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.