TVSquad

Another week, another list issue of Entertainment Weekly.

I'm not sure what to make of all of these lists. We do them here too, but it seems to me the more giant lists that are done the more meaningless they become. This EW issue is "The New Classics," the 1000 best TV shows, movies, books, and music of the past 25 years. Since this is a television blog, I won't get into their book, movie, and music picks (but if I can just say as a side note, they pick both Clueless and The Naked Gun before L.A. Confidential?!), but let's talk about their TV choices.

And argue about those choices in the comments, of course.

First, that headline: yes, they really do pick Sex and the City before Star Trek: The Next Generation. SATC comes in at number five, while ST: TNG comes in at number 24. Now, there are those who say that I shouldn't pick this example out of the article because SATC was a woman-oriented half hour about relationships and sex and fashion and ST: TNG was a male-oriented hour about aliens and exploding starships. Fair enough, but this is a numbered list and they want you to see these in this order. It's their choices, and they decided to put each show in a certain place, so I think the example is fair.

Also note that SATC comes before Lost, Arrested Development, The Office (both versions), 30 Rock, Everybody Loves Raymond, Mystery Science Theater 3000, The Larry Sanders Show, NYPD Blue, The West Wing, NewsRadio, Oz, Deadwood, and dozens of others.

In fact, here's a list of shows that didn't even crack the top 50: Battlestar Galactica, NewsRadio, Everybody Loves Raymond, MST3K, The Office (US version), and The Golden Girls.

Some of the choices are predictable yet accurate: The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Friends, The X-Files, and Buffy all made the top ten, and the issue overall is one of those fun issues to read while you're eating or on the toilet. But it's also going to cause a lot of TV fans to slap their heads in a "what are they thinking?" sort of way.

(The issue does have a funny pictorial: Rainn Wilson dressed up as classic TV characters, including Xena, MacGyver, Jean-Luc Picard, and Paulie Walnuts.)