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

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Jon Stewart's nightly fake-newscast has become a bold, truth-telling Onion of the air for a cynical, disaffected, not-as-ill-informed-as-you-might-think audience. And while we journalists often characterize the show as being about politics, it's really about us: the show has nailed the reflexive media impulse to rationalize conventional wisdom, to sensationalize, and to reduce everything important to a branded phrase and a dandy graphic. ("Mess O'Potamia," e.g., for the war in Iraq.) Stewart and company have found the B.S. detector that stenographic media outlets seem to have thrown in the trash, cleaned it off, souped it up, and cranked up its sensitivity to 11.

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