It's Debatable

I've never been one to shy away from a healthy sports debate, but the one thing I try never to get involved with is ranking players based on position or team. Not only is it really hard because you have to account for things which really can't be qualified like when they played, who they played with and who they were playing against, but everyone is going to bring their own hometown biases to the debate and refuse to budge no matter how compelling an argument the other person is making. For example, if were were ranking the best center in NBA history I would say it was Bill Russell because I am from Boston but people from Los Angeles would argue for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and anyone from Philadelphia would be convince it was Wilt Chamberlain. We would all have very solid cases and it would be completely understandable when none of us were willing to change our stances (even though I would be the person who would be right). Anyway, that is why I always think the wiser course of action is to simply list the finalists for whatever category you may be talking about and allow the people out there to put them in their own order. I've just found it is much easier to get people to agree that something may be on the same level as whatever you think is best rather than convince them to change their mind about who should occupy the top spot.

It is because I don't like placing things in order that I looked at yesterday's the news that the Writer's Guild of America had come up with a list of the 101 Best-Written TV shows of all time with a lot of skepticism. You can read the full list here, but the highlights include "The Sopranos" at #1, "Seinfeld" at #2, then "The Twilight Zone", "All in the Family" and "M*A*S*H" rounding out the top-five. As you can imagine with the influx of 'reality' TV shows in the past decade most of the list is older shows, but the good news is that they didn't appear to be biased against recent programs ("Mad Men" was #7) or animated shows ("The Simpsons" landed at #11). Still, I had a few issues with the rankings, as you would expect. They had the "The West Wing" at #10 when I clearly thought it should have been higher and "Homeland" made the list even though they really only produced 4 good episodes before the entire series went in the tank. Also, "Justified" made the list, which I approve of, but "Sons of Anarchy" did not, which I disagree with. But I think the main problem I had as I went through this list is how all the different genres were blended. I mean, how can you objectively hold a series show like "Roots" (#62) up against "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (#79)? I'm always saying the biggest problem I have with movie critics is they insist on looking at everything through the same microscope when the smarter thing would be to judge each film based on what it was trying to do and TV should be no different.

But, even harder than trying to judge comedies versus dramas is trying to judge TV from the 70s against the shows from today. They are just totally different eras played with totally different rules. To go back to the sports analogy it would be like assuming you know exactly how Babe Ruth would do against guys from today who can throw 90, spend all year doing nothing but training and thanks to advances in medical science know you shouldn't smoke between innings. You can discuss topics on TV today that you never would have even tried to get passed censors in the early days of television, but today's writers have to deal with a level of political correctness the previous generation never dreamed of. That same disparity is why I actually think shows on network television should have gotten extra bonus points because often they have to be more creative towards hinting about certain topics while the cable channel shows can just say whatever they like and get away with it. (I would actually love to know if HBO has ever edited a single show for violence or language because I seriously doubt it.) I'm not saying one is better than the other, just that sometimes subtlety is harder and takes more skill. On top of that back then shows were given much longer runs to prove themselves and find a groove, whereas shows these days are yanked if their first episode flops. It's like comparing apple to pears. Sure, they sort of look the same but at their core they are vastly different.

Finally, I mentioned that there were some shows from the modern era, but the majority of the programs are from several years ago. I can't help but wonder if that is a result of the fact that there are so many shows on television today it has watered down the talent pool. Think about it - back then you had just a few networks to choose from and only so many shows on those networks, so competition to land those jobs was fierce and they only hired the best and the brightest. (Recently I heard an interview with Dick Van Dyke where he mentioned his time as the original host of the "Today" program. His newsreader was Walter Cronkite and one of his copywriters was Barbara Walters. Seriously, there were like 9 people working in television back then.) Now even the so-called 'unscripted' shows need at least a couple people to write a basic plot for each episode, meaning many more people can call themselves television writers, which it makes me question if the talent pool has gotten slightly diluted and the quality of writing has suffered. In other words, while I appreciate the ambitiousness of this task it does feel like they would have been better off putting it into categories and then figuring out where shows should have been placed against a field of their peers rather than every show ever created. Of course, given the fact that these lists have a tendency to be a bit pretentious I should probably forgo questioning their results and just be happy they didn't name a program like "Masterpiece Theatre" just to appear cultured.