My Favorite Shows of the Decade

ABSOLUTE FAVORITES

So here’s my own personal list of my favorite shows of the last decade.

Favorite Shows Still On Air

Breaking Bad

I’ve always liked anti-heroes and villains more than stand-up good guys. I don’t know where this show will ultimately go, but the first two seasons have been excellent.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

The humor in the early seasons was more pointed and focused, but the timing and characterization from the later seasons keeps it going strong. There are duds here and there, but its highs are excellent. One of the only shows I watch with no ongoing story. Almost all the comedies I like revolve around failure and embarrassment.

LOST

No other show has engaged me the way this one does. Unless it completely drops the ball and does something awful, I suspect that it will ultimately be my favorite show of all time.

Mad Men

Assuming it gets picked up for a fourth season. I’m not really a big Don Draper fan. He seems like a big bully to me. It’s all the characters around him that fascinate me. And it looks incredible in HD. If I didn’t watch it in HD, I don’t know if I would love it as much.

The Venture Brothers

It borrows from and subverts some of my favorite cartoons as a kid – namely Jonny Quest and Scooby Doo. I don’t know if I really feel like it’s going somewhere specific, but I love the expansive cast of characters and complicated plots.

Favorite Shows I Enjoyed From Beginning To End

Arrested Development

I feel like this show ended at just the right time. It started to get just a little too silly and broad for me, but I loved the dry absurdity.

Carnivale

It’s very esoteric, but I’m okay with that. It looks, sounds, feels amazing. The entire cast is incredible. The cinematography is gorgeous. The creepiness is off the charts. I really wish it had gotten a proper run.

Daybreak

For a show that takes place over two days, it is crazy complex. Luckily, the network allowed them to finish out the season properly despite canceling the show before they were done shooting and knowing that it would never air on the network. (I watched the remainder of the season on ABC.com.

Extras

Shattered dreams are so funny. I can watch graphic horror movies without flinching, but I have to cover my eyes when I watch this show.

Freaks and Geeks

I saw the last few episodes of its run and thought it was very sweet. I identified much more with the freaks than the geeks. I wish this and Veronica Mars had been around while I was in high school.

The Office (UK)

I never got into the American version, but I hear people are actually getting married and not getting fired in that version. Lame.

Six Feet Under

During the fourth season, it felt as if the show was spinning its wheels too much, but it came back with a vengeance during the final season. My favorite remains the third – which was the most depressing. Bonus: my favorite opening title sequence ever.

Veronica Mars

I kind of like cliffhanger endings and unresolved stuff, so the ending doesn’t bother me, but I really miss the characters a lot. My favorite season is the second. The labyrinthine mystery, the darkness, Kirsten Bell.

Favorite Shows That Lost Me Along The Way

Battlestar Galactica

The characters were too inconsistent at times, and I was one of those that felt let down by the ending. I wasn’t totally on board all along the way, and I was relying on the ending to put some of my misgivings in perspective. FAIL.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

I probably enjoyed the sixth season best – despite hating the finale for that season, but I never really LOVED the show. I still haven’t seen every episode. It excels at building a history with the characters and calling on that when it needs to. Otherwise, it’s a bit too snarky for me.

Friday Night Lights

I loved the first season – except for that finale. If a show can actually get me to care about sports, it’s performing miracles.

Malcolm in the Middle

I loved the first two seasons, but the show never grew along with the characters. They seemed to be trapped at twelve perpetually.

Nip/Tuck

I loved the second season of this show. I thought it was the perfect blend of trashy and dark and funny. After that, it just felt like a bore despite the over-the-top grotesquery parade.

Oz

Much of this show never made any damn sense, but I had to tune in and find out who was going to die every week. There was a moment in the final season that totally reduced me to tears. Mentally impaired Cyril is going to be executed by the state, and all the prisoners in Emerald City go back to their cells, close the doors, and bang on the glass in protest. The only time that all the prisoners came together over something. I’m getting a little teary eyed thinking about it now, so I’m going to move on.

The West Wing

The first two seasons are such a warm fuzzy fantasy of what politics should be like. It almost makes me interested in politics. During the third and fourth seasons, I felt like the show repeated itself too much and never followed through on some of the plotlines it set up – letting most of them fizzle out. I stopped watching after Sorkin left.

The Shows I Caught Exclusively on DVD

Firefly

It took a while for me to warm to this show, but I enjoy it. Knowing that it would ultimately fizzle out kind of dampened my enthusiasm for it, though.

The Shield

The season with Glenn Close was a bore, but all the other seasons were tense and visceral and infuriating. I generally don’t like cop shows, but cop shows don’t usually show warts like these.

Skins

I’m kind of a sucker for dark teen dramas. I’ve seen the first two seasons of this show and love the characters. Some episodes are too sitcom-like, but the show is not afraid to go to some dark and darkly comical places. I don’t know if I’ll like the third season now that it will focus on different characters.

Shows That Never Grabbed Despite Everyone’s Telling Me They Should

Futurama

It always felt like Simpsons-lite to me. I mean, Jurassic Bark is sad and all, but the show never grabbed me.

The Sopranos

I’m not that into gangster shit. I thought the first two seasons were interesting mostly because of the psychiatry angle, but seemed to settle into being just another gangster epic after that. I think The Godfather and Goodfellas are great, but most other gangster stories always feel like echoes of those to me.

The Wire

Not into cop shows. This one focused on and empathized with the criminals more than most, but ultimately there were still too many cop show conventions for my taste. They get taken off the case once a season. There’s too many cops who want to prevent them from solving the case because of contrived reasons. And McNulty is just too fucking obnoxious. I enjoyed the fourth season quite a bit, though. Mostly because it was McNulty-free, and often felt more like a dark teen drama than a cop show.