The 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME

"First, I apologize. I know I left some of your favorite shows off this list. How do I know that? Because I left some of my favorite shows off this list. The happy and unfortunate fact is that there are far more than 100 great shows, and more created every year. Lists are incredibly important: they are how we define what matters to us, what we want entertainment and art to do, what we expect of our culture."
—TIME TV critic James Poniewozik

The Beavis and Butt-Head Show

BACK
NEXT

View All

Digg
Facebook
Twitter
MORE
- Add to my:
- Blog this on:
  - TypePad
  - LiveJournal
  - Blogger
  - WordPress
  - MySpace

To those who would call this MTV cartoon the boob tube at its most puerile, I have but one rejoinder: You said "boob." This show's fart-knocking, frog-smashing anarchy might have put it on the list alone, but B&B was so much more. It was a surreal comedy ("I am the great Cornholio!"). It was one of TV's great inside critiques, peeling back the MTV fantasy of unattainable cool and personifying the sugar-buzzed idiot-children who paid the channel's bills. Like creator Mike Judge's later King of the Hill, Office Space and Idiocracy, it was an unsparing, minutely observed and surprisingly good-hearted picture of consumer America. And to the list of great philosophical dialectics—good/evil, yin/yang—it added another: "That's cool" / "That sucks." B&B was on the right side of that one.

View the full list for "The 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME"