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best tv pilots
TV Guide picks the best pilots (and gets it wrong)
by Bob Sassone, posted Sep 5th 2008 2:03PM

I'm sorry, but while I think that everyone is entitled to their opinion about "best this" and "best that" (not to be confused with "favorite this" and "favorite that"), sometimes such a list has some entries that just make you scratch your head so much that you have to throw the whole list away and start over. Case in point, this list of the 10 Best TV Pilots from the new issue of TV Guide.
While I'm not going to sit here and argue about shows on the list like Lost, The Sopranos, and Alias, I am going to take issue with the inclusion of Desperate Housewives, The Shield, and Football Wives. Honestly, are these true representatives of the best first episodes of TV shows? Forget about what the shows became (great shows can often have so-so early episodes), just the first episodes themselves. Was there truly anything special about Desperate Housewives that would place it ahead of...oh, I don't know, 400 other shows in the history of television?
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