My Correction to Rolling Stone’s Very Wrong List of “The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All-Time”

Dear lords above and below, Rolling Stone magazine just dropped a list of the greatest TV shows of all-time, and I think my nose is bleeding a little. Their list is an insult to the history of television, to perspective, to ground-breaking significance. The list is so insultingly nonsensical, I fear they are just baiting TV fans like myself. Their Top 10 (TV Shows of ALL-TIME!) includes Fleabag, The Wire, and Atlanta. But no I Love Lucy. No Muppet Show. We need some serious perspective, after all we are trying to live in a society, here! There needs to be recognition of history, inspiration, comedy, impact, and originality. Whomever wrote the list over at Rolling Stone clearly never stayed up all night watching a Nick-At-Nite marathon, singing the theme to Welcome Back, Kotter or Mr. Ed at three in the morning. And here’s another point: Grit does not equal Great. Not necessarily. Perspective!

Here is my correction to their horrifying submission.

The 50 Actual Greatest TV Shows of All-Time:

50. Game of Thrones (The last season or two really tanked it.)

49. Seinfeld (Yeah, that’s right. The jokes haven’t aged well, okay?)

48. Brooklyn 99

47. Little House on the Prairie

46. Married With Children (It defied every notion of humor)

45. Britannia

44. Three’s Company

43. The Jeffersons

42. The A-Team

41. The Handmaid’s Tale

40. What We Do In the Shadows (BAT!)

39. The Kids in the Hall

38. Designing Women (A Sugarbaker woman beLONGS on this list!)

37. Lost

36. Orange is the New Black

35. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

34. Gilmore Girls

33. Schitt’s Creek

32. Father Ted

31. 30 Rock

30. Bewitched (It was ground-breaking and kicked Jeanie’s ass)

29. The Twilight Zone

28. The Price is Right

27. The Simpsons

26. Animaniacs

25. The X-Files

24. The West Wing

23. Supernatural

22. Spongebob Squarepants

21. All in the Family (Yeah, it’s un-airable today, but it was an important message to an older generation, Meat Head.)

20. Saturday Night Live

19. Veronica Mars

18. Unsolved Mysteries

17. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

16. Star Trek

15. Mr. Bean

14. Sesame Street

13. Star Trek: Voyager

12. Absolutely Fabulous

11. The Golden Girls

10. Friends (up this high mostly for it’s dominating global popularity)

9. Firefly

8. The Sopranos

7. Succession

6. The Muppet Show

5. M*A*S*H

4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

3. I Love Lucy

2. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

1. Doctor Who

I look forward to your cheerful confirmations of how insanely correct I am, and just how daft you find Rolling Stone’s list. See you on Twitter (@katieusingwords).

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