(t5!) Heroes Of The Zeroes T.V.: Top 30 Television Shows
Let's take a break from music for a moment, pull a little cliffhanger before we got to the singles #1, and let's talk about television for a little bit, more particularly the best 30 shows of the decade. Why? For starters, TV was easier to access in the zeroes mainly due to the rise of streaming video, PVR, shows on DVD, and torrent downloads. I have the capability to watch any show, even if it was canceled long time ago or even if I'm geographically restricted to watch it. Also, TV was phenomenal in the zeroes. All of the TV writers were so good that they went on strike in the middle of the decade so that they could get the compensation they thought they deserved. Well, (t5!) thinks that the writers from these thirty shows deserved the pay increase.
Of course, if it wasn't obvious enough, this is a personal blog and thus, I can only comment and pass judgment on the shows that I've personally seen. For instance, The Sopranos, Weeds, How I Met Your Mother, and Deadwood won't be in this list tonight, but if I have taken the time to immerse myself in these particular pieces of work, some of them would probably bump off #30 and #29 of this list. Don't worry, watching these TV shows are in my to-do list, but for now, this is the best thirty shows from the last decade that I've seen.
#30: Malcolm In The Middle (Fox; 2000-2006)
This got annoying after a while, not so much because Malcolm and his adventures getting annoying but because Frankie Muniz post-puberty was starting to become irritating. But the first few seasons were always good for a laugh-out-loud and the characters when they stuck to their guns were very amusing. It also kick-started the single-camera sitcom trend on Fox, broke the grounds for shows for better (Arrested Development and The Bernie Mac Show) or worse (Greg The Bunny and Method & Red).
#29: Clone High (Teletoon, MTV; 2002-2003)
This became popular with college students because one, it parodizes the life they were a year or two removed from, two, they were still immature enough to enjoy cartoons, and three, it has an animated Ghandi who has a penchant for dry humping and partying too much, an animated Cleopatra who uses her sexuality to rule over the school, and animated JFK who compensates for having two gay dads by being an extreme womanizer. It was sort of unfortunate that we didn’t get a second season because the first ended in a cliffhanger. Don’t we deserve, at least, an animated short in the MTV website somewhere?
#28: Boston Public (Fox; 2000-2004)
The back stories were often tedious to get through, and some of the acting are pretty substandard (some, like Chi McBride as the principal though, are acted pretty impressively) but when they attempt to tackle the topical stories of that time (which always had a precedent in real life), such as the misuse of the “n” word, how kid’s deal with anorexia, and how a public school balances the budget between academics and athletics, they’re usually on point. Maybe it hit me harder because I was in high school during its peak (first couple of seasons).
#27: Everybody Loves Raymond (CBS; 1996-2005)
It was very formulaic and it didn’t try to strive to be anything it’s not. It never strayed too far way from the main plots—mother is domineering, older brother is envious of the attention the little brother gets, dad is a grump, wife won't put out in the bedroom, Ray has a big nose. But sometimes a comedy has to keep it simple in order for the hilarious punchlines to leap out.
#26: Kenny Vs. Spenny (CBC, Showcase; 2003-Present)
Their challenges range from immature to controversial to gross, but most of the time, it’s entertaining. The comedy obtained from watching a good TV rivalry (Wile E. Coyote v. Road Runner, Tom v. Jerry, Homer Simpson v. Ned Flanders) comes from when the evil character’s eccentric shenanigans is always thwarted by the good’s propensity to stick to a code of ethics; Kenny Vs. Spenny works because it’s opposite of that—we route for evil to conquer good, and it does here most of the time.
#25: The Mole (ABC; 2001-2004, 2008)
When Anderson Cooper departed after Season 2, he took the quality of the show with it. Ahmad Rashard came in, and celebrities like Kathie Griffin and Dennis Rodman participated, and then fail. But for the first two seasons, this was the ace. Out of all the reality game shows, it looked like the most fun to play (if you were dorky enough and had enough friends that are as dorky as you, it’d be fun to do in a dorky party).
#24: Entourage (HBO; 2004-Present)
It’s a terrific premise for a show, and the show and HBO were perfect for each other. But it would be more riveting if the plot revolved around Jeremy Piven’s Ari Gold, instead of Adrian Grenier’s bland Vincent Chase. Get him to sign new clients every second season, and we can see him and his gay Asian sidekick bring them up to prominence. Alas, it started off with so much potential. But when it’s good, you get so engrossed with it until you fail to realize that the 28 minutes runtime is almost over.
#23: The Simpsons (Fox; 1989-Present)
It already saw its best days in the nineties and would, no doubt, top the list if I compiled such a list in 1999. But, it’s still The Simpsons, right? Mainstream pop culture awareness, Homer’s loony antics, wide array of entertaining minor characters, it’s still there. Plus, it probably was largely responsible for the adult-oriented cartoon genre that was very prevalent in the zeroes.
#22: Scrubs (NBC; 2001-Present)
It’s another show that also has seen its finest days, but we would never have seen House or Grey’s Anatomy or that one show in NBC about ambulance drivers if this didn’t become popular (don’t make a case for ER because the only good thing it did was give us the incredibly dreamy George Clooney). This probably also spawned Family Guy, a show that just missed the ranking. Zach Braff’s dream/imagination sequences allowed for very wacky comedy and zany musical numbers. Not only that, the hospital setting allows for very crestfallen tragedy sometimes.
#21: Futurama (Fox; 1999-2003, Comedy Central; 2008-Present)
It had marvelously smart writing for a cartoon, kind of like the middle class man’s nineties The Simpsons. It was so smart, in fact, that (1) it got picked up again by Comedy Central after being cancelled in 2003, proving that smart people always get their way, and (2) a scene from it was used in Al Gore’s An Inconvenienet Truth. They said that having an erratic airing schedule led to its first demise, but I think its cancellation was due to it not having characters as lovable as the ones in The Simpsons.
#20: American Idol (Fox; 2002-Present)
Undoubtedly the most popular show of the zeroes, currently the top program in the Nielsen Ratings and also #1 in five consecutive seasons. The process has been idiot-proof, but because of unimpressive past winners that didn’t amount to anything after the show (umm…Taylor Hicks, y’all) , it’s also proof that viewers can be idiots sometimes. On a personal note, it has been a favorite among my family, forcing us to sit in front of the same television twice to three times a week.
#19: Freaks And Geeks (NBC; 1999-2000)
Not to toot my own horn, but I was never a freak nor a geek in high school. I know this was advertised as a comedy (this was an Apatow after all); however, the contemplative and touching moments occured more often than the funny ones. Like the other Apatow television creation, it was pitiful that it never clicked or found a big enough audience to push it for more than a season.
#18: House (Fox; 2004-Present)
Some shows try their darndest to evolve its main characters and their premise, sometimes to the detriment of their product. House is so committed to do the opposite, and sometimes to the detriment of its product: Step 1: Someone looks sick, but someone else gets sicker; step 2: Massive Attack’s “Tear Drop”; step 3: A lot of medical jargon; step 4: patient gets sicker; step 5: House solves it once and for all. It’s predictable, but what keeps me coming back is House’s snarky everyone-is-stupid attitude. Gregory House, the most asshole hero in the history of television, is also its most intriguing.
#17: The O.C. (Fox; 2003-2007)
We were mesmerized by the early season’s unpredictability as quickly as we were frustrated by the latter season’s pointlessness. The key to the show is casting, the actor’s ability to pull off their character’s growth: Rachel Bilson’s Summer pulled off the transition from shallow spoiled princess to adorable girl next door; Melinda Clarke’s Julie Cooper-Nichol accomplished the evolution from bitchy golddigger to comical cougar. Tate Donovan’s Jimmy Cooper went from a sketchy embezzler to a likable underdog. They couldn’t have picked more suitable actors to play each roles.
#16: Dexter (Showtime; 2006-Present)
We all can relate to Miami’s Dexter Morgan: we all want to do well in our day jobs; we make every effort to become a good son and a good brother; maybe some, like Dexter in the latter seasons, want to be great fathers and great husbands. Once in a while, we like to retreat from the everyday hustle-and-bustle and work on a pastime like knitting sweaters, playing Madden on Xbox, or strapping evil-doers to a table with plastic wrap, collecting a drop of their blood, and chopping it up into smaller, disposable pieces…oh wait. Well, it does have the best opening credits of the zeroes.
#15: Grey’s Anatomy (ABC; 2005-Present)
Grey’s catches a lot of flak because of its saccharine main plot, the “pick me, choose me, love me” dialogue, and all the ghost sex. But then in one episode, just when you’re about to give up on the show, they roll in a patient in Seattle Grace that keeps you glued to the screen. What? A man with a live missle stuck on his chest? A boy stuck in a block of cement? An intense domino procedure? Meredith Grey might die? (Of course she won’t, she’s on the show’s title! They’re not going to change the name of the show to McDreamy’s Anatomy!) If this is what I'll be missing if I stopped tuning in, I might just have to tolerate all the sap.
#14: So You Think You Can Dance (Fox; 2005-Present)
SYTYCD was brought to you by the makers of American Idol, and it adapted pretty much the same process to attain their winner. But how was it exactly that SYTYCD ended up six units better than Idol? To begin with, the industry of dance didn’t have a stage or another means to achieve distinction, unlike Idol where the journey for fame is often criticized for being inauthentic. Also, SYTYCD tend to get the best choreographers in the business, who also double as judges with expert opinions. Then, there’s the dancers who already gained underground fame in Youtube, broadway, ballroom competitions, or whispers among the people in dance circles. SYTYCD has unearthed the best of the dance business.
#13: Undeclared (Fox; 2001-2002)
It’s another short-lived attempt at conquering the small screen by comedy extraordinaire, Judd Apatow. It’s pretty unfortunate that it debuted two weeks after 9/11, a time when the world wasn’t ready to laugh out loud yet. Undeclared was television’s best portrayal of college life; a funny way to depict the heartbreak, embarrassment, social reinvention, and hijinx that everyone goes through during a special time of his or her life. It’s also the best portrayal of Apatow’s comedy genius, giving his actors freedom to improvise with their dialogue.
#12: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart (Comedy Central; 1999-Present)/The Colbert Report (Comedy Central; 2005-Present)
Even though each show deserved its own separate merits, I grouped the two together because I’ve always watched the one right after the other. I know it’s pathetic but I get my current events from these two shows, and I’m confident that I’m not the only person in this world that do that. Not only that, if there are important events that happen that I would’ve heard somewhere else first, I’m also confident that I’m not the only person that tune in to find out how these two cover it.
#11: Breaking Bad (AMC; 2008-Present)
No other show from the zeroes went from zero to sixty quicker than this suspense-drama. The narrative of the first season was intentionally paced slowly so that we truly understand the choices Bryan Cranston’s Walt White made. And when it’s for sure that we got it, the writers of the show didn’t allow us to catch our breath by making every moment either absurdly funny or palm-sweatingly intense. Breaking Bad is fairly new compared to the other shows in this list, which means that its best has yet to come.
#10: Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO; 2000-Present)
It already gained points for giving us an appropriate Seinfeld reunion/ending, even if the episode was eleven years too late. With Seinfeld’s co-creator Larry David on the lead this time, he gave us a show as hilarious and, at some episodes, as uncomfortable. As the real-life George Costanza, he walked us through the life of a rich, influential, and bored man, who refuses to comply with today’s unwritten social rules as a result. He gets himself into the most awkward societal situations—like “hiring a prostitute to drive on the carpool lane”, “inadvertently injuring Shaq as a Laker spectator”, “accusing the weatherman of giving false reports so that he can have the whole golf course for himself”—so that we don’t have to.
#09: 30 Rock (NBC; 2006-Present)
Back in the fall of 2006, NBC released two shows from the same ilk: Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip and this: Tina Fey’s 30 Rock. Before the two shows aired, if I had to bet on who will have a longer shelf-life, I would’ve guessed Studio 60. Well Studio 60 lasted one abbreviated season while 30 Rock churned out hilarious workplace comedy every episode, resurrected Alec Baldwin and Tracy Morgan’s career, won Emmy’s for Outstanding Comedy Series, and verified the fact that Tina Fey is the funniest woman in showbiz. I guess they showed me.
#08: Survivor (CBS; 2000-Present)
If the predictions are correct that civilization will somehow cease to exist, then someone should put an entire box set of Survivor seasons in a time capsule somewhere. We don’t want the next inhabitants of this world to get the wrong idea of what reality TV was SUPPOSED to be. Yeah, Real World did it first, The Amazing Race won more awards, and American Idol garnered more audiences; however, Survivor is when reality TV went boom, the best representation of our society’s desire to do almost anything for a prize. Burnett seldom changed the formula—separate in tribes, build shelter and fire, compete in challenges, get immunity, form alliances, vote someone out—but even if we know what’s coming, it didn’t entertain us any less.
#07: Mad Men (AMC; 2007-Present)
I don’t want to go the “if in the future” route two entries in the row, but I can’t avoid it with Mad Men. If in the future they did a show that strives to illustrate what life was like in the zeroes—the boom of Internet and social media, the global economic crisis, Obama’s election, 9/11—I just hope that they do it as properly and as detail-oriented as Mad Men did about the life in the sixties. Everything was tackled appropriately, from the absence of feminism, to the race segregation, to the JFK assassination. They ended season three with such a cliffhanger that we don’t know what type of Mad Men we’re going to get in the tens, and that just makes it ultra exciting.
#06: Pardon The Interruption (ESPN; 2001-Present)
You know what I said about The Daily Show/The Colbert Report, how if something happens in the world, you look forward to how Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will address it? Well that’s what Pardon The Interruption is: if something consequential (even trivial) occurred in the sports world, you’re damn sure that noteworthy sportswriters Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon (and sometimes Dan Le Batard, unfortunately) will have a word or two about it. The majority of the time, their outlook on sports issues are so insightful that even when they disagree with each other, they still articulate exactly the thoughts that sometimes you don't have the ability to voice on your own. On a personal note, it has been a Napster for my sports opinions.
#05: The Office (NBC; 2005-Present)
I’m not even sure if it was the first comedy mockumentary on TV—Reno 911! of Comedy Central certainly existed first—but when the American remake of The Office debuted on NBC in the spring of 2005, it came across as a really refreshing brand of comedy (especially to those who avoided the British version because they find their type of humor really dry). As effective as the format is at winning an audience, the most alluring characteristic of the show is its ability to promote their minor characters, even if they only get seconds of screentime or they have to do it via webisodes.
#04: Lost (ABC; 2004-Present)
Lost could have stayed as a show about strangers marooned in an island, a “Survivor: the fictional drama”. Things would’ve been so simple, we probably wouldn’t have been so confused , and we probably wouldn’t be bitching about plot holes after every episode . But then again, we wouldn’t have gotten polar bears, smoke monsters, back-to-the-future Scots, gun-weilding French women, and a giant concrete foot with four toes, and it wouldn’t have been so addictive. And if Lost remained similar to its debut, it also probably wouldn’t have cracked this list. At this point of the show, even if they don’t end up answering anything, we still tune in because we’re still very very entertained.
#03: Friday Night Lights (NBC; 2006-Present)
There’s a couple of reasons why Friday Night Lights were gasping for its last breath a few episodes in: (1) it premiered in opposition to American Idol while the reality show was in the height of its popularity, and (2) its premise has accidentally placed itself right in the middle of two opposite demographics: people (mostly women) who like dramas generally don’t like watching a show about high school football, and people (mostly men) who love sports don’t like watching kids open up their emotions with each other. It was so outstanding though that the people who belong in the overlapping area of that Venn diagram ensured that they were vociferous enough to make NBC sign the show for extra seasons. I was so thankful that the show was consistent enough (if you ignore the Landry killer sub-plot in Season 2) that it swayed naysayers eventually, making grown men weep and making grown women cheer like they’re actually sitting in the bleachers of Dillon.
#02: Arrested Development (Fox; 2003-2006)
Sometimes, I just don’t get it. For the amount of total decibels of laughter per show, there was no comedy from this decade that came close to this narrative of an utterly quirky OC family struggling to cope with a world where they are not as affluent. No joke was too foolish, no topic too off limits, no outcome too rigorously established. And the actors, their acting was superb. Then how was it that Arrested Development only ran for 53 episodes and something like The George Lopez Show got 120. Maybe that was it, it was too “too”—too taboo, too smart, too silly. Maybe the sense of humor were too subtle—such as Tobias Funke proclaiming that he’s the world’s first “analrapist” (a poorly-devised combination of “analyst” and “therapist”), or “deuce chill”, or the whole family’s different interpretation of the chicken dane, or…I can probably go on forever. It’s just too bad that the decade’s funniest show didn’t.
#01: The Wire (HBO; 2002-2008)
A show being pronounced as the greatest television show of the EVER, it should probably top the zeroes list of television shows, right? I don’t even know how to appropriately justify how excellent this show is without expanding it into a 4000-word dissertation. Let’s just start with this: David Simon is a genius. He’s an unequivocal genius! Just consider the fact that every detail, every plot, every subplot, and every character was meticulously planned out. Every season had a theme. Every scene had a purpose, which means that every single second of this show has to be watched, if them being tremendously chilling wasn’t reason enough to tune in. Every single character, no matter how important, can be killed off, which makes every death is such a shocking moment. When we arrived at the final scene of the show (a shot of the real star of the show, the city of Baltimore), it was just inconceivable that it was over. The Wire has made West Baltimore a place so horrifying to live in, yet it somehow also made it a place that didn’t want to leave.
Of course, if it wasn't obvious enough, this is a personal blog and thus, I can only comment and pass judgment on the shows that I've personally seen. For instance, The Sopranos, Weeds, How I Met Your Mother, and Deadwood won't be in this list tonight, but if I have taken the time to immerse myself in these particular pieces of work, some of them would probably bump off #30 and #29 of this list. Don't worry, watching these TV shows are in my to-do list, but for now, this is the best thirty shows from the last decade that I've seen.
#30: Malcolm In The Middle (Fox; 2000-2006)
This got annoying after a while, not so much because Malcolm and his adventures getting annoying but because Frankie Muniz post-puberty was starting to become irritating. But the first few seasons were always good for a laugh-out-loud and the characters when they stuck to their guns were very amusing. It also kick-started the single-camera sitcom trend on Fox, broke the grounds for shows for better (Arrested Development and The Bernie Mac Show) or worse (Greg The Bunny and Method & Red).
#29: Clone High (Teletoon, MTV; 2002-2003)
This became popular with college students because one, it parodizes the life they were a year or two removed from, two, they were still immature enough to enjoy cartoons, and three, it has an animated Ghandi who has a penchant for dry humping and partying too much, an animated Cleopatra who uses her sexuality to rule over the school, and animated JFK who compensates for having two gay dads by being an extreme womanizer. It was sort of unfortunate that we didn’t get a second season because the first ended in a cliffhanger. Don’t we deserve, at least, an animated short in the MTV website somewhere?
#28: Boston Public (Fox; 2000-2004)
The back stories were often tedious to get through, and some of the acting are pretty substandard (some, like Chi McBride as the principal though, are acted pretty impressively) but when they attempt to tackle the topical stories of that time (which always had a precedent in real life), such as the misuse of the “n” word, how kid’s deal with anorexia, and how a public school balances the budget between academics and athletics, they’re usually on point. Maybe it hit me harder because I was in high school during its peak (first couple of seasons).
#27: Everybody Loves Raymond (CBS; 1996-2005)
It was very formulaic and it didn’t try to strive to be anything it’s not. It never strayed too far way from the main plots—mother is domineering, older brother is envious of the attention the little brother gets, dad is a grump, wife won't put out in the bedroom, Ray has a big nose. But sometimes a comedy has to keep it simple in order for the hilarious punchlines to leap out.
#26: Kenny Vs. Spenny (CBC, Showcase; 2003-Present)
Their challenges range from immature to controversial to gross, but most of the time, it’s entertaining. The comedy obtained from watching a good TV rivalry (Wile E. Coyote v. Road Runner, Tom v. Jerry, Homer Simpson v. Ned Flanders) comes from when the evil character’s eccentric shenanigans is always thwarted by the good’s propensity to stick to a code of ethics; Kenny Vs. Spenny works because it’s opposite of that—we route for evil to conquer good, and it does here most of the time.
#25: The Mole (ABC; 2001-2004, 2008)
When Anderson Cooper departed after Season 2, he took the quality of the show with it. Ahmad Rashard came in, and celebrities like Kathie Griffin and Dennis Rodman participated, and then fail. But for the first two seasons, this was the ace. Out of all the reality game shows, it looked like the most fun to play (if you were dorky enough and had enough friends that are as dorky as you, it’d be fun to do in a dorky party).
#24: Entourage (HBO; 2004-Present)
It’s a terrific premise for a show, and the show and HBO were perfect for each other. But it would be more riveting if the plot revolved around Jeremy Piven’s Ari Gold, instead of Adrian Grenier’s bland Vincent Chase. Get him to sign new clients every second season, and we can see him and his gay Asian sidekick bring them up to prominence. Alas, it started off with so much potential. But when it’s good, you get so engrossed with it until you fail to realize that the 28 minutes runtime is almost over.
#23: The Simpsons (Fox; 1989-Present)
It already saw its best days in the nineties and would, no doubt, top the list if I compiled such a list in 1999. But, it’s still The Simpsons, right? Mainstream pop culture awareness, Homer’s loony antics, wide array of entertaining minor characters, it’s still there. Plus, it probably was largely responsible for the adult-oriented cartoon genre that was very prevalent in the zeroes.
#22: Scrubs (NBC; 2001-Present)
It’s another show that also has seen its finest days, but we would never have seen House or Grey’s Anatomy or that one show in NBC about ambulance drivers if this didn’t become popular (don’t make a case for ER because the only good thing it did was give us the incredibly dreamy George Clooney). This probably also spawned Family Guy, a show that just missed the ranking. Zach Braff’s dream/imagination sequences allowed for very wacky comedy and zany musical numbers. Not only that, the hospital setting allows for very crestfallen tragedy sometimes.
#21: Futurama (Fox; 1999-2003, Comedy Central; 2008-Present)
It had marvelously smart writing for a cartoon, kind of like the middle class man’s nineties The Simpsons. It was so smart, in fact, that (1) it got picked up again by Comedy Central after being cancelled in 2003, proving that smart people always get their way, and (2) a scene from it was used in Al Gore’s An Inconvenienet Truth. They said that having an erratic airing schedule led to its first demise, but I think its cancellation was due to it not having characters as lovable as the ones in The Simpsons.
#20: American Idol (Fox; 2002-Present)
Undoubtedly the most popular show of the zeroes, currently the top program in the Nielsen Ratings and also #1 in five consecutive seasons. The process has been idiot-proof, but because of unimpressive past winners that didn’t amount to anything after the show (umm…Taylor Hicks, y’all) , it’s also proof that viewers can be idiots sometimes. On a personal note, it has been a favorite among my family, forcing us to sit in front of the same television twice to three times a week.
#19: Freaks And Geeks (NBC; 1999-2000)
Not to toot my own horn, but I was never a freak nor a geek in high school. I know this was advertised as a comedy (this was an Apatow after all); however, the contemplative and touching moments occured more often than the funny ones. Like the other Apatow television creation, it was pitiful that it never clicked or found a big enough audience to push it for more than a season.
#18: House (Fox; 2004-Present)
Some shows try their darndest to evolve its main characters and their premise, sometimes to the detriment of their product. House is so committed to do the opposite, and sometimes to the detriment of its product: Step 1: Someone looks sick, but someone else gets sicker; step 2: Massive Attack’s “Tear Drop”; step 3: A lot of medical jargon; step 4: patient gets sicker; step 5: House solves it once and for all. It’s predictable, but what keeps me coming back is House’s snarky everyone-is-stupid attitude. Gregory House, the most asshole hero in the history of television, is also its most intriguing.
#17: The O.C. (Fox; 2003-2007)
We were mesmerized by the early season’s unpredictability as quickly as we were frustrated by the latter season’s pointlessness. The key to the show is casting, the actor’s ability to pull off their character’s growth: Rachel Bilson’s Summer pulled off the transition from shallow spoiled princess to adorable girl next door; Melinda Clarke’s Julie Cooper-Nichol accomplished the evolution from bitchy golddigger to comical cougar. Tate Donovan’s Jimmy Cooper went from a sketchy embezzler to a likable underdog. They couldn’t have picked more suitable actors to play each roles.
#16: Dexter (Showtime; 2006-Present)
We all can relate to Miami’s Dexter Morgan: we all want to do well in our day jobs; we make every effort to become a good son and a good brother; maybe some, like Dexter in the latter seasons, want to be great fathers and great husbands. Once in a while, we like to retreat from the everyday hustle-and-bustle and work on a pastime like knitting sweaters, playing Madden on Xbox, or strapping evil-doers to a table with plastic wrap, collecting a drop of their blood, and chopping it up into smaller, disposable pieces…oh wait. Well, it does have the best opening credits of the zeroes.
#15: Grey’s Anatomy (ABC; 2005-Present)
Grey’s catches a lot of flak because of its saccharine main plot, the “pick me, choose me, love me” dialogue, and all the ghost sex. But then in one episode, just when you’re about to give up on the show, they roll in a patient in Seattle Grace that keeps you glued to the screen. What? A man with a live missle stuck on his chest? A boy stuck in a block of cement? An intense domino procedure? Meredith Grey might die? (Of course she won’t, she’s on the show’s title! They’re not going to change the name of the show to McDreamy’s Anatomy!) If this is what I'll be missing if I stopped tuning in, I might just have to tolerate all the sap.
#14: So You Think You Can Dance (Fox; 2005-Present)
SYTYCD was brought to you by the makers of American Idol, and it adapted pretty much the same process to attain their winner. But how was it exactly that SYTYCD ended up six units better than Idol? To begin with, the industry of dance didn’t have a stage or another means to achieve distinction, unlike Idol where the journey for fame is often criticized for being inauthentic. Also, SYTYCD tend to get the best choreographers in the business, who also double as judges with expert opinions. Then, there’s the dancers who already gained underground fame in Youtube, broadway, ballroom competitions, or whispers among the people in dance circles. SYTYCD has unearthed the best of the dance business.
#13: Undeclared (Fox; 2001-2002)
It’s another short-lived attempt at conquering the small screen by comedy extraordinaire, Judd Apatow. It’s pretty unfortunate that it debuted two weeks after 9/11, a time when the world wasn’t ready to laugh out loud yet. Undeclared was television’s best portrayal of college life; a funny way to depict the heartbreak, embarrassment, social reinvention, and hijinx that everyone goes through during a special time of his or her life. It’s also the best portrayal of Apatow’s comedy genius, giving his actors freedom to improvise with their dialogue.
#12: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart (Comedy Central; 1999-Present)/The Colbert Report (Comedy Central; 2005-Present)
Even though each show deserved its own separate merits, I grouped the two together because I’ve always watched the one right after the other. I know it’s pathetic but I get my current events from these two shows, and I’m confident that I’m not the only person in this world that do that. Not only that, if there are important events that happen that I would’ve heard somewhere else first, I’m also confident that I’m not the only person that tune in to find out how these two cover it.
#11: Breaking Bad (AMC; 2008-Present)
No other show from the zeroes went from zero to sixty quicker than this suspense-drama. The narrative of the first season was intentionally paced slowly so that we truly understand the choices Bryan Cranston’s Walt White made. And when it’s for sure that we got it, the writers of the show didn’t allow us to catch our breath by making every moment either absurdly funny or palm-sweatingly intense. Breaking Bad is fairly new compared to the other shows in this list, which means that its best has yet to come.
#10: Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO; 2000-Present)
It already gained points for giving us an appropriate Seinfeld reunion/ending, even if the episode was eleven years too late. With Seinfeld’s co-creator Larry David on the lead this time, he gave us a show as hilarious and, at some episodes, as uncomfortable. As the real-life George Costanza, he walked us through the life of a rich, influential, and bored man, who refuses to comply with today’s unwritten social rules as a result. He gets himself into the most awkward societal situations—like “hiring a prostitute to drive on the carpool lane”, “inadvertently injuring Shaq as a Laker spectator”, “accusing the weatherman of giving false reports so that he can have the whole golf course for himself”—so that we don’t have to.
#09: 30 Rock (NBC; 2006-Present)
Back in the fall of 2006, NBC released two shows from the same ilk: Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip and this: Tina Fey’s 30 Rock. Before the two shows aired, if I had to bet on who will have a longer shelf-life, I would’ve guessed Studio 60. Well Studio 60 lasted one abbreviated season while 30 Rock churned out hilarious workplace comedy every episode, resurrected Alec Baldwin and Tracy Morgan’s career, won Emmy’s for Outstanding Comedy Series, and verified the fact that Tina Fey is the funniest woman in showbiz. I guess they showed me.
#08: Survivor (CBS; 2000-Present)
If the predictions are correct that civilization will somehow cease to exist, then someone should put an entire box set of Survivor seasons in a time capsule somewhere. We don’t want the next inhabitants of this world to get the wrong idea of what reality TV was SUPPOSED to be. Yeah, Real World did it first, The Amazing Race won more awards, and American Idol garnered more audiences; however, Survivor is when reality TV went boom, the best representation of our society’s desire to do almost anything for a prize. Burnett seldom changed the formula—separate in tribes, build shelter and fire, compete in challenges, get immunity, form alliances, vote someone out—but even if we know what’s coming, it didn’t entertain us any less.
#07: Mad Men (AMC; 2007-Present)
I don’t want to go the “if in the future” route two entries in the row, but I can’t avoid it with Mad Men. If in the future they did a show that strives to illustrate what life was like in the zeroes—the boom of Internet and social media, the global economic crisis, Obama’s election, 9/11—I just hope that they do it as properly and as detail-oriented as Mad Men did about the life in the sixties. Everything was tackled appropriately, from the absence of feminism, to the race segregation, to the JFK assassination. They ended season three with such a cliffhanger that we don’t know what type of Mad Men we’re going to get in the tens, and that just makes it ultra exciting.
#06: Pardon The Interruption (ESPN; 2001-Present)
You know what I said about The Daily Show/The Colbert Report, how if something happens in the world, you look forward to how Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will address it? Well that’s what Pardon The Interruption is: if something consequential (even trivial) occurred in the sports world, you’re damn sure that noteworthy sportswriters Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon (and sometimes Dan Le Batard, unfortunately) will have a word or two about it. The majority of the time, their outlook on sports issues are so insightful that even when they disagree with each other, they still articulate exactly the thoughts that sometimes you don't have the ability to voice on your own. On a personal note, it has been a Napster for my sports opinions.
#05: The Office (NBC; 2005-Present)
I’m not even sure if it was the first comedy mockumentary on TV—Reno 911! of Comedy Central certainly existed first—but when the American remake of The Office debuted on NBC in the spring of 2005, it came across as a really refreshing brand of comedy (especially to those who avoided the British version because they find their type of humor really dry). As effective as the format is at winning an audience, the most alluring characteristic of the show is its ability to promote their minor characters, even if they only get seconds of screentime or they have to do it via webisodes.
#04: Lost (ABC; 2004-Present)
Lost could have stayed as a show about strangers marooned in an island, a “Survivor: the fictional drama”. Things would’ve been so simple, we probably wouldn’t have been so confused , and we probably wouldn’t be bitching about plot holes after every episode . But then again, we wouldn’t have gotten polar bears, smoke monsters, back-to-the-future Scots, gun-weilding French women, and a giant concrete foot with four toes, and it wouldn’t have been so addictive. And if Lost remained similar to its debut, it also probably wouldn’t have cracked this list. At this point of the show, even if they don’t end up answering anything, we still tune in because we’re still very very entertained.
#03: Friday Night Lights (NBC; 2006-Present)
There’s a couple of reasons why Friday Night Lights were gasping for its last breath a few episodes in: (1) it premiered in opposition to American Idol while the reality show was in the height of its popularity, and (2) its premise has accidentally placed itself right in the middle of two opposite demographics: people (mostly women) who like dramas generally don’t like watching a show about high school football, and people (mostly men) who love sports don’t like watching kids open up their emotions with each other. It was so outstanding though that the people who belong in the overlapping area of that Venn diagram ensured that they were vociferous enough to make NBC sign the show for extra seasons. I was so thankful that the show was consistent enough (if you ignore the Landry killer sub-plot in Season 2) that it swayed naysayers eventually, making grown men weep and making grown women cheer like they’re actually sitting in the bleachers of Dillon.
#02: Arrested Development (Fox; 2003-2006)
Sometimes, I just don’t get it. For the amount of total decibels of laughter per show, there was no comedy from this decade that came close to this narrative of an utterly quirky OC family struggling to cope with a world where they are not as affluent. No joke was too foolish, no topic too off limits, no outcome too rigorously established. And the actors, their acting was superb. Then how was it that Arrested Development only ran for 53 episodes and something like The George Lopez Show got 120. Maybe that was it, it was too “too”—too taboo, too smart, too silly. Maybe the sense of humor were too subtle—such as Tobias Funke proclaiming that he’s the world’s first “analrapist” (a poorly-devised combination of “analyst” and “therapist”), or “deuce chill”, or the whole family’s different interpretation of the chicken dane, or…I can probably go on forever. It’s just too bad that the decade’s funniest show didn’t.
#01: The Wire (HBO; 2002-2008)
A show being pronounced as the greatest television show of the EVER, it should probably top the zeroes list of television shows, right? I don’t even know how to appropriately justify how excellent this show is without expanding it into a 4000-word dissertation. Let’s just start with this: David Simon is a genius. He’s an unequivocal genius! Just consider the fact that every detail, every plot, every subplot, and every character was meticulously planned out. Every season had a theme. Every scene had a purpose, which means that every single second of this show has to be watched, if them being tremendously chilling wasn’t reason enough to tune in. Every single character, no matter how important, can be killed off, which makes every death is such a shocking moment. When we arrived at the final scene of the show (a shot of the real star of the show, the city of Baltimore), it was just inconceivable that it was over. The Wire has made West Baltimore a place so horrifying to live in, yet it somehow also made it a place that didn’t want to leave.
Comments