Leaderboard

3. Mr. Robot When you think of prestige TV, the first networks that come to mind are HBO, Showtime, AMC, and maybe even FX. Before recently, USA Network was not thought of as a home of prestige TV and seemed to have no designs of being so. Shows like Monk, Psych, and Burn Notice were good and occasionally even great, but you knew what to expect from shows like that, which had well-defined structures and rarely ever deviated from them. They were TV equivalents of comfort food, giving you something better than the bland fast foody dramas the broadcast networks pump out but nothing that will challenge you with bold new flavors. Enter Mr. Robot. The Sam Esmail drama ignored the precedent set by the popular USA Network dramas before it and defied every expectation it could. With a main character whose various mental disorders and drug habits made it hard for him to determine what was real or not, Esmail and crew had the opportunity to create one of the most unpredictable shows we've ever seen, and it was an opportunity they took advantage of. The show was a huge success during its first season, but the second season proved to be too confounding for a lot of people, and the ratings began a steep decline. Despite that, network executives maintained their faith in the show and its crew, and while the show's ratings continued to fall over its final two seasons, the show itself only got better, ending as not just the best show USA Network ever produced but one of the best shows of all time. My two favorite episodes of Mr. Robot came in those last two seasons: eps3.4_runtime-error.r00, which unfolded in real time, and 407 Proxy Authentication Required, which not only defied expectations but defies description, an episode you have to watch yourself to understand just how game-changing it is. If there's one thing most of the shows on my list have in common, it's a willingness to experiment with the medium, to truly give us something that we haven't seen before. In a television landscape dominated by spin-offs, reboots, and remakes (some of them admittedly very good, like the show right under this one on my list), that's very important to me, and Mr. Robot's commitment to doing just that is what makes it one of my top three shows.

I no longer like holographic meatloaf.