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Ever since I saw my first episode of "Oz" two summers ago, I haven't been able to figure out if it's one of the best television shows I've ever seen or one of the worst. I think it's both. I've never seen a more graphic, horrific show than this one, from the creators of NBC's "Homicide: Life on the Street." And from a moralistic standpoint, there's never been a worse series: every sin imaginable is shown in explicit detail. But that's exactly the strength of this show. It's a true shock to the system. I've never been more confronted with the brutal reality of sin and its consequences than I have been through this show. No fictional television program has made me lie in my bed thinking about issues of justice before. I cannot recommend the show. In fact, I strongly recommend against watching it. All I can say is that it's the most powerful hour of television I've ever seen.

Plenty of caveats for this one, too. Yes, the show has shown increasing deference to Wicca this year. And yes, it sometimes speaks out of both sides of its mouth on the violence issue. But for adult viewers, the show's strengths surpass its surface weaknesses. Taken as a whole, the writing is simply brilliant, mastering metaphor, parable, and actual drama more deftly than any film I saw this year. And, in a striking difference between "Buffy" and most other shows, the characters actually change over time. Good characters succumb to temptation and are forever changed. Evil characters experience redemption (usually through sacrifice). All characters learn from their experiences.

Ten years old and it's still funny week after week. In 1992, George Bush (the one who was president) told the National Religious Broadcasters, "We need a nation closer to the Waltons than the Simpsons." Maybe so, but on television, we need social commentary closer to "The Simpsons" than the syrupy, "everyone be nice" sentimentalism of shows that seem to permeate the CBS network.

The Simpsons' animated neighbors, this show was once hard to figure out. Just how much were the series' creators mocking Hank Hill and his family? The answer is "Plenty," but it's become obvious that Hank is a human hero, noble yet fallen. The show seems to be written with an unlikely but successful mix of irony and respect that I imagine can only come from writers who have a Hillish past.

It's a requirement of writing these lists that you praise "The Sopranos." Actually, you're supposed to list it first—show of the year and all that—but I thought I'd go out on a limb and put it down here. All the other TV writers will probably hurt me terribly now. Seriously, though, HBO's overpraised and overhyped series does an amazing job of presenting the futility of trying to live a completely self-pleasing life and expecting it to be peaceful.

The darker, scarier, Byzantine sister series of those other Star Trek series finished its run this summer, and I'm sorry to see it go. By doing away with Gene Roddenberry's ridiculous utopian vision of the future (no poverty, no colds, no racial strife), DS9 had a much more realistic view of the human condition. And, unlike the other series, it rarely offered good-vs-evil plots. Kai Winn's slow, reluctant turn to evil through her own conceit was one of television's most nuanced looks at pride.

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January (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44