The Only Good Shows Ever On Television
I was reading a list in Variety, one of those lunch break lists where you’re chewing your sandwich and see some faces you recognize and some words underneath that make you think “huh, that’s wrong” and then you finish your sandwich and throw away the wax paper and then the list is gone, like it never existed.
It occurred to me, reading this thing, that it presupposes you enjoy television. You turn it on and watch the shows people are talking about and it’s fine. I’ve spent most of my adult life, at least once in awhile, writing about television for money, so I assumed I like television too. It’s easy and everybody else does it. But now I’ve turned states and I’m trying to just be normal and I realize I don’t like TV. It’s basically a numbing agent, and it doesn’t work on me anymore. I just dissociate or think about dying.
Doesn’t matter how much people hyped up a given show or said it was totally my thing. Take Severance. Got recommended to me a lot by friends I trust. I made it 70 minutes before my brain decided it should have been directed by Spike Jonze, it should have been a 102 minute movie, and it should have come out in 2004. After that thought existed, I was cooked. I couldn’t pay attention anymore. I mean, I could, for money, but recreationally it was impossible.
Variety’s list was fine if you like TV. Steve Carell did give one of the best TV performances of the last 25 years in the sense that he kept a big network show in business for a long time, moved you through the world of the show, explained the rules, made you relaxed, whatever. He’s great.
But I didn’t watch that show because I don’t like TV. I’ve had good times with it, but it’s not my friend. I enjoy saying “oh wow, they’re on Alameda. That psychic is still there actually,” but only around other people, and they don’t enjoy hearing it. I figure there are other people like me out there who feel the same, so to that end, I’ve created my own list: a comprehensive ranking of the only good shows ever on television, in exact order. Looney Tunes is disqualified because those were actually supposed to be played in front of movies. Twin Peaks: The Return is also disqualified because it’s a film.
- The Rockford Files, which is good even if you’re by yourself and can’t annoy anyone by saying “how does he get from Malibu to North Hollywood that fast?”
- Actually The Sopranos, sorry
- Columbo but not the revival on ABC, where there’s too much set-up and he’s Bugs Bunny but elderly
- The Twilight Zone but only the ones Rod Serling wrote.
- Letterman reruns
- Sanford & Son
- Jeopardy when Alex Trebek was alive but only if you swear you won’t audition for it
- King of the Hill, especially when your life is ruined and nothing makes sense. Skip the ones where they switch to digital animation unless it’s one with Tom Petty
- Eastbound & Down
- Regis Philbin
- The Larry Sanders Show but not if you’ve been laid off from a media job in the recent past
- Newsradio but start emotionally distancing yourself in season four and skip season five
- Dick Cavett
- Get Smart
- Really long Johnny Carson compilations on YouTube
- Saturday Night Live but only old pirated episodes where you know NBC pulled some sketches and the musical guest from circulation
- The Bob Newhart Show but you have to say “I had such a crush on Suzanne Pleshette” whenever she’s on-screen
- Arrested Development but start emotionally distancing yourself in season three and skip seasons four and five
- Serial Experiments Lain after you show a script for Zoloft, Lexapro, or Effexor
- Really old sitcoms that were canceled early in the first season just so you can feel like you were definitely the last person on earth to watch them
- True Detective season one as tribute to the creator and director who both died when their small plane flown by a non-instrument-rated pilot crashed in Ventura
- Battlebots episodes on an old tube TV, on a homemade VHS tape of the original broadcast with the ads intact, preferably with somebody who was on the show and has problems with the failure of imagination that leads to wedgebots. Hi Don, I hope Washington state is treating you nice. I’ll get up there one of these days. I never have seen it. How similar is it to Medford?
- Win Ben Stein’s Money
- The Andy Griffith Show but only if you’re sick or took time off to quit smoking
- Kids in the Hall but you gotta fast forward through a lot of it
- Videos of people driving around a city you’re familiar with in a time period you’re not
- Really long documentaries that aren’t about true crime. Bono can’t be in them either.
- Go back in time 30 years and watch one of those shopping shows where it’s just knives spinning around really slowly for hours