went all the way, there would be one box remaining, and the contestant would walk away with that amount of money. However, to hedge his or her bets, a mysterious banker offers the contestant a deal after every few cases are eliminated, depending on the values of the cases which were eliminated - for example, if the eliminated cases had relatively low values - it's most likely the offer will be higher than if the eliminated cases had relatively high values. There's absolutely no skill whatsoever - the choice of cases is random - the only thought process is calculation the expected value of the remaining cases and comparing it to the banker's offer along with one's personal risk aversion.

Deal or No Deal truly did create one of the great villains in game show history - the banker (doesn't it just sound evil? If only it had been popular a little longer it might have picked up on the investment banker and banks in general hatred wave of the bailouts) (at least second in outright villainy to the insane Inquizitor). The banker was shrouded in mystery - a silhouette who we only knew through the offers he placed via Howie Mandel. Was he a capitalist big wig trying to make a buck off the working man with sinisterly lowall offers, or merely trying to help take away some risk so a contestant could at least bring back something to show for their efforts? Who can say - you decide.

The eponymous catch phase is mentioned by Mandel each time the contestant must choose - whether to accept the banker's offer (Deal) or not (No Deal.) This decision is replete with a button - pressed when the contestant wants to make the deal. The unsung heros - the models - Wikipedia has an insanely (yes, I think it's insane) comprehensive list of the models used along with which case they held (imagine what an opening that would be at parties: "I held 17 originally, but was moved later to 21.") There was even a model search in which viewers could vote for models who tried out in various episodes. Of course, as well, this was a total resurrection of Howie Mandel's career (making him the second big-time OCD game show host) even leading to his starring in an insane Candid Camera-style show called Howie Do It (let's all groan at once.)

I want to say it's oddly compelling, but it's really not. It almost is - I mean it has the ingredients to be the show that you shouldn't want to watch but you actually can't turn away from, but it just never quite did it.

Somehow, this was big (and internationally - it started out in the Netherlands and spread to over 20 countries - among them Tunisia, Malta and Bulgaria) - and when I explain this to people in forty years, they're going to laugh and say why was this so popular, this is ridiculous, but it was true, and we were there.

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).

25: Chappelle's Show

Hard as I might try, it's impossible to exaggerate the absolute sensation Chappelle's Show was during the relatively short airing of its two seasons in 2003 and 2004 and just after when the DVDs came out. In 2005, soon after it came out the first season DVD sales were the best of ALL TIME for a TV series. Now, I understand DVD was still a relatively recent medium and there were only so many shows on DVD, but still compared to all the other shows which had drawn far bigger ratings, it's an extraordinary accomplishment.

There were some all time great sketches - the racial draft - where each race was allowed to draft to take people who were of mixed race and assign them to one race for once and all -

There were phrases that became part of the language on places like college campuses (at least mine) - the Charlie Murphy True Hollywood Stories Prince and Rick James sketches in particular - "I'm Rick James, Bitch", "Cocaine is a Hall of a Drug," "Game, Blouses" among them.

His Lil Jon sketch in particular was huge, and perhaps a product that could only come out of exactly that time - Lil Jon's brief reign in american pop music came at the same time Chappelle's Show lasted - my friend wondered if college students today would even know enough about Lil Jon to have the sketch make any sense.

The Samuel Jackson beer ads (based on a Sam Adams that was iconic enough that anyone at the time would recognize it but not iconic enough that too many people would probably remember it now), in which Chappelle appears as Jackson, looking like his Pulp Fiction character, aggressively and with foul languages attempts to persuade the viewers to try his beer ("It'll get you drunk!).

Oh, and I couldn't finish the entry without mentioning the Wayne Brady sketch - after being insulted by a bit in which character Negordamus claimed that white people liked Wayne Brady because he made Bryant Gumbel look like Malcolm X - Brady was asked to come on and do a sketch - basically the idea was a parody of his squeaky clean images, in which Brady does drugs, terrorizes Chappelle and recites memorable quotable lines such as "I'm Wayne Brady, bitch," and the immortal, "Is Wayne Brady gonna have to choke a bitch?"

As I'm writing, I just think about more notable sketches, but these were more or less the absolute biggest, and I'm honestly just reminiscing and recapping to anyone who has seen the show. But really it was because as I remember them now to myself, they were both good, and they were big, and if you haven't seen them, you should see them, if not for their quality than for the massive pop culture phenomenon they represented. Like every sketch show, it had its share of flops, but for just two seasons there was a remarkable number of successes, especially consider the number of total sketches was cut by the appearance of musical acts and the seemingly interminable amount of commercials.

With a success like this, the show should have gone on forever, or at least until popularity gradually faded away. It was not to be though, as Chappelle, and I don't know a better way to explain this, and I apologize if it's technically incorrect - freaked out over some combination of the stress of making the show and its impact on his stand up career and his life and who knows what else and that was it, the show was over - but maybe it's better off anyway, that what existed of the show remains, as a moment in time.

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).

26: King of Queens

If aliens come down and want to know what television comedy was like in the 00s, King of Queens might be the sitcom to show them. No one, I don't think, claims it's the funniest show or the best show, but it might be the most representative (and part of the proof of de-evolution CBS Monday night sitcom progression from Everybody Loves Raymond to King of Queens to Two and a Half Men).

It's a show that as a sophisticated east coast (well I know the show is based on the east coast also, but that's not the point) TV viewer and fan of Mad Men and Bored to Death I wanted to hate, but I just can't (Two and a Half Men, though, another story.) I don't watch it very often, nor do I flip to it generally when it's on, but I've seen episodes and it's hard not appreciate it's relative mastery of the traditional sitcom genre. Now, when I say relative mastery, I don't mean like Seinfeld (not a traditional sitcom in a lot of ways, but still multi-camera and laugh track and all that) or even Cheers - I mean more in a way that it is has the pure essences of sitcom - man (Doug) , husband, is selfish, immature, and not the smartest, wants to play cards and watch sports with his friends but has a good heart and really loves his wife deep down - woman (Carrie) is smarter, sarcastic, and really keeps their lives together while working at a legal secretary (at least the woman have jobs now.

The offbeat, strange character humor, which would often come from kids in a show like this instead comes from Carrie's father, Arthur who is craaaaaaazy, doing also sorts of eccentric things and not getting along with Doug in the process, although of course, somehow over time they grow warmer and learn to respect and live with one another.

Not to mention the achievement as being the definitive go-to example of fat-husband with hot wife - perpetuating the classic double standard that fat guys (well, TV fat - Kevin James is is large by any standard, but could get a lot real life fatter) can get attractive thin wives, but pretty much it never works the other (I suppose I have to give the new CBS Monday show Mike and Molly (and yes, this is just about the only credit I'm giving it) credit for having both protagonists being actually, and not TV, large and equally so).

Probably the strangest, biggest attempt at quirkiness (aside from Patton Oswalt, of course) is the recurring bit of having Lou Ferrigno as their neighbor (part of the Hulk's 00s revival, along with his appearance in I Love You, Man). Patton Osawlt as friend of Doug's Spence is the highlight of the show the few times I see it, playing a character pretty much based on himself, the stereotypical nerd character, but hey, Patton Oswalt's funny (also random aside - does anyone else hate it when a character has a link on wikipedia (Spence, Oswalt's character in this case) which just links back to the show page (King of Queens, here) - why would there be a link then? WHY!?).

Random fact I learned in that King of Queens has one of the great classic sitcom tropes - character written out of show with absolutely no explanation - Carrie had a sister who also lived with her and Doug, Sarah who magically disappears after the first season.

Anyway, yeah, King of Queens - the type of the thing CBS does (I was going to write best, but I think that might be giving too much credit to CBS.)

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).

27: John and Kate Plus Eight

The world of family-with-lots-of-children-television doesn't end with Jon and Kate - 19 Kids and Counting and Table for 12 were inspired by Jon and Kate (as we speak there's a new one - Sextuplets Take New York, and Quints by Surprise debuted earlier this year - I swear I wish I was making these up) (and all on TLC, it's true - it's essentially become your one-stop shopping home for family-with-lots-of-children reality shows). However, none of them have exploded onto the national consciousness like Jon and Kate Plus Eight.

I got most of my first hand experience with Jon and Kate through my friend Leslie who was obsessed with it, and in particular with the way Kate constantly nagged Jon, and what Jon had to put up with (though she was quick to label Jon as something of a scumbag for his behavior after their separation), in particular one notable clip in which Kate yelled "Jon" with a particularly indolent naggy tone, which soon entered our vernacular.

The merging of crew with family was apparently so thorough that permanent light fixtures were installed in their house to make filming easier and the crew was treated as family - further blurring the continuing line between how "real" reality tv ever is.

Jon and Kate made for fantastic tabloid fodder - the almost inevitable breakup-over-tv (their separation was announced on a June 2009 episode) celebrity tragedy and maybe a general lesson on why-not-to-get-married-and-have-lots-of-kids-when-you're-fairly-young. People were into it - this was an US magazine story, on TV, and you knew it was going to air on an episode of the show after it happened. The episode in which they announced their separation was the most-watched on the season. When it came down to it, that's what people really wanted - not that they wanted to see the divorce necessarily, but at least to some extent what fed the show was the train wreck/car crash at NASCAR element - with all these pressure, and these people, something has got to go wrong. Certainly, it was in part a chicken and egg situation - only because people were interested at all from day one was there enough fodder to feed the machine - but once it started going, that was it. Jon and Kate post separation are probably as popular (well not personally, but in a selling magazine sense) than they ever were before.

Jon and Kate Plus Eight (now simply Kate Plus 8, sadly - Jon's name wiped from existence in the title) was a definitive pop culture phenomenon and defined a segment of reality television.

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).

28: Jackass

Jackass

I had maybe for a second questioned the staying power of Jackass before the last couple of months, but if I had, I had made a huge mistake - it had been four years since the last Jackass movie, but Jackass 3-D went off without a hitch - grossing 130 million so far with a boffo opening weekend win.

The show itself, it's hard to believe (it was hard for me to believe when I saw it) only lasted two seasons - from 2000-2002. The series' stars - most notably Johnny Knoxville, but also Steve-O and Bam Margera became household names (at least in households having people under the age of 30) and even got their own spinoffs - Viva La Bam about Margera and co. (which I knew about) and four (four! - Dr. Steve-O - who turns "wussies into men" for all of 7 episodes,Blastazoid, which beat that with only 2 episodes aired, Homewrecker, with 8 episodes, kind of a Jackass-meets-Extreme Home Makeover take off, and the actually successful Wildboyz, which was kind of more Jackass, post-Jackass, except with wild animals, with Steve-O and Chris Pontius). There were only 25 half hour episodes of Jackass! To have the kind of impact it had with so few episodes is incredible (though to be fair it's with the help of now three movies, each of which has grossed more than its predecessor).

Jackass has a what in some ways has always struck me as strange so-stupid-it's-brilliant-art type stigma (or I guess stigma has a negative implication (though some might thing arty is negative too) we'll presume some sort of positive stigma can exist for these purposes) - Jackass 3D debuted oddly enough at the Museum of Modern Art and counts Spike Jonze among its producers.

The premise is simple - the show is a bunch of people performing stunts on themselves, leading to injuries, and hopefully, hilarity. Some stunts from just the third film include - playing tetherball with a beehive, launching Steve-O in the air while he is inside a portable toilet, pulling a tooth out with a Lamborghini, and using super clue to take off chest hair.

These things were of course not acceptable to stodgy politicians - who deemed them poor moral examples for today's youth - unsurprisingly, video game lovers most hated politician Joe Lieberman was at the forefront. It was rather insubstantial in the long run though.

I admit, I don't really get it. I feel like an old person saying this, but yeah, it just seems pretty dumb. I'm not going to go so far as to claim it could never be entertaining in short spurts, or that some of the pranks couldn't be amusing, but more or less I did miss the boat here. It's bound to happen though, that you don't get on board with cult pop culture items (obviously Jackass is more than a cult, but the point remains) - god knows I never could figure out what's so great about Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Alas, it's a thing, and a big one, and I at least appreciate their pushing the boundaries of what can be shown on TV, anyone who does that gets some extra credit in my book.

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).

29: Six Feet Under

This show has been on my mind particularly of late, as I've been watching through it currently - I'm midway through the third season. So I'm not going to look up anything in the last two seasons, because there's no point in ruining them for myself, but there's plenty to say about the first two and a half.

I knew the concept of Six Feet Under - it's about an family (the Fishers) who run a funeral home and their various lives, and the gimmick that at the beginning of each episode, we see a person die, and that person later has a service at the funeral home (Fisher and Sons.). In the first episode, I also knew, in the first five minutes more or less, the patriarch of the family dies in a car, crash thus setting up the return of the eldest son Nate from Seattle to run the funeral home with his brother David. As silly as it sounds, I was worried that the show would be simply so depressing I wouldn't want to keep wanting to watch many episodes in a short period of time.

That's not really the vibe though you get from the show. By no means is it an upbeat show - I would say on the whole there's a lot of depressing little moments - but the feel too the show is not wholly dark - the characters have happy times, and even some of the terrible bad times are not portrayed as utterly grey as they could be. And, honestly often the characters get on your nerves - they're crazy, irritating, immature, self-pitying - but maybe that's going too far, because they're really not all that bad. They have their good moments too, particularly in regard to each other. The relationships between members of the family Fisher

Though, sometimes it becomes a race between which character is driving you most crazy at the time - right now it's Ruth, the matriarch.

You get desensitized in a weird way from watching all the deaths at the beginning of the episodes. Instead of a downer, sometimes it becomes a game of figuring out how the person's going to do, or who's going to die (one episode betweens with a pair of construction workers sitting on a beam high up, eating their lunch - I figured one would fall or be pushed off, but instead his lunch box fell and killed a passer-by). It is interesting to me (though probably easy to guess when thought about for longer) to figure out which of the rare deaths actually affect me - not usually the gimmicky deaths or the accidents as much as the deaths from disease - one in particular where a husband died from cancer and was having morphine hallucinations.

Anyway, it sits pretty much where I thought - it's good, quite enjoyable, but not quite as good as some of my absolute favorite HBO shows.

I hate myself for this, and but humor is the best thing in the face of depression right...

It looks like after Tuesday's elections, he's no longer still the one...groan.

2010 was a banner year for New York Times television reporter Bill Carter - master of the most niche of specialties - late night battles. Sure, while most people were focusing on the sometimes outlandish, sometimes riveting, and sometimes both battle between Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno for the storied Tonight Show, which had its share of winners and losers, one man was winning no matter what happened, and winning more the longer it took and the more heated it got - Bill Carter - the definitive expert in late night television battles. He benefited on two friends - one, the battle between over the Tonight Show brought to mind the battle in the early '90s, particularly as Jay Leno was a key combatant in both, and Carter was asked tons of questions about that battle, and how it compared to the current one, and secondly, he was given plenty of material for a second late night book, bound to generate buzz, based on the fact that he is the reigning expert on all issues late night television. The War for Late Night, his new book comes out this week, and if it's lucky, will even inspire a made-for-tv movie of its own.

So, kudos to you Bill Carter - you deserve to have your expertise tested and rewarded every 18 years or so. Just one question - where's my Craig Ferguson book?

Okay, I admit this is really dumb, but this is actually what I thought Droid Does meant when I first read it (yes, I know how stupid that sounds, and how it doesn't make any sense, but that's somehow what I thought - it just read that way). Whatever you want to say, I find it hilarious and will continue to do so.

At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig by John Gimlette

How much do you know about Paraguay? How much do most people in the US know about Paraguay? How much do I know? Let's see. I watched them in the World Cup, and I know that Roque Santa Cruz hails from there, and that's about it. I couldn't have even told you it was landlocked. Embarrassing, maybe, but best to be honest with myself.

In the Head of the Inflatable Pig is a combination travelogue and basic history guide to Paraguay - the author intersperses his experiences visiting historical places in Paraguay, his experiences with the people he comes across while visiting those places, and bits of history - both important political moments and interesting tidbits of history he comes across that may not be important in the largest sense but provide insight into the Paraguayan way of life, which is really what runs through all the sections of the book.

I get a taste of the history of Paraguay which is absolutely fascinating (which is helped by Gimlette's writing style and the general organization of the book) - a series of dictators each with their own eccentricities - one who drove the country into an unbelievably debilitating war in the late 19th century (the War of the Triple Alliance (which I knew the name of, but just about nothing else) killing over 80% of the population and leaving a 10-1 female to male ratio which is hard to digest even as I type it now), a period of instability, and a 35-year long brutal dictatorship which lasted up until almost the end of the 20th century. In addition, I get a flavor of the culture and the Paraguayans attitude towards their series of dictators. It left me, while reading it, thinking about how inconceivable it is, as an American, even with all my frustrations with our political process, to imagine what it would be like to be living under constant dictatorship and the weight of such a brutal history and to appreciate how the Paraguayans carry on.

More than just straight history, though (not that straight history is not enough for an excellent book) Gimlette lends some insight into Paraguayan culture. I don't mean culture so much in the particular art, or music, or literature, but more in the sense of the general attitudes and

Recently, I read another book about South America, The Lost City of Z, and it made me read more about South American, and in that case the Amazon. This book is very different but makes me feel the same way, not just about South America but about any country. Every country has its own story - its own unique history - before reading this book, Paraguay was just a country next to and with a similar name than Uruguay, who probably had some dictatorial issues, sure, but that's about it.

And yes, sure, that sounds obvious, as if it's coming from an ignorant person who should have known more about the country in the first place, and yes, that's at least partly true. But even so it speaks to a broader point (yes I'm not I'm going a bit far here) about the simplicity with which people view the world all too often (and why history is so valuable even today) - people are quick to group people and make snap judgments, to look no deeper than the surface, because they don't have enough information and because they don't care enough but there's almost always a nuanced reason for everything that you'll miss if you don't look a little harder. To give the most broad example, many people within Paraguay kept voting for people who were related to their old brutal dictatorship, which seems crazy, until you realize that in a country with so much instability economically and politically, that time represented the only stability they ever knew.

Anyway, even if you don't get that much, it's a good book for the anecdotes alone, so read it.

I just discovered something for which I desperately am seeking physical proof.

It turns out that one of a very young Brad Garrett's first, uh, roles, was as a the model for the back cover of Electric Light Orchestra's album Discovery, in which he is, according to wikipedia, "dressed in middle eastern clothes, turban and holding a big sword." I have been conducting some google searching and have yet to locate this back cover. As it is, I'm going to have to search for this every time I go to a record store (the few that are left these days) and at the very least hope to find it and get a photograph it. I have a hard time believing it's not on the internet somewhere, but so far at least it's eluded me.

As a longtime participant in College Bowl during college, I learned to think of trivia in threes, as many questions were three part questions ("bonuses")about something similar (ie. three different bands recorded songs called "Learning to Fly"), so whenever I see two of something unusual, I automatically think, with one more it could be a bonus.

Last night, I watched the Sam Peckinpah film Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and it contained the second driver-of-car-talking-to-disembodied-head-sitting-on-passenger-seat scene I've ever seen (the first is the Quentin Tarantino guest directed sequence in Sin City in which Clive Owen has Benecio Del Toro's head on his passenger seat). One more and there'd be a bonus...

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).

31: Aqua Teen Hunger Force

Aqua Teen Hunger Force will always hold a special place in my heart even though I honestly haven't watched much of it in the last. Still, even through to this day, a picture of Master Shake is my facebook icon.

Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block in general was a phenomenon in the first decade of the 21st century amongst a certain segment of the population - boys in particular aged from about high school to about 30. There were a whole host of shows that played a part in this - Harvey Birdman, Sealab 2021 along with repeated programming of shows on other network - such as Futurama andFamily Guy, but indisputably the biggest of the original programming was Aqua Teen Hunger Force. ATHF (for short) was based around the absurd premise of a trio of human-sized fast food items - a shake (Master Shake), fries (Frylock), and a, uh, meatball (Meatwad) who could talk and had powers (shooting lasers for Frylock, changing shapes for Meatwad and, well, nothing really for Master Shake) solving mysteries in suburban New Jersey, all while bothering their Jersey slob neighbor Carl. Of course the premise was even this coherent just to get them on the air - their creators and no actual intent for them to be solving mysteries all the time (they do in about the first three episodes) - that was merely the only way to convince Cartoon Network to put the show on (The show is kind of a spinoff of Space Ghost Coast to Coast, where a twisted version of the characters appeared (though Meatwad looks pretty much the same)).

ATHF became a minor sensation. During the first couple years of college, watching Adult Swim was a weekly ritual. Every week I'd get together with my friends and put it on, every Sunday night when the new comedies aired. I was so obsessed with these episodes that I can even now recite some of the episodes nearly line for line, particularly what may have been our favorite episode, Revenge of the Mooninites, which featured a belt which gave Foreigner powers - my friends and I loved the episode so much we actually started listening to Foreigner more because of it.

ATHF became the type of quick barometer of what people I could get along with that certain pop culture phenomena become to individuals (not that I'm endorsing super quick judgment, but hey, everybody does it, and sometimes it's right) - I remember talking to a coworker in the first or second summer after it's existence and finding out first she didn't know what it was, and then that she more than just didn't like it, she didn't get it - I tried to be polite but inside, I scoffed. The show was never bound to appeal to more than a niche population - it was far too ridiculous - but it had a cult among those who did.

ATHF got a national airing to many who had absolutely no idea what it was for a brief moment when, in 2007, a viral marketing campaign went wrong (or right, considering the amount of publicity in generated) when commuters reported LED set ups of the Mooninites by a T station in Boston unlit and replete with a power source and some exposed wiring, which was essentially a giant sized Lite Brite. Before you could say Ignignokt and Err, there was a huge freak out and the site was surrounded by fire, police and ambulances, none of whom clearly was a stoner or under 30 because one look at it for anyone who had seen the show would clearly recognize the character, who appeared in many episodes. A second sign was spotted, and the full blown panic was repeated. It's hard to tell whether this speaks more to the incompetence of the Boston police department or the generation gap. The two people responsible for the marketing campaign was even arrested, citing an incredibly far-fetched idea that they were trying to start a panic.

The episodes got even more ridiculous as time went on, and I haven't seen a lot of the later ones - it's the last of the old Williams Street Adult Swim series still airing - and I don't watch Adult Swim with the insistent regularity that I used to (that's not to say I don't tune in occasionally, especially for Venture Bros.). But that should take nothing away from those classic early episodes.

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).

31: Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad is probably my favorite drama on TV right now (though Mad Men is closing in with it's currently very strong season). The show improves over each of the first three seasons, with the third getting into the darkest, but the most interesting territory, not to mention the most exciting as well. The show also manages to trade off suspense and introspectivity (yeah it's probably not a word - I'm still using it) very well - late in the third season, there is a bottle episode which could easily have fallen flat but was very entertaining and seemed to fit within the context of the season.

The ending of the third season did something that's relatively rare for me in shows - got me excited enough about the possibilities that it makes me want to go online and read everything about what people thought about the episode, and the season - blog entries, comments, interviews with the creator (Oh, to think when I liked Lost, at the beginning this happened a bit). Even better, reading this stuff actually made me like the show more, rather than less. When I would go on to read about Lost opinions and theories, a little thought would make a lot of the initial excitement about the show lessen - it make a lot less sense after thinking about it. With Breaking Bad, reading about it pointed me in new directions and illuminated things I hadn't noticed - not just plot related, but ideas about the characters and the way the show is shot. I read one particular interview with the show's creator Vince Gilligan, and what he said about the way the show is written rang true - he said that they didn't, for the most part, plan out entire season arcs from the beginning - rather that they often wrote themselves into corners and then tried to write their way out of them. While that sounds like a recipe for disaster, it actually succeeds time and again over the course of the show - so many times I wondered how exactly they'd get out of a tricky situation without making it so the show couldn't continue anymore and they've cleverly, and plausibly within the boundaries of the show managed to work their way out.

Bryan Cranston's Walter White is a moving and nuanced protagonist up there with the best in TV - the Tony Sorpanos, the Don Drapers, though opposite of Draper, whose work life is honest (more or less), but family life is not, White does not mess around on his family, but his dishonest career comes up and screws with his family life anyway, no matter how much he tries to prevent it. Cranston and Aaron Paul as Jesse, the second principal character (Cranston's Christopher Moltisanti? Maybe a stretch...) both give excellent performances and create a really interesting relationship between the two characters - often it's portrayed that although Jesse is the career criminal, he's the one with the true heart of gold, while the socially awkward middle aged father career science teacher is the cold and inhuman one. Maybe that sounds cliche, and to put it in one sentence it is, but as it's shown over the course of three seasons, it a lot more subtle and complicated.

The one flaw the show has is the occasional unnecessary gimmick - the show is so strong already that sometimes it resorts to cheap tricks that it doesn't need to succeed. A couple of the gimmicky conceits really work well - I particularly loved Tuco's uncle who appeared in season 2 when Walt and Jesse were kidnapped, and could see them plotting, but could only hit his bell, rather than speak. Ones that don't work though include particularly the gimmick in which the end of the episode, or season (in the case of the second season) is shown at the beginning and we're left to wonder how it gets there. This doesn't add a whole lot to the show, and particularly in the case of the second season the whole airplane-crashed-by-Jane's-grieving-dad plot didn't do it for me (thought it wasn't so overwhelming as to ruin the show or anything) - it seemed out of place - but I'll chalk it up to not quite being able to paint out of one of those corners as well as they do it every other time (though the crash itself was fine - leading to the great scene of Walter explaining why there's no need to fret to his school's student body).

Book Review: The Lost City of Z by David Grann

My grandma and I were reading buddies. Whenever I visited her, we'd talk about what the other was reading, or had read recently, and how was it, and so forth, even though we just about never read the same things. She always said that reading was one of the things that kept her going into old age - one of her favorite parts about reading was that you could immerse yourself in another place, or another culture, or another time and feel what it was like even without leaving your house. Personally, that had generally not been a major factor in my motivation for reading, but reading something like this makes you understand why that rationale can be so powerful.

That's only one of the reasons this book is so fascinating - the adventure in the Amazon aspect. Everything described about the amazon area was so interesting I found myself looking up more online later, and wanting to find another book that talks about the area - my imagination was piqued by all the unique dangers and experiences of the amazon - I felt like a little boy reading an adventure novel (I guess it's not that far away from truth) - undiscovered tribes, with thousands of unique languages who could befriend explorers, take them prisoner and eat them (yes, it sounds like an old-fashioned belief, but apparently a couple of the tribes actually practiced cannibalistic behavior) along with untold ways leading to an untimely death - several different insects alone, many poisonous animals, starvation, and of course sheer mental insanity.

Another reason to read the book is the mystery - there's a degree of suspense to unraveling what actually happened to Percy Fawcett, the protagonist of the non-fiction work - an incredibly riveting figure - unrelentingly loyal to a few, showing no fear in the face of these dangers, but also impossible to get along with for anyone who didn't share his one-dimensional keep-going never-stop mentality. There are even various little clues - journal entries, some of them possibly coded, rumors and stories from local tribes, and little bits, possibly true, or possibly not from the different explorers who have followed him in - at least those who survived.

A third (I'd say last, but that implies a more limited list than I'd like - maybe I'll think of more later?) is the reason I end up most often end up reading non-fiction books - the history. The shift in anthropological ideas, and how Fawcett was both ahead of time in his treatment of the natives, and still a member of his time with his generally noble savage beliefs. The notion of exploration, of how to deal with something completely new is compelling, and the amazon in the early 20th century (and probably to a lesser extent today) is particularly interesting because of how it was the last truly unexplored place on the planet, and that even as technology outside kept improving, explorers struggled to make use of that technology within the jungle. There's some strange romance to the notion that a small group of explorers could succeed where a giant battalion could not, and to the idea that even to this day there's some unexplored piece left.

And it kind of teases you - because in the end, there wasn't realy an answer, even though reading the whole way you kind of knew there wouldn't be - and to some extent, that's probably the point - all these people looking for definitive, certain, iron-clad proof that just is never going to exist as hard as it is to except, and it is hard, but it's a little less hard because of how enjoyable for us (not for them surely - with the malaria, and the yellow fever, and bugs, and the pirhanas and whatnot) the journey is getting there.