9. Undeclared (Fox, 2001)
It seems amazing that Judd Apatow's wonderful follow-up to Freaks & Geeks got 16 episodes off before cancellation, because Fox shifted, pre-empted, and generally abused the show as soon as it was launched. Blessed with F&G's humor and sweetness, as well as its obsessive attention to comic detail, Undeclared captures the camaraderie and shenanigans that take place in an average co-ed dormitory hall, but it also deals with the problems of young people living on their own for the first time. As the show struggled to find an audience, Apatow called in some favors and got memorable guest appearances by Will Ferrell (as a hopped-up townie who writes terms papers for cash) and Adam Sandler (as himself, hanging out with his awkward fans), but to no avail. Had Apatow directed The 40-Year-Old Virgin before making the show, perhaps the network would have shown a little more patience.
10. Stella (Comedy Central, 2005)
As with many one-season wonders, it's remarkable that a show as unabashedly strange and singular as Stella made it onto the air in the first place, let alone lasted a full season. Building on the wry absurdism of videos and live performances by State veterans Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, and David Wain, Stella found the perfect combination of regressive stupidity and boho sophistication in its screwball misadventures.
11. Firefly (Fox, 2002)
Fox clearly didn't know what it had in Firefly, Joss Whedon's epic-in-scale-but-human-in-focus series that transposed the elements of classic Westerns to the far reaches of space. Whedon was forced to rework the pilot, and only a few episodes aired—scheduled out of order. But with their carefully crafted characters and rich universe—of course people curse in Chinese in the future!—they were enough to stir interest that led to a full-on cult once the full series reached DVD. Fans even saw their wishes for revival come partially true with the 2005 film sequel Serenity.
12. Police Squad! (ABC, 1982)
Leslie Nielsen has been synonymous with bottom-feeding spoofs for so long that it can be hard to remember how restrained and understated he was in Police Squad!, David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abraham's parody of cop shows. Of course, Nielsen was taking his cues from the show itself, which affected a straight-faced deadpan tone worthy of Dragnet and Buster Keaton.
13. Action (Fox, 1999)
The world wasn't exactly crying out for yet another show-biz satire spoofing disreputable producers, narcissistic actors, or insecure writers when Action was released to critical acclaim and anemic ratings in 1999. But Action more than justified its existence with an eviscerating nastiness that fell somewhere between Entourage's affectionate show-biz satire and Power's ice-cold, dark-night-of-the-soul bleakness. Action! took its uncompromisingly dark take on Hollywood to its logical conclusion by killing off Jay Mohr's strangely ingratiating (albeit utterly amoral) super-producer in its final episode.
14. TV Funhouse (Comedy Central, 2000)
Robert Smigel's gleefully perverse TV Funhouse cartoons have long been favorites on Saturday Night Live. But the brief lifespan of Smigel's Comedy Central's spin-off proved audiences only had a limited appetite for the wildly transgressive misadventures of sex- and drug-crazed puppets. The combination of animal puppets and real animals proved disturbing on an almost primal level, while host Doug Dale all-too-convincingly captured the whitebread creepiness of kid-show performers.
15. That's My Bush! (Comedy Central, 2001)
For their first live-action show, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone decided to focus on the inhabitants of the White House, a tricky gamble that became even trickier in light of the 2000 election debacle. Thankfully, history conspired to give Parker and Stone the perfect hapless sitcom boob in the person of George W. Bush, as eerily channeled by Timothy Bottoms. Who knows whether Parker and Stone could have sustained their satire of mind-numbingly banal sitcoms as seen through the prism of Presidential politics, but like all the one-season wonders here, it was great fun while it lasted.
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