Series 7 concerns the familiar idea of a game in which human beings hunt each other for sport. Beginning with Richard Connell’s 1924 story, The Most Dangerous Game, this concept has gone through a number of incarnations, most recently in the Japanese cult favorite Battle Royale and the immensely popular The Hunger Games. What sets Series 7 apart most of all is its relentless dark humor; for example, after blowing away a fellow competitor in a convenience store, the film’s protagonist, Dawn (Brooke Smith, best known as Buffalo Bill’s captive, Catherine Martin, in The Silence of the Lambs), calmly asks the clerk, “Hey, you got any bean dip?”

Dawn is the crowd favorite, having won the two previous seasons in a row (contestants are granted their freedom if they win three in a row) and being eight months pregnant. She is now presumably trying to win her freedom and her life in order to care for her baby once it is born, but the skills she has honed in the previous two seasons show in her apparent relish for the sport. As the film begins, she is seen stalking the other contestants and calling them on the phone in an attempt to psyche them out and make them easier prey. Other contestants include Dawn’s high school boyfriend, Jeff (Glenn Fitzgerald), which indicates that the supposedly random selection process is rigged; Lindsay (Merritt Wever), a perky high school student who has just turned 18, making her legal fair game for the show; and Connie (Marylouise Burke), a seemingly sweet, middle-aged nurse who proves to be the most fascinating and terrifying character in the film.

Though Series 7 frustratingly lacks a larger worldview to explain some of its more questionable conceptual leaps of faith – particularly the circumstances that led to the government’s sanctioning of the show’s selection process – its commitment to accurately recreating the look and feel of reality television pays off enormously. The undeniable entertainment value of the series makes for extremely effective satire, especially in the film’s ending, which is too viciously brilliant to spoil here.

Hidden Netflix Gems is a new feature designed to help readers answer that burning question, “What should I watch tonight?” It will be updated every Saturday before the sun goes down.

* Mike Fleming is claiming a “toldja” on the news that Elijah Wood will be appearing in “The Hobbit” as Frodo Baggins who is, I believe, not yet born during the events of Tolkien’s original children book. The rumor from earlier in the week has now been confirmed and nothing will ever be the same.

* Mr. Fleming also has the latest on speed-crazed Hollywood buying the rights to a book that has yet to be published and the remake rights on a documentary almost no one has seen. At least we know what the documentary’s about, and it does sound like material for a good movie — except, of course, it’s already a movie.

* Robert De Niro will be heading the jury at Cannes this year. This will be his third go-round in the gig.

* There’s been a ton of quibbling on why it’s not a sequel and maybe not even a spin-off, but the fact remains that Judd Apatow is building his next film around the terrific characters from “Knocked Up” played by Paul Rudd and Apatow’s real-life wife, Leslie Mann. I have to admit I find these kind of fine distinctions to be marketing-driven annoyances. Novelists cast supporting characters from past books in leading roles in newer books all the time and no one calls these books anything other than “novels.” Novelists like Sinclair Lewis and Kurt Vonnegut treat their worlds like the Marvel Universe, so why can’t there be an Apatow-verse?

* Ricky Gervais has apparently signed up to play Mole in an upcoming version of “Wind in the Willows.” Ordinarily, I’d be a little bit excited about this news, but this is a project coming from Ray Griggs, who I frankly wonder about for a number of reasons. I’ve written about him before, at least he had the good sense to hire WETA in on the project. Still, if I were a friend of Gervais’s I advise him to stay away. It has a funny smell about it.

* Oscar winning writer-director Paul Haggis is taking his complaints with the Church of Scientology public in an upcoming book-length expose to be written by Lawrence Wright. Haggis is a former member of the church. I’d tell you what I think of Scientology, but that’s a whole other blog post. I will say I think this will be big.

* Danny Strong played the greatest geek ever on “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” and went on to become a respected screenwriter with his script for the Jay Roach television movie about the 2000 election, “Recount.” Now he’s back in the genre world with a gig rewriting something called “Earth Defense Force,” which Sam Raimi is producing.

* Stan the Man got his star on Hollywood Blvd. Excelsior!

* Ron Howard wants you to know that the “Arrested Development” movie is really still happening. Sure, why not?

Still, as one of the three actors/cum camera people/cum screenwriters who endured a deliberately scary and uncomfortable shoot in “The Blair Witch Project,” Leonard has leveraged his decade old flavor-of-the-month status into a solid career as a working actor with scores of credits ranging from the HBO movie “Live from Baghdad” to recent episodes of the new TV series, “Hung,” also on HBO. He’s also become a director. “Beautiful Losers,” a documentary he co-directed, is just hitting home video after a run on the festival circuit, and he recently completed shooting his dramatic feature debut as a writer-director, “The Lie.”

Still, he’s clearly very proud of his involvement in writer-director Lynn Shelton’s “Humpday” alongside costar and previously interviewed fellow film-maker Mark Duplass – now a very close real-life buddy — and happy to have contributed to a new tightly-plotted but improvised movie where there was absolutely no attempt made to convince the world he was dead. His portrayal of Andrew – puppyish Peter Pan, would-be artiste and compulsive traveler/bohemian – remains the extremely funny heart of the film. He’s also, I was happy to find, a really fun guy to talk to. He’s obviously a lot more smarter and 10,000 times more mature than his movie alter-ego, but he’s every bit as easy to hang out with – even on a twenty-minute phone call set up by a publicist.

PH: I don’t always say this, but I really did like “Humpday.” I thought you guys were great.

JL: Thanks, man. What have you hated recently?

PH: [Laughs] I’m a critic, we could blow out entire time talking about that.

JL: [Laughs] That’s what I want to know.

PH: Fortunately, nothing of yours. Okay, so I’m going to ask everyone I talk to on the movie this question….

Just before I saw the movie at the L.A. Film Festival, I had reviewed the DVD for “The Odd Couple.” It was kind of interesting because it was sort of two of the poles of the male bonding thing and of course the whole idea of “bromance” has been  out now. I was just wondering how you thought “Humpday” fit in with all these movies that have been out there on this general topic.

JL: You gotta realize that when we were making this we were making it in such a bubble that we didn’t realize that we were potentially going to be able to coat-tail off any zeitgeist moment; that was not in the master plan.

PH: Mark said the same thing.

JL: No. All of a sudden “bromance” was a term and male bonding was being talked about and that kind of fortuitously happened right around the time that our movie was done. We were nothing but grateful for it because we certainly did not have the studio marketing dollar. Every time somebody talked about “Zack and Miri” or “Brüno” and happened to mention us, we considered that free publicity.

And I think in terms of what you were talking about with “The Odd Couple,” it’s those two archetypal characters. We kind of put two guys on either end of the responsibility spectrum and put them together in a room and it’s usually pretty funny to watch. We certainly far from invented that formula. I think we took advantage of what we care about in our lives and kind of updated it a little bit. And, also, we were working so far outside of the system that we could really push the envelope a little bit in terms of taking that concept to its hyperbolic extreme, without anybody looking over our shoulders and telling us what was or wasn’t appropriate or what would or wouldn’t play with an audience.

PH: That’s one of the things that’s interesting about the movie. A lot of times, you’ll see films and people will ask if they are improvised and the response is “No, it was all written, but we really tried to make it look that way.” But this really was improvised and yet it really feels tight.

JL: [Laughs]. It certainly will play to our strong suit as a collective. Mark and I are both writer-directors as well. While neither of us will ever be cast in “Raging Bull 2,” it’s a vernacular that we’re comfortable with and kind of writing on the fly is something that’s really fun.

Lynn [Shelton] is very confident as a director because she picks people very carefully. She is an amazing curator of personalities and talents, and so she really gets the right group of people together to make her movies. I think everybody who was there was there in support of the process in which we were making it.

And then, the unsung hero of this whole thing being [editor] Nat Sanders. When you say the movie was “tight,” I promise you that had absolutely nothing to do with the acting that was actually put on. We focused on trying to make organic transitions and making this stupid/funny concept emotionally viable and really putting ourselves in the audience’s shoes and thinking: “Okay, where are we going to be skeptical and how can we answer those questions.”

But in terms of putting those together in five-minute propulsive scenes, that is absolutely, a thousand percent our editor. He could have made thousands and thousands of really bad, boring movies out of the footage, I’m sure.

PH: [Laughs] I’ve got to say I’ve seen a lot of these movies, going back to John Cassavettes, who had his own thing going on. Still, it’s unusual. I’m sure Nat deserves a lot of the credit, but I’m sure you gave him the beats to work with.

Anyhow, moving on just a little bit, I want ask a question about the way you decided who was going to be who. Originally, Mark was going to be Andrew, but when you came aboard, it was sort of never a question that it was you who would be Andrew. I was wondering…I was just looking at your Wikipedia entry. It said that as a teen that, like Andrew did a bit later in his life, you had actually traveled through Mexico. Was that always there?

JL: I think that, once again, it’s what you’re good at and what you’re not. I don’t think if you ever hired me to improvise a Ph.D. character, I would ever do something authentic.

Where improvising works best is where you’re pulling at least facets of your own personality into the story; you don’t have to reach very far….I pulled a lot from my past and a lot of stuff from my late teens and early twenties and kind of transposed that in my head as to what that would feel like if I was still doing those same exact things in my mid-thirties – I think we all have have friends like that…

PH: Some of us are that.

JL: [Chuckles] Some of us want to be that. But, with Andrew, his real cross to bear in the course of this film and in the course of his life is…I think that stuff starts out as exploration and the longer you do it at a certain point you cross over into just straight avoidance. I think he’s done that somewhere along the way and hasn’t really admitted that to himself. This situation kind of gives him a perfect opportunity to confront that.

PH: And now we’re at the eight minute point here and I’m just curious: Do you ever get to go through an interview where no one mentions “Blair Witch”?

JL: (Quiet for a moment): I think there was one. [Chuckles]. I had to think about it. There might have been one or two.

PH: I actually didn’t make the connection until I was watching the extras on the DVD. I saw “Blair Witch” at the time. I liked it; I’m rather easily scared and so it really scared the heck out of me. That was you in the corner at the end of the movie, right …or was it the other guy?

JL: I think it was Mike [Michael C. Williams] in the corner.

PH: Oh, I’m sorry.

JL: It’s okay.

PH: Anyhow, you guys really scared me. It is kind of interesting that this probably going to be something – I hope — that will be on your Wikipedia page now right alongside “Blair Witch.” It’s kind of an interesting case of two poles of your career because that was obviously also a case where you were effectively a co-writer. And, in that case, even a co-director/co-cinematographer because you were holding a camera.

JL: Andrew has his cross to bear and I have my cross to bear. On one side, it’s something that I am so fucking proud of….There’s a part of me that looks back on the 14 year-old version of myself who discovered punk rock and was like “people can just make things.” You can just go out and make stuff and you don’t have to wait for permission to do it. And I really, to this day, believe in that ethos.

You know, the first time Mark and I ever met, I virtually stalked him. We became friends later, but I saw “The Puffy Chair” and that film just blew my mind. It’s speaking to me, very specifically generationally. Also, it was a great piece of art that was made by any means necessary, which I think is fantastic.

That being said, being back at Sundance, ten years to the day of the premiere of “Blair Witch” with another low-budget improvised film, there was [chuckling] that feeling like “Is this my lot in life?” Will I just never make any money and keep doing cool, obscure movies and every once in a while one of them will pop up?

I’ve tried the other stuff and I’ve done bigger and far worse things. I never get a chance to give as much of my authentic self as I would like. I think one of the great things about growing up is just figuring out what you’re good at and what you don’t have to waste your time, or anybody else’s time, trying to pursue anymore

PH: And this is the other question you’re probably getting asked all the time, but I still have to ask it. Have you seen “Paranormal Activity”?

JL: I haven’t seen it yet. I hear it’s good.

PH: It is very good, but I was also thinking that they had it a lot easier than you guys did. They spent the whole movie in a townhouse in San Diego.

JL: [Laughs] Yes, the comfort level [on “Blair Witch”] was not often good. Fifty degree weather with rain….I have just finished directing a film, so I haven’t seen anything.

PH: I think for you, personally, you’ll find it an interesting film to watch. Anyhow, here’s a question that one of my editors, Will Harris, always asks. Of the movies between “Blair Witch” and “Humpday,” are they any you feel didn’t get enough love?

JL: Hmm. Uhm…

PH: Especially, I should say – not to put anybody down.

JL: There are other movies I did that I’m proud of. Not all of them for sure. At the end of the day, I think, kind of across the board, when a movie hits a vein with an audience…I am an audience member. I am part of a demographic and I kinda get it.

There are some movies that I personally really like but should they have blown up into huge successes? No. I’m a film geek. I like stuff that is a little more rarefied sometimes and not everybody’s going to like that. I don’t know if I would say “yes” to that.

PH: Okay. The one that I’m sorry I missed, which I haven’t seen, is “Live from Baghdad,” where you were actually third billed [after Michael Keaton and Helena Bonham Carter].

JL: I really liked “Live from Baghdad” but plenty of people saw that movie.

PH: [Laughs] It was on TV.

JL: Yeah, it’s an HBO movie. I’m thinking more the tiny little, experimental/independent films. That hit the people it was supposed to hit.

PH: Well, let’s talk about the movie that you just finished directing. What’s that going to be?

JL: It’s another tightly outlined but improv-dialogue film also kind of high-concept/reverse-engineered into something a little more human. It’s actually based on a T.C. Boyle story that I optioned out The New Yorker called “The Lie.” It’s about a guy who has, kind of slowly in the domestication process, given up his artistic dreams. He has a bit of a breakdown one day and decides he doesn’t want to go to work, gets backed into a corner and lies to his boss and says his newborn baby has just died. The movie takes place in the ensuing five days in which he throws the bomb into his life and when it blows up in his face.

Ben [Kasulke], who shot “Humpday” shot it. It was all friends and favors. I got the most amazing cast. I just called up all my favorite actor friends and got them to come out and play. Mark Weber from “Shrink” and “Broken Flowers”; Jess Weixler from “Teeth”; Jane Adams who I had done “Hung” with; PJ [James] Ransone from “The Wire”; Alicia Shawkat from “Arrested Development”; Kelli Garner from “Lars and the Real Girl”; Holly Woodlawn from the old Andy Warhol films….

PH: Wow.

JL: It was just the coolest group of people. [We also had] Kirk Baltz who was the cop who got his ear cut off in “Reservoir Dogs.” God, I hope he gets work because he’s absolutely brilliant.

It was another [movie] done very much in the spirit in which we did “Humpday” and, production wise, a little more difficult because it was a 15 day shoot with 22 locations with a 5 and a half-month old baby as our third lead…Not easy.

PH: [Laughs] I can imagine. This is an interesting one because I can’t tell from the concept whether it’s going to be black comedy or drama. Do you know what genre it’s going to be with a movie like this?

JL: Oh, we’re defying genres these days. I don’t know. “Dramedy” is such a terrible word to say. Who wants to say they made a “dramedy”?

PH: [Laughs]

JL: I think the same way that you hear the pitch on “Humpday” and you say, “Oh, that sounds…pretty stupid…”

PH: [Laughs some more.]

JL:...I think it’s one of those movies that absolutely is humorous, but where “Humpday” was kind of a movie about friendship and self-identity and taking responsibility for your adulthood, this is very much a movie about the struggle to grow-up and retain your ideals – the myths of growing up versus the reality of it. I think what’s great and fun to me about couching it all in this high concept is that you can address all those issues pretty head on, without running the risk of becoming too didactic and having your audience turn on you and feel like you’re trying to teach them a lesson.

PH: It sounds very interesting. It’s also interesting that you’re adapting something that’s been written in an improvisational way.

JL: I’m just curious what T.C.’s going to think.

PH: Yes, because it’s going to go in different directions, obviously.

JL: Well, yeah. Also, it’s a 15-page story and we shot 55 hours worth of footage for a 90 minute movie. The character that Mark Weber plays is mentioned twice in the whole story, peripherally, and he plays one of the most instrumental roles in the film. A lot of things you have to invent from whole cloth in order to make it work structurally.

PH: We’re probably getting to where you need to move on….’

PUBLICIST (breaking in): About one more question, Bob, okay?

PH: That’s exactly what I was going to ask. Getting back to something I probably should have asked you before…that final scene in “Humpday.” We know that there was no plan. I asked Mark this, but did you have like a million contingencies in your head since you didn’t know what he was going to do. Was it “If he does X, I’ll do Y”? Did you think about it in that way beforehand?

JL: It’s funny, and I’m not a touchy-feely actor guy. It’s a little bit more storytelling and pragmatism, the way I look at it. But I will say that because we shot the film in sequence and we basically have been living in the character’s skin for ten days, there was so little thought that went into that scene. There was so little premeditation…

It was really one of those rare experiences that I seldom have as an actor where I just walked into the situation and owned the character and was able to respond as things came up. What’s funny about it is that every take of that scene was probably, at it its shortest, forty minutes…I think we did about 12 takes; we shot until dawn. I would say probably 70% of what made it into the final film was from the first few takes. It was all the stuff where it was freshest.

It’s what’s fun about working with your friends. What’s fun about improvising is that you get to know what people’s buttons are. Sometimes you find a grenade and you stick it in your back pocket and you know you’re going to throw it at somebody at any given point. It gives you a little power coming into the scene. If you’re working with somebody as smart as Mark, you throw it out, and he tosses an atom bomb right back at you and then you’ve got to deal with that.

PH: So, in a way it would be kind of pointless to plan ahead?

JL: Exactly.

PH: Okay, we’ll thank you very much Andrew…I mean Joshua – this is how good you are! (laughing)

JL: I take that as a compliment.

Within the format itself, the whole concept of reality TV must surely have been the biggest revolution of the decade. It’s really easy to bag on reality TV – mostly because the bulk of it is so damned unreal – but anybody who spends any time in front of the tube has surely had at least a couple of reality series they consider appointment TV. The two concepts that paved the way for everything else are undoubtedly “Survivor” and “American Idol.” The former, of course, opened the floodgates for the genre, and while it’s seen a considerable dip in the ratings department over the years, 12 million viewers isn’t a viewing figure to sneeze at. The latter, despite all the bitching and moaning and cries of “it’s not as good as it used to be” that accompany each new season, remains one of the most watched shows on the tube, likely due to the fact that it’s strictly a talent competition.

On “American Idol,” the only backstabbers are the judges, and since they aren’t part of the competition, their amusing duplicity is championed. The contestants, on the other hand, are innocents, and once the competition is underway, we’re given no peek into any possible backstage drama, which is a good thing, because by the time the audition rounds are over, we’ve had enough drama to last the whole season. Everything that comes after is all about who can best transfix us for three minutes a week via one pop ditty. It actually says something positive about the U.S. that “American Idol” remains our #1 form of reality entertainment, even if the actual reality is that the vast majority of Americans couldn’t care less about buying the winner’s album six months after they’re crowned.

You might think reality TV is a bunch of crap, and in most cases you’d be right, but the whole idea of it, to my mind, led to an important revolution, and that is serialized nighttime television (the classic “soap” formula notwithstanding). Reality shows taught viewers how to become invested in characters, how to be concerned for their eventual fate, and, most importantly, how to pay attention to an ongoing storyline, and the need to tune in every week. It didn’t take long for the networks to figure out that there was an audience for shows that didn’t continually hit the reset button. “24” must have been the first successful show of the decade to embrace the serial formula, and it embraced it whole hog. It required you to tune in for every episode, because each installment was another hour of a single day in the life of Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer. That “24” premiered less than two months after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 was pure happenstance. That it became enormously popular with viewers? Probably not so much. America needed some fictitious reassurance that there were folks on the job who could get shit done, and “24” filled the prescription.

Strangely, “24” didn’t open the network floodgates for more such programming right away. It took a few years, and then “Lost” made its mark. The number of “Lost” episodes I’ve seen could be counted on two hands, but that’s not because I didn’t like it, but because real life got in the way of it being appointment TV. Yet I viewed the pilot for “Lost” several months before its 2004 premiere, and when it ended I was convinced that I’d seen the second best TV pilot ever made. (“Twin Peaks” stills sits at #1.) The fact that a show as intricate as “Lost” still has a hardcore, central audience is perhaps a testament to that pilot. “24” started a new story with each new season; “Lost” required that you tune in for every episode of every season.

Another sci-fi series that did just that was “Battlestar Galactica,” a show that, due it being on a niche network (Syfy), never amassed a huge audience yet snagged boatloads of publicity and awareness nonetheless. It was no small feat to take an utterly laughable short-lived series from the late ‘70s and re-envision it for modern audiences, but Ron Moore and company did just that…and they did it far more successfully that anyone ever guessed possible. Most amazingly, the show taught us a lot about ourselves, by thoroughly defining what it means to be human, and as the damaged ‘00s dragged on, there may not have been a more important lesson to be learned.

On the same day I saw the “Lost” pilot, I saw another pilot for a completely different kind of series. While I didn’t rank it as one of the greats, there was one thing I was sure of: it would be a massive hit…and it was. “Desperate Housewives” was precisely the sort of vapid, soapy fare that had been absent for far too long on American TV. It clued into the seemingly bland suburban construct which surrounds so many Americans, via the Lynchian notion that “all is not what it seems.” Most anyone who lives a suburban life can no doubt relate to that idea, because wherever there are groups of people, there are bound to be some of them that are fucked up. “Housewives” is littered with fucked up suburbanites of all shapes, sizes and types, but they’re kooky and funny and there’s always some twinkly music playing in the background that in the end makes everything OK. It is not great television, but over the years it has, for the most part, been immensely watchable in the most disposable sort of way.

Around the same time period as “Housewives,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” made some major waves. It’s a series I have never watched and never plan to, but I’d be foolish to omit it from discussion since it brought two annoyingly obnoxious terms to the TV table: McDreamy and McSteamy. I haven’t heard either in a few years, but there was a time when they seemed to define everything that was wrong with television. I assume “Grey’s” fans have grown out of it…or maybe the show killed one of those guys off? I’ve no idea and can’t be motivated to investigate. Presently, there’s a brand new version of it going around, through cinema, via Camp Edward and Camp Nimrod. People can be so easily distracted it makes you wonder why some shows actually try harder.

Speaking of trying harder, it’s a good time to bring up some cable shows, otherwise I’m going to lose about 90% of the readers – only people who appreciate cable fare are likely to be on the net reading an article like this in the first place. “The Sopranos.” Jeez, what can possibly be said that hasn’t been said already? It turned pay-TV into a must-have for millions, and proved that there was a huge audience for an ongoing series with gratuitous nudity, violence and bad language. Of course David Chase’s baby wasn’t just tits, blood and variations on the word fuck – it was also a deep exploration of the human condition. You didn’t have to be a gangster to identify with Tony Soprano’s problems – you just had to understand them, which wasn’t a tall order since most of his dilemmas had nothing to do with offing people. The show rearranged the mafia formula so methodically, that it’s presented a serious challenge for any like-minded material that’s come since. It’s too soon to proclaim the definitive TV series of the ‘00s, but were I placing bets on what folks would say 20 years from now, I’d put my money on this one.

Fans of “The Wire,” would tell me I’m insane with the previous assertion, but since every time I’ve tried to watch “The Wire” I’ve fallen asleep, I’ve no basis for an argument. The thing is, the people I know who worship “The Wire” (and for some it really is a fucking religion) are the smartest, most well-read and educated, witty and interesting folk in my life. I’m probably a boob for not “getting it,” but I’m willing to bet there are quite a few other “boobs” reading these words, nodding in agreement. “The Wire” must be engaging, literate television…that was so niche it failed to capture a huge audience. The thing is, “Wire” fanatics, not everyone “gets” your show, no matter how damn good it is. You know how I know this? My two favorite shows of the ‘00s – both of which I believe to be incredible examples of TV – are “Doctor Who” and “Farscape,” and yet I know better than to showcase them in this piece, because it quite simply wouldn’t make any sense to do so, as neither of them had any real impact on American culture. “The Wire,” however, probably made some very relevant statements on certain segments of our culture, which is why I’ve devoted this much space to it. It’s too bad the general public didn’t bother to tune in and care. Maybe there wasn’t enough tits and ass?

There was plenty of tit and ass on another HBO series that captured a great deal of attention, and that was “Sex and the City.” This one I’ve seen far too much of, and I’ve no hesitation in saying that while “The Wire” made me comatose, and its fans may have driven me up the wall, “Sex and the City” made my blood boil, and its fans are some of the most clueless I’ve come across in all my TV watching years. Here’s the thing with this show: These women are not meant to be emulated. They are not just bad examples of women, they are bad examples of human beings. Some folks made the same mistake by rooting for Tony Soprano, only David Chase had the good sense to eventually call them on the carpet for it. The people who made this show never did any such thing, even though I’m fucking positive they damn well know better. If you think Carrie Bradshaw is an encouraging role model, then I hope you enjoy living alone for the rest of your life, because that’s exactly what’s going to happen if you choose to behave as she did in this series. Since the show has miraculously moved on to successful movies – proving that its disciples are more slavish than any fan base outside of “Star Trek” – it begs to have a happy ending sooner or later. And unless the writers dig way down deep and drag these women through the muck all the way to a reasonable sense of enlightenment – it’s going to be horribly hollow. There was, quite simply, no show that was more evil and insidious in the past decade than this one. Not even “According to Jim.”

Lest you think that outside of “The Sopranos” I’ve a hatred for all things HBO, that’s hardly the case. Even with my opinions of “The Wire” and “Them Clueless Bitches in NY,” there’s no question that HBO uniformly provided the finest entertainment of the decade. There have been times when critics have championed Showtime as “the new HBO,” yet I couldn’t come up with a single series from that network that really mattered. Oh, they’ve tried, but if the cream of their crop is “Dexter” and “Weeds,” they’ve got a long way to go before catching up to Home Box Office (a phrase that’s all but forgotten, yet is perhaps more descriptive than ever). “Six Feet Under” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” are two series that have had a lot to say about the people we are/were in the ‘00s: The former through its deep exploration of fractured and problematic humanity, and the latter though its shallow exploration of fractured and problematic humanity. I miss “Six Feet Under” immensely, although it ended at a perfectly reasonable point. I look forward to more “Curb” because it has no clue where to end; hopefully Larry David will keep coming back to it every few years until either he dies, or runs out of straw men to bash.

“Curb” is damn funny. Wish I could say that about more comedies in the ‘00s, but the humor was scattered and inconsistent. As far as the defining comedy of the decade? That’s a tough one to assign, since nearly every single offering seemed to appeal to a different kind of audience, but the honor should probably go to “The Office.” Here’s a show that, given the track record of translated Britcoms, should not have worked, and yet it did, and continues to do so. I’m not sure exactly what “The Office” has to say about the typical workplace, because I haven’t done that sort of work in years, yet it still largely manages to be a scream on the occasions I bother to tune in, which is, admittedly, maybe once every six or so weeks (chances are if I tuned in every week I’d have gotten sick of it a long time ago).

Probably the most influential comedy of the past ten years was “Arrested Development,” and it also happened to be the most prescient: George Bluth, Sr. was Bernie Madoff long before the phrase “Ponzi scheme” entered our everyday vernacular. The series has a devoted following that continues to demand a movie followup that they may never even see (but we’ve got our fingers crossed, even if the storyline revolves around George Michael’s funeral).

Fox discovered it could build a Sunday night empire on animated fare outside of “The Simpsons” by bringing back a series in ‘05 that it’d cancelled in ‘02. “Family Guy” may not be the definitive comedy of the ‘00s, but it must be one of, if not the most popular. It’s been amazing to watch comeback kid Seth McFarlane conquer the world through sheer idiocy, and one wonders exactly what sort of Faustian deal was made, and which supernatural deity has such a warped sense of humor.

Comedy Central’s “South Park” remains the go-to series for pissing people off, and rare is the season that goes by without some kind of shitstorm erupting from the questionable content presented by Messrs. Parker and Stone. Again, here’s a show I never really got into, but probably not for any reason you’d guess: I simply get bored by the cutout animation style, and it visually fails to hold my attention. One of my editors, however, was quite insistent that it be included here, which seemed a reasonable directive, especially given how often it’s been a focal point for controversy and discussion.

Also on Comedy Central we’ve seen the rise of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” a comedic take on daily events that for many has turned into an actual source of news, which in itself says something more profound about our country than anything I can possibly come up with. But I ask you, who presents a more reasonable version of the day’s events – Stewart or Glenn Beck? Sometimes the only thing left to do is laugh, because nothing’s really funny anymore. Something should be said about the show’s previous host, Craig Kilborn, but it would fall on mostly deaf ears, as nobody either cares or remembers that “The Daily Show” ever even had another host. (See also “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.”)

“The Colbert Report” is a spinoff of “The Daily Show,” and a lot of people are fervent believers in Stephen Colbert’s mock brand of conservatism. Occasionally, you get the awful sensation that some of them might not realize that it’s all a big joke, but rest assured it is. Mind you, I say that even though the joke has always escaped me, but then again, I love “Real Time with Bill Maher,” so what do I know?

Actually, one thing I do know for sure is that Americans love their fictitious cops, doctors and lawyers. We can’t get enough of idealizing these three professions that in real life we fear and/or hate. Noteworthy legal dramas were on the lean side in the ‘00s, and with a half a dozen versions of “Law & Order” (a concept that has the cojones to showcase all three professions to varying degrees) on the schedule, it’s perhaps unsurprising that lawyers especially got the short end of the TV stick. Regardless, “Boston Legal,” was a fantastically entertaining series that was never shy on opinion. During its run (’04-’08), it managed to do an exhaustive job of chronicling the political and social landscape as seen through the eyes of two very different lawyers – über liberal Alan Shore (James Spader) and extremist conservative Denny Crane (William Shatner). The show was clearly aimed at folks who wanted to think, which is probably why it never amassed a huge audience.

On the cop front – or indeed on any front – there was no show people tuned in for en masse more than “CSI.” Man, this thing was a ratings monster, and it even spawned two successful spinoffs. Of course, the central characters aren’t actually cops, but rather criminologists, but since they’re investigating and solving crime, they might as well be. The concept likely paved the way for all sorts of other successful fare such as, but not limited to, “NCIS” and “Criminal Minds,” as well as their current and future spinoffs.

The best cop drama of the ‘00s was “The Shield,” and it was a huge step forward for the genre, since it didn’t ask us to love its morally bankrupt central character, Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis), and yet the intricate study of this man made it very difficult not to relate to him on some level. For perhaps the first time in a cop drama, we saw an officer of the law (actually several) faced with all the temptations we assume cops are presented with on a daily basis; sometimes they indulged, sometimes not. Either way it went down, for the first couple of seasons especially, the damn thing felt so real.

If “The Shield” was the most real cop show of the decade, then “Monk” was the most absurd, but it never pretended to be anything other than a whimsical presentation of criminal investigation. In lieu of delivering a fascinating storyline, “Monk” delivered a fascinating central character, brought to life by Tony Shalhoub. This past weekend saw the end of “Monk,” which was heartbreaking and uplifting simultaneously, and yet it was an ending for a lengthy ongoing series that snagged little press. People won’t realize how much they’re missing “Monk” until it’s been off the air for a few years. This is the kind of show of which we’ll see TV-movie followups in the coming years; Shalhoub, much like Peter Falk before him, will never escape this character.

Then there are the doctors. Resting uncomfortably at the top is Hugh Laurie who stars as “House.” I personally have some major reservations about this show, but I’d be a damn fool to not realize its power to entertain, and much like “Monk,” the show wouldn’t work without the talents of its central star driving the bus. There’s no question that the man just inhabits this character, and adding to the equation is the fact that, once again, it’s a bold new stab at a tired genre. The idea of taking the medical cases for which nobody has the solution is a grand one, and episodes typically feel more like mysteries than medical drama. The other great series of the ‘00s that revolved around surgery turned out to be not so great after all.

FX’s “Nip/Tuck” charged out of the gate, and its first two seasons rewrote the book on what TV doctors could be. During that period, it felt like we were watching TV history unfold, and we probably were. Too bad that book ended up being more of a novella. Here I am watching the show’s sixth season every single week, mostly because the end is nigh and Episode 100, which, as I understand it, airs in March of ’10, will be the finale. (If the show had no end in sight, I’d have given up some time ago.) Surely there must not have been a series this decade that showed more promise in the beginning, and then went so disastrously south so quickly? I suppose there’s a lesson to be learned here about making tit jobs the central draw of your series – or perhaps knife-wielding madmen are just not the best course of action to take when telling this kind of story. In any case, flawed though it is, you gotta give credit to the show for saying everything there is to say about the previously unexplored topic of plastic surgery.

Speaking of madmen, let’s wrap all this up with “Mad Men,” a series I was reluctant to mention here, yet two people on the Bullz-Eye staff suggested it as being important to this piece. The main reason I didn’t see it as worthy of inclusion is because, even with three seasons under its belt, the show still feels as if it’s in its infancy. Perhaps this is my problem, as I don’t see that the series has properly defined its mission as of yet. It’s a period piece and when I watch it, I wonder, “How will these characters react to disco?” Yes, that proposition is ludicrous, yet I’m unable to see a proper end for this story, and I’m not sure how it fits into this decade any more than it will fit into the next. But I have a feeling that the deepest parts of the series have yet to be presented, and that much of what we’ve seen over the past three years has been a sort of buildup. Matthew Weiner cut his teeth on scripts for “The Sopranos,” and even though the first few years of that series had massive amounts of greatness, the show delivered some of its finest, most definitive and thought-provoking material in the last two seasons. I’m hoping that Weiner took some notes from David Chase.

Back in 2005, Bullz-Eye kicked off a regularly-recurring feature that’s become a staple of our site: the TV Power Rankings, which gives us a chance to offer up our opinions once every six months on the best that television has to offer. Now that we’re looking back at the entire decade in our TV in the 2000s feature, however, it gave us an opportunity to look back at all of the shows that have appeared within the Rankings over the course of its history, and when we did, it was a little eyebrow-raising to see how many of our favorite programs bit the dust almost immediately after receiving accolades from us. We’re pretty sure their cancellations weren’t our fault…or, at least, not entirely. Anyway, take a look back through the list with us, won’t you? If nothing else, it shows that we’ve got good taste, even if the average viewer doesn’t always share our opinions.

1. Arrested Development (Fox, 2003 – 2006) – “Even if this is indeed the end for one of Fox’s all time greatest shows, it is better to have loved and lost…oh, the hell with that, Fox is freaking nuts if they cancel this show.” So said David Medsker in February 2006. But did they listen to him? They did not. “We’re not ones to buy into the whole dumbing-down-of-society thing,” Medsker added, “but if this show gets canned while ‘According to Jim’ lives on, maybe there’s something to it after all.” Oh, yeah, there’s definitely something to it: “According to Jim” stayed on the air until June 2009.

2. Deadwood (HBO, 2004 – 2006) – When it was announced that Season 3 would be the last for the semi-historical look at the wild west, there was really only one name that John Paulsen could call the folks at HBO. We probably shouldn’t use it here, but if you need a hint, it starts with a “C” and rhymes with “sock pluckers.” “Everything about the show – the language, the acting, the story, the sets and the costumes – is colorful,” Paulsen observed in February 2007, “and whether or not HBO wants to admit it, they’re going to miss ‘Deadwood’ once it’s gone for good.” They must’ve been in some serious denial, then: creator David Milch reportedly agreed to do a proper wrap-up of the series through a pair of “Deadwood” movies” for the network, but things never really got beyond the discussion stage.

3. Invasion (ABC, 2005 – 2006) – The fall of 2005 was a good time in prime time for sci-fi fans, with each of the big three networks offering up an entry from the genre, but by the spring of 2006, their cheers had turned to tears. NBC’s “Surface” was permanently submerged after 15 episodes, while CBS’s “Threshold” crossed the point of no return after only nine episodes had aired. Give ABC some credit, however, for at least sticking with their entry for the full 22. “’Invasion’ started slowly, but has steadily ramped up the creepiness,” said John Paulsen in February ’06, acknowledging that, although it gave its audience lots of questions, at least it was providing them with more answers than “Lost” was. Unfortunately, there was still plenty to be answered when the show was canceled, and things got even more depressing when Tyler Labine talked to Bullz-Eye about what might’ve been. “(Creator Shaun Cassidy) had written this bible for the show, and he had written this amazing five-season arc,” said Labine. “We were just floored. Our jaws were literally on the floor after he explained it to us. We were, like, ‘Wow, we’re on for a really great ride!’” What a shame for us all that the ride ended as quickly as it did.

4. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (NBC, 2005 – 2006) – Well, you can’t say that we weren’t honest about offering up both the pros and the cons of Aaron Sorkin’s behind-the-scenes look into a late-night comedy series. “The show is pompous, unrealistic and ridiculously left-wing,” admitted Jason Zingale in February 2007, “but it also makes for some damn good television.” Unfortunately, with an awful lead-in – seriously, who thought that pairing the show with “Heroes” was a good idea? – “Studio 60” didn’t develop enough of a following to earn a second season.

5. Rome (HBO, 2005 – 2007) – In its first season, “Rome” turned up at #18 in the Power Rankings, but by the time Season 2 aired, it had leapt to #6. Not that such success earned the show a third season (it was apparently ridiculously expensive to produce, which you can absolutely believe if you’ve ever seen it, but at least the news of its cancellation came in time for John Paulsen to register his annoyance within the February 2007 Rankings. “As it turns out, ‘Rome’ isn’t the heir to the throne of ‘The Sopranos,’” he wrote. “Instead, sadly, it’s a bastard stepchild, just like ‘Deadwood.’” Creator Bruno Heller was probably even more pissed than Paulsen, having mapped out his vision of the series all the way through its fifth season, but as recently as December 2008, Heller was still sounding optimistic about the chances for a “Rome” movie. “I would love to round that show off,” he told the Hollywood Reporter. Hey, we’re behind you 100%, Bruno.

6. Four Kings (NBC, 2006) – If you don’t remember this sitcom, you’re forgiven, as it premiered in January 2006 and was gone by March. Still, it made enough of an impression to earn Honorable Mention status in the February 2006 rankings. “Four Kings” was created by David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, the duo behind “Will and Grace,” and featured Seth Green as one of its cast members, so you might think it surprising that it was off the air within seven episodes (and with a remaining six episodes still unaired). Looking back, however, the fact that the greatest praise Jason Zingale could heap upon the show in his write-up was that “it’s a worthy quick-fix until NBC finds a better alternative” should’ve given us a clue that it wasn’t long for this world.

7. Jericho (CBS, 2006 – 2008) – It was the little show that could, our “Jericho.” It started with an awesomely dark premise – a nuclear bomb goes off in the U.S., and we view the repercussions through the eyes of a small town in Kansas – and, after figuring out its direction (the attempts to meld some “Little House on the Prairie” aspects to the show were soon phased out), the series found its footing, kicked some creative ass, and was promptly canceled. But what’s this…? The show’s diehard fanbase made enough noise (and sent enough nuts) to get the show a 7-episode second season which lived up to everyone’s expectations and then some. Too bad the same couldn’t be said for the ratings, but those who actually tuned in for Season 2 know how many twists, turns, and outright shocks it included. There’s still talk of a possible “Jericho” movie. We can only hope.

8. Journeyman (NBC, 2007 – 2008) – Ross Ruediger acknowledged in November 2007 that everything from “Back to the Future” and “Quantum Leap” to “Somewhere in Time” and “The Time Traveler’s Wife” could be seen as inspirations for this series, but he assured readers that “its brilliance lies in its ability to grab from wherever and cohesively bring it all back around into a series that delivers something special every week.” Despite Ruediger’s contention that the show “continually demonstrates the potential to become a classic sci-fi/romance series for the books,” the combination of so-so ratings and the curse of being produced by another studio (20th Century Fox) resulted in NBC deciding against a second season.

9. Dirty Sexy Money (ABC, 2007 – 2009) – It could’ve been a throwback to the glory days of “Dynasty,” but with a cast including Donald Sutherland, Peter Krause, and Jill Clayburgh, the series quickly evolved into something more substantial. “At first glance, it seemed the foibles of the rich and powerful Darling family would strictly be seen through the eyes of their comparatively ‘normal’ attorney, Nick George, and we’d all have a good laugh at how out of touch they were from the real world,” I wrote in November 2007. “Gradually, however, we’re reminded that, although we’re still in the gutter, the Darlings are looking at the same stars we are.” Although the series survived the writer’s strike to return for a second season, the ratings were such that, at the end of December 2008, it was pulled from the schedule. By the time it returned, it had already been canceled, making the season / series ending cliffhanger all the more cruel.

10. Pushing Daisies (ABC, 2007 – 2009) – Anyone who can appreciate a show about a piemaker who can bring people back from the dead can surely also appreciate the irony that, with such a strange premise, its days were always going to be numbered. Indeed, John Paulsen acknowledged as much in November 2007, but he was still optimistic, praising the shows cinematography, sets, and costumes, then observing that “’Pushing Daisies’ debuted to strong ratings and seems to be doing just fine.” And so it was, right up until the writer’s strike, which derailed it and every other series that had been gathering momentum. Once it returned, things were never quite the same, which Paulsen acknowledged in November 2008, bemoaning, “It has pretty much devolved into a weekly procedural format that lacks the compelling season-long storylines that made the first season so much fun.” Why do I suspect that the changes were the result of ABC wanting the series to be more accessible? If that was indeed the case, then it sure as hell backfired.

11. Reaper (The CW, 2007 – 2009) – Best pilot episode of the decade? If not, it’s certainly on the short list of contenders. A show about three slackers working as demon bounty hunters for Satan may have sounded like a dude’s version of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” but many nonbelievers were swayed over to the “Reaper” camp by the deliciously devilish performance of Ray Wise as Lucifer himself. The series had a few creative struggles in its first season, but Bob Westal assured readers, “There’s plenty of room here for seasons more of good-natured deviltry.” Indeed, when it returned for Season 2, he confirmed that “the travails of Sam Oliver remain a highly reliable source of big laughs and an occasional thrill,” adding that “’Reaper’ has done a fabulous job of balancing emotion with comic timing and spook-hunting slapstick.” And how was it rewarded for these successes? With cancellation, of course.

12. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Fox, 2007 – 2009) – A “Terminator” TV series? Surely the third movie killed the franchise dead, no? Well, you’d think so, but John Paulsen wrote of “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” in November 2007, “the series has accomplished a major feat: overcoming the skepticism of both critics and fans and being able to translate the ‘Terminator’ story to a serialized format.” It still gave people headaches with all of its back-and-forth time travel, of course, but once you put on your Suspension of Disbelief hat, you realized that show runner Josh Friedman and company had found a way to combine the necessary technological components of the ‘Terminator’ mythos with deep characterization. When Fox canceled the show at the end of Season 2, it seemed like an inexplicable move. “Why drop the show just as you’ve got a new ‘Terminator’ movie coming out?” we wondered. “Surely it can only help the series!” And then we saw the movie and understood: Poor “Sarah” never had a chance at salvation.

13. Life on Mars (ABC, 2008 – 2009) – Talk about a show that was doomed from the start…and we’re not even talking about the retooling that the series went through in its early stages, when it was originally going to be helmed by David E. Kelley. No, the problem with “Life on Mars” is that it was an American adaptation of a much beloved British series, and the majority of the fans of the original version steadfastly refused to watch the new version. The show’s premise (a cop gets knocked unconscious in 2009 and wakes up in 1973) was already going to result in an uphill ratings battle, but take those who would ordinarily be its core audience out of the picture, and…well, here we are back where we started. If there’s any good thing to be said about the cancelation of “Life on Mars,” it’s that the producers had enough advance notice about their fate to actually write an ending. Of course, half the fans hated it, but, hey, it’s the thought that counts, right?

14. Dollhouse (Fox, 2009) – Well, really, what did we expect from a show that was dogged by rumors before it even premiered that Fox had no particular love for it? Granted, after “Firefly,” we’d come to expect that sort of thing, but when “Dollhouse” came slowly out of the gate, we never expected to see a Season 2. But the show’s creative direction shaped up quickly, leading David Medsker to declared in February 2009, “With crack supporting players Harry Lennix and Olivia Williams providing ballast, some remarkable visuals, and numerous creepy/thought-provoking ideas, we think ‘Dollhouse’ has earned our support.” To our surprise, Fox actually renewed the series, but their support didn’t last long: just before we went to press with the November 2009 Power Rankings, the plug was officially pulled. In his write-up / obituary for the show, Medsker made no attempt to deny the flaws of “Dollhouse,” but he spoke for many when he said of the series, “We may not have always loved it, but that won’t stop us from watching until the very end.”

15. Kings (NBC, 2009) – NBC shot its own program in the foot when it offered a panel for “Kings” at the fall TCA tour in 2008 without having a pilot for them to screen first. If you’ve never seen the series, trust us: it’s kind of hard to explain. The scope of “Kings” was downright epic, often nearing Shakespearean proportions, but as I wrote in April 2009, “the characters had depth, and the actors portraying them – including Ian McShane, Dylan Baker, Christopher Egan, Eamonn Walker, Sebastian Stan and Susanna Thompson – offered performances which lived up to the show’s lofty goals.” If “Kings” had been on FX, it would probably still be on the air, but NBC offered the series little opportunity to build an audience, quickly moving it from Sunday night to…ugh…Saturday. This was, as I wrote at the time, “the equivalent of a doctor saying, ‘I’m sorry, but there’s nothing more we can do,’ and removing life support.” The only credit the network deserves is for releasing the complete series on DVD, and since it was surely only done as a cost-recouping maneuver, they probably don’t even deserve that.