Mick's Top 10 Favorite TV Shows

10. Family Guy



I've never sought it out. I've never made a note to remember what channels it airs on or when it airs. I've never even considered the idea of buying the DVDs. Regardless, it's a show that's never disappointed. I always go breathless laughing. I know a lot of the humor is easy. I know that the criticisms that it's just a bunch of pop culture references thrown together have merit. But I can't help it. It's just goddamn funny.


9. Scrubs



Sometimes it's way too cheesy. Sometimes the music is excessive, particularly when - and this is often the case - thematically speaking the music has absolutely nothing to do with the story. Still, Scrubs succeeds at being ruthlessly funny and achingly human at the same time. Despite how improbable and sometimes outright impossible their antics are, for example, the friendship between JD (Zach Braff) and Turk (Donald Faison) feels more genuine to me than just about any relationship I've seen depicted on television.


8. The Daily Show



I've watched it from the very beginning, from back when Craig Kilborn was hosting - back when the funniest segment was asking the celebrity guest 5 random questions accompanied with video of some dude's head exploding.

It seems stupid to even think now, but at the time I had a difficult time imagining Jon Stewart filling Kilborn's shoes. Remember, Stewart's track record with TV wasn't exactly stellar. It pretty much amounted to one or two short-lived shows on MTV back when featuring programs without music videos on that channel was still a relatively novel idea. And there's also the simple fact that Stewart's temperament is wildly different from Kilborn's. Kilborn's satire was outright mean, while Stewart can still seem almost apologetic at times for his biting commentary.

I'm happy to have been proven wrong - wrong to the point where mentioning that Craig Kilborn used to host The Daily Show is kind of like when you mention to some folks that Dave Grohl from Foo Fighters used to be the drummer for Nirvana. They give you this curious head tilt and make some noise to the effect that that's an interesting factoid, but you know they're going to check on the Internet before they'll believe your silly ass.


7. The Colbert Report



I'm happy to say the success of The Colbert Report is yet another example of me being proven wrong and not minding. I remember tuning in to the first show with curiosity, but feeling fairly certain it would be a failure. It was just, I assumed, a lame spin-off of The Daily Show like David Spade's abortive The Showbiz Show.

But just as Spade's tedious and cynical personality renders any solo project of his an exercise in futility, the childlike joy Colbert evokes while playing at being an even more dim-witted disciple of Bill O'Reilly is almost more fun to watch than the satire itself.


6. The X-Files



It's difficult to resist the urge to sigh regrettably every time I think of The X-Files. There were a lot of great moments in Chris Carter's one successful series, but it's tough to not feel those moments are overshadowed by failure: the failure of Carter and co. to ever make any kind of coherent sense out of their alien mythology, the failure of David Duchovny to decide whether he wanted to be a talented minimalist actor or simply an untalented robot who undercut criticism by poking fun at his near-dead performances, the failure of Carter to learn to write believable dialogue or intelligent plots, the failure of taking every successful aspect of the show and beating it to death in lieu of new ideas (e.g. the Lone Gunmen, Cancer Man, etc.), and finally the failure to live up to the unbelievable potential inherent in this concept.

But when the potential was met, it was a sight to behold. I still feel "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'" is one of the greatest hours of network television ever aired. Try to remember, if you care to, that if/when you watch that episode with your children, when Jesse Ventura drives into the garage of a character - a character named after the psychedelic rock singer and mentally plagued Roky Erickson - and delivers a speech that is, arguably, not only the most intelligent and complex speech ever given on network television in regards to the concept of the limits of human perception, but actually a speech that describes the very soul of the show's oft-unrealized potential, you will get to tap your child on the shoulder, point at the screen, and say "That cro-magnon freak was the Governor of Minnesota, I shit you not."


5. Twin Peaks



Twin Peaks left me shaking. Literally.

I first saw it in Tampa, under what I imagine may be unusual circumstances for Peaks fans. Before it turned into a channel of nothing but reality shows geared towards the people who don't want to feel like the idiots who watch those OTHER reality shows, Bravo used to annually air a Twin Peaks Halloween marathon. They aired the entire series, though honestly I don't remember if they aired it all at once, or staggered over a couple of nights.

I watched the first few episodes out of curiosity, and was soon hooked. I stayed up for longer than I care to admit, watching hour after hour of the series, waiting for the end. When the last episode finally came and I saw the ultimate fate of the lovable and pure-hearted Agent Cooper, it literally left me shaking. The next day in school, every time I held out my hand, it shook like I'd gotten a spinal tap of caffeine. No television show had ever made such an emotional impact on me. And if it weren't for the fact that so much of the middle of the series was craptacular, it would have a higher spot on the list.


4. The Sopranos



It is difficult for me to figure out why, with so many unpleasant childhood memories involving fat Italian family members yelling obscenities at each other, that I would love The Sopranos as much as I do.

I guess what I appreciated the most about the show was its moral honesty. It never tried to fool us about its main character. Tony Soprano wasn't a misunderstood, kindhearted, gentle giant who was only doing what he had to do. He was a sadistic, insecure, murderous bully. They showed us the evil he committed, and more often than not the fallout for innocent people. If we fell for him, it wasn't for the sake of not being shown what he really was.


3. Buffy the Vampire Slayer



I didn't really get into Buffy until the show was close to ending. My girlfriend at the time and I would buy the seasons on DVD and watch them for hours at a time. For quite a while, every birthday and holiday came with one of us buying a season as a "gift" for the other, even though we both knew it was no such thing. Until we finally had all seven seasons assembled, we told family and friends to not bother with anything but Best Buy gift cards as presents.

After she dumped me and it was time to gather up all my stuff, the Buffy dvds were a problem. There was no way to remember who had bought what seasons, or which seasons were gift for who, from who. And what would be the point of taking half? How would it even be possible to take half since there was an odd number of seasons? And who would get stuck with the craptacular Season 7?

Ultimately, I decided to extend a bit of kindness to my ex and leave her the series. Besides, I was taking all the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings even though she watched them more than I did (they WERE mine, just so you know - one was a gift from her, and the other two were gifts from my family). But I didn't want to go without indefinitely. So I decided my tax refund (it was the end of last January when we split) would go to the entire series set.

I kept that promise, and immediately set about watching the entire series, every episode, one more time. And it felt like I got a little bit of my life back.

And the only reason I told that story is that I feel like I've written about Buffy online so much, that that story was really all I had left to say.


2. Firefly



Like The X-Files, "unrealized potential" is a necessary phrase when describing Firefly. The only difference is that, in the case of Firefly, it wasn't for lack of trying.

There is no doubt in my mind that, if Fox had dislodged its skull from its butt and aired the installments of Firefly in the order in which they were meant to be seen, the series wouldn't have folded after only a handful of episodes. You really, REALLY know the full extent of network television executive stupidity when you buy the DVD collection of Firefly, read the air dates of the episodes, and learn that the first two-part episode - which introduces all the plot elements of the series - was aired AFTER every other episode. After.

After.


1. The Office



This was honestly a surprise to me. I've become an avid watcher of the show, to the point that I know I've crossed the geek line.

In other words, I've started pointing out plot inconsistencies and can easily remember dialogue from just about any episode. Yes. I've gotten to that place.

But I didn't think it was my favorite. When I tried to figure out which one was my favorite, I just asked a simple question - if someone offered to play episodes from any of these 10 shows, which one would I rather watch? And the answer was The Office. That simple.

I saw the first season of the original UK version, and I know there's a staunch crowd of folks who think that's the better version. I don't know. I never saw beyond the first season of what the Brits did so I can't say for sure, but I think one of the things we yanks changed was occasionally making characters like Michael Schott (Steve Carell) and Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) occasionally sympathetic. I know Schott's English counterpart Ricky Gervais (David Brent) was never anything but detestable, and in fact you could say the same about Schott in the first season of the American rip-off which more closely followed the limeys. At this point, you not only DON'T thoroughly hate Schott the same way you do Gervais, but there are some episodes when you actually root for him. Does that make it a better or worse show? I don't know. But it's still funny. And it's still updog.