Best of the 00s: Odds and Ends

In reading all the various final season retrospectives on Lost, I realized that I had forgotten yet another favorite music moment, this one from the show's second season premiere.

By now, it's become old hat that Lost's writers end their seasons with insane cliffhangers then pick up the next in a completely different place; in fact, the season three and five openers also begin with new or previously unstudied characters waking up and selecting music. This may have been the most shocking simply due to the novelty of it all - the then-unfamiliar retro Dharma aesthetic paired with the show's flashback structure up until that point made the setting maddeningly oblique up until that final pan up the hatch. Frankly, I don't think I'll ever stop being creeped out by the progression of daily chores culminating in the shot in the arm. The music is perfect, too; I sought out "Make Your Own Kind of Music" soon after this originally aired - Cass Elliot's voice makes the song somehow less silly than it could be with a more soprano singer - and the way Michael Giacchino's always haunting score comes in after the explosion is eerie as ever.

The first four minutes of Tuesday's premiere have apparently leaked online, but watching the opening moments of the other premieres makes it seem more than likely that no substantive information would be available to spoiler-seekers anyway. Personally, I'd like to think that Lindelof and Cuse have another retro track in store, but that's just me.

Best of the 00s: Hiatus

Okay, so clearly I should have just started the whole "Best of the 00s" thing in the summer when I started making my lists rather than waiting until November and accruing this insane backlog of posts while simultaneously facing the end-of-semester writing crush. Long story short, I need to focus my writing energies on my thesis no matter how much I'd rather be committing hundreds of words to pop culture minutiae. Posting the Showrunner list without commentary was so personally unsatisfactory that I'll probably just add here and there to the lists I've got and post them whenever they're done. (The fact that I'd rather write so much about television than, say, myths of national origin highlights the fundamental flaw of my thesis. I'm planning to do something about that in looking ahead to comps.) So here are the "Best of the 00s" lists in the pipeline:

Best Romantic Chemistry

Best Season Finales

Best Series Finales

My Favorite Albums

My Favorite Movies

Favorite Actors and Actresses

I'm torn about whether or not to do master lists of Best Comedies and Dramas from television - you can probably guess what they are just from level of recurrence across all the various posts. I'd also like to return in the future to some ongoing themes from the past - I never did finish my favorite book-to-movie adaptations (there are two more posts there) and I'd really like to pick up the Musicalfest thread again (the recent uptick in Gerard Butler's popularity prompted me to recently rewatch The Phantom of the Opera - what a deeply weird story that is). Anyway, it'll probably just be miscellaneous brief posts until I metaphorically wrestle my thesis to the ground. Believe me, I'd rather be doing this.

Best of the 00s: One Season Wonders and Other Short-Lived Shows

Freaks and Geeks (NBC, 1999-2000)

Looking back at the decade, I see Freaks and Geeks as a formative show in my media consumer evolution. It was the first show that I loved that wasn't watched by very many people, and the first I watched that was cancelled mid-season. I was a thirteen-year-old eighth grader and I couldn't believe that no one around me was embracing this show I found so amazing. Its cancellation was also the first time that I really thought about the relationship between networks and viewers - I briefly considered boycotting NBC, but realized that the absence of one Nielsen-box-free tween wasn't going to make a bit of difference. Finally, the complete series was also the first DVD box set I bought on my own. I *may* have raised the box over my head and done a celebratory dance in the store - maybe.

Undeclared (Fox, 2001-2002)

Undeclared has never quite received as much press as Freaks and Geeks within the Judd Apatow pantheon, but it deserves to be recognized for a take on college life that was funny and authentic. Jay Baruchel's gangly geekiness may never be better served.

Wonderfalls (Fox, 2004)

One of Bryan Fuller's imaginative spotlights in the decade's TV landscape, Wonderfalls is distinguished by a delightfully cynical heroine - twenty-something slacker Jaye remains rare among young women as depicted on television - and a uniquely quirky concept - Jaye hears what may or may not be the voice of God advising her through inanimate objects.

Reunion (Fox, 2005-2006)

As much flak as Fox gets for quickly canceling underperforming shows, they probably showed the most willingness to give oddball shows a chance of any of the networks over the past decade. Case in point - Reunion. The show was probably too overstuffed, concept-wise, featuring a murder mystery revolving around six high school friends with each episode taking place in a different year beginning in the mid-eighties. In the early episodes, at least, it was just clever enough to be innovative, drawing out the present-day character introductions to gradually sculpt the mystery and featuring some fantastically soapy twists. As cheesy as it could sometimes be, it deserved a full season.

The Black Donnellys (NBC, 2007)

The Black Donnellys may have been better in theory than in execution - the show's mythologizing of the early years of four brothers who it was implied would become well-known criminals always made the show's future seem more interesting than its present. It wasn't helped by the fact that shows on cable had the freedom to display the kind of violence necessary to driving home to consequences of living in a criminal world. Still, it was probably the best that could be done with a modern gangster show on a major network.

Swingtown (CBS, 2008)

When critics talk about Swingtown, they often remark that the show might have been better served had it been picked up by a cable network rather than notoriously stodgy CBS. To me this implies that the show's problem was insufficient salaciousness, but it was always more about the emotional fallout of testing a marriage's sexual boundaries than the act itself. It was pretty much doomed from the start - airing on Friday nights during the summer (remember when there used to be original programming on Saturday nights? That feels like another age entirely) - but the show's central six actors - Jack Davenport, Molly Parker, Josh Hopkins, Miriam Shor, Grant Show, and Lana Parilla - made the material vibrantly heartfelt.

Kings (NBC, 2009)

To return to the previous point, it's easy to see how Kings might have been served by being a cable property rather than a network one, particularly with NBC's fraught relationship with scripted dramas over the past few years. Kings displayed the kind of ambition that is rarely seen in any new shows, modernizing the Biblical story of Saul and David and mixing in grandiose Shakespearean overtones, featuring riveting performances by Ian McShane and Sebastian Stan. All the episodes are on Hulu - I highly recommend it.

Joan of Arcadia (CBS, 2003-2005)

Recently (I want to say New Years Eve or Day) I got sucked into watching a mini-marathon of Joan of Arcadia on SyFy with my sister and mother. I'd forgotten what a warm show JoA was; the "God speaks to teen girl" premise could have been much cheesier than it was - instead it exemplified the best of what "family" television can be. Plus, any show where you can nickname a recurring character "Hot God" definitely merits inclusion on a best-of list.

Dirty Sexy Money (ABC, 2007-2009)

I don't talk about it very often, but I love soaps. The unabashed embrace of melodrama and sense of freedom from conventional narratives often creates thrillingly outlandish TV. In its first season, DSM embraced the ethos of classic primetime soaps like Dallas and Dynasty, particularly aided by great family chemistry among the actors playing the self-absorbed, moneyed Darlings. The show tried to do too much in its post-writers-strike second season, but there was a brief moment when it seemed like it could start a true 80s revival.

Pushing Daisies (ABC, 2007-2009)

Pushing Daisies presented such a vibrant visual world, any attempt at verbal description feels automatically insufficient. Like Bryan Fuller's other shows, Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me, Daisies was so unique that it was almost shocking that it ever made it to air. The show's murder mystery structure kept its bright, inventive universe from veering too far into twee-ness and the central quartet of Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Kristin Chenoweth and Chi McBride were uniformly excellent.

Life (NBC, 2007-2009)

With better ratings, Life should have made Damian Lewis the next Hugh Laurie - that is, a Brit playing a quirky American in a semi-procedural show. I can't say I quite recall how Life's twisty conspiracy ultimately ended, but it offered just enough of a twist on the average cop show to be engaging.

Dollhouse (Fox, 2009-2010)

Sure, Dollhouse hasn't quite ended yet, but it still qualifies with only two thirteen-episode seasons. Dollhouse was a slow starter - Fox executive interference is credited for emphasizing procedural repetition in the early episodes. As the first season came to an end, particularly in the DVD-only finale "Epitaph One," the writers began to explore the darker implications of the show's central identity-wiping technology and made it one of televisions most uniquely compelling hours.

Best of the 00s: Favorite Episodes

Alias, "Phase One," 1/26/03

It's always interesting to see how the networks use the post-Super Bowl slot. Some launch new shows, others feature guest-star-packed episodes of already popular shows. Another tactic is to use the slot to try to juice the ratings of a good show that may not be getting the attention it deserves. At the beginning of 2003 Alias was in the middle of its second season, critically beloved but with middling ratings. Blessed by ABC with the post-Super Bowl opportunity, J.J. Abrams and company pulled out a "Go Big or Go Home" episode that functioned as a rare mid-season gamechanger in exploding the show's structure. The elimination of SD-6 and its partners, which erased Sydney's status as a double agent and freed her to finally make out with Vaughn, was an unquestionably bold move for the show and one that paid off, at least until the season-ending time jump. The episode-ending shot of Francie shot through the head by her double remains, for me, one of the most haunting images of the decade in TV.

Arrested Development, "Motherboy XXX," 3/13/05

One of the things that made AD great was the show's offbeat universe. Motherboy is one of the more fantastically weird creations, building on Lucille and Buster's codependent relationship by introducing a creepy mother-son costumed dance. The building insanity that ensues when Lucille decides to kidnap George Michael rather than deal with Buster's recent hand loss features some of the show's funniest situations and images - my personal favorite is Jessica Walter and Michael Cera in costume as Sonny and Cher. What's more, the episode also features the excellent meta reference of having Henry Winkler jump over a shark, which the writers must have found too irresistible to exclude.

Veronica Mars, "A Trip to the Dentist," 5/3/05

I've already written about how much I love this episode, so those points don't really need to be reiterated. Tightly written, evocative of the insularity of high school, fully rooted in the show's universe, features Teddy Dunn's best scenes as Duncan, brilliantly sets up the following season finale. What more could you ask for?

The Office, "The Dundies," 9/20/05

As the show's second-season premiere, "The Dundies" was a big show for The Office. The show's writers needed to prove that they could move out from the shadow of the British original and be more dynamic than the slow-starter first season. The Mindy Kaling-penned episode does all that and more, working to more clearly establish the Dunder Mifflin staff outside of the main credits group and making Michael Scott a noticeably softer character than David Brent.

How I Met Your Mother, "Slap Bet," 11/20/06

HIMYM is a show with writers who love continuity - that is, continued references to people, places and things contained within the show's universe. One of the best things about "Slap Bet" is that the first time you watch it, if you're unspoiled, the ending is impossible to predict. Robin's cagey refusal to go to the mall leads to the rest of the group speculating on her rationale, leading to the infamous titular bet between Barney and Marshall. The ultimate revelation of Robin's past as a Canadian pop star (with hit single "Let's Go to the Mall") makes the episode great. The launching of the running joke of the slap bet, with Marshall ultimately winning the opportunity to slap Barney five times from now until he dies, makes the episode classic.

Battlestar Galactica, "Unfinished Business," 12/1/06

Any show that utilizes a significant jump in time - say, a year or more - ultimately faces the dilemma of how to deal with the lost time afterward. Too much exposition renders the jump essentially pointless, while too little can leave viewers with a surplus of unanswered questions. "Unfinished Business" found the perfect level of revelation - focusing on one hopeful day early in the New Caprica settlement emphasizes the origins of the descent into misery that defined BSG's third season, while still leaving much to the imagination in the time jump. The framing device of military-rank-independent boxing serves the flashbacks so well that it doesn't feel as abruptly introduced as it could have been and allows for great little character moments from Tigh, Cottle and especially Roslin. Truthfully, it's also probably the last time Lee and Kara's relationship (see clip below) didn't seem like it was based on creating needless drama out of thin air.

30 Rock, "Hardball," 2/22/07

30 Rock's stellar first season is full of gems, but this has always been my favorite. One of 30 Rock's best ongoing devices is bringing in real NBC personalities to give the show's universe a semi-fictional air (the best, in my opinion, have been Lester Holt announcing that the Black Crusaders are after Tracy, and any time Brian Williams is on.) This episode's use of Chris Matthews and Tucker Carlson, as Jenna appears on Hardball to apologize for an unintended slight against America's troops, results in some of Jane Krakowski's best work as Jenna. The subplots of "Jack loves negotiating" (which culminates in the clip below) and "Kenneth joins Tracy's entourage" (featuring what I believe is the first appearance of "I love x so much I want to take it behind the middle school and get it pregnant." - the first "x" is cornbread, and Jack McBrayer's quiet "Pregnant cornbread...?" is an unbelievably great line reading) make this an example of 30 Rock firing on all cylinders.

Friday Night Lights, "Mud Bowl," 3/28/07

FNL's first season march to the state championship provided a lot of great moments, but "Mud Bowl" was the best. A train accident leads to a chemical spill that disrupts the Panthers' home field advantage, the coach finds a replacement in a cow pasture (with live cows!) and pouring rain turns the field into a mud pit during the climactic game - all fabulously serving FNL's homegrown/verité aesthetic. The show has always used filming in Texas to its advantage, but this is the episode where the show really dug into its non-Hollywood, non-soundstage location and brought up a gem.

Best of the 00s: Odds and Ends

Okay, so this has gotten a little out of hand, and obviously is going to have to bleed over into the new year. I'm sure you don't care, but: I forgive myself for being completely unable to adhere to any sort of posting timetable. Cue the last minute and a half of "A Quick One While He's Away."

I think this is probably my favorite individual television scene of the decade - this was the first new episode I watched after catching up on the show, and after purchasing it on iTunes, I kept returning to this scene and watching it over again. The third season of Battlestar Galactica was wildly uneven quality-wise, but it contains some of my favorite episodes and moments of the entire series. I was sort of baffled by the people who criticized BSG for getting too religious in the final season - from the very beginning, the show featured its characters attempting to explain and contend with circumstances beyond their control in a manner that always seemed to be at least partially rooted in religious faith (not to mention the LDS-referencing touches left over from Glen Larson's original series.) This scene highlights that sense of faith, viewed through the prism of the show's unique mythology. I don't know that the decade in television had any other couple put through the grinder quite like Helo and Athena, but Tahmoh Penikett and Grace Park's ability in playing the highs and lows made them one of my favorite things about a very good show.

Best of the 00s: Best Showrunners, Creators and Head Writers

I can't decide whether I want this list to be super-detailed or not. I'll just leave it as is and adjust if the mood strikes.

J.J. Abrams (Felicity, Alias, Lost, Fringe)

Judd Apatow and Paul Feig (Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared)

Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, True Blood)

Tina Fey (Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock)

Bryan Fuller (Wonderfalls, Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies)

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant (The Office, Extras)

Shonda Rhimes (Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice)

Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage (The O.C., Gossip Girl, Chuck)

Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars, Party Down)

Matthew Weiner (Mad Men)

Best of the 00s: Best Film Soundtracks

Almost Famous

It's no surprise that Cameron Crowe could put together a winning collection of seventies rock; his use of "Tiny Dancer" endures as a great musical moment.

Standout Songs: "Tiny Dancer," "Tangerine"

Josie and the Pussycats

This comic book movie/teen satire didn't need to have a great soundtrack, but the power pop that appears throughout would work even independent of the film.

Standout Songs: "Three Small Words," "Spin Around"

The Royal Tenenbaums

In my opinion, Mark Mothersbaugh's best score for Wes Anderson, plus dreamy tracks from the Rolling Stones and Nico, among others.

Standout Songs: "Needle in the Hay (if anyone wanted a 2.5 minute explanation of why Luke Wilson's AT&T ads are currently depressing me, that clip's as good as any)," "She Smiled Sweetly"

Kill Bill, Vol. 1

Yet another of Quentin Tarantino's patchwork collections of songs - however disparate, they always fit together in his vision.

Standout Songs: "Battle Without Honor or Humanity," "Nobody But Me"

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

A soundtrack I admittedly like better than the film it came from - Seu Jorge's Portuguese covers of David Bowie songs are a wholly unique contribution to the decade's music in film.

Standout Songs: "Starman," "Search and Destroy"

Marie Antoinette

Using New Wave to score a story of 18th-century teen royals shouldn't have worked, but it somehow completes Sofia Coppola's shimmering vision.

Standout Songs: "Hong Kong Garden," "What Ever Happened"

Once

It's no surprise that a film that portrays the process of creating music with such care resulted in a beautiful soundtrack, but it still feels revelatory.

Standout Songs: "Falling Slowly," "When Your Mind's Made Up"

Juno

What makes this soundtrack great: even if Kimya Dawson makes you want to light a rhyming dictionary on fire, there are still light retro tracks and beautiful songs like Cat Power's cover of "Sea of Love" that redeem it.

Standout Songs: "Anyone Else But You," "Sea of Love"

Twilight

A perfect mix of music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas' indie sensibility and author Stephenie Meyer's taste in moody rock.

Standout Songs: "Flightless Bird, American Mouth," "Supermassive Black Hole"

Best of the 00s: Odds and Ends

Camp is a bit hit-or-miss as a complete film, but its stagings of musical numbers from shows-within-the-show (most, if not all of which are from musicals that hadn't made it to the screen at the time) are fairly spot on. The increasing Oscar buzz around Anna Kendrick makes this as good a time as any to share this clip:

A list that never quite became as fully formed as I liked was "Musicals I Hope Will Be Made into Movies in the 2010s." However, Company is unequivocally at the top of that list. It's a fantastically cynical show, which might change some musical-hating minds, and it's a great ensemble piece. "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going" played so well in Dreamgirls (talk about your uneven movies), I'm dying to see an actor with pipes to do the same to "Being Alive." It would also be nice to see someone new - that is, outside of the Marshall-Condon-Ortega-Shankman group - offer a different take on the twenty-first century film musical like the eye Tim Burton brought to Sweeney Todd. Maybe Sam Mendes? His films can tend to be terribly self-serious, but the experience from his celebrated stage take on Cabaret plus his affinity for marital angst just might work for Company.

Best of the 00s: Odds and Ends

Alas, Tiger Woods going down in tawdry flames and Thierry Henry's handball scandal (I don't know, it's a soccer thing. He might get banned from early rounds of the World Cup?) probably means that we will never see the likes of this awesomely ridiculous commercial gracing our television screens in the 2010s.

I love the badass dismissals of "yesterday," followed by the delightful jingle.

Best of the 00s: Best Procedurals

Procedurals: also known as cop/doctor shows, or shows that I enjoy and frequently watch in syndication. They're ubiquitous, but here are five that stand out to me, each with a representative episode.

Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (NBC, 1999-present)

Every person has their favorite L&O; mine is SVU. The show is sometimes criticized for the intensity of its characters' "taking it personally" (particularly Christopher Meloni's Elliot Stabler) but I think the element of the personal, and its execution by SVU's rock-solid cast, is what makes SVU the best Law and Order franchise.

Episode: "Ghost", February 22, 2005

This episode serves as the follow-up to 2003's excellent "Loss," where the show's A.D.A Alexandra Cabot went into the Witness Protection Program after being shot while working on a case involving a powerful drug cartel. Cabot's return in "Ghost" to testify against that cartel features a great performance by Stephanie March as Cabot grapples with the past and rejoins colleagues who believed she was dead.

Bones (Fox, 2005-present)

I got sucked into watching Bones in reruns on TNT this summer. (They show two episodes a day! You can watch a whole season in two weeks!) The show utilizes unique characterization in a manner that frequently elevates what can be rote about mystery procedurals, particularly in the standout chemistry between Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz.

Episode: "Aliens in a Spaceship", November 15, 2006

This episode, which introduces the serial killer The Gravedigger, is Bones firing on all cylinders. The Gravedigger's m.o. of placing victims in sealed containers and demanding ransom be paid before their air runs out comes brilliantly into play as Brennan and Hodges find themselves trapped underground in Brennan's car and use their collective scientific ingenuity to craft a series of MacGyver-esque survival-prolonging tactics. Shows featuring intelligent characters don't always utilize their alleged knowledge - this episode was a refreshing example of what can happen when they do.

Cold Case (CBS, 2003-present)

There is one surefire way to get me to weep like a baby: put on an episode of Cold Case. Sure, it'll take about fifty minutes, but when that ending montage comes where the ghost of the victim appears to their loved one to show that they're finally at peace, I am Cold Case's bitch. Recently I was watching an episode I hadn't seen before, and midway through I was all, "I'm totally okay. I'm definitely not going to cry during this one," and twenty minutes later I was reaching for the tissues.

Episode: "Forever Blue", December 3, 2006

I've written about this episode, which centers on the tragic story of two police officers in love in the late 60s, before, and there's really not much to add to that. I'll just say that I watched it again recently and not only did it still make me weep at the end, but it's become one of those things where knowing what happens at the end makes me weep throughout the episode.

House, M.D. (Fox, 2004-present)

Did Fox ever luck out with Hugh Laurie - he has defined the character of Gregory House so thoroughly that he carries the show over ebbs and flows in quality that would destroy one with a less charismatic lead. The show also benefits from functioning in a clearly defined niche - diagnostic medicine - which distinguishes it from other shows in a genre that can often feel tired.

Episode: "House's Head", May 12, 2008

This first part of the fourth season finale started with an intriguing premise: how does House solve a diagnostic mystery when a) he's the patient and b) he has a head injury resulting from a bus accident. The hour of step-retracing and fantasy sequences culminated in a gut-punch of an ending when House realized that his clues were pointing to Anne Dudek's Amber having been in the accident with him, which in turn lead to what is almost certainly the show's best-executed character exit.

Grey's Anatomy (ABC, 2005-present)

If it were a more consistent show, Grey's would probably be on my best dramas list. However, the highs have been so high that the show is impossible to ignore. When ads originally ran for the show, it didn't seem like it would depart too far from the standard medical show format. The tack of having patient problems reflect the interpersonal relationships of the doctors wasn't always as subtle as it could have been, but with a solid cast, creator Shonda Rhimes made it work. Every time I think I'm ready to give up on Grey's, it sucks me back in.

Episode: "It's the End of the World"/"As We Know It", February 5/12, 2006

Grey's was on fire in its second season (for serious, the season was concluding while my sophomore year in college was coming to a close and my friends and I were totally obsessed. One of my non-watching friends came by during one of the season's final episodes when he was leaving for the summer, and we were all fully watching the TV over his shoulder as we hugged and said our goodbyes.) and this two-parter - the first part of which was ABC's post-Super Bowl selection - is a perfect example of the show firing on all cylinders. Like many Grey's sweeps episodes, this pair featured an outlandish central case - a man comes in with an unexploded bomb lodged in his chest. Sterling guest performances by Christina Ricci as the EMT holding the bomb in place and Kyle Chandler as the bomb squad leader, plus the storyline of George assisting Bailey as she gave birth (which included the notorious first appearance of "va-jay-jay") made this a Grey's classic.

Best of the 00s: Best Reality Shows

Recently, my mother asked me if I thought reality would decline as a television genre in the coming years. The long answer is: barring some sort of massive paradigm shift in the way that broadcast networks function and measure success, I think reality is too cheap to die. It often gets decried as television's wasteland, and sometimes that's certainly true. Here, though, are ten shows that, in my opinion, either epitomized all the potential for quality in reality programming or were so terrible or over-the-top that they went around bad and came back around to awesome:

The Amazing Race (CBS, 2001-present)

I feel like with CBS reality, you're either a Survivor person or an Amazing Race person. I watched all of Survivor's Australia season, and most of the first one, but otherwise it just never spoke to me. (I suppose there are probably also Big Brother people, but we won't get into that mess.) Survivor seems like it's tailored to a specific kind of personality, while The Amazing Race seems like with some luck and a decent teammate, anyone could compete. This travelogue-as-TV-competition has had a few missteps over its fifteen seasons (Family Edition, anyone?) but it remains one of TV's most consistent reality shows.

American Idol (Fox, 2002-present)

It seems hard to believe now, but Idol originated as somewhat of a sleeper hit, premiering in the "let's throw shows at the wall and see what sticks" environs of Fox summer programming. In the years since, Idol has become its own all-consuming cultural entity - one where people can become famous for giving a terrible, deluded audition performance; one that has produced Grammy winners, an Oscar winner, Tony nominees and a man who appears to have been banned from ever performing on ABC again; one that has turned Ryan Seacrest into Dick Clark's media-conglomerate-running heir apparent. Some people love the audition segment of the season, others the studio performances and audience voting - my personal favorite is the all-too-brief Hollywood week, where you get a glimpse of people's true (often egomaniacal) personalities before the gloss takes over. The Idol machine has a winning formula, at least in television viewership, and it's one that doesn't appear likely to slow down any time soon.

America's Next Top Model (UPN/The CW, 2003-present)

Tyra Banks may come off as crazy sometimes, but Top Model makes it clear that said crazy is of the "like-a-fox" variety. The drama created each cycle by the show's contestants has always managed to overshadow the fact that it ultimately operates in an entirely different sphere than America's actual top models. That Top Model continues to draw a contestant pool after a dozen cycles is a testament to the tenacity of American beauty myth culture: so many young women, it seems, want to "be on top."

I know that this kind of schadenfreude is unbecoming, but I've probably watched the Cycle 2 episode this moment is from about fifteen times:

Made (MTV, 2003-present)

MTV's shows featuring young people being totally awful are so dominant, it's easy for a show like Made to get lost in the shuffle. Each episode operates as its own self-contained Cinderella story, working to fulfill the transformative wish of a teenager. Before High School Musical found popularity in showcasing young people escaping clique boundaries, Made created an engaging formula for breaking out of a social box.

Making the Band (original incarnation, ABC/MTV, 2000-2002)

Before Diddy got involved, Making the Band presented itself as a kind of behind-the-scenes look at the boy band creation process of noted 90s pop Svengali Lou Pearlman. This is, of course, back when boy bands essentially were pop music, and when Pearlman only seemed creepy. In winnowing down auditionees to a five-man group, Making the Band served to level the reality TV playing field by showing that women were not the only reality contestants prone to catty infighting. I wish I could find a show clip of the contestants atonally rehearsing the song "All for Love," the introductory harmony of which was repeatedly mangled. We'll have to settle for O-Town's tragic first single, which is both weirdly gross for Top 40 and insanely catchy:

The Paper (MTV, 2008)

I don't know if I've ever mentioned here before that I worked on the newspaper at my high school, but I did. It was a uniquely stressful experience, a miniature pressure cooker within the already energy-draining confines of high school. The Paper, in only eight episodes, somehow captured all of the heightened emotion of that experience. The show focused on a Florida high school's newspaper, its endearingly geeky copy editor-turned-editor-in-chief Amanda Lorber, who has one of the kinds of personalities that pop so naturally that they make it obvious when other people are trying to make themselves the "personality" of a show (ahem, Suede from Project Runway season 5) and the other staff members who wanted her job. Here's the first episode, which lays out the terrible interpersonal relationships that would make the show so undeniably riveting:

Paradise Hotel (Fox, 2003)

I don't feel like I have sufficient adjectives to capture all that Paradise Hotel was. Some shows you watch because they're great, some shows you watch because their insane campiness makes them great. Paradise Hotel ran throughout the summer of 2003, with labyrinthine rules and a structure that seemed like it could enable the show to air indefinitely. The show was unique for cycling "hotel guests" in and out by taking new contestants from the viewing audience, whence came standout cast member Dave, who appears in the clip below. Paradise Hotel represents to me the best in the worst of reality television: the trainwreck that you can't peel your eyes away from, even as you hate yourself for watching. I couldn't have stopped watching this ever-stirring cauldron of drama even if I'd wanted to.

Project Runway (Bravo/Lifetime, 2004-present)

As soon as it premiered, Project Runway quickly established itself as one of TV's best artistic showcases. Featuring the behind-the-scenes work involved in fashion design, Runway brought some quality to a genre that had already become mired in tackiness. The interpersonal conflicts that inevitably rise when "real" people put themselves in a spotlight for fame, fortune or mere exposure, was tempered by the process of watching an outfit go from concept to design to execution. Add the unique presences of Tim Gunn, Michael Kors and Nina Garcia, and you've got a winner.

Runway is also noteworthy as the source of what is one of the best reality TV moments of the decade, if not of all time.

Real World/Road Rules Challenge (MTV, 1998-present)

At the beginning of this decade (you know, when they still had new seasons of Road Rules), the Real World/Road Rules Challenge was an entirely different show. The show as it originally functioned was more like Road Rules - two teams of six driving around the country in RVs and participating in competitions with each other. There was always drama, as castmates from the same RW or RR season would hash out old arguments and grudges (or create new ones, having watched said season unfold on television), but it all seemed relatively contained. Somewhere along the way, though, the producers decided to park the show in one tropical locale per season and shit got crazy. Each successive season becomes television's most reliable source of out-of-control drama, and these days features people who never even appeared on a season of The Real World or Road Rules, only challenges - it's become its own insane universe.

So You Think You Can Dance (Fox, 2005-present)

SYTYCD has an appeal similar to that of Project Runway, in that it showcases genuinely talented people and gives them an outlet to get recognized and rewarded for their craft. Unlike Idol, the partnership and group dance format of the show seems to foster strong relationships among the contestants - most seasons, they seem to genuinely like each other and get along as a group in a way that makes the show really charming. It also has one of television's best hosts in Cat Deeley. If all that wasn't enough, SYTYCD also gets points (at least from me, because I'm way cheesy in case you hadn't guessed already) for being one of the few reality shows conducive to the usually fiction-based overly-emotionally-invested fan project of shipping.

Here, from the second season, is a routine that remains one of my favorite. Enjoy it while it's here - 19 or Dick Clark or somebody is super-litigious about taking clips off of YouTube. (Dear Corporations, If you cooperated with new media instead of fighting it all the time, you could probably find a way to make it profitable and stop alienating the people you want to sell crap to. Cheers! - Liz)