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).

13: American Idol

Perhaps it's unfair to stow the best rated program of the last decade here at number thirteen. Call it a bit of discretion for a show I genuinely extremely dislike. I admit I've had trouble exactly explaining very well what it is I so dislike about the show, and I'm not always sure I can to myself. In addition, I hold no animus towards contestants post-Idol, I've liked plenty of their music that has come afterwards (well, mostly Kelly Clarkson and a couple of other songs by people here and there). I just really don't like it. Oh, sure, there are a couple of reasons I can pinpoint, and they explain maybe why I don't watch it, but not really why I don't like it so much - two hours of show a week means they contain a ton of absolute fluff and the songs that got released at the end of every year as Idol songs tended to be lousy as a general course -A Moment Like This or Inside Your Heaven, for example. And part of it, certainly is because it's so popular, if nobody watched it, I probably would feel the same way about it as I feel about, I don't know, According to Jim. But it is that popular, so it stares me in the face every time a great controversy is there about which David to vote for, Cook or Archuleta (okay, that only happened once, but you get the idea).

I don't watch it, but that doesn't mean I haven't seen it, for better or worse. It's hard to avoid it ever, with it being so big and talked about. I know all the winners, and just about all of the runners up (I don't want to say for sure that I might not forget about a Diana deGarmo) because they're usually worth knowing, most of them have had at least some semblance of at least one hit (Taylor Hicks really pushing it with just the American Idol done "Do You Make Me Proud?"

It's everywhere. So many things about it have been cultural touchstones over the last decade - Simon Cowell raving, From Justin to Kelly, Clay Aiken claiming he's not gay and then finally coming out, Paula Abdul's scandal and alleged affair with a contestant, the great run of Sanjaya, Adam Lambert not winning probably because he's just gay or because he's flamboyantly gay - there are almost too many to count (there's so many that after writing this I just remembered William Hung - with almost any other show, that would be the biggest random sensation to happen to it). Although it has still been the #1 and #2 programs for the past five years (and no, I'm not giving separate entries to the performance show and the results show), I feel like while tons of people still watch, it's been less talked about everywhere the past couple of seasons (could just be wishful thinking).

Two of the winners have become unqualified stars - Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood, and Jordin Starks has had her share of success. Two non winners have also become stars - Chris Daughtry, and oscar-winning Jennifer Hudson (there's a section of the American Idol wikipedia page devoted to award winners - hilariously there's an "Academy Awards" column - which looks like a binary column - it's basically a whole bunch of zeros and a one by Hudson's name).

Someday, someone's going to write a book about American Idol. As we move into a new generation of Idoldom, we have two new judges - really important decisions for the producers, who were worried that Simon Cowell leaving might cause droves of viewers to leave as well - and allegedly Steven Tyler has a knack for it (possibly making other new judge Jennifer Lopez jealous?). Still, we may well be reaching a point where American Idol is relevant in television, but not so much in music anymore.

I'll continue to follow it in as much as I need to know - acts that might actually become popular outside of Idol, and any major scandal news story, but no more. Thankfully, at least the days are gone where any American Idol songs released at the end would instantly shoot super high in the charts (the weirdest for me is going through my old year end top 100s realizing how high a version of God Bless the USA by "American Idol finalists" went - thankfully quickly forgotten - another distasteful byproduct of post-9/11super patriotic fever).