Friends

Correct Ranking of Seasons: 5, 4, 2, 3, 1, 6, 8, 7, 9, 10

Jesus Christ, there were ten seasons of Friends. Okay! Season five is the best because it’s Chandler and Monica trying to keep their relationship under wraps, which improbably stayed funny over the course of fourteen episodes and STILL managed to pay it off with the best episode of the series (“The One Where Everybody Finds Out”). Season four has the trivia contest episode, so that’s your runner up, no arguments. Season two was really the only time Ross/Rachel was truly great (Rachel’s drunk “closure” phone call), plus Monica + Richard was a great extended storyline. Ross and Rachel on a break in season three was fun until it wasn’t. Season one finds its bearings way quicker than most TV shows do, actually. Season six … you know, happened. Season eight taught a post-9/11 America how to laugh again. Season seven had Tag and Rachel’s worst-ever hairstyle. Season nine was the one where they cast Aisha Tyler as the pivotal character See, We Do So Have Black People. You don’t remember anything from season ten except the finale, and stop pretending like you do. —JR

Gilmore Girls

Correct Ranking of Seasons: 3, 4, 1, 2, 5, 6, 7

Fact one: Jess (the season three boyfriend) is better than Dean (the seasons one and two boyfriend). Fact two: season four, Rory's first at college, is very underrated partially because it mostly lacks Rory boy drama and features both Chris Eigeman and the eventual Luke/Lorelai union. Seasons one and two are heady shots of the best-remembered and very lovable la-la-la Stars Hollow experience. Season five is the best the show did with Luke and Lorelai together, but it's still not quite right. Season six is flawed. Season seven is an unspeakable nightmare that I'm still waiting on Doctor Who to fix. —DS

Lost

Correct Ranking of Seasons: 5, 1, 4, 3, 2, 6

Season five remains a sci-fi masterpiece that actually got complicated time travel retcon plotting right and makes your heart hurt when the Incident happens to rip it all apart. Sawyer and Juliet living in the '70s is what matters. Season one is why we all fell in love. Season four is when we all fell back in love (frozen donkey wheel). Season three starts on the worst foot, then tries to win us over and succeeds by the end ("WE HAVE TO GO BACK"). Season two is a bit of a slog with the numbers and the hatch and whatnot, but Desmond. Let's all admit that we wish season six had gone very differently. —DS

Seinfeld

Correct Ranking of Seasons: 5, 4, 7, 3, 6, 2, 8, 9, 1

The best seasons of Seinfeld spiral out from the middle, and that’s just all there is to it. The biggest debate is season four vs. season five. Four has the stronger throughline, with Jerry and George writing their pilot, all the way up to its premiere. But four also starts out with that godawful two-parter where they go to L.A. and Kramer gets caught up in some noir murder subplot; no one in good conscience could rank that as anyone’s best. Certainly not above a season that gave us “The Hamptons.” Quibbling over seasons 2, 3, 6, and 7 is allowable, but basically: seven has George’s engagement to Susan, two is still getting on its feet, and three and six are basically equally fantastic. Season eight of Seinfeld is probably better than the very best season that 90% of all sitcoms have managed to produce, and it’s the third-worst of these nine seasons. Don’t fuck with Seinfeld, seriously. Everybody remembers how bad the final season was, but have you tried watching any of the five first-season episodes lately? Unbearable. —JR