Because we don't have a TV critic here at the Loaf, but so many of us are inveterate TV hounds, we thought a team-written Top 10 was in order. After Snider suggested that Dexter be No. 1 and The Wire be No. 2, Polk went after him with a butter knife, and Warner had to intervene, so we decided to skip the rankings on this particular list.
Dexter (Showtime)
Michael C. Hall, who played David Fisher in Six Feet Under, presents one of the most riveting characters to hit TV in some time: Dexter Morgan, blood-spatter specialist and part-time serial killer, albeit one with a conscience (he only offs people who really, really deserve it). Hall's haunting voiceovers paint Dexter as a man sans emotions, but his actions often contradict that, which just adds to his depth and complexity. Dexter deftly combines suspense, well-drawn characters, superb acting, just the right touch of gallows humor and — perhaps most important for a pay-cable serial — storylines that aren't so sprawling as to slow the narrative to a crawl. —Eric Snider
Heroes (NBC)
There's a reason this fantastic (in every sense of the word) new series is a hit, while Lost is getting lost: The writers of Heroes don't take their audience for granted. Where Lost trots out unidentified monsters and flashbacks-within-flashbacks without ever coming to a resolution, Heroes honors its comic-book roots by giving us just enough answers to keep us yearning for the next chapter. And even though the unwitting superheroes can read minds and stop time, most of their dilemmas are firmly grounded in everyday realities. (What if you really could read your wife's mind?) The producers' smartest move: casting the irrepressible Masi Oka as Hiro, a superman truly delighted with his otherworldly abilities. —David Warner
Weeds (Showtime)
This black comedy series about the fictional California suburb of Agrestic and its pot-dealing, double-life-leading single mom Nancy Botwin has revived the careers of 40-something actresses Mary-Louise Parker and Elizabeth Perkins, while offering a blessed alternative to the soap opera hijinks of Desperate Housewives. This season, Nancy (played with Golden Globe-winning intensity by Parker) expanded her business to include production, which left plenty of room for plot devices like her clandestine marriage to her DEA agent boyfriend. The show's tendency to flirt with the absurd without crossing the line into complete implausibility added up to a great second season, with a cliffhanger of such epic proportions that I can't fathom how things will straighten themselves out. —Leilani Polk
Project Runway (Bravo)
The third season of Heidi Klum's fashion design reality show featured the most talented and diverse bunch of designers to date, and the result was an added level of melodrama. One designer was kicked off the show for having pattern books; two designers bickered constantly (one of them unintentionally making the other's mother cry); and in the two-part season finale, a finalist green with envy accused another of cheating by using outside help to complete his designs. Poetic justice was served when the supposed cheater not only proved his innocence, but wowed the judges at Olympus Fashion Week and claimed Project Runway victory with his great attention to detail and radical point of view. —LP
The Wire (HBO)
This may be the most uncompromising show ever on TV. A chilling evocation of the mean streets of Baltimore, The Wire taps into undiluted (and sometimes incomprehensible) ghetto argot, a drug plague apparently without solution, brutal violence, backroom politics, a crumbling public education system and just about any other urban ill you can think of. At its heart, The Wire is a cops-and-robbers show, but one with an unremitting commitment to realism. The drama features so many characters and mini-plotlines that sometimes its forward momentum suffers, but each detour, no matter how seemingly small, adds richness and depth. —ES
The Office (NBC)
There are very few network sitcoms that can deliver consistent laughs and enough knee-slappers that'll have you quoting them around … the office, of course. Steve Carell's branch manager Michael Scott is an utter boob who means well, and he's surrounded by a delightful array of kooks (and a couple of folks who might just pass for normal). The show's faux documentary style, with those nervous glances into the camera, just adds to its edginess and overall hilarity. The Office renders conventional laugh-track sitcoms all but obsolete. —ES
The Shield (FX)
The first time I tuned in The Shield a couple of seasons ago, Strike Team leader Vic Mackey (chrome-domed Michael Chiklis) killed a fellow cop. Well. This is no ordinary police show, I thought. The Shield follows the shady exploits of a supposedly elite crime-fighting team in the LAPD. Watching tough-bastard Mackey and his crew shortcut the law is the guilty pleasure here, because they're basically fucking with a bunch of dickheads who deserve it. The once-corrupt Strike Team attempted to go at least somewhat straight last season, making them more sympathetic. The Shield also benefits from terrific guest stars — top shelf talents like Glenn Close and Forrest Whitaker. —ES
Grey's Anatomy (ABC)
Don't hate her because she's got beautiful ratings. Yes, the storylines can get outlandish; any hospital with the level of hanky-panky that's rampant at Seattle Grace would be so deep in malpractice suits it wouldn't be able to operate an ambulance service. And yes, T.R. Knight's puppyish pout, not to mention Ellen Pompeo's narcotic voiceovers, verge on terminally annoying. But Grey's is a success because it knows what E.R. seems long ago to have forgotten — not to take itself too seriously. The tensions feel authentic, too, maybe even more so since the cast's recent much-hyped on-set dust-up. And Sandra Oh's surgeon-in-training — a seething cauldron of ambition, love and bad attitude — is one of the most interesting women to show up in a TV series in years. —DW
West Wing Final Season (NBC)/The Daily Show (Comedy Central)/Colbert Report (Comedy Central)
The Daily Show continued talking snark to power, and Stephen Colbert took that trope and ran with it all the way to White House correspondents' dinners and Word of the Year. Truthiness be told, these two shows cast a brighter light on what went on in Washington this year than any given installment of the nightly network news. But where Stewart and company illuminated the surreal world of politics, Aaron Sorkin's valedictory West Wing season gave us the ideal: With the win of Jimmy Smits' Matt Santos as a Democratic president and his selection of Republican opponent Arnold Vinick (played masterfully by Alan Alda) as secretary of state, here was a vision of a truly bipartisan Washington that could probably never happen — but it was pretty to think so. Plus, Sorkin and his exemplary cast handled the details of a presidential race and the death of a beloved cast member with class, humor and precise detail — doing it all so well that, when Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip started off this fall like a weekly preachathon, it made you miss Martin Sheen and company (Allison Janney!) even more. Studio 60 is improving, but it's unlikely to ever generate the kind of nostalgia stirred by the majestic, melancholy theme music that inaugurated every episode of West Wing. —DW
Survivor, Cook Islands/Amazing Race 10 (CBS)
This season, both competition-driven reality shows featured a melting pot of players with interesting and varied backgrounds. Survivor's twist was its separation of tribes by race, but the real social experiment began a week later, when the four tribes mixed and merged to create two. A few already-established bonds lasted throughout the game, but alliances seemed to be personality-based and were generally not formed because of any sense of racial obligation. Amazing Race relied on its tried-and-true formula of neatly labeled teams of two, but the tandems spanned so widely across the human spectrum — a coal miner and his wife, a one-legged woman and her artificial-limb-making boyfriend, Muslim brothers, a pair of former beauty queens, a lesbian and her attempting-to-cope-with-it father — that it was near impossible to look away. —LP
This article appears in Dec 27, 2006 – Jan 2, 2007.