TV Power Rankings

Here's the first issue of what will ideally be a weekly thing: five shows that you should be watching. Rankings are based off of a number of subjective and objective criteria that are much too important to quantify in words:

5. The Office

The Office is one of the best comedies on TV, but it's really faltered this past season. It still makes the list because in the last episode, "The Michael Scott Paper Company", Michael quit. Yes, the "main character quits" angle has been beaten to death. I'm still holding out some hope that they stick with this for more than one week. If it goes back to the status quo by the end of the next episode, I'll have officially lost faith that the show will ever really try to mix up the formula, which is sad, because the first third of season three was some of the show's best work. Also, catch Parks and Recreation, if for no other reason than because it's loaded with talent.

4. Tough Love

Two reality shows are on the power rankings this week, and this one is on here entirely because of the host. Steve is brilliant, and needs to be shouting at every woman on VH1, not just these eight.

3. The Duel 2

When done right, the never-ending series of Road Rules/Real World Challenges can be very entertaining. The Duel was a particularly good season, in that an episode only took thirty minutes, leading to a half challenge, half drunken outburst format. It's quick, it's solid, it's good shitty TV when you want to fill your head with garbage. And it's interesting to see what goes on in the minds of professional reality show contestants, so there's that. (Imagine how much everyone on Survivor would hate each other by now if they'd have been using the same contestants in every season. Actually, I would like to see a year of Survivor in which the castaways play for a million dollars, come back, and go back out and do it again for a second million in the spring.)

2. 30 Rock

Easily the top comedy on TV right now; just not this week. I highly recommend you watch it all from the beginning. You're on the internet right now, so I have faith that you know what to do.

1. Scrubs

This is a show that seemed to be doing really well for a while, but fell off the rails a couple of years ago. This year, since a move to ABC forced some large budget cuts, the writers had to get creative, leading to them stepping out of the rut they'd been in. Main characters take weeks off, so episodes are allowed to flow naturally, without the need to have a weekly C-plot for The Janitor to come in, say something wacky, and leave. They've also fixed the problem of needing to tie the narrative structure into JD's thoughts every week, so the last minute of each episode isn't horrible. I reccomend starting at the beginning of this season and watching from there; don't worry if you missed a couple seasons, you didn't miss anything that ten minutes on Wikipedia can't fix.

Alright, I'm out. Let's see if I make it back within a week this time.