AV Club Top 100 List

There's certainly a greater degree of difficulty to maintain quality across four or five seasons (or longer) than in just one or two. So I'd say that a show which manages a long run without declining in quality is more impressive than one which lives fast and dies young.

That said, shows that go 4+ years without a dud season in the bunch are very rare. And I expect them to become rarer still, as shorter runs become more common in the prestige TV world. TV shows are designed to be longer than films - but if you want to tell a story without it feeling drawn out, it often won't be that much longer.

I think yes, based on their stated criteria for year-end album lists (everyone distributes X points among their favorite releases of the year and they tabulate the totals).

The most gratuitous inclusion here is Bob's Burgers inexplicably being #8 (or, um, included on this list at all - but I'm aware that that's a such a nuclear take that I don't want to start this conversation. I've really turned on BB in the past couple years when I realized it wasn't usually funny or ever heartwarming or much of anything). A couple shows seem inflated by dint of appealing very specifically to television critics rather than a general audience (Review, CXGF). Mad Men and Breaking Bad as #2 and #1 felt kind of disappointing.

And I agree with the AV Club commentariat that Louie's absence probably is AVC doing penance for praising him long after it became apparent he was a creep rather than an honest evaluation of the show's merits. One of the best essays in the Sepinwall/Zoller Seitz book is the one where they grapple with the historical importance of the Cosby Show despite its inseparability from Cosby's sex crimes - I don't think the nu-AVC could write a blurb of that quality in 2019.

If you'll recall, I did have a rule on my Lustrum list that shows had to have premiered before the summer of 2013 in order to be considered. I'm probably going to make a similar rule when I do my "Best of the Decade" piece - there won't be a single 2019 premiere on it. (Sorry, Russian Doll.)

I haven't looked at the list myself, because that would require the terrifying task of visiting the AV Club, but... Mad Men at #2? I'm assuming that's due to the voting process, but still... eh.


I actually agree with this. A few years ago, Bob's Burgers was one of my favorite shows. Now I find it unfunny and at times pretty unwatchable. I'm not entirely sure what's changed.

Not quite what I'm saying. Longer shows aren't inherently better, but consistency of quality over a long duration is an impressive factor for a TV series to pull off. But of course, it's almost impossible to find a show that can pull off a purely excellent run for five seasons or longer. (Even staunch fans of The Wire will admit the show lost some of its luster in its fifth season.) So it's hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison between long and short shows.

It's for a similar reason that I probably won't include intentional one-season miniseries (be they from 2019 or earlier) on my Best Shows of the Decade list. Although the two genres have blended somewhat in recent years, I'm still not convinced it's fair to judge miniseries by the same standard as long-form TV shows.

Part of it is because after ten damn seasons without anything remotely resembling a single emotional stake, it's become obvious just how limited the show's bag of tricks is. Tina is a horndog. Gene likes to say "penis." There will be at least three unfunny puns per episode, and probably a 90's pop culture reference that makes no sense coming from the lips of a 10-year-old.

But I think the thing that stands out to me about Bob's Burgers is that the world of the show is ostensibly as complex as that of Springfield, and yet I don't think a single member of the extended Bob's Burgers community is all that memorable, despite ostensibly being better developed. How many minutes of screen time has Dr. Yap gotten relative to Dr. Nick - and which character is more quotable? I know it's unfair to compare any animated show to The Simpsons, but I think it's kind of gratuitous that BB has done so little with so much.

I suspect the show is popular for much the same reason, e.g., The Great British Bake-Off is on the AV Club list - it's cynicism-free comfort food. But for me, it's pretty obvious the show is just empty calories.

Right, this is another problem with the show, how much of the dialogue feels like dumb ad libbing. Especially with Bob and Teddy. (Actually, does anybody like Teddy? Does he add literally anything to the show's ensemble?)