Top 10 Favorite TV Shows:

1:   Lost.  I know many people were super-fans and then hated the ending, but I thought the whole show was great.  It’s hard for me to stick with a show if it’s predictable, and Lost certainly never was that.  The best explanation I’ve heard to try to pacify fans who weren’t satisfied with all the unanswered questions is this:  If the island’s entire history was a TV series, it’s like Lost was a season of that series – we saw THIS part of the story.  (And if you try to argue that they were dead the whole time, I might have to stop talking to you.  Like permanently.)
2:   Arrested Development.  I quote this show probably more often than I do any other source.  The layers of cleverness are brilliant.  The cast fits perfectly.  It’s so bizarre it’s somehow believable a real family could act like this.  Not a huge fan of the Netflix season, but still. 
3:   Game of Thrones.  If you’re into world-building as much as I am, that’s enough reason to love this show (or the books, for that matter).  It’s so complex and FULL that it feels like real history… except for, you know, dragons and magic.   The show lets us visualize everything in the books, and the “look” of the show is one of my favorite things.  And of course Tyrion.
4:   Breaking Bad.  I didn’t bother watching this for a long time because it didn’t seem like a storyline I would care about at all, and then I binge-watched the show over a single summer so that the only episode I ever watched live was the series finale (during which I *might* have made a visiting friend sit in another room because I refused to be interrupted).  I can’t think of a more perfect drama as far as character arch.
5:   The Walking Dead.  Character-driven stories are always going to be my favorite.  Since the rest of the world and most of its inhabitants are destroyed in this show, the focus is on these few people who struggle to survive.  And that’s the best part, to me – the struggle isn’t only against the walkers/zombies but also against other people, and often even themselves.  It’s wearing a bit thin, I think, but over the seasons its been thought-provoking again and again.
6:   Archer.  It doesn’t hurt that there’s some Arrested Development cast overlap.   This show should probably be my guilty pleasure because it’s characters border on being absolutely terrible people.  But they’re hilariously terrible, which somehow makes it all endearing.
7:  Will & Grace.  I quote this one a lot too.  And I definitely liked that Grace was a klutzy screw-up most of the time.  And I might have hero-worshipped Karen a little bit.  Really, the whole thing was hilariously written, but also with some very heartfelt moments.
8:  Justified.   I really connected with the general concept of “you can’t go home again” in this show.  My family is from the sticks of Michigan, which in many ways is not far off from Kentucky.  I often sympathized with Raylan’s constant sarcasm and heavy sighs.  Along with that, the show was simple and complex at the same time as far as the relationships between the characters, and I’m always happy with a likable bad guy.
9:   Friends.  My brother is currently rewatching the whole series, and my fondness for this show is probably part nostalgia.  But there’s also a kind of timeless humor to a lot of the gags.
10: Star Trek: Next Generation.  I grew up on this one.  I’m absolutely positive my creative mind wouldn’t be what it is without it.  It hasn’t aged extraordinarily well, but these characters are always going to be what I think of first when I hear “Star Trek.”

Anybody have their own list?   Comment below!