So it’s time for some more good top ten list action. Today it’ll be the Top Ten TV Shows of the Decade. I don’t watch much TV. 99% of what I watch is done on DVD and not anything like close to live. So yeah, that affects how I view stuff. It also doesn’t mean a damn thing. Shows were chosen because I love them more than other shows. So here are my picks, in no particular order:

The Shield
This is, quite simply, the best TV show ever made. It’s dark and mean and wonderful. No one is “good” or “bad” among the main characters. No one is clean. The world is an expanse of moral gray. It’s also incredibly tightly written, directed and shot with a unique style, uses music like no other show (by not using background music at all past the pilot and the very rare bit of montage, maybe once a season) and… frankly most shows go up and down. They peak and valley. Shield goes in a straight line, up, for 7 seasons. Each one is better than the last.

Scrubs
While technically this show is still on, for me it ran 8 seasons and ended. And they were, for the most part, a great 8 seasons. What with House before there was House, a medical drama that could be incredibly dramatic and comedy that could be perfectly hysterical, Scrubs had everything you could want in a half-hour sitcom. It’s just so perfectly watchable, you know? It had a few weak seasons, but overall the show was just always touching and funny and spot-on.

Chuck
Man this show is awesome. Anything but mean the thing manages to be part geek comedy and part spy movie. Chuck himself is such a great guy, as a character, you honestly want to root for him. Adam Baldwin sings as a gruff NSA agent and… the show just works. It’s light-hearted and fun and action-y. Chuck is kinda exactly what I hoped it would be, except better. The family relationships are also something you don’t see much in shows like this – happy.

Middleman
That this show was cancelled after 12 episodes is one of the three major crimes against TV this decade. Middleman was the best live-action superhero show to ever run. It packed so many hysterical references in each episode, gave you great characters and fun, exciting plots and… Christ Middleman was what comics done live action show be. The whole show was just fun. Joyous, even.

Dr. Who
I know it’s popular to bag on Davies now, but he brought back the show from the dead after 18 years and turned it back into one of the best and most exciting SF shows ever made. Not perfect, Davies has flaws, and Season 3 annoys me more often than not but taking the oldest television SF show and returning it to glory is one hell of an achievement and if you want to be all “Bleh Davies” just remember the parts you love wouldn’t be there if not for him, either. He shepherded the show back into life and brought great writers with him and a sense of how to make a children’s SF show that adults could also love.

Veronica Mars
The first season of this show was strong enough that it carried it all the way to this list. Did you know you could do noir mystery TV with a high school female lead? And have it be as dark and powerful as anything with Mike Hammer? You can. They did. Season 2 falls apart and Season 3 only takes off at the very end, but that first season is so well done it carries everything.

Freaks and Geeks
If cancelling Middleman was one of the crimes against TV this decade, shutting down Freaks and Geeks after 18 episodes is another. This is the show that launched Judd Apatow’s career, along with James Franco, Seth Rogan, Jason Segal and others. Brutally honest about how crappy high school can be and set in the 80s, Freaks and Geeks got laughs but not as often as it got winces because we’ve all been in there, somewhere. Powerful stuff with a keen sense of itself.

Arrested Development
Funniest. Sitcom. Ever. Well, Fawlty Towers is maybe funnier. But I don’t know. Some days I can’t call it. Arrested Development was bitterly hysterical and threw jokes at you so fast and hard, without ever waiting for you to catch up you simply found yourself forced to play at their level or go home. It’s the last major crime against TV on this list with it’s third season truncated and the show shut down. Genius level writing and the sort of show you don’t blink during, because you’ll miss six GOOD jokes.

Always Sunny in Philadelphia
It’s not often sitcoms make me wince. In a good way. This thing is crazy and mean and awful and I love it so very dearly. Most shows, when two characters decide to go on welfare because they want to cheat the system, back out of it fast. When those characters decide to take crack so they can get a doctor to sign off on addiction problems so they can get that welfare money, well most shows have them fail at buying the drugs, at worst. If they buy the drugs, most shows have them fail tot take them. Sunny turns them into crack heads and then makes fun of them. Welcome to it.

Justice League/JLU
When Timm and Dini did the Batman animated show they redefined what that type of show could be. Then they did Justice League and redefined it again. The first season of two was fun stuff but when it became JLU the show got tight and they really started to play and build out of their box. It’s fun TV and a great cartoon. Also they had an episode with Booster Gold. Booster Gold! On TV! So awesome.

11th exception item

Farscape
I didn’t put this in the main list because a bunch of the first season aired in 1999 so I excluded it from play. But since the rest of it was this decade and because it is the best SF TV show I’ve ever seen, I am giving it a special place all its own. A bunch of folks I know dismissed it because “Oh, puppets” and, frankly, that’s just sad. The show was, over it’s 4 year run and 3hr special TV movie, everything SF on TV should and can be. Smart, fun, sexy and deep, Farscape wasn’t afraid to change characters and grow its playing field as they went along. No topic was off limits, no cliché too silly for them to play with and make interesting. They worked their asses off and it shows.