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).

9. Veronica Mars

Okay, so here's the last show on the list that absolutely nobody watched (well, there's a second one that most people didn't watch as it aired, but I think far more people have watched it since), though it developed a significant cult and is probably one of my, I don't know, five favorite shows of all time (it's incredibly high ranking on my personal list make up for any commercial drawbacks).

I like doing analysis of television as much as the next person, but sometimes more than exactly what you can put your finger on is the feeling you get when you watch a show, when you talk about a show, after you watch it, and when you think about watching it (I spend a lot of time thinking about TV). For Lost, the feeling as the show moved forward changed from excitement right after an episode to frustration, to not really wanting to see more episodes, to at least, for now, not really wanting to see any episodes again(maaaaybe the Desmond-centric time travel one is an exception). For Veronica Mars, my feelings are the opposite. Recently it was mentioned when I was in the car with my friend who had not seen it, and my other friend and I got really excited, telling him to watch it and then later watching the first couple of episodes with him, which were just as good as they were the first time I saw them (or the second). Just writing about it makes me want to watch.

Veronica is a teenage sleuth in a California high school divided between sons and daughters of the rich and the sons and daughters of those who serve them. She is an exception from either of these two groups in that her dad was the sheriff - poor but with power. This all changed after the biggest murder in town history, when he accused the wrong suspect, a multi-millionaire software developer whose son dated Veronica and whose daughter, the dead victim, was her best friend. After that, he was recalled from office and started up a private detective agency, while Veronica became a target at school, since her dad became so unpopular in the wake of accusing the richest man in town. She was asked to choose her friends, or her dad, and stuck with her dad, making her a social pariah. Oh, and her mom walked out on her and her dad somewhere around this time. Got all that?

The way the show works is that every episode contains a small scale mystery - who stole something from the school, who is terrorizing another student - random classmates will come to Veronica for help sometimes, knowing her reputation as a bit of a crime-solver. She then uses some of her dad's cool P.I. equipment along with her natural guile and solves the cases. There's also a big season-long mystery (in the first season, it's who killed her old best friend portrayed by the now much more famous Amanda Seyfried) which works itself out over time, until becoming the focus of the last couple of episodes.

There are many reasons I love this show. For one, the writing is fantastic. Joss Whedon is one of my television heroes and I think it's undeniable Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas (sadly not the same Thomas lead singer of Matchbox 20) is influenced by him. The dialogue is sharp, witty and banter-y, all around, but I particularly enjoy the conversations between Veronica and her dad. Her dad is a great character - it would be so easy to make a show like this and make her dad a bumbling fool, or at the least a naive father on whom she is always pulling one over, or some strict disciplinarian who you are always rooting for her to disobey. This isn't the case at all however - as a viewer, you love her dad - he's smart, he's good at his job, and while he doesn't always know everything she's up to (he does have a job and other commitments, after all) several times in the course of the show, Veronica thinks she's gotten away with something but he knows about it, or knew about it all along. Another character, Logan, who is pretty despicable in the first couple of episodes of the show, became a favorite by the latter half of the first season. The power to transform a character from hated to loved and not have it feel forced (reminiscent of what Whedon does with Cordelia in Buffy) is impressive.

It's tempting to go far more in depth, but it would be difficult without way more words so another subject for another day. All I'll say is that, while I could say this about a whole bunch of series on the list (and I may again before it's over), if you have not watched this show, WATCH IT NOW.