The Quest to find my Top Ten TV Shows...

Buffy is #1 of course, but what are the remaining nine slots of my favorite TV shows of all time? To determine the all-important answer to this question, I've made a chart.

On the chart I've listed my top 12 shows:

*Buffy the Vampire Slayer
*Daria
*Dollhouse
*Firefly
*Friends
*Gilmore Girls
*The IT Crowd
*The Mighty Boosh
*New Girl
*The Office (U.S. version)
*Parks and Recreation
*Star Trek: The Next Generation

The second column in the chart, next to show's name, is what I think might be my favorite episode of each show. This turned out to be a more difficult task than I thought it would be. Some shows I knew right away. The Office's "The Injury" I have watched probably a dozen times. I quote it often and enjoy every bit of it. Buffy's "Restless" immediately came to mind as my favorite Buffy episode. Most shows I had to painstakingly look through the episode lists to find the possible favorite ep of each. The aspect of each show that I like usually boils down to the characters and isolated situations that make me happy. For example, I love the fight between Monica and Rachel on "The One After the Super Bowl", but the whole episode isn't gold. The thing I love the most about "The IT Crowd" is Moss. So anyway, I picked an episode per show. An episode I know I like, though in some cases I couldn't choose a favorite.

I will rate each episode on the following five criteria, then average the score for an overall episode total:

*character development/representation within the episode
*storyline
*quotability
*times I felt genuine emotion or high-level intellectual thought in response to the episode
*feminism (like does the episode pass the Bechdel Test and represent chicks well?)

I will then rate the overall scope of the series on the following five criteria:

*character development/likability
*story development/overall engagement in the series
*how often do I think about the show in everyday life/quotability/has the show become a part of me?
*identifiability: how well did the show teach me to cope with something in my own life?
*feminism

THEN, I will average the two averaged scores together to get an overall score for each show. Then I shall have my ranking. At that point, I will probably watch a few more episodes of each of the top five to analyze them more thoroughly.

Here we go!