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).

35: CSI Miami

Actually not the only spinoff on this list (Law & Order SVU and Boston Legal), it's so similar to its to its progenitor that I dread writing about it, but I felt it would be unfair to not include a show that has just about (maybe just a little short) equaled the popularity of the original CSI domestically an possibly eclipsed it internationally - having made the top 10 viewing charts in more countries than any other show some arbitrary survey named it the most popular show in the world.

I've seen a handful of CSI Miami episodes, and frankly there's not all that much to talk about, and almost anything I would has to be saved for the original CSI article, so we'll talk about the people involved in the most successful spin-off of a show to date (that I can think of quickly).

This discussion starts and ends (well, not really ends because I want to talk about other people) with David Caruso. Caruso's career has an arc just like so many classic movies, many of which Caruso wishes he could have been in, or a great sports tale (Zach Grienke anyone?). After plugging away in supporting roles throughout the '80s and early '90s, he got his big break with NYPD Blue and earned rave reviews. It all went to his head, however, as he got cocky, and left after just one season to pursue a career in film. The epic failures of his two big starring roles in Jade and Kiss of Death derailed his leading man career before he could really get started - Jade apparently is so forgettable that one of the few facts mentioned above the contents on the wikipedia page is that the movie is known for killing Caruso's career. He returned to TV in the one-season classic Michael Hayes where he played a New York prosecutor - the series' best distinction may be that it was the first show on the three major networks to have a first run episode finish 6th in the nightly Nielsen ratings (Somehow both leads landed on their feet - Caruso's co-star Ruben Santiago-Hudson is now appearing as the boss in Castle).

Caruso's film career didn't improve much from here - he appeared in Proof of Life and a movie called Body Count which doesn't even have a wikipedia entry (trumped by the Ice T band, an independent movie made with Ice-T, and an early '90s video game Operation: Body Count), and those are seriously the highlights. Yet, somehow, all-knowing Jerry Bruckheimer (or more likely someone else) saw his former talent and decided to rescue him from the scrap heap, installing him as Lt. Horatio Kane on CSI: Miami, and a legend was born.

Caruso is the heart and soul of the show - him and Emily Proctor are just about the only two to remain the whole time. Caruso's character has become best known for his one-liners, often strategically timed with putting on his sunglasses and the subject of many an amusing youtube clip (They're really just getting funnier and funnier as I watch - my favorite being "The verdict is in, Frank...but the jury is out" - I don't have a clue what the context of that could be).

The rest of the cast is stocked with regulars of the tube. Kim Delaney, from NYPD Blue and the short lived Philly, stuck around just for a season. Emily Proctor was best known for her role as Republican white house counsel for the Bartlett administration. Medical Examiner Khandi Alexander was on Newsradio, ER and the The Corner.

(just a brief interlude here to make it known just I just watched that "Verdict is in" clip another three times - it's really that good.)

Honestly, I could keep going on with cast members - it has Rory Cochrane of Dazed and Confused fame who after barely drawing a regular paycheck for years somehow decided to leave the show after two seasons - but really, you should just spend what extra 30 seconds you might have spent browsing the rest of the article just watching some of those clips again. And that's why CSI Miami is on the list if for no other reason.


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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).

36: Battlestar Galactica

Another show that I've seen, has a huge cult following, and that I feel very strongly about. I like, but I don't love it nearly as much as Flight of the Conchords (which makes me wonder why I would put it on spot above it?). Battlestar Galactica (or BSG and everybody calls it and I will be) does some things right but also does a lot of things wrong which prevent it from being a truly great show.

Now, I'll warn ahead of time that when I make this quick list of bad things about it's going to make it seem like I hate the show - but honestly, this is different - like with say, Scrubs or How I Met Your Mother, my most specific criticisms of shows are saved for shows that I generally like but have some problems that keep them from being great shows - there is just no point in nitpicking about everything wrong with Two and a Half Men - everything is wrong about, so why go into detail - but with these shows that are pretty good but have some serious pitfalls, these are the shows that frustrate the heck out of me.

Oh, and on to the list.

The dialogue is terrible - lazy at some times, just plain bad at others. There are a couple of cute things - I love the little bits of its own language - the fracks, and the "So Say We Alls." and every once in a while Admiral Adama gives a nice little speech. But in comparison to other sci-fi shows I invested in - mainly of the Joss Whedon variety - it's so lacking - it's often generic, melodramatic, cliche and repetitive.

The characters are terrible. Basically, there are a handful of characters who are superheroes - both Adamas, Starbuck, Roslin, Baltar - they're basically the critically characters in every important event that happens on the ship and they come to the rescue in every single crisis, surrounded by a couple of the next tier of characters. Some of the worst episodes, which will be discussed shortly are about the back stories of these characters - and highlight the flaw of the poor characterization but overexposing them to dramatic situations that either the existing characterizing can't handle, that seem ridiculous and out of context, and that are just uninteresting because we don't really care about the characters enough. Sure, I root for them, and yes the Admiral is awesome - and just about always right, Jack Bauer style - but some of them really grate on the viewer, and the constant reinvention of characters like Baltar to kind of redeem them while keeping them as antiheroes is stretched beyond belief.

Some episodes are absolute duds. It's hard to be a great show when you have a handful of episodes that don't simply not move the story forward, or focus on a weaker character, but are just plain awful. There's a handful of them particularly in the second half of the second season, included possible the worst episode of them all Black Market - about some personal demons of Lee Adama who takes up with a prostitute and has to shut down an illegal black market run by (the only redeeming part of the episode) Bill Duke. Scar, the episode with the entirely unwanted Kat backstory is another true stinker.

The ending is terrible. Yeah, I won't ruin it for if you haven't seen it, though you can more or less guess part of it, and the part of it you can't guess really doesn't make any sense.

Okay, so, as I warned it sounds like I hate the show. I really don't though - it does a couple things well - mainly it's interesting plot and the dynamic between the cylons and the humans and the questions of what's really human, and whatnot, that inevitably occur. It does a relatively good job of keeping suspense and slowly revealing the remaining Cylons and for the most part I was not incredibly angered by any revelation (except for the ending). The main-plot centric episodes are by far the best - the ones dealing directly with Cylons - and those tend to heat up towards the end of the show, and towards the end of each season, or half season. Another quick issue with the plot (not to get back into complaining I swear) is BSG's utter reluctance to change the status quo - basically to get away from their main set up as Roslin as president and Adama as Admiral on the ship - when something happens to change that you can feel the tension as they try to return to normalcy - particularly when they were held captive by the Cylons on New Caprica you could feel how badly they wanted to get back to the existing set up - a plotline that could have been half a season on another show was only a couple of episodes on BSG.

Yeah, so honestly again, I do like the show, but don't make it your first choice to watch either. But yeah, it's got quite the cult following, so here it is.

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

37: Flight of the Conchords

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

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

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

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

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

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

Minor complaint:

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

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

-Andrew