“So you like ‘30 Rock’ and ‘Battlestar Galactica’ and ‘Lost’,” you might be saying. “Big deal. Join the frakking club, sheep!”

Fair enough, but would a sheep dare to post on the internets a comprehensive list of the best episodes in the history of television? The answer is yes, if he were an exceptionally nerdy sheep.

Best Episodes in the History of Television

1. Lost: “Pilot”
Say what you will about the declining quality of the series, the pilot is the best two hours of television ever produced. The numbers station, the first night on the beach, Jack’s story about counting to five, and a guy gets sucked into a jet engine. I tried watching it twice, when it first aired and when it was repeated, and had to stop because it was too intense for me. When I finally watched it on DVD, I was hooked.

2. The X-Files: “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space“
This is the episode where Charles Nelson Reilly’s character is writing a book about Mulder & Scully, and there are guest appearances by Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebek as Men In Black. Plus the line: “You don’t play Dungeons and Dragons for as long as I have without learning a little something about courage.” All of Darrin Morgan’s episodes were brilliant, but this one realized the real potential of “The X-Files” better than any other episode. Not only did it give a better account of UFO sightings than any other episode, but it made fun of itself, the series, the FOX network (with the alien autopsy video), the producers, and its stars, without ever crossing the line of being too post-modern. And it’s funny, creepy, and philosophical in equal doses. If you had to pick one episode of any TV series to prove to people that TV is capable of intelligence, this is the one you’d show.

3. Arrested Development: “For British Eyes Only”
Michael visits Wee Britain for the first time, meets Rita, is struck by something from his childhood, and is threatened by a foul-mouthed British guy. And the Bluth family joins together in a mass chicken dance. Plus, Lupe’s reaction to Tobias’ hairplugs: “Mr Gay! He is bleeding!” The only thing that could’ve made me like this better is if this had been the one with “Mister F.”

4. Alias: “The Telling”
The one where Sidney and her roommate finally come to blows. “Alias” may have been all over the map quality-wise, but it always had the best season finales. And this was the best of the best. I was more shocked by Francie’s death a few episodes earlier, but the fight scene in this one is just epic. And the twist at the end was so good, it kind of makes you wish the series had ended there, considering how they “resolved” it.

5. Lost: “Orientation”
The only reason “Lost” is still on my list of best currently-running TV series is because, season 3 or no, it still has two of the best episodes of any TV series ever. Actually, the first episode from season 2, “Man of Science, Man of Faith,” is a contender for best episode, just because of the opening sequence and the reveal of the bunker. But overall, this is the one that turned me from a casual fan of the series into an obsessive. And just because of the orientation movie. From the film grain, to the title cards, to the soundtrack, to the missing bits of film, to the pacing of the episode up to the movie, and the fact that Locke said “we’re going to have to watch that again” right at the moment I started to hit rewind on my remote: this was the bit that convinced me that this series was trying things I’d never seen before, and that these guys really knew what they were doing. Even now, after realizing that they didn’t know what they were doing, I can’t forget that that was one of the coolest bits of TV I’ve ever seen.

6. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Superstar”
The nerdy kid from high school casts a spell to create an alternate reality where he’s a superhero. Lots of sci-fi shows have done alternate realities, and “Buffy” even did it a few times. This one wins because they really made it an alternate reality: they changed the opening credits, and the main plot of the episode continued from the last as if nothing had happened. The shot of Buffy walking mopily down the street, with a wall plastered with posters of Jonathan behind her, was just genius.

7. Cowboy Bebop: “Speak Like a Child”
The crew has to fly back to the ruins of Earth to find an ancient VCR to watch a mysterious tape left for Faye Valentine. The entire episode plays like a comedy until the last five minutes, which hit you like a punch to the gut.

8. Police Squad!: “Rendezvous at Big Gulch”
There wasn’t a bad episode of this series, and whoever cancelled it has reserved his own spiky chair in hell. But this is the episode that has my favorite gag: “Who are you and how did you get in here?” “I’m a locksmith, and I’m a locksmith.”

9. Doctor Who: “The Unquiet Dead”
Charles Dickens fights zombies. If that doesn’t spell awesome to you, then you’re a big dumb gay communist.

10. Mr. Show with Bob and David: “Oh, You Men”
This is the one where they film their “lost episode,” the Druggachusettes sketch, the bit with the lie detector, and the east coast/west coast ventriloquism wars. There are episodes with funnier sketches, but this one has my favorite gag in the entire series: the “who wants a banana?” line in the opening monologue, where you have to wait an hour for the payoff.

I didn’t include “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” because it’s in a league of its own; if I’d listed one, I’d have to list ten. But my favorite is “Godzilla vs Megalon,” if only for the Jet Jaguar Fight Song. But then, “Mitchell” was great too. And “Master Ninja I,” as well as “Master Ninja II”. And “Fire Maidens from Outer Space.” And “Werewolf.”

I also didn’t include “NewsRadio,” only because it’s been a while since I’ve watched any of it, and the episodes run together in my memory. “Super Karate Monkey Death Car” has the best title of any television series ever, of course, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it all the way through.

I invite, nay, encourage readers to give their own favorites in the comments.

Thanks to the last few months of under-employment (which ends tomorrow), my TV-watching has almost gotten back up to the levels before I worked for EA and before I discovered RSS feeds. I still haven’t suddenly regained consciousness sitting on the couch 35 minutes into a History Channel documentary about classified Nazi cheese experiments, but I have spent 3 straight hours watching back-to-back episodes of “Mythbusters.”

And I still won’t watch whatever’s on, just for the sake of watching TV. Which means that the list of shows I watch with any regularity is also the list of

Best Series Currently In Production

1. “The Venture Brothers”
This could’ve been just an obvious parody of “Jonny Quest,” ‘cept it’s all edgy, and the pilot was pretty much exactly that. But Jackson Public and Doc Hammer just get it, more than the creators of any other series except maybe “Arrested Development.” One episode of “The Venture Brothers” has a dozen throwaway gags that lesser writers would try to form entire TV series or Lorne Michaels-produced movies from. Just the details are hilarious: like when Hank & Dean make the Go Team Venture! sign and you can see the light from it reflected on their dates. And also, Patrick Warburton as Brock is the best animated character ever. Next to maybe Dr. Girlfriend.

2. “Battlestar Galactica”
I admit I didn’t watch it at the start. It was too depressing, and I didn’t cotton to the idea of a female Starbuck. I still don’t like her very much, and I still hate Apollo, but the series is just every bit as good as people are saying it is. And huge stuff happens, all the time. Whenever I see the count of survivors at the beginning of an episode, I remember being a kid on the way home from elementary school (okay, maybe it was middle school) and screaming at the bus driver to go faster so I’d get home in time for “Starblazers.”

3. “30 Rock”
I’m still baffled as to how a show that started out so shaky turned into one of the best comedy series ever. Everybody goes on about how great Alec Baldwin is, and he is, but he’s not even carrying the show anymore. Most series would’ve been content just to have Paul Reubens as inbred Austrian royalty (with only one real limb, which was genius), but they threw in a catfight between Isabella Rosselini and Tina Fey, as if they had a direct line to my subconscious. I still say it’s a shame they don’t use Rachel Dratch more often.

4. “How I Met Your Mother”
I started watching this one just because Willow was on it. And I figured it’s pleasant enough, so I’ll watch it if it’s on and I’ve got nothing better to do. Somewhere along the line it became one of my favorite series. Just recently, they had three or four episodes back to back that were just hilarious, and now that they’ve hit their stride, they’re consistently funny. And they have the most appealing cast on TV right now. I think the best thing they did was changing the big question from when is Ted going to meet “your mother,” to when the remaining slap-bet slaps are going to happen.

5. “Lost”
This week’s episode was pretty strong, and it was a good sign that they’re slowly getting back on track. The sad fact is that even if the executive producers of the show really are as smarmy as they come across in interviews, and even if they have no idea where they’re going, and even if they’re unable to get themselves out of the corner they’ve painted themselves into, this still has some of the best performances, set design, and just overall production quality of any series on TV. (Even “Galactica.”)

6. “Monk”
I’d speculate the reason this series is underrated is because it’s so formulaic. That’s actually kind of why I like it. It’s got so many formulas and cliches weighing it down, and still manages to be great TV. Every episode has to have the hour-long crime drama format, plus the unassuming “Colombo”-style detective with issues, plus the comedy scene showing Monk freaking out because he’s completely out of his element, plus the black-and-white recap at the end, plus all the formulaic bits from a Sherlock Holmes story, plus the therapy session, plus the character development. As if that weren’t stifling enough, they’ve by now established their own formula, of making every episode somehow “bittersweet.” Still, instead of being hobbled by it, they come up with some great mysteries and characters that for the most part (except for Disher) feel real. I’m just really impressed with how solid the show is, going into its fourth season, dabbling a little bit in an overarching storyline (Trudy’s death) but not really needing it.

I’ve got to say I was completely wrong about Sharona’s leaving. The character of Natalie is my favorite one in the series now; she’s not abrasive or annoying, but not saintly, either. And the actress playing her (Traylor Howard, from the pizza place) does a great job. Her delivery is perfect, always, and she just makes you glad she’s there even during the frequent times her character’s given nothing to do. There’s a lot to be said just for being appealing, and she, and the series itself, always manages to do that.

7. “Heroes”
Yeah, the writing is still weak, and there are plot holes you could pilot the X-Men’s jet through, and the marketing hype blitz around it is annoying. Yeah, I’m still completely hooked on it. I don’t want to talk about it.

8. “Mythbusters”
They know what the people want, and they deliver it. Even if it is 10% science and 90% explosions, it’s not like they ever claim otherwise; they’re proud of it. I don’t recommend anybody watch three hours back-to-back of it, though: the gang gets pretty annoying after a while.

When are companies going to learn to stop hiring “guerilla marketing” firms?

First there was the ridiculously ill-advised Sony PSP blog (Consumerist saved the original here after Sony was forced to take it down), which got the company much, much worse PR than they could’ve ever hoped to gain with the campaign in the first place.

Now, of course, is the hubub over the douchebags responsible for the “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” bomb scare. I feel compelled to point out first of all that I used to be a huge fan of Adult Swim, but they lost me sometime between the last episode of “Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law” and the first episode of “Squidbillies.” Somewhere along the line, they got just a little bit too pleased with themselves, and assumed that they could put whatever the hell they wanted on the air, and stoners would watch it. (Which is true, but not a good long-term strategy). So it’s just a damn good thing this promotion was for “ATHF” and not “The Venture Brothers,” or I’d be in an ethical quandary.

The Adult Swim braintrust should realize that they’re already walking on a very thin line between “look how f-in’ edgy we are!” and being genuinely clever. And they should have a tighter lock on that, and realize that an outside company just isn’t going to get it, and they’re likely going to screw it up. Maybe they didn’t understand exactly the magnitude to which they’d screw it up, but surely somebody at Turner saw the idea and had to give it the okay.

Assume that you’re more sincere in your non-violence than I am, and you can look at pictures of the smarmy grinning marketing gurus responsible for the incident, and read their snickering responses to reporters, and not want to just never stop beating them. Still, you have to take a step back and get some perspective. This “guerilla marketing” combines two of the most horrible things to blight mankind: marketing, and performance art. If they could’ve somehow directly involved Fox News commentators, they would’ve scored a trifecta.

Apologists are coming out of the woodwork now, saying that the devices have been in place for weeks, they’re “obviously” not anything dangerous, and it shows how irreverent and edgy the network is and how lame and dumb and out-of-touch Boston’s city officials are. Okay, first: shut up. And then: just how much of a moron do you have to be to plant devices with visible circuit boards and batteries and wires on city overpasses? Acting all surprised that they’d be mistaken for bombs is just plain bullshit.

And if your whole schtick is based on how edgy and counter-culture you are, then you’re just a chickenshit for claiming that they couldn’t possibly be confused for bombs and that that wasn’t the intent. Of course that was the intent, and if you’re going to pull that kind of nonsense, then at least have the balls to stand behind it. I’ve got zero sympathy for these losers, and the details in that CNN story just make me happier and happier: not only could they get fired, but they could be charged with a felony, and one of them could get deported. I just hope if nobody at Cartoon Network’s marketing staff got fired, they’ve at least learned their lesson.

I already confessed to how I broke up the Pixies and made the Pogues split. I don’t know how I do it; it just happens. I got into “Alias,” right before it went downhill and got cancelled. I waited until the last minute to start liking “Lost,” and then look what happened there. So it pains me to announce that I really, really like “Battlestar Galactica” an awful lot.

Don’t despair, though; I liked “X-Files” so much I even went to a convention, and that lasted a good four seasons before it went south. Same with “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” So considering I just got into “Galactica” this season, and bought the DVDs last weekend, there’s probably at least a couple good years left. I would just hold off on getting that tattoo of Apollo & Starbuck 4-Ever, if I were you.

Tonight was the half-season opener, “Rapture,” and it was pretty damn cool. I haven’t been keeping track of the fan rumblings, and I still haven’t seen all of the miniseries or the first season, but it seems like these episodes are moving a lot faster than the early ones. I’m still amazed that they have the stones and talent to set up huge, story-changing events and cliffhangers, and then quickly resolve them. It’s just plain exciting to see people who aren’t so afraid to mess with their prize-winning formula that they’re frozen into inaction and navel-gazing. They’re eager to keep mixing things up, putting their characters through hell and then pulling them out. Making huge, sweeping changes and then tying everything together all in the span of a few episodes.

I could see how some people would complain that it doesn’t linger on the real implications and ramifications of what happens long enough for them to have any weight, but I think that’s just traditional TV lulling everyone into complacency. This series credits the viewer with enough intelligence to follow everything that’s happening and fill in the details on his own — if something big is happening, you’ll know it, without having to make the cast and soundtrack reiterate how important this is a dozen times. The drama takes precedence even over the plot, and that’s just a great change. It feels like the creators of the show are eager to mess around with the story and the characters, just to see what happens.

Of course, it looks like this episode permanently wrote off my second-favorite cast member. (Grace Park’s my favorite). That’s a huge disappointment, but then I guess that’s what happens when you’ve got a series that isn’t afraid to change.

I just read a rumor online that there will be at least one ore major cast member to go before the season ends. Normally I’d dismiss that as a cheap ratings gimmick — whenever you hear a show creator mention the need to remind viewers that every cast member is expendable, that’s a sure sign the show is creatively rotten, and depends on cheap gimmicks to keep it interesting and “edgy.” Character death just for the sake of character death is as weak as the cat jumping suddenly from a dark place in a horror movie. It has to extend naturally from a storyline, or it’s just a cheap thrill. But I’ve got faith in “Battlestar Galactica,” from what I’ve seen so far. If they do kill somebody else off, it’ll be given a good setup, it’ll probably be bleak as hell, and it’ll almost definitely be good television.

I wasn’t a big fan of Jesus is Magic. In fact, it managed to do what I never would’ve thought possible: by the end of it, I was kind of sick of Sarah Silverman and wanted her to go away.

If you want to read somebody who can write say what I’m thinking, Stephanie Zacharek’s review once again lays it all out, Mouth of Sauron-style. I’d add that it wasn’t just the musical numbers that were unnecessary and went on too long, but the routine itself. At the time I saw the movie, I’d just seen Silverman do a short set at a benefit concert in the city, so I’d already heard all her material.

Obviously, that’s not her fault — that’s what comedians do. And her delivery is perfect, which is actually part of the problem. When she’s so good at making her routine come across as spontaneous, it ruins it when you realize she’s just performing well-rehearsed material.

And that’s why I’m really looking forward to her Comedy Central series, which starts in February. She’s just brilliant in small doses, and a half-hour time limit will just about do it. And most of the material’s got to be new every week, so there’s a bonus.

Plus, I’ve watched the intro about 12 times now and it still cracks me up:

TVSquad.com has a link to an interview with Damon Lindelof about the upcoming season conclusion of “Lost.” I agree with the TV Squad guy — dude could stand to shut up for a while and lessen the backlash.

The part of the interview that annoyed me the most was at the end:

But I feel for the fans that are desperately waiting for the big answers. The reality is that there is an inherent catch-22 there, which is “Who killed Laura Palmer?” Once you give up who killed Laura Palmer, why watch “Twin Peaks”? Once Dave and Maddy kiss, why watch “Moonlighting”? So I feel like once we give up those big answers, the really compelling reason to watch “Lost” will be over and done with. I would really like to answer those questions because I think that the answers are very cool.

One of the reasons it bugs me is because I used to buy that schtick — hip young guy who loves TV, not just makes TV; can combine high culture and pop culture; and in touch with what fans are saying and what they want. That was before I read about a dozen of these types of interviews (and that’s only a fraction of what’s been published), and they’re all the same — unbelievably cool things are coming up in the series, so just wait; “Twin Peaks” sure fizzled out, huh?; and we want the show to be cool, but it’s all Disney’s fault.

This is going to make me sound like a Disney apologist, but I’m speaking more as a fan of the show teetering on the brink of becoming a former fan. But I’d bet one 30-second block of ad revenue that Disney just wants to make money off the show, they don’t care how it’s done. As long as the series doesn’t full-stop end, I bet anything would be fair game.

And mentioning “Moonlighting” and “Twin Peaks” is just weak sauce. What killed “Twin Peaks” wasn’t revealing who killed Laura Palmer; what killed it was having nothing planned for after the reveal. They’d put all their effort into one mystery, and didn’t start with the larger-scale Black Lodge stuff until it was already too late. “Lost” doesn’t have that problem; if anything, they’ve got the opposite. It’s all Black Lodge stuff, and they keep throwing more into the mix.

They could bring any of the big mysteries to a conclusion and keep the series going. They could bring all of them to a conclusion and — hey, here’s a thought — invent new ones. Hell, they’ve already got enough threads going; if they just devoted two episodes each to resolving every single one of the open stories, that’s at least two seasons’ worth right there.

And what about the stuff that’s been hinted at but never evolved to full-blown mystery? The Black Rock ship that’s over 100 years old — why not do a half-season of that crew and their flashbacks? I’d watch.

As for “Moonlighting,” it was on the decline a long time before they got the two leads together. Because they took a prize-winning formula from the start of the series and killed it by doing the same thing over and over again. They put so much effort into one gimmick (will they ever get together?) and didn’t have anything left over.

Sounds like “Lost” is going to waste its dozen interesting characters and intriguing premises with pointless, never-resolved subplots and more obfuscation. Look forward to the Shakespeare episode, all-musical episode, and black-and-white episode to come soon.

I don’t know if y’all have heard, but the SciFi channel has been running a miniseries called “The Lost Room!”

Non-stop promotions aside, this is actually a damn fine show. (It concludes tonight, which would make this blog post seem useless if not for the fact I’m 100% sure SciFi is going to be rerunning it frequently).

A lot of science fiction and sci-fi/fantasy stories start with a high concept, and then go on to tell a traditional story based on that concept. Every history of “Star Trek” mentions that it was described as “‘Wagon Train’ in space.” Most episodes of TV series like “The Twilight Zone” and all the Star Treks were standard drama plots with a high concept thrown into the mix (what would a love story be like if one of the characters were from a symbiotic race that could change gender?) or used the high concept as allegory for something else (can’t you see that I’m half-black and he’s half-white?)

The thing that impresses me the most about “The Lost Room” is that it’s all about the concept. A preview I read described it as being like a videogame, and that’s apt. It’s true on the obvious level — the story really just boils down to a standard adventure game, with a guy collecting inventory items to solve puzzles.

But the videogame comparison goes deeper, in that this is the most successful non-game art I’ve ever seen that conveys that feeling of engagement that’s unique to videogames. That feeling of being dropped in a world with new rules, and the satisfaction that comes from figuring out how to use the rules to accomplish something.

It helps a lot that the series doesn’t insult your intelligence. Especially when it very easily could have; pretty much every single character in the story knows more about what’s going on than the hero does. That could’ve devolved into a lot of really tedious and clumsy exposition, but it ends up making the hero seem like even more of a bad-ass. Explain something once, and he’s not only figured it out, but figured out how to use that knowledge to get farther than any of these other people have been able to.

He’s not a hero because he’s been dropped into the role of protagonist; he’s a hero because he’s actually accomplishing things. The best example is when he uses the properties of the motel room and the missing objects to figure out how to open a locked safe. It was just ingenious.

I’ve been trained to watch TV from “on high,” sitting on a platform just underneath the writers as we both look down on the characters and wait for them to clue in to what’s going on and catch up with the rest of us. With this, I feel like I’m having to hurry to keep up. A villain will shout, “take all the doors and burn them,” and it takes me a minute to realize what that was all about.

And characters don’t spend a lot of time staring with Spielbergian wide eyes and open mouths at the wondrous properties of these mysterious objects; they jump right in and start playing with them. Testing them with stuffed animals, smashing them with sledgehammers, and using them to break locks, break out of prison, or spy on people. A lot of stories introduce the Ring of Power or the Bag of Holding or Portable Hole and then make you wait for that one crucial plot point to come where the hero remembers the object and uses it to save the day just at the last minute. In “The Lost Room,” people have already exhausted every possible use of an object a dozen times over by the time the audience has figured out exactly what it does.

It’s not perfect; the whole love-interest “don’t break my heart” bit was goofy, and I’ve read previews that suggest that the final pay-off is kind of weak (I’ve only seen four hours out of six). But I’ve been enjoying the hell out of it, and not only am I excited about the conclusion, I already wish it were an ongoing series.

My biggest complaint is that I wish Peter Krause would stop harping on about his daughter and the Prime Object and start trying to find the mysterious missing razor. Any guy over 18 (at least those of us who weren’t raised on estrogen-rich soy products) knows that the perpetual haven’t-shaved-in-a-day look takes a lot of effort, and watching six hours of it makes you feel uncomfortably itchy.

I guess it’s a little weird to be upset when celebrities pass away, but then few celebrities are as cool as Peter Boyle.

He’s got a permanent place on my cool list just for his performance in Young Frankenstein, of course. But he was great in everything I saw him in — the “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” episode of “The X-Files,” and every episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond.” It’s a shame that series was so popular and long-running that it created a backlash, since it was consistently funny and frequently genuinely moving, and Boyle was always one of the stand-outs.

What always impressed me the most about Peter Boyle was that he just seemed to “get” it. He wasn’t just somebody delivering funny lines; he was a real comedic actor. The difference is knowing how to play a character as a real person — even an obnoxious or belligerent person — and work it so that it’s true to the character and still comes across as funny and relatable. Reading his obituary makes it sound like he had a pretty interesting life off-screen as well.

Update: Entertainment Weekly’s PopWatch blog has the best obituary of Boyle I’ve seen.