Good TV was hard to find in 2003.
That's probably always been the case, but it seems more so than ever.
Weird TV, on the other hand, was everywhere, from the Britney-Madonna kiss on MTV to Michael Jackson on 60 Minutes.
Paris Hilton simultaneously became the star of an Internet sex tape and a Fox reality show, giving her a particularly dubious form of media exposure, 2003-style.
Those who hoped the reality trend would just fade away are sadly disapppointed.
The stuff is everywhere you look, from the spate of home renovation shows to increasingly weird takes on romance.
Even Monica Lewinsky hosted a reality show in 2003, the dreadful Mr. Personality. Fox is actually working on a reality show that could, in theory, run forever.
I'm just waiting for Average Joe Millionaire's Queer Extreme Idol Wedding.
Trista and Ryan's wedding, a $1 million made-for-TV event, probably did more to devalue the idea of marriage than every gay marriage in Canada.
And speaking of gay, the fab five gay guys of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy became the media stars du jour when their unstinting efforts to teach hapless straight men the basics of hair care, home decor and finishing off fancy desserts with a tiny blowtorch became an unexpected hit for Bravo.
The line between TV's reality and the non-TV version became virtually transparent in 2003.
In November, CBS and NBC went head-to-head with biopics on kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart and captured American soldier Jessica Lynch. Neither one seemed overly persnickety with the facts.
And then there was an actual war in Iraq, with real bullets and real suffering.
The war had been in the makings for months, and TV networks -- who had spent big bucks on embedded reporters and high-tech equipment -- were champing at the bit.
MSNBC aired a countdown clock ticking off the seconds to war, and when the combat started, most news anchors turned into cheerleaders for the home team, complete with digitalized American flags waving in the corners of the screen.
A few images from the war stick in the memory, maybe because they were designed for television in the first place:
President George W. Bush, decked out in a Top Gun flight suit, on the deck of an aircraft carrier with a huge "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him. Turned out to be a little premature.
Then there was a captured Saddam Hussein, bearded and disheveled, having his hair and teeth poked at like a vagrant who had wandered into a walk-in clinic.
In the entertainment world, it wasn't a very good year for the big three networks, since a lot of TV's best in 2003 was broadcast by cable channels.
Many of the most heavily promoted new network shows (NBC's Coupling, for example), disappeared within a very few weeks.
CBS looked particularly bad when it caved in to conservative pressure by cancelling a biopic on Ronald and Nancy Reagan and shipping it over to pay channel Showtime.
The network managed to appear both stupid, for not realizing it was sticking its Guccis into a hornet's nest, and cowardly, for not airing the show.
When The Reagans finally aired, it turned out to be your run-of-the-mill drama, no better or worse than a zillion others.
After all this, there was some worthwhile TV on the air in 2003. And although I hate to be corporate shill, if you want the best on television, do yourself a favor and get HBO.
True, the pay channel's self-congratulation gets old after a while. And they did have their share of stinkers, such as the unwatchable experiment K Street.
But the folks who brought Angels in America to the screen are clearly doing something right. And one of these days -- they promise -- The Sopranos will be back.
Here's my list of 2003's top 10, in no special order:
1. Angels in America (HBO): Director Mike Nichols and an A-list cast (Al Pacino, Emma Thompson, Meryl Streep) bring Tony Kushner's epic of love and death, ghosts and God in the age of AIDS to the small screen. Kushner's fountain of language is a special effect all its own.
2. The Wire (HBO): You've got to pay attention to the labyrinthine, slowly unfolding plot, but the results are worthwhile. Other shows -- Line of Fire, for example -- try to show the parallel worlds of cops and criminals, but no one's managed the depth and compassion of The Wire.
3. CSI (CBS): The airwaves are littered with forensic cop shows (Cold Case, Without a Trace, NCIS) but this one's the best. This season, they cleared away some of the distracting sub-plots (Grissom's hearing loss) to concentrate on the cases.
4. 24 (Fox): Sure, you've got to suspend your disbelief. And you have to hope the trouble-magnet Kim avoids any more cougars. (They promised she would this year). But this is an addictive thrill ride with plenty of weird twists and turns. One of the few shows where you can't guess what will happen.
5. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (Bravo): OK, it perpetrates stereotypes, with gays as the flawless arbiters of good taste and straight men as hopeless dolts. It's still a lot of fun, and the relationship between the Fab Five and their subjects is surprisingly sweet.
6. Boomtown (NBC): Grrrrrrr. . . it still makes me mad the way NBC treated one of 2003's best shows. First, they tried dumbing it down by reducing the alternate points of view that made it unique. Then they gave it a tough Friday night time slot. Finally they took it off the air, and burned off the last four episodes during the dead weekend between Christmas and New Year's. Maybe it will get some new life on DVD.
7. Arrested Development (Fox): That rarity, an innovative network comedy, produced and narrated by Ron Howard. Jason Bateman plays the lone beacon of sanity in a very dysfunctional family. Lots of weird funny stuff here, but be sure to check out the guest appearances by Liza Minelli, and Jeffrey Tambor's performance as the family patriarch, who appears to be flourishing in prison.
8. The Simpsons (Fox): The perennial, with some of the best writing on TV and an apparently endless stream of guest voices -- this year they got English Prime Minister Tony Blair. How The Simpsons manages to stay funny and fresh for so long is a small miracle.
9. Sex and the City (HBO): The gal-pals are a bit older now, and they're dealing with grown-up stuff such as marriage and babies. But they still have an eye for the perfectly mixed Cosmo, a great pair of shoes, and a hunky man. Most of all, they still have each other to lean on.
10. Six Feet Under (HBO): Yeah, it's a soap opera, but a dark and funny soap opera with a unique setting, the Fisher family funeral home. Last season wasn't perfect, but I'm still watching.
Some runners up: Karen Sisco, Joan of Arcadia, The Shield, Monk, Playmakers, The Larry David Show, The Gilmore Girls, Without a Trace, The Amazing Race (my favorite reality show), The O.C., Lucky (alas, no longer with us).
Avert Your Eyes department: The plastic surgery scenes in FX's Nip/Tuck. The rest of the show, by the way, is pretty good.
Cool Casting Department: I'm watching The Practice again, even after budget considerations forced David E. Kelley to fire about two-thirds of the cast. The reason is the arrival of James Spader as a snarky but somehow endearing lawyer.
