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.