Top 5-3 (I'm busy, so lay off)

Here we go, 5-3. Did you guess ahead?


... no, no you didn't. Well Amy did, she saw some of the list. But you didn't did you smart guy? You thought you knew me...

#5 The Simpsons


I was so opposed to watching The Simpsons. All the people who were
watching the show were, well, dumb ass kids at school. Dumb ass like their
profession now is "drunk shirtless guy in the town square." I don't even know what caused me to watch either, but it was some where around the fourth season, and the show was unstoppable.

By now you know it too, and you either love it or don't. But then, my gosh, it pissed off U. S. presidents. Presidents. There's a pattern here with my liking these shows, and I'm not smart enough to add a lot more than "smart, satirically, goofy, strange" and I guess I can add animated. The show was such a antidote to banal sitcoms with thirty minute resolutions to complex problems.

The Simpsons has fallen from it's higher perch in the upper echelon of great TV, but I can point to a good decade (a DECADE) of entertaining, sacred cow skewering, smart episodes.

#4 Sports Night -



If I ever do any kind of show, radio or TV, where I get to talk, it will be for the express purpose of saying "... and the rain in Spain falls mainly on Tulane. We'll have that, plus Bobbi Bernstein in PA. You're watching Sports Night on CSC, so stick around."

You have to understand: I was working a shitty TV job with people that were less than inspiring as, well, people. And along came this show about TV people who strove to do their part and make sure the other guy could do their part. And the dialouge and direction just crackles.

It's the ups and downs of the third rate cable sports show on the CSC Network. Behing the scenes and behind the desk, it's the "office comedy" with drama. It's got some the of the best moments on television.

Sorkin and Schlamme hit it big with West Wing but it started here. Half way through the first season the show got to dump its ABC mandated laugh track, and the show had room to get even funnier. Sports Night suffers from the usual Sorkin-Schlamme weak spots (sometimes they're too much in love with what they're doing, and sometimes the characters behave out of character to further story points) but I'll tell you this: I had maybe three dollars to my name (my shitty TV job with less-than-inspiring people also paid poorly) and I saw the Sports Night DVD set and bought it immediately.

I may have never made a better purchase.

#3 Ed



Okay, this was the one that surprised me, now and then. When I sat down and contemplated what shows I really loved and why, I realized how much Ed impacted my entertainment and work. Ed was somewhat poorly marketed but I tuned in anyway. I remember watching the first episode and being glad I did. It was a very uneven outing (the show was meant for CBS and the pilot was cut down to the opening minutes of the NBC premiere) but it was enough to make me tune in with anticipation.

Ed was a New York City lawyer who got fired from his big law job and caught his wife diddling the mailman on the same day. He retreats home to Stuckeyville Ohio to hide out with his high school buddies Mike and Nancy and their new daughter. That night he runs into his high school crush Carol and, bathed in moonlight and beer, kisses her.

He moves back to Stuckeyville, buys a bowling alley, and sets up a law practice. He's defeated, he's down, but he's figured out everything before this is a warm up. Ed has gotten a second chance in life, and it's nothing like he expected.

I looked at the opening sequence to the show about six times in a row, marveling at the good design on the show open. Everything you need to know is there: Ed starts in darkness and enters into the light. Some of it's familiar, some of it's new.

The show excelled at being funny in a way that pop culture shows can't, in a way that can be dismissed as "quirky" but is ultimately sweet and kind. And Tom Cavanagh makes you believe that it's really just him being him, not some guy acting like he's the eternal optimist, the hopeless/ful romantic who doesn't give up because that would be too easy.

I remember when I fell for the show (like a good book or movie, I am in love/fatuated with Ed): November 12th, 2000. Sure I was really leaning that way with episodes 2 and 4, but it was epsiode 6 that sealed the deal: Ed creates a holiday "The Festival of Ducks" (complete with backstory) to get the town an extra star in a tourist guide to beat out the neighboring Jaspertown and help the mayor get re-elected. I'm not doing the plot justice, but the episode ends with Ed, still in his giant duck suit, sweeping up confetti and debris in the middle of the town square. He's just talked to Carol, back from her intended-leaving-town-for-good trip, and the camera is booming up as Wilco's "I'm Always in Love" hits the chorus. An old man leading a group of ducks walks through the lower part of the frame as we fade to black.

Just like the show open sums up the back story, that sequence,to me, showed the heart of Ed. Funny, sweet, not sappy, kind, and hopeful.

I want to buy a house in Stuckeyville and eat pie just thinking about it.


**** Alright, 2-1 is just ahead(ish). #2 has never been broadcast properly in the States, and Number 2 always sort of knew Number 1 from #1. Oh bad play-on-words...