Top 20 TV Shows of the Decade: #10 - #6

The top 5 are extremely close, but these five were the hardest of all to seperate for me. I thoroughly enjoyed each and every one of these shows, and still do for the ones that we're lucky enough to still get new material from...

#10. ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. If you want to sum up the state of the American Intellect with one fact, it’s that American Idol became a runaway ratings bonanza while Arrested Development could only muster up about 37 people a week to tune in. Luckily for me, I think I know about 23 of those 37 people. While many shows have followed suit, AD was the one of the first to abandon the laugh track and go documentary/single camera POV style. And if you go back now and watch a show with a laugh track it seems so contrived and forced, a stunning development coming just as the sitcom was saying goodbye to Friends, Frazier, Seinfeld and everything else that used to make NBC not a laughing stock.



#9. LOST. Nobody hates Lost more than the people who love it. But no show in television history has ever inspired so much chatter and speculation as this island mystery. Not it’s ancestors “Twin Peaks” or “The X-Files”. Not it’s rip-offs like “Fringe”. From the minute we saw the polar bear or heard the island monster, every scene, every character, every detail has been overanalyzed and broken down to whatever conclusion you’d prefer to assign to it. I think the defining moment of the show came off-camera. After Season 3 the network and staff decided to give the show a finite end date (Spring 2010 season) which in retrospect was absolutely brilliant. Free from concern over ratings or dangling just enough info to keep people tuning in each week or each season, the writers charted a time specific course to bring the show to it’s long awaited conclusion. Some people have been disappointed with the direction the show has taken – yet they still tune in on a weekly basis. Which means Lost is still doing its job.


#8. 30 ROCK. I’ll say it right now: Liz Lemon is the best lead female character in television history. Now that that’s out of the way, if you’re not watching 30 Rock every week, you’re living a deprived life. Every character is so integral and perfectly cast that you’re really not going to be left disappointed on a weekly basis. The satirical commentary on Fortune 100 Executive life, portrayed through Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghee is one of the greater signs of the times this decade. Tracy Morgan’s Tracy Jordan (do I have that right?) is possibly the funniest character on TV. Just last night he let us know that reason Catholics can’t eat meat on Friday is because the Pope owns Long John Silver. And that might not even be one of his 20 funniest moments in 4 seasons or so.

#7. FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. The television graveyard has its share of shows that attempted to tap into the American obsession with sports. Most are forgettable, few make it past mid-season (“Coach” is the only show I can recall with some success). But FNL finally got it right. The reality of the show is, football is just a very small part of the action. However, it serves as the launching pad for everything else on the program, and in a more macro sense, in life. My first reaction to the program was great, it’s going to be 90210 with jocks and cheerleaders, thanks but I’ll pass I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’m eternally grateful that I watched beyond the first episode - where the star QB heading to Notre Dame becomes paralyzed, seemingly right out of the Official Cliché Playbook.

And while some storylines seem a tad bit over-the-top, at its absolute core, the show is a genuine tale of the American livelihood. Sure, it’s Texas-centric but remove the cowboy hats and television coverage of high school athletics and the struggles and relationships can be found in any old American town. The ultimate irony is, a show which my first impressions pointed me towards believing it was a run-of-the-mill typical high school “drama” turned out to be completely incomparable to anything else on television. And a big shout-out to Buddy Garrity – one of the more uniquely entertaining characters on screen.

#6. THE OFFICE. I have to admit how close this batch of shows from #10 down to #6 really was. Some are similar, some are unique, but I love them all. The deciding factor for me was to take a breath, step back, and ask myself “How much do I look forward to seeing X”. And in the narrowest of decisions, The Office wins. While it’s hard to call an adaptation of a foreign program “Original”, The Office hit a homerun in conveying the last frontier of American Life on television: mundane cubicle white collar work. We’ve covered the changing family dynamic from “Leave it to Beaver” to “Modern Family”. We’ve done the Blue Collar thing over and over again, be it “Taxi” or “Roseanne”. We’ve been to the inner city, suburbs and tax brackets we can only dream of. But a large segment of the population works in a boring, repetitive office and “The Office” exploits the ridiculous nature of the humdrum work day in a manner that millions of Americans can relate to.

Not every boss is Michael Scott per say, with his questionable decision making and apparent intellectual defect. But most people probably think that they, like the cast, are eminently more qualified for the leadership position than their boss is. One could spend hours recapping the funniest moments of the series on an episode-by-episode basis, but that’s not what makes “The Office” great. No, what makes it great is its ability to hit home for millions of Americans across all lines: gender, orientation, race, ethnicity, education and values. If you haven’t tuned in it’s your loss.

You HAVE to see this.

Thats what she said.