What do Empire’s list of the 50 Greatest TV Shows Of All Time have in common? All but four of them aired in the ’90s and ’00s. Apparently someone held a gun to their head and said, don’t you dare leave out the original Star Trek or Monty Python.
I really have no problem with “greatest” lists, but please if what you really mean is “The 50 Greatest TV Shows Of My Admittedly Brief Lifetime” then please do us the favor of saying so right up front.
Kottke‘s annoyed that Buffy’s No. 2. I’m annoyed that “Scrubs” is rated higher than “Star Trek TNG,” and that’s despite the fact that Zach Braff graduated from the high school my kids attended.
Oh, and what do you call a show that featured Carl Reiner, Woody Allen, Neil Simon and Mel Brooks as writers? Or the show that first showed the U.S. both Elvis and The Beatles? Or the show that drove millions to go buy their first television set ever? Annoyed people like me might call them “Your Show Of Shows,” “Ed Sullivan” and “Milton Berle.” These guys are blissfully unaware of their existence.
I could go on. Maybe I will. Groundbreaking ’60s and ’70s shows: Julia, Flip Wilson, All In The Family for heaven’s sake. M*A*S*H. Mary Tyler Moore. I don’t even like some of these shows very much, but are they greater in the greatest-of-all-time sense than Family Guy (No. 12)? You tell me.
Go home kids, turn off the TV and read a book or something. This makes me want to create a new category for this here blog, “stupid.”
Maybe we should declare “Fantasy Island” the best show of all time and leave it at that. “BJ and The Bear” will just have to stand aside.
“American Idol,” especially last night’s episode.
The Jeffersons is the best show ever imo.
What happened on American idol last night??? I missed the last few episodes and don’t even know who’s left.
Oh I don’t know, that was just a joke. Reflecting on the short attention span, “last night was cool, it must be one of the 50 best shows of all time!”
Never watched The Jeffersons, but there you go.
Family Guy. Blech.
You never watched the Jeffersons in the 70’s. We only had 5 channels in the 70’s for crying out loud. That show was hella funny.
Family guy. Double blech with a projectile vomit on top.
Here’s a better top 50 list. The best comedy sketches of all time.
Nice balance, lots of SNL and Monty Python — and why not? — but also some Ernie Kovacs, Carol Burnett, In Living Color, Wayne Chappelle, Sid Caesar. This one is not actually an original Monty Python sketch, it predates the group by a few years.
You try to tell that to the young people of today…
Is there a way to see that entire list of The 50 Best Shows of All Time on one page? Cuz i don’t have all day to scroll thru 50 pages. Maybe i would find the time if Veronica Mars wasn’t #47. Are you kidding me!?
What about Columbo, Perry Mason, The Rockford Files? The Red Skelton Show? The Carol Burnett Show and Bob Newhart better have been on there!
well if you’re looking for those shows I can tell you right now you look in vain. You’ll have a lot more fun with the 50 greatest comedy sketches (I showed the one above to Claire who laughed out loud at it — I think because it sounds like her parents).
The four and only four shows on the list that aired before the ’90s (not including shows that started in the ’80s and ran into the ’90s) are the first Star Trek, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers (someone must have said, “John Cleese was in this one, too”), Blackadder (what? and just barely).
Oh, i’m not gonna bother looking at that list after the few that i saw. The Simpsons is good, or i should say was good at one time, but #1? Uh, i dunno about that. Shoot! Did Maguyver at least make the list? Now that show was entertaining.
We better make our own list. Nominees, in addition to what’s already mentioned: Ed Sullivan, The Twilight Zone, Gunsmoke, Carol Burnett, Tonight, Tomorrow, NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues.
McGyver will probably draw blank stares, until you tell them it was the show Richard Dean Anderson was on before “Stargate.”
I was too young to remember the show personally, but my mom used to be a big fan of Streets of San Francisco. Maybe it was the Michael Douglas….
I can’t believe people don’t know about McGyver! Shocked i tell you, shocked! What that man could do with dental floss and a match was just about as amazing as what Bruce Willis did in “Live Free or Die Hard”.
I used to like Baretta and the Little Rascals too.
Speaking of Robert Blake, when he was on trial I was hoping he would be acquitted (even tho i knew he was guilty as hell) because to me he was still little Mickie. And when i told that to my aunt she confessed that although she knew that OJ was guilty, she would’ve acquitted him if she were on that jury too.
Now i know what you’re thinking. Stoopid people. Stoopid stoopid people. But what if it were Chralize Theron on trial for murdering her husband and it was obvious she did it? Would you let them put that beautiful womanly specimen behind bars with all those, those, brute felons? I think not!
Well people do have a tremendous ability to convince themselves that what they want to believe is true. This could easily lead into a discussion about politics, which would really cheapen this discussion about what TV shows were best.
The Little Rascals, like The Three Stooges, weren’t technically TV shows. They were shorts that got played during the double feature (remember double features?) TV stations found them convenient to pick up for after-school fare which is why we saw them. Ultimately they were seen as too politically incorrect (the Rascals) or violent (the Stooges), probably by the same people who decided that Mr. Potatohead needed to have soft rubber widgets instead of the hard plastic ones you could use on stuff out of Grandma’s refrigerator.
Don’t get me started.
I’d really only acquit Charlize if she killed her husband so she could spend more time with me. Otherwise, it’s off to the sweaty women’s prison for her.
Apologies all around. I didn’t realize talking about OJ and Robert Blake was getting close to political talk.
But for the record I never convinced myself Blake was innocent. I knew he did it or had someone do it for him. I was confessing that I am human and can be unfair/irrational/illogical at times. OTOH, I woulda strung up OJ by his privates, cut them off, made him eat them as his last meal, then placed him in the electric chair in the gas chamber without benefit of a lethal injection.
OK no more politics from me. Go Cavs!
I remember when the OJ verdict came in, I was sitting in a conference room with several African-American women, and when the judge said “not guilty” they all cheered. Up until then I honestly had no idea, it seemed so obvious that he was guilty. So that’s what I mean by political, only it’s race politics not partisan politics.
I was at work when the verdict came down too. We all rushed to the cafeteria to watch. The room was silent and everyone just walked away shaking their heads.
In my case with my feeling about the OJ case vs the Blake case, it wasn’t about race, altho OJ made sure it was. I didn’t really “know” OJ like my aunt did. I mean, he meant something to her at one time and Blake meant something to me and I thought of him as a decent guy (I was wrong). And maybe subconsciously it had something to do with the victims, OJ’s wife being murdered so brutally and she being the more sympathetic of the victims (compared to Blakes wife). I know, it’s not fair. But it had nothing to do with race.
To prove i don’t play race politics, when i was not working i was addicted to courtTV and their was a trial about a guy named Michael Peterson. I watched it every day. White guy. So arrogant. He killed his wife by knocking her down the stairs and then bludgeoning her with something which they thought was probably a fireplace poker. I wanted that guy to go down so bad. He did.
And then there was the Scott Peterson trial. That one was local here and people hated that guy. I know you are familiar with this one. Everyone around here knew he did it and wanted to see him get the death penalty, including me. Of course he did.
Justice. I guess there was no justice for Blakes wife and OJ’s wife. But that has more to do with celebrity power than race. That’s the thing that gets me, and yet i fell right into the trap. Look at Phil Spector. Will he get retried? If so, he’ll probably beat the rap this time. Money and Power. Power and Money. Which reminds me of this:
Race didn’t have as much to do with the OJ verdict as it did the public’s reaction to it, which was pretty sharply divided on racial lines.
After all, his jury was pretty well mixed. He had the money to hire smart lawyers who blew enough smoke in the jurors’ eyes to raise “reasonable doubt” in their minds. It’s not that hard to see that — in a country where significant numbers of people believe in creationism, astrology, UFOs, ghosts, ESP and any number of other wacky unscientific things — some people are going to doubt DNA evidence. That’s the undereducated citizenry we’ve got.
Why does Weird Al have a problem with Amish people? So they go slow on the roads, just wait a minute and then pass them. No big deal.
Not only does Wierd Al have a problem with the Amish, he also hates white people:
Johnny Cochran and company blew enough smoke up the jurors noses that juror Denise’s got confused and said “we acquitted him to get even with all the injustices that are done to black people all the time”. I paraphrase. Poor woman. I hope she doesn’t have permanent brain damage from the smoke inhalation.