Steve Harvey is ****ing terrible.

Ive just accepted that i missed the boat on lost and/or the shield. Just too much goatish tv out there to watch older shows are probably a tier or two below BB/Wire/Sporanos//Madmen/GOT/BWE etc

Shield def > mad men. Below top tier for sure, though.

Wire and BB are good, but we all know what the real GOAT show is:

FF had such potential, one of the more disappointing discontinues ever. If I had known about it when it was a new show and been watching week to week, would have been totally crushed

"Pat and facile" were great words to describe it. I just found it so masturbatory and self-congratulating. It's for people who want to fantasize that a world exists where decisions are made by having people (specifically, middle-aged white men) who roughly agree with the viewer's politics making impassioned speeches that change the mind of their strawmen enemies. I just didn't find it compelling. I don't need my TV to flatter my intellect; I need it to tell me good stories.

I liked Sports Night, but I think one show in that style was enough for me.

Yeah, I've come to appreciate The Shield more and more with time. I'd say The Shield > Mad Men. Sustaining dramatic momentum for seven seasons is really hard, and The Shield did it as well as any show in history.

I wouldn't try to argue with someone who thinks Mad Men > The Shield, because they might prefer that immersive, anthological form over the momentum and action of real dramatic literature. (And it's not just about "Cops are cool" action, it's action in the real dramatic sense: a character has a tragic flaw, he takes an action based on that flaw, and that action begins the plot rolling and leads into more actions to deal with it, until it all piles up at the reversal/realization and the climax. The Shield and Breaking Bad are great at this. Mad Men has too many self-contained stories that don't really change the status quo for my taste.)

I don't know which I'd rank first but the Shield is definitely the perfect antidote for the more frustrating aspects of Mad Men

Pretty pumped for True Detective on HBO.

Boardwalk Empire gets slept on so much on 2+2 imo

what's the overall opinion of suits?

I don't know if it gets slept on. It has been the offseason for BWE, hence it hasn't been as topical as madmen, got, and now breaking bad which all put out new seasons recently (or are doing so with BB).

Last season of BWE was fantastic, but were only 3 seasons in. Overall I'm very satisfied. Obviously has to sustain the momentum to get into the GOAT conversation, though.

BWE isn't as good as the top shows airing right now, but I was really impressed with their storytelling last season. I wasn't sure about the third season for a long time (Rosetti was way too much of a cartoon character for my tastes), but they really tied together all the plots very well in the end.

My brother is the showrunner for True Detective.

Sick brag. Your brother looks like a prettay good writer.

Hmm. I thought TWW did tell good stories. I'll freely admit that I'm a (was?) level one show watcher, though.

Seinfeld is obviously >>>Friends but Friends is a truly elite show, one of the best of all time.

Rank the characters, I got it

1. JOEY TRIBS
2. Phoebes
3. Bing
4. Rachel
5. Ross
6. Monica

Yeah, he's legit. Working on a couple screenplays too right now, I believe.

Ehh, I mean, I guess it depends how you define good stories. I saw a good summary of this elsewhere, that Sorkin's TV shows often lack much dramatic tension, because he doesn't like to write conflict, and anyone who would be in a position to be an antagonist to our heroes is always won over by their awesome nobility.

I haven't watched the West Wing in ages, so I don't have much useful to say about it, but this isn't a retroactive opinion-- I first watched it because friends recommended it to me about 10-12 yeras ago, and I just never found it to be the great show everyone said it was.

Perhaps. From what I can gather, Sorkin is pretty polarizing, so I suppose I can see why there's differing opinions.

To be fair, I'm not sure how I would define a good story. And, like you, I haven't seen it in some time. But, it was one of the few shows that I made sure I had nothing to do during. And I'd binge the hell out of it when Bravo ran it all damn day.

Yeah, I mean drama. I'm aware of there being good comedies out there that I don't watch. Heh.

I kind of watched 3 or 4 seasons of The West Wing. Not necessarily always paying close attention to it is why I say kind of. From a technical standpoint the show is outstanding, love the way they used the camera to glide through the White House. And of course the actors, writing, etc, were almost always exceptional. Maybe some of the characters were a bit overly douchy but that's kind of how I imagine big time political operatives to be in real life. It's a good show for sure.

1. joey
2. chandler
3. ross
4. monica
5. rachel
6. phoebe

gap between chandler and ross and bigger gap between rachel and phoebe

The Toby character tilted me hard in TWW.

Ross is pretty high variance. At his best he's elite but at his worst he's really bad.

Friends had way too many soap opera elements

first season was pretty good, now it is not good

Leo was the best character by a large margin for sure