Remedying a Deficiency

Eastbound and Down

HBO, 2009-2013, Kenny Powers (Danny McBride), baseball, Steve Little, Mason Greer

Wings

NBC, 1990-1997, David Angell, Cheers spinoff, Tom Nevers Field airport in Nantucket, Sandpiper Air single-plane “airline”, Tim Daly, Steven Weber, Crystal Bernard, Thomas Haden Church, Tony Shalhoub, theme by Schubert,

Oz

HBO, 1997-2003, prison, Tom Fontana (showrunner), Ernie Hudson, Terry Kinney, Harold Perrineau, Eamonn Walker, Kirk Acevedo, Rita Moreno, J. K. Simmons, Lee Tergesen

The Golden Girls

NBC, 1985-1992, Susan Harris, Dorothy Zbornak (Bea Arthur), Rose Nylund (Betty White), Blanche Devereaux (Rue McClanahan), Sophia Petrillo (Estelle Getty), four older women who share a home in Miami,

Portlandia

Gunsmoke

Key and Peele

Jeopardy!

Mystery Science Theater 3000

Bonanza

American Idol

Broad City

The Dick van Dyke Show

Homeland

Party Down

Doctor Who

Good Times

1974-79: The Evans kids grow up in the Chicago projects - keeping their heads above water, making a wave when they can. They remain one of the most relatable TV families ever, from the 1970s boom for superfly black sitcoms that also gave us Sanford & Son and What's Happening!! Good Times had the dy-no-mite Jimmie "J.J." Walker, long-suffering mama Esther Rolle ("Damn, damn, damn!") and black-power little bro Michael, surely the first kid on TV to get sent home from school for calling George Washington a slave owner.

The Real World

MTV, 1992-Present. "This is what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real."

Real Time with Bill Maher

House of Cards

The Jeffersons

1975-85. Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford were the coolest customers on the block, a couple who were ruthlessly sarcastic yet perfectly matched. George and Weezy moved on up to their deluxe apartment in the sky, but never lost their street swagger. Originally the Bunkers' neighbors on All in the Family, they got 10 times funnier on their own.

Dallas

1978-91. Sue Ellen Ewing: "Tell me, J.R., which slut are you gonna stay with tonight?" J.R.: "Whoever she is, she's gotta be more interesting than the slut I'm looking at right now." Truly a marriage made in TV heaven. This sex-and-money blockbuster chronicled the spectacularly evil Ewings and their Texas oil empire, led by Larry Hagman's J.R. _______ invented the prime-time soap tropes for family sagas from The Sopranos to Empire - as Hagman said proudly, "Even the mother was bad."

The Fugitive

1963-67. Dr. Richard Kimble got falsely convicted of murdering his wife - but after he broke loose, he went hunting for the real killer. The finale was a historic ratings smash as the whole country tuned in to see him catch the one-armed man.

In Living Color

1990-94. Keenan Ivory Wayans blew the roof off with this hit, bringing a hip-hop sensibility to sketch comedy. ___________ had Homey the clown ("Homey don't play that"), the World's Hardest-Working West Indian Family ("I have 15 jobs!" "You lazy lima bean!") and a rubber-faced token white guy then-called James Carrey. (Whatever happened to him?)

Thirtysomething

1987-91. The ultimate yuppies-in-love drama, as ad execs and their wives reckon with parenthood, marriage, work and real estate. ____________'s white-collar suburbanites climbed the corporate ladder, looking for ways they could live with their compromises both at work and at home.

The Walking Dead

AMC, 2010-.

The Ren and Stimpy Show

Transparent

2014-present. Jill Soloway's painfully compassionate drama was like nothing else the screen had seen before - and remains that way, with Jeffrey Tambor as the patriarch-unto-matriarch of a bitterly estranged family, transitioning from Mort to Maura on sheer nerve. Who can forget the Trans Got Talent show where Maura sings "Somebody That I Used to Know" to the empty chairs she reserved for her kids? Sing on, Maura.

Girls

HBO, 2012-?. Lena Dunham aspired to be the voice of her generation - or at least a voice of a generation - with this unflinching HBO sitcom about a quartet of acid-tongued young women failing their way through their twenties, striking out at relationships, rehab, careers, school and basically everything else they attempt.

Mr. Show

HBO, 1995-98. What completely bizarre careers Bob Odenkirk and David Cross have had - and how bizarre that we first met them as the duo behind this wild-ass HBO cult sketch show, always erratic but often astounding, with future stars like Sarah Silverman in the crew. They excelled at high-concept stunts like their Jesus Christ Superstar parody, with Jack Black as the hippie messiah, or the gay metal band Wyckyd Sceptre. Best line: "I'm not talking to clouds on a sunny day!"

Roseanne

1988-97. The lights go out. The Conner family just got their electricity cut off because they can't pay the bill. Out of the darkness, _______'s voice: "Well, middle class was fun." ________ was the unsaintly matriarch of this struggling heartland family, with biker husband John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf as her hard-luck sister, Jackie.

The State

MTV, 1993-95. The MTV comedy show was a whiff of youthful arrogance in the early Nineties, with 11 college wise-asses running wild in manic sketches about monkey torture, Muppet-eating and the mailman who only delivers tacos. After three years on MTV, they jumped to a network - and got destroyed amid the corporate machinery. But their cult kept growing, especially after they masterminded Wet Hot American Summer.

The Odd Couple

1970-75. Tony Randall was neurotic neat-freak Felix; Jack Klugman was cigar-chomping sportswriter slob Oscar. Thrown out by their wives, they shared a Park Avenue bachelor pad, taking out all their midlife male angst on each other. Though based on Neil Simon's play, it worked even better in sitcom form, thanks to Randall and Klugman's negative chemistry and that perky theme song - their dance on a Central Park lawn is one of the truly romantic visions of New York.

Downton Abbey

2011-16. Welcome to the aristocratic English countryside circa 1912, where Julian Fellowes' Crawley family acts out the decline and fall of the British Empire, from the bed-hopping elites to the downstairs schemes of the servants. Dame Maggie Smith steals the show as the delightfully nasty shade queen Dowager Countess, who does a better job than anyone else here at pretending the world isn't changing. Her best line: "What is a 'weekend'?"

Happy Days

R.I.P. to the late, great Garry Marshall. The sitcom maestro's opus was this 1970s hit set in the 1950s, with Henry Winkler as the Fonz, the leather-boy greaser who ruled Arnold's Drive-In with his nerd pals Richie, Potsie and Ralph Malph. It's easy to forget the Fonz had a dark introspective side - best seen in the surprisingly harsh episode where he stars in Richie's production of Hamlet ("I thought a couple of times about whether I wanted 'to be or not'"). _________ gave us Scott Baio as the Fonz's douche cousin Chachi, but that can be forgiven, as can the time Fonzie got on water skis for an aquatic stunt that invented the concept of "jumping the shark."

The Wonder Years

1988-93/ Timed perfectly for the late Eighties, _______________ depicted the childhood of baby boomers in the most nostalgic terms, as Fred Savage's Kevin Arnold grew up in 1960s suburbia and learned about life from the girl next door, Winnie Cooper - played by future mathematician Danica McKellar.

Sex and the City

1998-2004. Or The Golden Girls: The Early Years. This shoe-porn Manhattan fantasy was ubiquitous, to the point where Jay Z could rap that Beyoncé wouldn't talk to him when it was on. Nothing could stop fans from feeling the Carrie fever, as Sarah Jessica Parker and her clique - Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis, Kim Cattrall - date, shop and quip their way through a borough full of rich straight guys, eventually realizing their only true soulmates are one another. And maybe also Manolo Blahnik.

Your Show of Shows

1950-57. Sid Caesar perfected the sketch-comedy format in the Fifties, with legends like Carl Reiner and Imogene Coca. When Nanette Fabray replaced Coca in 1954, the title changed to Caesar's Hour, but the spirit remained the same. His writers' room broke in hungry young rookies like Mel Brooks, Neil Simon and Woody Allen. Flights like the 1955 opera Gallipacci still look fresh - especially when the manic Caesar whimpers "Just One of Those Things," in clown drag, blubbering in pure faux-Italian gibberish. Indescribably moving, not to mention seriously ****ed up.

Beavis and Butt-Head

1993-97, 2011. Mike Judge captured the spirit of American adolescence, epitomized by two cartoon butt-munches who live for metal, nachos and breakin' the law (or at least putting poodles in the washing machine). It was liberating how cheap and crummy the animation looked, compared with the sophisticated rococo of The Simpsons or Ren & Stimpy, but [title characters] spoke their own kind of trash poetry, whether they were heckling MTV ("Stop in the name of all which does not suck!") or looking for wholesome fun: "This sucks. Let's go over to Stewart's house and burn something." And they hung with Daria, who got her own classic show. Kids, do try this at home.

Hill Street Blues

1981-87. A police show too adult to ever get much traction in the ratings but cherished at a time when network dramas were the pits. These cops were troubled people dealing with moral conflicts, urban corruption and their messy personal lives. Precinct captain Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti) and public defender Joyce Davenport (Veronica Hamel) were secretly an item after hours - it was racy stuff in the Eighties to show an unmarried couple who liked to share a bathtub. So many landmark dramas came out of this precinct - the writers included everyone from Law & Order's Dick Wolf to Deadwood's David Milch, not to mention producer Steve Bochco.

Roots

1977. _______ ran for only eight episodes, but set ratings records in January 1977 - a 100 million Americans tuned in live as it followed Alex Haley's family history from Africa to the slave ship to the plantation, without any attempt to water down the violence for mainstream appeal.

Fawlty Towers

1975-79. John Cleese based this most horrible of hotel owners on a resort where the Monty Python gang once stayed. Basil ________ is the nastiest piece of work Cleese has ever played - one of his most famous scenes features him snarling at a nun. But nobody infuriates him like his customers, especially the one inconsiderate enough to die in his room. "It does actually say 'hotel' outside, you know. Perhaps I should be more specific: 'Hotel for people who have a better than 50 percent chance of making it through the night.'"

24

2001-10. Can Agent Jack Bauer save our nation? This adrenaline thriller starred Kiefer Sutherland as the Counter Terrorism Unit's most lethal weapon, leaving no principle of civil liberties unviolated in a cloud of ass-kicking and CGI effects. It also had that innovative real-time structure, each season another 24-hour crisis point and each episode another hour of Jack racing the clock.

Six Feet Under

HBO, 2001-05. A California family with a funeral home to run - which means that mortality and grief are never far from anyone's mind. Every episode opened with a disturbing (or comic, or both) death scene. Alan Ball's dark yet tender HBO drama explored new terrain, and the closing episodes helped innovate the idea that a series finale should be an artistic epitaph, rather than just a death rattle.

The Muppet Show

1976-81. Jim Henson became a global phenomenon in the 1970s - a hit only Statler and Waldorf could hate, starring Kermit, the Great Gonzo, the Tom Waits-esque piano dog Rowlf, the Swedish Chef, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and everybody's favorite, Beaker. (Meeeep!) The jokes were nonstop corn - "Fozzie, what are you carrying that fish for?" "Oh, just for the halibut" - with one-shot guests like Marvin Suggs and His All-Food Glee Club. Full of unforgettable music moments too, like Elton John doing "Crocodile Rock" with a choir of gators or Animal mangling the drums to "Wild Thing." Thanks to these characters, the gentle hippie spirit of Henson lives on forever. Play us out, Animal.

The Bob Newhart Show

1972-78. ________ was already a comedy legend for his brilliant 1960s stand-up monologues - his albums routinely topped the charts. His button-down mind seemed too dry and cerebral for TV, but he hit the jackpot as a Chicago psychologist seeing one nut case after another - perfect for Newhart's unflappable deadpan. He could get laughs just clearing his throat. (Nobody ever was a throat-clearing virtuoso like this man.) Suzanne Pleshette was his wife - in one of the Seventies' most enduringly hot TV marriages.

Fargo

FX, 2014-Present. Well, this was an obviously terrible idea - turning the Coen brothers' classic true-crime film into an FX series. Yet Noah Hawley proved that terrible ideas often hold the seeds of greatness. The first season was a welcome surprise, but the real killer was the next chapter, one of the best seasons any drama has ever had, a small-town gangster tale involving state trooper Patrick Wilson, desperate housewife Kirsten Dunst and Bruce Campbell as the real-life Ronald Reagan.

ER

1994-2009. The hospital drama to put all others on the DNR list, it blew up in the early Nineties, making stars out of Julianna Margulies and the previously obscure George Clooney, until then best known as the big-hair hunk teacher from The Facts of Life. But the real surprise was how it kept thriving, replacing all its original stars yet remaining itself for 15 years, with hour after hour of life, death and romance amid the scrubs.

Taxi

1978-83

It seemed like an unlikely idea for a hit - a bunch of depressive taxi drivers working the night shift, trying not to think about the rotten disappointments that got them stuck at the Sunshine Cab Company. But it hit pay dirt because it had warmth, as these losers bonded together - Andy Kaufman's babbling naif, Christopher Lloyd's wacked-out hippie, Tony Danza's meatball, Judd Hirsch's cynic. And Danny DeVito suddenly became a star playing a larger-than-life monster as the drunken dispatcher Louie De Palma.

The Office

NBC, 2005-13. Nobody expected this to be more than yet another example of a U.S. network trying to rip off an edgy Brit-com and getting it all wrong. Except, with Steve Carell as the world's worst boss, it turned out to be a groundbreaking and original comedy in its own right, with a dream team of eccentric employees lost in the cubicles of Dunder-Mifflin. It was looser, riskier and more ambitious than the U.K. version, not to mention warmer - Carell's Michael Scott wasn't hateful, just a moron - with a cast including Rainn Wilson's Dwight ("Through concentration, I can raise and lower my cholesterol at will"), Mindy Kaling's Kelly and the ever-bilious Creed Bratton. (Let's just pretend those last two post-Carell seasons never happened, OK?)

The Rockford Files

1974-80. James Garner was a new breed of TV detective - a small-time P.I. who got stuck with the loser cases nobody else wanted, living in a Malibu trailer with his elderly dad. ___________ didn't exactly live the glamorous life: He was an ex-con wisecrack machine who had done hard time in San Quentin, now scraping by as a freelancer while routinely getting his ass kicked or getting stiffed on his fee. But thanks to Garner, he always got by on a superhuman supply of cocky charm.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

1970-77. The ultimate template for how to make comedy gold out of being a grown-up neurotic making it on your own in the big city. She worked in a Minneapolis TV newsroom full of cranks like Ted Knight's windbag anchorman and Ed Asner's hard-drinking boss, Lou Grant. ("I haven't been this mad at anybody since 1944." "Did anything much happen?" "I captured a town in Germany.") Revolutionary at the time, blasé about sex and birth control, it also pioneered the all-too-rare concept of going out on top - it signed off in 1977, a massive hit to the end. Every sitcom still steals from MTM, but Moore's heart and soul remain one of a kind.

Battlestar Galactica

2003-09. The 1970s original was a promising but failed sci-fi franchise, one of many the networks rushed out in the wake of Star Wars. But Ronald D. Moore's version was the rare reboot that topped the original, with a space colony of humans escaping the Cylons and searching for a home somewhere in the universe - maybe this planet they've heard about called Earth. Edward James Olmos is the commander who leads the way; Mary McDonnell is the president with a very different vision of this society. And Katee Sackhoff's Starbuck remains one of the most badass frakking action heroes ever. So say we all.

Columbo

1971-78. Peter Falk's cheap detective was the coolest TV cop of the Seventies. With all due respect to Kojak, Baretta, Starsky, Hutch and all six of Charlie's Angels, it was Lt. _________ who snagged the cover of Rolling Stone. John Cassavetes sidekick Falk hit the streets as a rumpled dirtbag in a trench coat, always mumbling and asking for a pencil, walking away from the bad guy at the end but then turning around with one of his crazy grins to say, "Oh, wait - just one more thing." He's always the underdog, but that's how he plays his mind games on all the smug L.A. high-society types who make the fatal mistake of thinking he's an idiot.

The Americans

2013-Present. There's never been a TV marriage like this one: Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys play a pair of deep-cover Russian spies living in the D.C. suburbs in the early 1980s. They pretend to be a nice, normal, happy American couple - except these two do things like kill a hit man to the strains of "Tainted Love." The FX masterwork is both a taut espionage thriller and a bleakly intimate marital drama - as if leading double lives full of deceit and betrayal makes this couple real Americans after all.

NYPD Blue

1993-2005. Nearly a decade after Hill Street Blues, Steven Bochco raised the ante for down-and-dirty police realism. The 15th Precinct was home to hard-boiled detectives brought to life by the likes of Jimmy Smits, Amy Brenneman and David Caruso. Dennis Franz's Detective Sipowicz was a foulmouthed alcoholic racist bully - and he was the most sympathetic cop here.

The Honeymooners

1955-56. One of the founding Fifties comedies, spun off as a sketch from Jackie Gleason's hit variety show, about Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden and his put-upon wife, Alice, played by Audrey Meadows. No Father Knows Best here - this was brutalist blue-collar city life. It was the template for every sitcom marriage between a boorish slob and a tsk-tsking shrew, with Ralph shouting threats ("To the moon, Alice!") and Art Carney as his dimwitted pal Ed Norton.

The Shield

2002-08. The first time we meet Vic Mackey, he's shooting a fellow cop in the face - to stop him from ratting on what a sleazebag Vic is. Like his captain says in the premiere, "He's Al Capone with a badge." Michael Chiklis created one of TV's most fearsome cops in Mackey, a dirty detective with plenty of street smarts but barely any scruples. Shawn Ryan's FX drama followed Vic through seven seasons of murder, drug dealing and torture, with a hell of an endgame.

Lost

2004-10. A cosmic mystery trip so complex nobody has ever quite figured it all out - a band of castaways trapped on an island after the crash of Oceanic Flight 815, with a smoke monster and the enigmatic group called the Others, multiple timelines, the Seventies backstory of the Dharma Initiative, each episode crammed with clues to be argued over for years to come. Lost proved there was a broad audience out there who wanted their TV to be more unpredictable and challenging, not less - and TV would never be the same.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

1997-2003. Sarah Michelle Gellar created a supernatural feminist avenger in Joss Whedon's saga the California girl who finds herself by kicking vampire ass. The musical episode - "Once More, With Feeling" - is a classic in itself.

Orange Is the New Black

2013-. When Jenji Kohan's women's-prison drama started, there was no real way of knowing it would remain great after four years - in fact, the brilliance of the first season looked like a fluke. But it keeps getting better - the recent fourth season is the most intense yet. No other drama can match this ensemble, as actresses like Uzo Aduba, Jessica Pimentel, Danielle Brooks and Samira Wiley go deep on these characters and the heart-shredding stories that brought them here.

Law & Order

1990-2010. Dick Wolf's long-, long-, long-running procedural created its own formula - gruesomely violent crimes ripped from the headlines, clock-punching cops, idealistic lawyers, stern judges who bang the gavel and say "I'll allow it," each character a different cog in the crime-solving machine until the trial scene at the end. All of its different incarnations, from Logan and Briscoe to Benson and Stabler, just proved what a rich formula it was, not to mention a chance for countless aspiring NYC actors to get their first real taste of catering.

My So-Called Life

1995. "Ignore Angela. She can't help herself - she's the product of a two-parent household." Claire Danes became a teen-angst heroine with this high school classic, so ahead of its time it got axed after one season. The World Happiness Dance episode - where two lost and lonely kids find a moment of disco redemption together - might be the Nineties' most emo hour of TV, which may explain why some of us out here still get a little dusty whenever we hear Haddaway's "What Is Love."

30 Rock

NBC, 2006-13. Alec Baldwin said it best: "You are truly the Picasso of loneliness." He has a point. Tina Fey's Liz Lemon is a single gal who spends her evenings playing Monopoly alone, working on her night cheese or watching the Lifetime movie My Stepson Is My Cyber-Husband. But Fey made her a timeless heroine, turning her SNL writers-room experience into the backstage antics at The Girlie Show, with a crazy-deep bench that included Tracy Morgan, Jane Krakowski and Jack McBrayer. And Baldwin chewed up the role of his life, turning what could have been a generic sitcom boss into the only man worthy to stand by Lemon.

I Love Lucy

1951-57. The adventures of real-life Hollywood couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz - he was Cuban bandleader Ricky Ricardo, and she was the daffy redhead housewife as slapstick queen. They were TV's premier married couple, in an era when the network would only let them sleep in separate beds - and awaited the real-life arrival of Little Ricky without allowing anyone to utter the word "pregnant" on the air.

Friends

1994-2004. A group of twenty-somethings in New York sit around complaining about their day jobs, their sex lives, their screwed-up families. It's a formula countless sitcoms tried to get right over the years (nice try, Herman's Head), but it took the Central Perk crew to get the right mix of personalities, from Lisa Kudrow's flaky folk singer to the schlub-fox romance of David Schwimmer's Ross and Jennifer Aniston's Rachel. Even at the time, it was ridiculous how huge and luxurious Monica's West Village apartment was, and the story line where she's banging Tom Selleck just gets more stomach-turning the longer Blue Bloods stays on the air.

Veep

HBO, 2012-. Julia Louis-Dreyfus presides over the Oval Office in HBO's political satire, still getting more horrifyingly brilliant with each season. Her President Selina Meyer is one of the truly great monsters in TV history, a politician you can count on to say things like "You're gonna cancel this recount like Anne Frank's bat mitzvah." Each episode is a warp-speed blast of insults, many aimed at Timothy Simons' delectably loathsome aide, Jonah.

Deadwood

2004-06. Al Swearengen's moral philosophy: "You can't cut the throat of every ********er whose character it would improve." Spoken like a true Founding Father. He's the villain of David Milch's epic Western set in the mud and slime of an 1870s South Dakota gold-mining camp. At the center of it all (i.e., the saloon), Ian McShane's Al glowers, pours drinks, counts money and slices jugulars, in a frontier hellhole full of prospectors, whores, drunks and lost freaks looking for one last fatal fight to get into (and often finding it at Al's place). It was like McCabe & Mrs. Miller with more depressing sex scenes. The first two seasons are solid gold, the third, flimsier, but Deadwood is about how communities get built - and all the dirty work that involves.

Cheers

1982-93. You need a place where everybody knows your name - even if it's just a dive bar in Boston full of regulars with no place else to go. It started with a focus on the mismatched romantic banter between Ted Danson's washed-up Red Sox pitcher Sam and Shelley Long's uptight bookworm Diane. ("Over my dead body!" "Hey, don't bring last night into this.") But it regularly renewed itself by bringing in new blood like Woody Harrelson, Kirstie Alley and Kelsey Grammer.

Twin Peaks

1990-91. "These girls are authentically dreamy," auteur David Lynch told Rolling Stone in 1990. "They're all just boss chicks. And they're just jampacked with secrets." The small town of Twin Peaks is full of these women and their deadly secrets, from murdered high school homecoming queen Laura Palmer to alive-and-how seductress Audrey Horne. A few years after Blue Velvet, Lynch's surreal Pacific Northwest mystery followed Kyle MacLachlan as FBI agent Dale Cooper, on a quest for damn-good coffee as well as the solution to the murder of Palmer.

MAS*H

1972-83. The Korean War show that lasted three times as long as the Korean War, taking off from the revolutionary 1970 Robert Altman comedy, as the doctors and nurses of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital wait for the next chopper with the next crop of wounded grunts requiring "meatball surgery."

The West Wing

1999-2006. Aaron Sorkin gave America the leader we didn't quite deserve in Martin Sheen's benevolent President Jed Bartlet, a high-toned Catholic professor from New Hampshire. Premiering in the fall of 1999, it played like a Bubba-era fantasy of how the political future would look (like if the Democrats had a little more courage, or if the Republicans had a principle or two) that soon turned out to be utterly out of step with the Bush-Cheney years. But Sorkin's trademark rapid-fire dialogue and the Bartlet administration's idealism made this a welcome parallel universe.

The Larry Sanders Show

HBO, 1992-98. The late, great Garry Shandling could have taken over as host of The Tonight Show - but instead he starred in his own nightmare fictional version. As _________________, he played a showbiz monster whose loathing for all forms of humanity (especially himself) left him no choice but to make small talk with strangers behind the desk of his late-night chatfest. It debuted on HBO in 1992 with a whole new look - single camera, no laugh track, a constant stream of bile and abuse - and became a word-of-mouth hit. ____________ always had the biggest ego in the room, but he had competition from Rip Torn's producer Artie and Jeffrey Tambor's pitiful sidekick, Hank. Countless comedy legends cut their teeth here - Judd Apatow, Sarah Silverman, Bob Odenkirk, Janeane Garofalo and Dave Chappelle for starters.

Late Night with David Letterman

1982-2015

A failed Indiana weatherman takes over the graveyard shift after Johnny Carson and completely changes the way America sees itself. He brought weirdos to the tube like we'd never seen before - from Larry "Bud" Melman to Harvey Pekar, from Peewee Herman to Sandra Bernhard, from R.E.M. to Andy Kaufman. Not to mention Paul Shaffer, the indispensable piano man. Letterman was a connoisseur of American eccentrics without ever pretending to be one himself, and a master interviewer, especially when he was up against a fellow curmudgeon, like when Cher called him an "a-hole." (She was right, and thank God for that.) When he made the move to CBS' Late Show in 1993, he changed titles and time slots, but kept that same acerbic spirit alive - especially in his magnificent final weeks, as he broke down the statistics: "33 years, 6,028 shows, eight minutes of laughter." We'll never see his like again.

Freaks and Geeks

1999-2000. High school mathlete Lindsay takes her first puff of weed but gets busted by one of her fellow nerds, who tells her, "I know what high people look like. I went to a Seals and Crofts concert last summer!" Paul Feig and Judd Apatow truly captured the agonies of American adolescence in this intensely compassionate comedy, set in a Michigan town in 1980. It tragically lasted only one season, but all 18 episodes hit home, with a rock soundtrack and a cast of future legends. Martin Starr's Bill, Jason Segel's Nick, most of all Linda Cardellini's Lindsay - these are kids who don't fit in, craving a place they might belong, whether that's a Dungeons & Dragons game or a van following the Grateful Dead tour.

All in the Family

1971-79. What a shocker to see this hit TV in 1971, in the middle of the Nixon years - loudmouth bigot Archie Bunker, wife Edith, feminist daughter Gloria and her hippie husband, Mike, all under one roof in Queens, having the arguments real families had at the time. And it was Number One in the ratings every year because it didn't belittle its characters - as creator Norman Lear told Rolling Stone, "People were interested in seeing themselves very correctly." Carroll O'Connor gave Archie dignity and decency, even as he expressed opinions like "England is a fag country." It went where TV never dared before (racism, homophobia, abortions, gun control, premarital sex, religion) - everything was fair game. Those were the days.

The Twilight Zone

1959-64. Rod Serling's sci-fi anthology series is the opposite of a period piece - it can still blow your mind today, with Serling's gritty staccato introductions and a host of supernatural scenarios. The best episodes looked for freakdom in the everyday: space invaders posing as hotrod greasers, suburban neighborhoods turning into hysterical mobs, grotesque death masks, talking dolls. Countless vignettes remain classics, from William Shatner staring out the airplane window and seeing a gremlin on the wing to Richard Kiel as the gigantic, smiling alien who arrives with the solutions to all Earth's problems - simply because he wants to serve man.

The Simpsons

1989-Present. How has America's favorite cartoon family lasted this long? Because they're also America's realest family. Especially Homer, the doofus dad everybody fears turning into, nature's cruelest mistake: "And to think I turned to a cult for mindless happiness, when I had beer all along!" Or maybe especially Lisa, the sax-tooting voice of wisdom. Not to mention Apu, Krusty, Flanders, Monty Burns, Amanda Hugginkiss or any of the other unforgettable kooks who make Springfield just like your town, except funnier. As creator Matt Groening boasted to Rolling Stone in 2002, "Characters on our show drink, smoke, don't wear their seat belts, litter and fire guns. In this season's Halloween episode, there's probably more gunfire than in the entire history of The Sopranos."

Seinfeld

1989-98. The show about nothing that blew up into the great American comedy. Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer: four friends who happen to be horrible people, in a New York full of soup Nazis, close talkers, anti-dentites, sponge baths, astronaut pens and lobster bisque. Even at the time, everybody could tell Seinfeld was the funniest sitcom we'd ever witness, a week-to-week miracle. But no matter how many times you've double-dipped into all 180 episodes, they keep luring you back like pretzels making you thirsty. Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David set the rules from the start - "No hugging, no learning." As Julia Louis-Dreyfus told Rolling Stone in 1998, "The reality is that these four characters are a pathetic group, and they should disassemble promptly. I mean, if you stand back from it and look at what happens every week, they do terrible things to one another. And yet they continue to hang out. It's sociopathic." Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Mad Men

2007-15. The American dream and how to sell it - except for Don Draper and the hustlers of Sterling Cooper, selling is the American dream. It became a sensation as soon as it appeared, partly because of its glam surface - a New York ad agency in the JFK era, all sex and money and liquor and cigarettes - but mostly because it was an audaciously adult drama that wasn't about cops or robbers (or doctors or lawyers), staking out new storytelling territory. Jon Hamm's womanizing adman, Don, is a genius at shaping other people's dreams and fantasies, but he can't escape his own loneliness - he's a con man who stole the identity of a dead Korean War officer and built a new life out of lies. "A good advertising person is like an artist, channeling the culture," creator Matthew Weiner told Rolling Stone. "They're holding up a mirror saying, 'This is the way you wish you were. This is the thing you're afraid of.'" Don can reduce a room to tears pitching the Kodak Carousel, even though the happy family memories he's selling are a fraud.

Breaking Bad

AMC, 2008-13. Bryan Cranston, previously the dentist on Seinfeld and the lovable dad from Malcolm in the Middle, became a villain for the ages in Vince Gilligan's AMC noir. Walter White, a bitter high school chemistry teacher, gets terminal lung cancer and decides to provide for his kids by turning into New Mexico's premier crystal-meth chef. Unfortunately for his family, his victims and practically everyone he meets, he loves his new secret life as the killer drug lord Heisenberg. "I am not in danger, Skyler," he tells his wife. "I am the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks!" Yet he's so frightening because he's so ordinary - any American loser who gets a chance to act on his most criminal fantasies, which in Walter's case is just the chance to finally be good at something. The more Walt transforms into Heisenberg, the deeper he digs into the grim side of the American dream. After one spectacular killing involving a kamikaze wheelchair bomb, he calls his wife to report, "It's over. We're safe. I won." The tragic part is he believes it - but he's lost her as well as himself.

The Sopranos

HBO, 1999-2007. Edie Falco's Carmela, Dominic Chianese's Junior, Michael Imperioli's Christopher, Tony Sirico's Paulie Walnuts. E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt became Tony's lieutenant Silvio - Chase spotted him on early Bruce Springsteen album covers. (As Chase told Rolling Stone, "There was something about the E Street Band that looked like a crew.") It wouldn't have been possible without Gandolfini's slow-burning intensity - he was the only actor who could bring Tony's angst to life. But all the writing, acting and directing went places TV had never reached before.