The 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME

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The Super Bowl (and the Ads)

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First devised as a condition of the merger of the AFL and NFL, the big game quickly became the kind of national communion that only TV could make—a day long ritual and feast, an event that you watched because you needed to watch that thing that everyone was watching. And in 1984, with the debut of the Apple Macintosh 1984 ad, the game became a showcase for commercials and seemed to realize its true purpose: to be a massive, expensive, profligate tribute to the desires of America's consumers and to the full bellies of its warehouses. (Somewhere in all the movie previews and product launches, a game still gets played.) Showy, theatrical and full of talking animals, America's favorite short-film festival erases the boundary between shopping and entertainment, if there ever was one.

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How I Chose The List

Adding to this list would be easy; taking shows off is the tricky part. How did I settle on this list? I set a few guidelines...

Talk Back

What is your all-time favorite TV show?

Which films should have been included and weren't? Did we leave off any of your favorites? Were any shows on the list more influential than others? Tell us what you think