Onward, as we move beyond “pleasant sitcoms” and “prestige shows that didn’t reach their aspirations,” to “better and more rewatchable sitcoms” and “semi-prestige shows that mostly hit their aspirations.”

26. Bob’s Burgers
Seasons 13-14
FOX

Bob’s hasn’t done much to vary the formula over the years, and hasn’t needed to, but there were a couple of things I noticed in this run of episodes I wanted to highlight. As Bob’s has gotten deeper in its run, it’s done a little more experimentation with form and exploration of the lessons of parenting and of the emotional core of the show. Several of the early season-14 episodes hit a little more on the nose with the lessons Bob and Linda want to impart on their kids– or, sometimes, the lessons they themselves need to learn about them.

The emotional core is explored through episodes like the season 13 finale “Amelia,” where Louise’s insistence on writing her school paper on Amelia Earhart (despite classmate Wayne’s annoying insistence that getting lost at sea isn’t very heroic) leads into Louise and Linda exploring what it really means to be a hero. Or season 14’s “The Amazing Rudy,” which spends a lot of time looking at Regular-Sized Rudy’s home life, a good kid in a sad situation, dealing with a needy and insecure (and divorced) father and all the neuroses that stem from that.

In another episode off the beaten trail, season 13’s “Radio No You Didn’t” kicks off with Linda cleaning out the closet and finding an old broken radio she wants to throw out; Bob insists it’s a family heirloom, and we flash back to tell the story thereof. Bob’s grandmother Alice used to leave the radio tuned to an empty shortwave station because the static helped infant Lily (Bob’s mother) sleep, but one day she accidentally picks up a transmission in German, discovering there’s a Nazi spy in her building. And, of course, no one believes her at first, but Alice is ultimately proven correct, and she and her mother Gertie ultimately thwart the spy’s attempt to kill Alice after he’s uncovered, before reaching the police, who arrest the spy and break up the espionage ring.

Most of the time, though, Bob’s keeps on chugging along as the same show we’ve come to know and love since 2011. Whether it’s in a more traditional episode or in the kind of episode that treads off the beaten path like those above, Bob’s Burgers continues to stay as consistent as ever in quality and as a presence on Sunday night TV.

25. White House Plumbers
Miniseries
HBO

An HBO miniseries focused on two major players behind the Watergate break-in, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. Woody Harrelson plays Hunt with a sweaty desperation, a need to get back in the good graces of the Nixon administration and an even more desperate need to believe that he’s actually competent and capable of doing that. Justin Theroux plays Liddy with (apparently true-to-life) a mania and patriotism that crosses over into full-on derangement, a true believer in service to America (whatever “America” means). The two of them try to dig up dirt on Daniel Ellsberg unsuccessfully before hatching the Watergate plan with the tacit approval of Nixon’s dirty tricks team; that, of course, goes awry for a number of stupid and easily avoidable reasons (although my favorite detail of the break-ins, that spotter Alfred Baldwin missed the police arriving because he was watching Attack of the Puppet People on the hotel TV, was omitted).

As a historical miniseries, the actual events are fairly predictable and well-known, and it’s the execution that matters. I particularly enjoyed it on that front thanks to our main performances: Hunt’s need to believe in himself, Liddy’s insanity, and Lena Headey’s turn as Dorothy Hunt deserves particular mention, as the ex-CIA agent does her best to stand by her man even though she knows how stupid and desperate he’s acting and that she’s clearly the brains of the couple. There’s a certain tragedy running through the Hunt story, although thanks to Howard’s incompetence and the schemes he gets involved in, it’s a sort of stupid version of tragedy. (Liddy, of course– and again, apparently true to life– takes to prison life very well and readily.) But that doesn’t make it any less effective or enjoyable to watch. It’s a solid little miniseries with some great performances (and tons of actors in the minor roles, particularly in the Nixon White House, whom you’ll recognize).

24. Only Murders in the Building
Season 3
Hulu

Only Murders in the Building suffered a bit this season in part because the case, for the first time, takes us out of the Arconia, as the lead of Oliver’s new musical is mysteriously murdered on opening night. Part of the appeal of the show for me was in how the cases ended up revealing more to us about the history of the Arconia and its residents, all the stories therein, and this case didn’t really do that. It just kind of wasn’t as compelling a mystery, either– the final culprit made sense, but there were stretches I felt like the story wasn’t advancing at the pace it needed to, and at least one moment that was clearly intended as a mystery to be revealed late in the season that I figured out right away (including before any of the characters, apparently).

That said, our lead trio is still a pleasure to watch, and the show brought in high-octane guest stars like Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep to boost this season. And there were some nice explorations of the trio’s personal lives and needs– particularly with Selena Gomez’s Mabel, turning thirty and feeling the need more than ever to figure out what she wants to do with her life, what satisfies her, and who she wants to spend it with.

Only Murders is always a pleasure to watch, even when certain aspects don’t work as well or hold together as well as when the show was at its best. But there were just too many shows this year that did work at a high level for what they were attempting to rate it higher.

23. Beavis and Butt-Head
Season 10
Paramount+

I still love this show, although admittedly I didn’t think it was quite as good as the previous season. But it’s also Beavis and Butt-Head, so it would be hard for it to be bad unless it completely changed format or became as uninspired as the Itchy & Scratchy episode that led Bart and Lisa to start writing scripts in “The Front.”

Among our stories this time around: B&B mistake a polling station for a strip club, decide to become tobacco farmers by planting cigarette butts, and as adults get jobs working at the “Amatron” warehouse.

One thing that always delights me in the show is when the unintended consequences of the duo’s plans end up being pretty good for Beavis personally. Like in “Old Man Beavis,” where Butt-Head dyes (well, paints) Beavis’ hair so he appears old enough to buy beer– it just gets him mistaken for one of the rest home patients out shopping and herded back onto the van, and he actually fits in pretty well there. “Needle Dicks,” similarly, has Mr. Van Driessen recommend acupuncture to the duo, and Beavis actually finds it works very well for him.

Maybe my favorite episodes involve Tom Anderson. “Stolen Valor” has middle-aged B&B pretending to be veterans at the VFW so they can get free beer. And in “Hunting Trip,” Mr. Anderson takes the two on a deer hunt, hoping to bond with them like he couldn’t with the son he doesn’t see anymore… which is something the duo, unsurprisingly yet in unpredictable fashion, prove completely incapable of. There’s also an episode where Smart Beavis and Butt-Head pay Mr. Anderson a visit, which of course can only go askew. “Tom Anderson’s War Stories” are always a delight, too, new facets on his pedantry and how it completely blinds him to what’s really going on around him.

Not as delightful as the best B&B of 2022, including the movie, but there were enough good segments here that it’s worth your time.

22. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Season 5
Amazon Prime

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel wraps up largely how it ran. On the downside, success still comes a little too easy for Midge, and the show loves Joel a lot more than I do given how it introduced him to us. On the bright side, the climactic moments are genuinely satisfying, as are the flash-forwards to where our characters are years later– by and large, anyway, and during the season I had my worries about them, but they pay off well. In particular, what we learn about Midge and Susie, both their individual careers and what happens to their friendship over the years, is very satisfying– especially as we see what Susie went through to get Midge her big break that finally launches her as a national name.

There are some good moments for some other characters, as well. I thought some of Abe’s behavior around his grandson Ethan’s apparent lack of genius was ridiculous as first, but the way that behavior plays into what he ultimately realizes is lovely, and Tony Shalhoub gets a great monologue that I assume he submitted to the Emmys. All in all, this season was pretty much in line with what you’d expect from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, for both all its great qualities and the little things that occasionally bugged me or I picked at. But again, as always, there was far more good than bad.

21. What We Do in the Shadows
Season 5
FX

The penultimate season of What We Do in the Shadows probably deserves to be ranked higher, but 2023 was a year jam-packed with good shows. Kristen Schaal joins the main cast as the Guide becomes a permanent character, and as much as anything, this season is an exploration of the obligations our group has to each other as people– whether that’s Nadja’s neglect of the Guide, Nandor’s neglect of Guillermo, or Laszlo’s genuine attempts to help Guillermo or even Sean.

There are a lot of fun adventures this season, too, making this likely my favorite season since season 2. Sean runs for comptroller and the vampires throw him a combination campaign / Pride parade. “Local News” has the vampires hilariously in a panic after they fear Nandor has revealed too much in an interview about a local water main break. “Urgent Care” involves Nadja bringing Guillermo to an urgent care for vampires and familiars after an injury… and then having to break him out when the doctors simply want to put him down.

Even having said all of that, a great moment in the finale made a major part of the show’s story click into place and elevated the season all by itself. This season might deserve a higher rating, but this year’s list was pretty hard for me to crack, with a lot of old favorites playing at a high level as well as new shows that genuinely surprised me.

20. American Dad!
Season 20
TBS

It’s really remarkable that this show still manages to find stories that feel fresh and still make them funny.

The highlight stretch of the season is probably three episodes toward the end: “Between a Ring and a Hardass,” a classic farce where the Smiths have to look normal for an evening so that Social Services doesn’t take Steve away; “Footprints,” where Roger and Stan decide they haven’t left their mark on the world, and end up doing so by creating a TV show about tax cops called Audit Dogs; and “Steve, Snot, and the Quest for the OG Four Loko,” which takes our two teenagers on a night of insane misadventure.

I feel like there were more experiments this season than usual, too, largely successful: “Productive Panic” with its psychodrama; “Z.O.I.N.C.S.,” the Halloween episode that plays as a Scooby-Doo tribute; “Multiverse of American Dadness,” which is kind of exactly what it sounds like; and of course the Christmas episode, “Into the Jingleverse.” Other stories include a sentient printer trying to steal Francine from Stan, Klaus dating a wraith, Roger serving as both English professor and football coach at Hayley’s college, Hayley trying to silence her inner critic (which takes the form of a cow for some reason), and Francine learning to play poker so she can better hide her thoughts and feelings from her kids.

American Dad! continues to chug along steadily as ever, with no real or noticeable drops in quality, and no end on the horizon, thanks to a season-21 renewal.

19. Royal Crackers
Season 1
[adult swim]

Possibly the least-known show on the list this year, Royal Crackers is like someone pitched the premise, “What if we spoofed Succession with a family that owns a shitty cracker company in Bakersfield?” and then threw out almost everything Succession-like in favor of Adult Swim insanity.

Hornsby patriarch and Royal Crackers founder Theo Hornsby Sr. is alive but essentially catatonic, which leaves it up to his children to run his empire and jockey to become the next CEO… sort of. Those children are Stebe (not a typo), a very mild-mannered put-upon guy whose wife Deb seems to be the Lady Macbeth of their marriage; and Theo Jr., former briefly famous nu-metal musician as lead singer of the band Taint, still trying to cling to his glory days, but also immediately more charming and likeable than Stebe. Other main characters include Stebe and Deb’s son Matt and the family lawyer Darby.

From the pilot, we think this is going to be about Stebe and Deb fighting with Theo Jr. for control of the company… and that ends up being, like, part of the first episode. The rest of the series involves developing our characters through both stand-alone stories and how they interact with one another, and the stories take the kind of bizarre turns you generally only see on Adult Swim. Example: Theo Jr. tries to revive his music career, he gets upstaged by a ventriloquist at an open mic, yada yada yada, a fixer– played by Gilbert Gottfried in his final role– helps him dispose of the ventriloquist’s body and the corroborating evidence. Or Factory 37, a Royal Crackers factory which has been essentially abandoned and taken over by mutant chickens. Or the Hornsbys conning their way onto “George Beezos”‘ yacht and having to escape once they find out Beezos throws anyone who isn’t a billionaire to the sharks– which they do, thanks to Matt befriending Beezos’ robot servant Tanya. Things of that nature.

There’s also– in a bit of a bold move for a first-season show– a flashback episode on Theo Sr.’s birthday. Theo Sr. remembers the falling out with his old partner Luther Dennison over his own selfishness and greed, a journey he makes to help a wheat farmer who worked for him, and an encounter with a cannibal family.

The show really shines because of the strong voice behind it; creator Jason Ruiz really has clarity on the kinds of stories he wants to tell here, and while they’re all batshit, they’re also really funny. And for an Adult Swim show with this kind of skewed sense of humor, the finale still managed to be genuinely heartfelt and uplifting, an unexpected and impressive achievement. Royal Crackers is a show that often delivers the strange and unexpected– and the bizarrely high-concept, bordering on sci-fi or magical, considering this is ostensibly about a cracker magnate family– and it was a delightful discovery this year.

18. Tacoma FD
Season 4
TruTV

Our favorite firefighters are back for another season of shenanigans, and by and large are consistent as ever. We do have some fun when the season opens– season 3 closed with station 24 burning down, and some bad feelings between some of the officers; they’re all at different jobs while they’re waiting for it to re-open. (Eddie seems the most satisfied, as the technical consultant on TV’s Pittsburgh FD: Seattle.)

One big change to the show this year: Eugene Cordero has left, and Andy Myawani is replaced at the station by Andres Mickleberry (Chris Avila). As the new “probie,” he gets the requisite amount of flak and hazing from the other firefighters, which really comes to a head in the very funny “Chicken Fight,” where everyone is constantly making contradictory demands of Mickleberry at Terry’s annual summer pool party and cookout.

Other adventures include the crew finding a mysterious old trunk hidden in a station wall, and the secrets contained therein; a Valentine’s Day episode where people are trying to teach lessons to one another (mostly Terry and Vicky to Lucy, and the rest of the station to Eddie); a firefighter’s wake that turns into a very funny, drunken mess (complete with brawls and possible desecration of a corpse); and an It’s a Wonderful Life riff where an angel shows Eddie how successful everyone else at the station would be without him shooting down their ideas.

There isn’t much to say about Tacoma FD because it’s just a well-made, funny sitcom. It’s the closest thing we have in terms of quality and sense of humor to Super Troopers, so if you liked that, you’ll like this. I’ll keep watching and putting it on here as long as it stays funny. That said, no season 5 renewal has been announced. Netflix just added it to their lineup in December, which is great insofar as it means more people might watch it (including you, yes, you specifically).

17. I Think You Should Leave
Season 3
Netflix

A tumble from consecutive #1s to #17 looks worse than it is, quality-wise. Like I’ve said repeatedly, this was a stacked year. That said, season 3 wasn’t as good as the previous two– it started to show strains of formula here, as the volume of office and house-party settings started to feel repetitive. But the season did grow on me more after watching it again, and while few sketches were as immediately riotous as the best of the first two seasons, season three still had a lot of funny and memorable moments.

The most immediate hits for me were “The Driving Crooner” and “Pay It Forward,” although the Bachelor-style reality show was a pretty great bit, too. The silent entertainer was a lot of fun, “Sitcom Taping” got even funnier on rewatch, and Sam Richardson’s performance in “Pacific Proposal Park,” exasperated with all the wrestling practice, was great. Tim Meadows’ performance elevated the wedding-photo sketch all by itself. Barch Barley’s reaction to losing an on-air debate was great, and as someone exposed to a lot of John Valby in college, Don Bon Darley struck a familiar chord. And, of course, You're looking at a nude egg.

But nothing blew me away or made me lose my shit the way the best sketches in the first two seasons did, to say nothing of the criminal underuse of Patti Harrison. While the show is still funny, I had to make myself give the season a second watch, and that more than anything else I’ve written might be the single most damning assessment of its quality. But it’s not so bad that it doesn’t still rank ahead of a number of other shows I found legitimately funny. It’s just that with so many sketches relying on the old formula of office social dynamics or house parties, it didn’t feel as fresh this time around. And this year, there were a lot of shows that did feel fresh or revitalized.

Come back for part 3 tomorrow.