The Five Most Perfect Shows of All Time
For any who are curious about that sort of thing, this is exactly what you’re looking for. When you’re finished reading this, you’re going to definitively know about the most perfect shows of all time. You’re welcome.
Now when I say this, I’m speaking with a certainty that only a fool would truly feel. So to mitigate the tone here, “of all time” would be more accurately translated as “in all of my time”. Maybe it would be better as “in all of my time watching shows” or maybe even more accurately, “in all of my time watching shows critically.” [^1] But I feel more comfortable writing in a succinct and definitive style for this type of thing, so this will be my one and only disclaimer that, if it makes you feel better, you can add “in my opinion” to the beginning or end of any of my statements. What I’m essentially saying is, in my closest approximation of objectivity, of the shows that I’ve seen, while baring in mind that perfection is an ever-elusive, abstract, and likely fictional construct of the human mind, the following shows are the most perfect. Before I get to the shows, let me outline my criteria.
First off, I’ll only be talking about comedy shows. Conversations around dramatic shows are too rich for my blood. Because they’re comedies, the first box to check is that the show in question is funny. “Funny” is subjective, granted, but unfunny or funny in a lazy way is relatively easy to spot. Most of the shows are selected not just for being funny, but for being funny in a unique way.
The second box to check is if the shows were able to hit the mark that they set for themselves. If a show is trying to be profound and nails it, I find it equally as successful as a show that’s trying to maximize laughs per minute and nails that. The only way to truly fail is to miss the mark that the show sets for itself. But, as with the funny checkbox, most of these shows also have unique or difficult to reach marks and they nail it which is why they got my attention.
The final checkbox is the balance between evolution and staying true to the characters and premise that made the show a success to begin with. Some shows are stagnant (sometimes by design) and that’s fine, but it can lead to tired gags, repetitive stories, and a laziness that falls short of perfection. Other shows shoot for the stars, and that’s fine too. It’s admirable. But if done incorrectly, you find yourself one day watching the Season Eight premiere going “I don’t even recognize these characters anymore.” I enjoy the repetition of some shows and the ambition of others, but the perfect ones hit that balance exquisitely.
Finally, before we get this sucker kicked off, I want to talk about some shows I will not be mentioning and why. To clarify, these are not shows that are deeply flawed or that I dislike. On the contrary, many of them I enjoy more than the shows that ended up on my list of the most perfect shows of all time. They simply fall noticeably short of perfection. But they are so good that they cannot be ignored and must be mentioned even if they don’t make the final list.
The first show of that ilk is The Simpsons. The cultural impact of The Simpsons is unquestionable. The intuition of the writers is damn near prophetic. The voices and imagery in that show are iconic worldwide at a level to which very few shows are able to rise. Every single show on my list is more replaceable as a show in the history of humanity than The Simpsons. But in this list we’re talking about proximity to perfection. With an impressive thirty-seven year run, perfection is almost impossible to achieve. And while the Simpsons will and should top many other lists, over a decade of tired jokes, recycled story lines, and hackneyed tropes make it difficult to place The Simpsons on this list. The down years of the Simpsons last two to three times longer than the run times of most successful television shows and while that is a flex in itself, that’s too long of a time to ignore.
The next show that rightly tops many lists but will miss this one is The Office. The original version hailed from England before it was masterfully adapted for American audiences. Both versions played well to the sensibilities of their respective audiences and brought the mockumentary style of filmmaking to the fore of the comedic world. Moreover, at a time when comedies were getting louder and weirder, The Office reinjected some subtlety into the comedy space that was refreshing. Its louder wilder moments were well-earned and therefore The Office, possibly more than any other show, has the most memorable scenes of its era. It was well-cast, well-acted, and well-written. It doesn’t make the list purely because it went on about a season and a half too long. This doesn’t have as much to do with Steve Carrell leaving as one would think. While the show definitely felt rudderless at times after his exit and may well have lessened fan interest in the show, in some ways Carrell’s exit forced an evolution in writing which, purely from a craft standpoint, was immensely refreshing. But The Office, as with many popular long-running comedies, began to rely on less astute jokes about increasingly caricatured versions of the complex characters that made the show good once upon a time. They relied on sentiment, which was sweet, but weaker from a tradecraft perspective.
Finally I unfortunately have to omit the work of some of the greatest satirists of our time: Matt Stone and Trey Parker. South Park has been an adamantine stalwart of honest and unfiltered comedy which focuses on the hypocrisies of society. It is one of the only shows which can truthfully be said to swim through the murky waters of topical humor without plausibly being accused of kowtowing to any political agenda even for a second. It worships only at the altar of humor and attacks only the sanctimonious and the disingenuous of our society regardless of what color or slogan they wear. Despite its distinctiveness in this arena, this show also relies heavily on extremely childish and unimaginative humor. The presence of that humor in itself is not a disqualifier from this list and the unbridled and spontaneous feel of that type of humor can often be freeing. But when overused, it is also lazy. A well-placed fart joke is the exquisitely decorative icing on the top of a wedding cake. But a bowl full of icing with only small flaky nuggets of cake is no longer a masterpiece. South Park relies heavily on icing, so to speak. This may be due to the spontaneous writing style that Matt and Trey employ with a very loose plan for the season which leaves holes they fill with up-to-the-week content. It’s revolutionary and it is because of this that they have become some of the greatest satirists of their age, But something that flexible requires a lot of fluff and unfortunately that fluff disqualifies them from this list. So let’s get to it. The most perfect shows of all time.
Number five on my list is Rick & Morty. Stay with me. The classic fans of Rick & Morty are less than savory and make this addition seem both unpalatable and a cliche. But Rick & Morty does belong on this list. First off, it is funny. The free-flowing and childlike humor which can be enjoyable about South Park is directed in a way in Rick & Morty which more effectively serves the plot and is used with more precision. The writers are able to be masterful with that type of humor without seeming to be self-conscious. It reminds us of when we played make- believe as children and thought of silly names for our invisible comrades and the castles we imagined we’d built on top of a mound of dirt in our grandmother’s garden. It doesn’t rely on this humor, but “Butt-face Michael” may well have been the name of a fellow Jedi Padawan I attended the Jedi Temple with when I was seven. “Froopy Land” could well be the name of the land that resided between the rhododendron bush and the neighbor’s fence where we discovered hidden treasure when I was nine. And so much of the humor comes not just from the childlike humor itself, but the earnestness with which it is said and the serious role it plays in the plot. The show itself sets out to explore the existential dread that any mindful person who takes the time to sit and be alone with their thoughts has felt at one time or another. We mean nothing. Our time on earth means nothing. And we see this through the eyes of a tortured genius who, despite having access to every dimension, knows alternate versions of himself, and truly understands the vastness and complexity of the universe, still sees the emptiness and pointlessness of it all. And these devices by which he sees how pointless it all is are also the devices which drive the plots of the episodes. We go on adventures to different worlds and dimensions and they become the vehicle for punchlines and storylines alike, but they’re seamlessly woven into the fabric of the essence of the show. And that essence is a confrontation of existential dread. And it shows two very important perspectives on that dread. The first is Rick’s perspective. Rick is a nihilist. Nothing matters. He knows this to be true and so his selfishness and immorality is no better or worse than charity and virtue to an unfeeling universe. But his sidekick Morty is constantly learning and relearning, not that Rick is wrong, but that there is a beautiful opposing side to that very same coin. Existence doesn’t inherently matter, it only matters what we make of it. One of the best quotations in modern comedies comes from Morty’s mouth when he comforts his sister, Summer, who is having an existential crisis. She realizes that her birth was a result of an accidental pregnancy when her parents were just starting to date. This directly led to their miserable and dysfunctional marriage. She says that she is an accident. Morty shows Summer his and Rick’s graves and explains that the Rick and Morty from this dimension died in an accident. After he and Rick accidentally destroyed the world in their original reality, they moved to this one and replaced the dead Rick and Morty from the dimension in which he and his sister currently reside. Morty tells his sister to trust him when he says, “Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody’s going to die, come watch TV.” Without flowery language or long-winded platitudes, Morty encapsulates the philosophy that if nothing matters, everything does. Your time being happy, the people you’ve helped, your time with friends, and the love of your family is as important as the birth of galaxies. Now come watch TV. The show is able to stick that landing far more often than not. Its poignant moments are earned and well-placed with both the humorous misadventures and those moments being natural products of two characters confronting the conundrum that is the central theme of the show. Sometimes that means we get to watch a goofy drunken adventure on an alien planet with farting butts as their sole geological feature, other times it involves Rick falling through an endless abyss reflecting on how much emptier he has made his own existence by his actions. But the characters are able to learn and evolve in a natural way while continuing to explore the philosophical question that has vexed theologians, philosophers, and scientists since the beginning of time. All while still getting in some well-timed fart jokes.
Number four on this list is a two-’fer. This is Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. I was slow to lump them together because it seemed lazy. But as I wrote a paragraph for each of them, the more apparent it became that many of the same elements contribute to the strength of both. Both share a unique style of humor that boldly pulls at the threads of social interactions. Both put names to these interactions such as shrinkage, the stop and chat, outfit tracking, and the ever-famous soup nazi. And both have characters who don’t learn from their experiences. Their characters are social assassins who often confront things that we’ve experienced so many times that, to us, they’ve become mundane. But the characters from these shows pull at the threads of these moments until they fall to pieces and we the viewer get to examine the pieces through the often exasperated ranting of the characters. The mark they set for themselves is that deconstruction and it’s a mark that is hit damn near every time. We watch as the characters who are rude, abrasive, and get in their own way more often than not, say the things we can’t because, unlike us, they are designed to stay in one place, hamster on a wheel, criticizing and mocking anything that walks past them. In this way the characters need not evolve, the world evolves around them. Curb Your Enthusiasm had a twelve season tear and the show accurately reflected the evolving and changing world around us. In this the writers of the show check my final box. They show that they can write progress and development. They simply have the wisdom to know that that is not what is needed from our main character. What we need from Larry is to view this world as he always has: discontent with it all.
Third on this list is Atlanta. Even when it began, Atlanta was a breath of fresh air which took turns between a self-deprecating humor and a cool confident millennial humor. It ingratiated itself with the trend-setters of the time as its driving force was Donald Glover’s character, Earn, attempting to help launch his cousin’s, Paper Boi’s, burgeoning rap career. It felt cool, authentic, and gritty placed in an impoverished Atlanta suburb with struggling characters who seemed desperate to find their way in life. But this focus on hip hop was merely the strong bones which held up this giant. The storytelling techniques, plotlines, and character choices went above and beyond such a simple premise. There were episodes which could stand alone without any context needed from the rest of the show. There were flashbacks which required intimate knowledge of the show. There were surreal episodes which bordered on magical realism and others which were so grounded they seemed achingly familiar to anyone who has struggled in their life or career. There were quick one-liners, intricately built absurd plotlines and everything in between. But it never missed the mark. Atlanta didn’t shy away from uncomfortable topics. There’s a strong undercurrent of racism and the true destructive nature of poverty. But Atlanta found a voice within a framework that could address these topics while still allowing itself to play. What I mean by that is Donald Glover may have been the hook, but this show was not afraid to experiment with different writers, directors, and degrees of comedic style. There was something playful, like a jazz ensemble, about the way the episodes and styles coalesced to form a masterful cacophony. And somehow within that cacophony Atlanta still was able to explore some hard truths. It is truly exceptional. With this plurality of contributions, the show manages to maintain a cohesive aura in its understated style of humor, its quiet cynicism, and the coloring and lighting of the episodes all while zooming in and zooming out to focus on different groups of characters and their motivations. Atlanta’s stylistic consistency is one thing which keeps this show- which is exploring so many different avenues- a cohesive work of art. But another way Atlanta manages to stay anchored is the flaws and limitations of the characters themselves. Earn is constantly looking to take his life to the next level and seems unsure on how exactly to do it. He has successes, but many missteps. One step forward and two steps back allows us to see a character struggling to evolve, but also one that was spinning his wheels which keeps the show in familiar territory. Nothing illustrates this better than the series finale which sees Darius, Paper Boi’s sidekick who is often high, hallucinating because of his time in a sensory deprivation tank. Darius spends much of the episode questioning what is real and what isn’t as he drives all over town in his Maserati. By the end, despite several seasons where we’ve seen Paper Boi being played on the radio, appearing on talk shows, and even touring in Europe, we hear from Darius that his Maserati has been stolen as Earn and Paper Boi head out to smoke a blunt in the same place they always have. We don’t know if we can take Darius’ word for it or not, but at the end it doesn’t matter. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Number two on this list is Shoresey. The humor of Shoresey may be more familiar to those from Northern Ontario, but I think even for those particular citizens of the Great White North, this show is in a league of very few. The brainchild of Jared Keeso, Shoresey is made all the more impressive because the character of Shoresey began as something less than a supporting character on Keeso’s show Letterkenny. He was a one note idea of a person, a passing joke, a caricature of a foul-mouthed, quick-witted, chirping, hockey-playing jock from Northern Ontario. He appeared briefly and very rarely, and always with his back turned so you couldn’t see his face. He delivered quick obnoxious one liners about fucking someone’s mother or knocking someone’s teeth out in a slightly nasal highpitched voice, and then the episode would continue. The fact that Shoresey became a complex and intelligent character in his spin-off was probably more shocking to the longtime fans of Letterkenny than it was to anyone. But what a character he became. In a time where cynicism and irony run the comedy scene, Shoresey is one of the most earnest and passionate characters in all of modern television. Shoresey is very certain of life's truths. He loves to win, he hates to lose. He believes effort is the most important thing in hockey and in life. He believes in absolute loyalty to his family and to his teammates. And his positivity and certainty make him not just an endearing character, but a funny one. He seems earnestly confused when his teammates (all in their late thirties or early forties) don’t call their parents to let them know they’ve landed safely from their flights. He yells at his teammates who don’t smile at old ladies. And his most famous sequences are when he is trying to win the affections of a local news reporter and gives long soliloquies about the wild feats he would undertake just to do mundane things to improve her life. It’s this certainty and over the top passion about things that we would deem to matter very little that makes this character what he is. Shoresey remains a temperamental and rude presence just as he is in Letterkenny, but fleshing him out made him, not just funnier, but a truly good man. It is an unfairly one-dimensional description, but one way I have described this show is as a perfect marriage of Ted Lasso and Blue Mountain State. This balance is rare on its own, but this show also benefits from exceptional character-driven plot writing. Each season has a different goal that challenges the majority of the main characters on a personal level as they work towards that goal. They don’t always achieve it, either. But they learn to cope with failure and reevaluate. Every season has significant and logical character evolution from Shoresey and his supporting cast. There’s never stagnation. But Shoresey’s strong personality remains consistent. As an athlete at the end of his career, we see a man coping with the slow fracturing of the lens through which an exceptionally passionate and earnest man views his whole life. The way this is written is one of the most honest portrayals of life’s turning points while still being an extraordinarily entertaining ride because of the unique qualities of the character. These qualities add to a unique humor which is found in very few other shows. Even the content of the jokes are far from the themes common in many sitcoms. Shoresey constantly will be asked if he finds women in their twenties and early thirties attractive to which he will reply “bit young but…”. Shoresey cries easily when he feels honored, heard, or whenever he hears the Canadian National Anthem. And his earnest, kind, and quick-witted devotion to the aforementioned journalist should be a model to young men everywhere. The result is a character who gets the laughs of every jock from Northern Ontario to Miami Florida, but also displays the type of traits (respect for women, passion for your work, and devotion to your community) that we can all aspire to.
And finally we have our number one which will be no surprise to fans of theater: Fleabag. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is one of the best writers of the last decade and is the creator and lead actress of this show. Fleabag is the most adept use of the fourth wall break in any media I can think of. This is likely a product of the theater in which the one-woman show, which originated the premise for the series, was performed. The subtle physical comedy, quick deliveries, and an astute self-aware narration style are the trademarks of this masterpiece. But Fleabag is far from overstylized or self-indulgent. The narrative follows “Fleabag”, a woman who is, genuinely, a complete mess. She is on again, off again with a man she clearly isn’t compatible with and doesn’t love. She has a strained relationship with her sister who she views to be “perfect” in every way she is not. Her mother is recently deceased and her father’s new partner is a former student of her mother’s and is an odd carcinogenic mix of patronizing and boorish. And she is stuck with a failing cafe that she once owned with her recently deceased best friend for whose death she feels partially responsible. The guilt over the latter is the driving factor in her low sense of self-worth which leads to alcohol abuse, social outbursts, and unhealthy promiscuity. Her life is desperately sad. It makes no sense, therefore, that the show is as fun and as funny as it is. How it manages to do it also without losing even a teaspoon of the poignancy of the emotionality conjured up by this deeply flawed and complex character’s life circumstances is a masterclass in showrunning and acting. Because it is a fun ride. It really is. But the emotional power, like a wall of water held behind a dam, is always there. And it is tapped into sparingly but precisely, deftly threaded between the theatrical asides and subtly funny scenarios that happen to and around Fleabag. The audience, us, is her coping mechanism. She speaks to us as she breaks that fourth wall. And for us, she tries to be funny. She puts on a brave cynical face that seems so familiar to the face we and the people around us put on for the world. And we do laugh because that’s what this character wants us to do. And she knows how to make us do it. But that mask slips every now and then. She looks concerned every once in a while out at us. Sometimes she glances in fear at the only other people who are witnessing what she is. And once, when she feels too broken, too unloveable, she runs from us, the camera pursuing, as she tries to hide her shame and brokenness. Because of this, her mechanism for coping becomes a conduit for both this show’s humor and its heart. But it goes beyond even that. Only one other character notices that fourth wall break. There is one man, different from all the others, who notices that she “goes somewhere” when she looks to us. He even, for one brief second, looks into the camera himself because he and he alone notices her mask. And in that way, this mechanism becomes a way to signal another level of intimacy between two characters. And at the end when she finally has learned what she needs to do to begin to love herself, Fleabag smiles wryly at the camera and shakes her head as she calmly tells the camera not to follow her. It’s a masterstroke.
And that’s it. My decisive list of the five most perfect comedy shows of all time. In all seriousness, this is my first opportunity to write for you beautiful people and I hope that I’ve gained your trust with my honesty and clarity. You can expect me to tell you what I will give an opinion on, outline the framework for how I will reach my conclusion, outline possible counter-arguments to my opinion, and then tell you what I think. And I also hope that I was entertaining along the way. Thank you for your time, thanks for your attention, and I hope you keep coming back.
Plus while one has a slightly fictionalized version of the writer and creator, Larry David, the other has George Costanza who is essentially a stand-in for the same. If the Hulk can go from being Edward Norton to being Mark Ruffalo and everyone’s okay with him being the same guy in the same universe, then I think I’m allowed to lump these two together.
1. I guess it’s possible that Barney & Friends were cranking out absolutely life-altering bangers that I don’t remember because I hadn’t yet reached a stage of mental development where I was forming memories. Because of the nature of human child development, I was unable to assess those shows with a properly critical eye. So to any Wiggles fans out there, I’m sorry if this list leaves you feeling somewhat snubbed.
2. I won’t though. Because in my opinion, I’m right and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong.
3. Also I haven’t seen The Wire or The Sopranos and I’ve been led to believe those shows would top this list if I included dramas so I needed a way to weed those out.
4. Look everyone! Sheldon is using scientific words to talk about basic human interactions again! Oh he’s so good at physics but so bad at attending birthday parties. He’s not like the rest of us. Let’s all laugh about it for twelve seasons and a fucking spin off.
5. See Cavemen (or don’t- actually- seriously don’t). To be fair, I’m not sure what the exact mark this marketing ploy-turned sitcom was aiming for, but if your shot bounces off a tree, hits a rock, kills a passing pigeon mid-flight, then lands smack dab in a sand trap, I don’t need to know exactly where the hole was to know that you missed it.
6. I was in Germany when I was sixteen and a German boy a few years younger than me who struggled mightily with the English language was still able to roll the words “Okily Dokily” out of his mouth with the ease of a snake flicking its tongue. Why Ned Flanders is who a fourteen year old German boy most wanted to emulate from that show, I’ll never know. But the point remains.
7. I hear it’s recovered in the last few years. I haven’t kept up. Someone told me that Homer went to therapy. I can't figure out if that’s an admirable evolution or losing touch with the essence of the show. Either way, it seems a bit like Sauron taking up gardening and yoga.
8. James Spader’s Robert California, for example, was probably one of the most interesting and inventive characters in American sitcoms even if he wasn’t particularly well-liked and seemed slightly out of place.
9. At least The Office waited seven seasons to start doing this. Some shows start in season two. Captain Holt’s super serious except when he’s cartoonishly goofy and aren’t goofy things funny when said in a deep monotone? Jess Day is shocked that several single men in their early thirties don’t want to do arts and crafts and aren’t just oh so adorably quirky like she is. Hailey’s a slut, Alex is brainy, and Gloria is foreign. And we’ve already mentioned Sheldon. If you understood any of those references, I should let you know now, none of these shows are making this list either.
10. And you know what? They wouldn’t give one single fuck. Gotta love that.
11 . I wanted to include Dan Harmon’s other brainchild in Community. It is my favorite of the two. But the meandering mess that became the final two seasons makes it far from even the area code of this list.
12. We have a character named “Mr. Poopy Butthole”, we’re not shitting out of our mouths twenty times in one episode. One is a candied cherry on a bamboo cocktail stick on top of a Manhattan, the other is a bowl of saccharine fake cocktail cherries someone has told you is all you’re getting for dinner.
13. At some point Morty’s Mom (who began as little more than an exasperated wife and mother who we occasionally see practicing medicine on horses) becomes an intergalactic space rebel and you don’t even really stop to think “how can this be?” It sort of just makes sense. Well, it’s either her or her clone. But either way it’s a testament to how whacky this format can get while still hitting the mark. Impressive.
14. Plus while one has a slightly fictionalized version of the writer and creator, Larry David, the other has George Costanza who is essentially a stand-in for the same. If the Hulk can go from being Edward Norton to being Mark Ruffalo and everyone’s okay with him being the same guy in the same universe, then I think I’m allowed to lump these two together.
15. No hugging, no learning. This concept is explicitly stated by Larry David to be the mantra of his shows. Another show which does this admirably well is Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It won’t appear on this list either but know that it could if Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm weren’t so damn iconic.
16. Another specific term from Larry David. I’m telling you. The guy’s good.
17. So. Like all of us. Probably. And if not you, then can I just say, your highness, I have no idea why you’re reading this. Go start a charity or something. Or I still have some student loans if you’re feeling really generous.
18. Most main characters in comedy are either cynical or stupid. A competent nice guy trying his best is rare because it’s truly difficult to make that character funny. Many of Bill Lawrence’s shows (Scrubs, Ted Lasso, and Shrinking) achieve it very well with Ted Lasso being the magnum opus, and if this list was ten long, it’s likely several of his shows would make this list, but as it’s just five, here we are.
19. “I’d tongue-kiss your toaster just to vacuum your fucking car.”
20. Yes, that includes Deadpool.
21. “Sniffing one's own farts” some would call it