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.