From Alan Sepinwall‘s “The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time,” a Rolling Stone piece posted on 9.27.22:

“Another art-versus-artist mess. Dave Chappelle’s legacy has unquestionably been tainted by his commitment in recent years to hardcore transphobia.” [HE insert: what?] Can we still enjoy the sketch-comedy series that he and Neal Brennan created, and the ways that the show bearing his name mixed hysterical parodies of Black celebrities like Rick James, Prince and Lil Jon with more nuanced but still funny ideas like the fake game show ‘I Know Black People’?

“As with several series on this list (and ones that didn’t quite pass muster with our voters, like Louie and The Cosby Show), perhaps it’s best to fondly remember the experience of watching it back in the day, rather than attempting to revisit and having to think more directly about the now controversial guy at the center of it.”

Sepinwall’s Chappelle diss aside, HE’s all-time favorite TV shows are…well, it’s not a massive list:

(1) Politically Incorrect and Real Time with Bill Maher,
(2) The Sopranos
(3) Curb Your Enthusiasm
(4) The Twilight Zone
(5) Mad Men
(6) The Larry Sanders Show
(7) Hill Street Blues
(8) Better Call Saul
(9) 30 Rock
(10) PBS’s American Experience series (which began in ’88)
(11) old kinescopes of live TV dramas from the early to late ’50s
(12) the original Twin Peaks (’90 and ’91)
NOT The Leftovers
(13) the first couple of seasons of Ozark (before it wore me down to a nub)
(14) 77 Sunset Strip (if watched ironically)
(15) NYPD Blue
(16) Freaks and Geeks
NOT The Wire or Breaking Bad (i.e., not a comment on their quality — I’ve seen episodes of both — but a comment on the HE comment vipers who’ve insisted for years that I watch them both in their entirety and then drop to my knees in absolute worship)
(17) The MacNeil-Lehrer Report
(18) Ted Koppel‘s Nightline
(19) Crossfire (’82 to ’05)
(20) SNL in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s
(21) SCTV during the John Candy glory years
(22) Late Night with David Letterman from ’82 to ’93 (NBC), and then in the ’90s and early aughts (CBS).