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).

18: Mad Men

Mad Men is one of the best two dramas on TV right now (along with Breaking Bad, though I'm not always certain on the order) and one of the buzziest shows around, at least in the Eastern seaboard Megalopolis (probably not so much in the flyover states).

Going into the fourth season this year I had talked myself a little bit down on the show. I had talked to some people who weren't in love with it, or kind of liked it but thought it was overhyped. The show hadn't been on for a few months and it wasn't fresh in my mind; by the time it came back I wasn't all that excited about it. But then, as I started watching season 4, my feelings changed, and after just a couple of episodes I remembered why I liked the show so much, and after the season was done, I got to thinking this was probably the best season yet. And unlike Friday Night Lights - a show which as I watch it seems amazing, but which quickly seems significantly worse after I'm a few weeks away from watching, the feeling of how good Mad Men was has stayed with me this time.

The acting is supurb and the characters are rich. The plots are great, but the show ultimately isn't about the plots at heart - it's about the interactions between the characters. Don Draper is the heart of the show, and without him being a great character, the show would certainly go nowhere, but it's about more than just him. In addition, it would be easy in some ways to have Draper's character become a little bit at least of a cartoon at various points - ambitious ad man who cheats on his wife constantly is easy to get tired of (as much of a crazy person as Betty later becomes, doesn't excuse the constant cheating - it was good to see the marriage end all around) - but a combination of really good acting and really good writing make him much more interesting than he had to be. This season, the episode "The Suitcase" had that kind of instant cache that pretty much everyone knew they were watching a classic when they saw it - when I read things online and talked to other people, they agreed, and when I talked to people after the season and started with something like "great episode" they knew exactly what I meant. The relationships are interesting, and the Peggy-Don relationship may be the deepest and most important one in the show.

If I do have to make my one nitpicky current issue, and it's a relatively small one (spoilers coming), it's that Betty, Don's by now ex-wife has sort of become cartoonishly insane. She has not been in the show nearly so much once she left Don (she's not quite as important to the show as say Carmela was in Sopranos, but still), but she has become a real monster. Deciding to move to spite Sally, firing Carla ridiculously, and in general just acting like an 8 year old. Yes, we get the idea that she's supposed to be immature and a child, but come on - all the other characterization is far more subtle and nuanced, in particular, say Pete Campbell who was super villainous in the first season and has become much more tolerable, or Roger, but Betty has become one dimensional.

Anyway, it's a minor complaint, seriously. Great show.