The Ed Zone

My Favorite Things – ‘Top 5 Television Shows’

Monday February 26, 2007 | 17 comments (now closed)

While most of My Favorite Things lists have focused on various genres in film, that’s not solely where my interests lie. Nope, not this cosmopolitan gent. I have a wide range of interests spanning the world over.

Case in point – today’s list. A real stretch from the norm.

Before I dive into my list, I wanted to run a little disclaimer. The rules for prior lists have been easy. In setting out to name my Top Five Favorite Scenes, the target population was any film released theatrically. Ranking my favorite television shows is a bit tougher mainly because there are a number of shows on the air currently which I feel have the potential to bump one or two selections from my list. The problem is, for this list to make sense to me there needs to be a bit of time elapsed.

Therefore the rules are simple. To qualify as a Favorite Television Show, the program has to either have completed its run (and the run can be any duration – from 3 weeks to 18 years) or if it is currently in production, it has to have completed at least three seasons. Current faves like Lost and The Office have a little ways to go before being considered for my all time list.

If you’d like to list your five, use the Comments section below. Also, be sure to include your favorite episode. If you don’t know the title, just say ‘The One with The Duck’ or something like that. If your favorite show is Friends, you’ll have an instant episode title.

All right, on with the show.

5. Millennium (1996 – 1999)

This show was definitely ahead of its time and having launched during the wrong time and place, it met its demise a bit too soon. Hell, it didn’t even make it to its titular event and needed to rely on Big Sis X-Files to close out the show’s mythology in a special pre-millennium episode that sucked.

Millennium was Chris Carter’s follow-up to The X-Files. While it focused on a special investigator whose crimes crossed into some dark areas, the show had more in common with Seven than with Carter’s prior hit. That’s why I declare this was well ahead of its time. If Millennium were on the air now, I have no doubt that it would thrive as the genre leader in a cluttered sea of CSI clones. This was the thinking man’s Criminal Minds.

Now, I’m not much of a procedural fan. With all of its deviations, Law & Order must have wracked up 800 hours of programming in its 18 year run and I can confidently state that I haven’t glimpsed more than 10 minutes of an episode. The same goes for all the CSIs (including CSI: Hoboken), NCIS, JAG and FUBAR: Petty Theft Operations. The cop and doc shows just don’t do it for me.

Millennium was different. It infused its serial killer of the week eps with the overarching mythology device borrowed from X-Files. From the pilot episode, Frank Black colors in the corners of his investigation into the Frenchman serial killer, with details on his induction to the Millennium group (a secret organization of former crime fighters who believe that the increasing levels of sick, depraved acts are warning signs of an impending apocalypse tied to the forthcoming millennium). Either that or it has something to do with computer clocks resetting to 1900.

While the first season sprinkled a few mythology eps in the mix, it wasn’t until Carter returned his focus to running The X-Files and handed the reigns to long-time collaborators James Wong and Glen Morgan that Millennium really began to explore that fascinating undercurrent.

Season II of Millennium solidifies the show’s inclusion in my Top 5 list. There were so many stand-alone eps that I consider some of the best hours of programming I have ever enjoyed on television. Morgan invited his Emmy winning bro Darin (who received the award for his X-Files teleplay – ‘Clyde Bruckner’s Final Repose’) to script a few episodes and as with The X-Files, Darin provided a couple classics – including ‘Jose Chung’s Doomsday Defense‘ (a riff on Scientology) and ‘Somehow Satan Got Behind Me‘ – which went off book and focused on four demons whiling away an hour in a coffee shop telling tales of how they’ve bedeviled mankind and the lessons they learned from their prey. Of course, Morgan and Wong also amplified the central plot of the series, revealing the Millennium Group to be less a cabal of crime fighters and more an Opus Dei-like secret society intent on staving off the apocalypse. Their work culminated in the Season II finale, one of the most devastating hours I’ve seen on television, which closed with the apparent end of the world.

Morgan and Wong planned that season finale as a series finale. Ratings were so abysmal they were certain they’d be cancelled. When Fox couldn’t find a suitable replacement to fill the show’s slot, it received an 11th hour reprieve. Morgan and Wong walked and Chris Carter stepped back in to try to pull the show from the abyss. I applaud Morgan and Wong’s work and that finale took guts. They painted the show into a corner it never should have escaped from. Alas, business took hold and Season 3 offered up a half-hearted explanation of how the apocalypse was averted. I stopped watching early that season, it just lacked the dark magic the first two seasons worked in but the eps produced in those first two years, coupled with Lance Henricksen’s performance as the haunted Frank Black – are enough to place this show on my Top 5.

My favorite episode is the aforementioned second season finale – ‘The Fourth Horseman’.

4. Freaks and Geeks (1999 – 2000)

Looks like a trend is starting to form. Here is another show that was ahead of its time and suffered an early demise.

Freaks and Geeks didn’t even last one full season. NBC launched this show in the Fall of 1999 on Saturday night at 8:00 p.m. There are so many questions opened with that simple time slot. Why a show of this caliber and quality was dumped on the television wasteland of Saturday night is beyond me? Further to the point, why did NBC even care about the show’s abysmal numbers in its Saturday night time slot? Nobody watches TV then so if you must air it then, why not let it breathe.

Unfortunately, the NBC suits had no idea how to handle this show so they moved it to Mondays. And moved it to Wednesdays. And moved it to Tuesdays. And moved it to ABC Family Channel. And ultimately cancelled it before the Season Finale would air. They also moved the order of eps around so the chronology got all out of whack during the first run.

Having read the reviews, I jumped to the show’s defense early on and craved every episode. The pedigree behind the show was very impressive with Judd Apatow (The Larry Sanders Show, The 40 Year Old Virgin) and Paul Feig handling the majority of the creative decisions, with some top-flight scripts turned in by Mike White (Chuck & Buck).

Like The Office, this is one of those shows that works because they get all of the little details exactly right. The characters feel less like television archetypes and more like people you know. The lines blur.

Freaks and Geeks is set in the 80’s but more specifically in 1980. People tuning in expecting The Wedding Singer treatment – a lot of cheap laughs at the melding of 80’s stereotypes – found something more realistic. There’s no cheap Delorian gag but there is a great recurring John Bonham riff. I was born in 1972 so I would have been a few years behind the characters here, but for the most part, the things they see are spot on for that time I remember when the world was moving on from 70’s Disco funk to 80’s Hair bands.

My favorite episode has to be ‘Beers & Weirs’ which sees Sam and his geek squad trying to sabotage Lindsey’s keg party by subbing the real keg with non-alcoholic brew. Despite the fact that everyone is sucking on a placebo, the partygoers still get hammered to the delight of Seth Rogen’s Ken who when Sam fesses up to his deception proclaims “What are you talking about? I’ve won $50 in quarters. This party rules!!!”

3. The Simpsons (1989 – Present)

I’m not going to go into too much detail here. Everyone frigging knows who the hell The Simpsons are. You can thank Dubya’s pappy for that, who way back when he was in office, famously declared “We need more families like The Waltons and less like The Simpsons.” Of course, Fox aired Bart Simpsons rebuttal – “Hey, we’re just like The Waltons. We’re living in a depression.” and that cinched it. Best show ever.

All right – not quite – after all, this is my number three, but it’s still pretty damn good. Of course, I ought to drop this disclaimer. Even though this show is still running (currently in the 18th season) I haven’t been a regular weekly viewer since roughly Y2K. Somewhere along the line, the quality dipped. While I’ve seen an episode or two each season over the last few years, they’ve never hit the levels of grandeur experienced during the show’s Golden Age (Seasons 3 through 8). And it’s those memories that propel this show so high on my list.

My favorite episode is ‘Homer Goes to College’ from Season 5. This is the ep where Homer loses his job at the Nuclear Power Plant after he inexplicably causes a meltdown in a training vehicle that “didn’t contain any radioactive material.” Having been reared on a number of collegiate slob comedies (‘School of Hard Knockers’), Homer makes it his mission to take down that crusty old Dean. Along the way he befriends a lovable trio of NNNNNEEEEEERRRRRRRDDDDDDSSSSSS!!! and helps them hijack a pig with powerful friends (cue Richard Nixon – “You’ll pay. Don’t think you won’t pay.”). By the way, this episode was penned by Conan O’Brien who wrote for the show following his gig as writer on SNL. O’Brien – who hails from the Harvard Lampoon – is a wonderfully witty writer whose produced some great bits on his own talk show. His own lampoon of college mores is priceless, easily producing one of those half-hours I can watch (and quote) endlessly.

Homer: I am so smart. I am so smart. I am so smart. S-M-R-T. I mean, S-M-A-R-R-T.

2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997 – 2003)

For my second favorite show of all time, I choose one that I had no desire to watch in the first place. When Buffy premiered on the WB back in 1997, I thought it was a joke. Having seen and absolutely hated the 1992 flick – whose sole saving grace was Paul Rueben’s death scene – I thought this show would be the final stake in the fledgling WB’s coffin. Of course, they both thrived (with an assist from Dawson Leary) and the WB killed the frog, became the new WB, lost Buffy to UPN which later merged with WB to become CW. All of which has nothing to do with why I included this show on my list.

For a supernatural show, Buffy made me laugh more consistently that most comedies on the air. Credit goes to creator Joss Whedon, his talented band of scribes and the great chemistry developed by his young cast. That was the beauty to this show – its ability to meld genres into something wholly unique. Whedon tossed equal parts horror, comedy, drama, adventure and Afterschool Special into his cauldron and crafted a bewitching brew all his own. While Whedon had his hands in the original flick – it was his screenplay that birthed that monstrosity – his script was largely butchered by the producers. With the television show, he was offered the chance for a reboot to set things right. Over seven fantastic seasons, Whedon crafted his masterpiece.

I know a lot of fans knock the later seasons for getting too dark – for losing some of the light that brightened earlier arcs – but I found myself fascinated with every road the show traveled. Whedon used the first few seasons to play as allegory for the trials faced in high school. If things grew dark later on, it’s only because the real world can reveal itself to be a much scarier place than those earlier horrors merely hint at.

My favorite episode of all time is one Whedon crafted. Season 4’s ‘Hush‘ was a deliciously creepy experiment in which a bulk of the narrative was told in complete silence. Sunnydale is silenced by The Gentlemen – creatures who come across as an amalgam of Hellraiser’s Cenobites and Dark City’s Strangers. With nobody able to utter a word, The Gentlemen terrorize the city looking to steal their quota of human hearts. The sequences of The Gentlemen floating towards their prey with great, ghoulish smiles on their face and a nasty set of surgical instruments is enough to haunt your dreams. In typical Whedon style, he breaks the tension with a few witty asides – most notably a ribald charade session courtesy of Anya. Hush is spellbinding television – one of the most creative uses of the medium I’ve witnessed and a testament to Buffy’s greatness.

Buffy Summers. She Saved the World. A Lot.

1. The X-Files (1993 – 2002)

As with The Simpsons, here is another show that I absolutely adored yet lost favor with along the way. That’s the cross to bear in this medium where sometimes the ad dollar screams for more episodes beyond a creators desires. As long as you’re still pulling that coveted 18 – 49 demographic, these shows will stay put.

The X-Files serves up the perfect blueprint for a show that should have had a predetermined arc. With Agent Mulder anchoring his investigation into supernatural cases with the quest to find his abducted sister Samantha, the dramatic stakes were planted in the first episode. We were told the truth was out there, we just didn’t realize that we’d have to keep digging and digging and digging until the answer no longer fit the question initially asked.

Simply put, the show should have ended when Mulder left and Duchovny shouldn’t have had to quit the show as the show should have ended a year or two before he exited. All right, maybe not so simply put?

Despite my misgivings with how things petered out at the end, The X-Files was the one show, the only show, that convinced me to stay in on a Friday night. In those days pre-Tivo, you just couldn’t put a lot of faith in your VCR. Hell, if you can’t set the time on the damn thing, how can you be sure it won’t botch the taping of ‘War of the Coprophages’?

When this show clicked, and for five solid years it was tighter than anything on television, it was better than anything else out there. Lost and Heroes all have The X-Files to thank for allowing a broad sweeping mythology to become the standard blue print for television narratives. Sure the murder of the week crime shows flourish, but the playbook written by The X-Files opened the door for alternative story telling.

I chose this show as my number one simply because no other show before or after created the same level of obsession in me. When pressed to think of my favorite episode of all time, I’m literally stuck picking favorites among children. How could I possibly do that? After all, this is the show that produced ‘Clyde Bruckner’s Final Repose’, ‘Jose Chung’s From Outer Space’, and so many other greats.

Still, if I have to choose one, it’s gotta’ be ‘Home‘.

‘Home‘ aired on Fox in 1996 and was subsequently banned from rebroadcast. I’d never seen that happen with a television show before so this self-policing on Fox’s part certainly added to the show’s mystique. This is also the episode that people in equal numbers offer up as the reason for why they either LOVE The X-Files or HATE it. If one episode can capture true fans or send viewers fleeing for the exits, there has to be something special going on.

Penned by Morgan & Wong, ‘Home‘ brings Mulder and Scully to Home, PA where they come across an inbred family of troglodytes ripped from those Hills with Eyes. The episode works on many levels. There’s a genuine pathos established when the small town sheriff Andy Taylor muses about his beloved home town and the mounting forces of change that threaten its ideal with the discovery of an infant’s body buried near the Peacock homestead. They follow that tender scene with an absolute brutal beating as the Peacocks go ‘caveman’ on the gentle lawman. The image of Taylor’s wife – hiding under a bed as a pool of blood slowly spreads towards her is frightening. Morgan & Wong deftly lighten things up with several entertaining discussions between Mulder & Scully on their dream home lives – which brings Mulder to offer up the suggestion that Dana settle down and begin “pumping out those uber-Scullys”.

Yup, there’s no place like ‘Home‘.