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).

15: NCIS

The sneaky biggest show on this list, perhaps the most remarkable thing about NCIS is that there's nothing really remarkable at all about it. The little procedural that could, NCIS chugged its way from a 26th place and 11.84 million viewers in its rookie season all the way to the 4th spot and 19.33 million viewers in its most recent 7th season, growing in viewers every single year as it progressed. It can not be emphasized enough just how unusual this is. Sure, every once in a blue moon shows take a couple of years to find their feet but usually they peak out after a few years and begin a decline, either steep, or just gentle because their show is still extremely popular, but fewer people generally watch any one show as years go on, with fewer people watching broadcast TV as a whole. The two most closest examples I could find were Everybody Loves Raymond, which peaked in its 6th season, and dipped a slight bit but not by much afterwards, and Seinfeld which started with absolutely no one watching it, getting an extreme amount of leeway from NBC, and then by the 7th season reached its peak, which it more or less maintained for the couple of seasons after it. While season 8 ratings for NCIS aren't out yet, the single episode record was already set by a season 8 episode. Not to mention all this for a show that had the audacity to schedule itself next to the clear #1 show of the era (which will prevent it from ever notching a #1 slot, for better or worse) American Idol.

Okay, enough about ratings, but man, what else is there to talk about. I've seen quite a big of NCIS - when I was out in California visiting my brother, my usual Law & Order watching schedule was three hours off and NCIS was in its place. It's you know, okay. Kind of a middle of the road procedural, better than some of the real drek of the genre, but inferior to, say, Law & Order. I can understand why people watch it and why it stays on tv; I can not understand why it's the most popular scripted show in America. CSI, which was the most popular procedural before being replaced by NCIS at least has its crazy zoom in shots, and it's super sensationalized crimes. NCIS, while being no authority on realism, is nowhere as out there as CSI. Mark Harmon, who had bounced around after Chicago Hope ended, to end up as the lead, is minorly charismatic and his team is about average, including former Man from U.N.C.L.E. co-star David McCallum as the wacky old and morbid trivia filled medical examiner and Pauley Parette as the she's-over-forty-what-is-she-still-doing-with-the-goth-and-pigtails-thing forensics specialist, who is probably the second most well-known character after Harmon - the creepy NCIS:LA commercials had Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J following her, as NCIS:LA follows NCIS on Tuesday nights.

I guess Michael Weatherly's the third most notable character? I don't even know. NCIS was a spin off of JAG which is notable for the fact that I just learned that JAG lasted TEN seasons, a fact which I find absolutely mindblowing, if only vaguely relevant here. That's it, really. This is going to be one of those weird shows that no one probably remembers even though it was huge at the time (Think: The Jets - 80s pop band with five top ten hits who no one has ever heard of - well, that's probably too obscure, but time will tell).