-Top Gear. HELL FREAKING YES, Top Gear. The presenters are all charming and hilarious, the challenges are entertaining, and I'm enjoying learning more about cars. I've had a horrible driving phobia, but Top Gear makes it all look so COOL that I want to relearn how to drive, I want to learn how to work on cars, I want to learn how they work. It's a brilliant program. (Also, I have such a mad crush on James May. He's adorable!)

-Phineas and Ferb. This is really the show that makes me go "WTF happened to the rest of Disney?" It's got such a consistently high quality! The animation style is cute and quirky, it's colorful, the characters are sweet and interesting, the songs are all earworms to the max (but I never mind having the songs stuck in my head), and the plots are just composed of FUN! Aesops are delivered, sure, but they're never delivered in an anvilicious or dull way, and only a few are outright stated. They're delivered in a more subtle way, and that, friends, is how cartoons should be. Fun first, education a subtle second.

I love all the characters on the show, but my favorites are probably Phineas and Perry the Platypus. Phineas is just such a cool little guy; he reminds me of a less-cynical version of Calvin from the Calvin and Hobbes comics. And in the case of Perry, it's TVTropes proving right again: everything's better with platypode. Especially secret agent platypode with cool little hats.

-Degrassi: The Next Generation. It's a guilty pleasure. It's so BAD it's delightful.

-Chef Ramsay's shows. I admire the fella, okay? He's strict and he swears worse than a sailor, but he does care a lot about what he does, cares about the people he teaches, and cares about the restaurants he visits trying to fix them. He honestly reminds me of a drill sergeant, honestly (I've known my share of real-live drill sergeants). He's strict and gruff, but he's simply trying to spur people into reacting, into trying harder, and he gets his results. And on F-Word and the British version of Kitchen Nightmares, he seems like he's a pretty fun guy, though he's still awful fond of his swearing.

-Antiques Roadshow. Partly, it's nostalgia. My dad and I would watch it all the time when I was a kid, when we were waiting for Justin Wilson to come on. We would guess how much each thing was worth, and then try to figure out how much our three antiques might have been worth (we only have three--a Coke cooler from the 1940s, an honest-to-god anvil that was owned by some blacksmithing relative on my mother's side of the family, and a small rocking chair from the 1920s). It's part that. But mostly, it's because I'm very interested in history and antiques can get you an interesting glimpse into history and the culture of bygone days, and I find that fascinating.

-Sesame Street. More nostalgia. But even as a grown-up, I like to sit down occasionally and watch it. It's still a quality program, and it never fails to make me smile, even on a miserable day. It's just so sweet and pleasant and consistently clever with its gags and the guest stars.

-Dancing with the Stars. I've always wanted to learn how to dance. But since I never learned as a kid, and as a grown-up, I'm too terrified of making a fool of myself in front of other people, I'm left to watch shows about it. I love watching people dance. I think DWTS is interesting because I like seeing how these famous people start off and how much they improve over the course of the show. Sometimes the results are surprising.

-COPS. Schadenfreude. I love watching stupid criminals getting busted; it lends a little bit of substance to the idea that perhaps there is some kind of justice in the world. I admire police officers for their bravery and hard work. And sometimes there's the stuff that's just entirely out of left field that's just hilariously awesome. Like the animal calls. I always love the animal calls because sometimes it's "someone help me remove this alligator from the kiddie pool!" and sometimes it's "My cow is lost! Can you help me find it?" You never know.

-Mythbusters. SCIENCE. HELL FREAKING YES. I love science, and I love learning about why things happen the way they do. I love urban legends; they're like modern folklore and fairy-stories, but that's all a lot of urban legends are. Stories. I like that the Mythbusters take steps to prove or disprove these legends and take time to explain why they are or are not possible. Mythbusters is not only an intelligent show, it's also enormously entertaining. My stepsisters hated science and learning, but Mythbusters made science interesting to them, and they like Kari a lot, so they've become more interested in it, and so try harder and learn more in their own spare time, as opposed to restricting their learning time to school hours alone. It's just a stunningly brilliant program in every way.

-Dirty Jobs. It's true that I never thought about any of these jobs existing, but it's also true that these jobs are entirely necessary for life as we know it. I think it's interesting to learn about them, no matter how gross or weird these jobs are. It's important to know about how and why the world works, and sometimes, our society keeps on living because of people we never think about doing jobs we've never heard of. It's nice that we have Dirty Jobs to highlight and celebrate them and educate the general public about the weird or cool jobs out there. (Also, Mike Rowe is awesome.)

-Life After People. High-octane nightmare fuel, to be sure, but I think it's interesting. People often think about how "the world" will end, but the truth is, "the world" probably won't end until the sun burns out in five billion years. Humanity will get their ticket punched a hell of a lot sooner than that. Sad, but true. The world will go on living without us, but nobody ever thinks about that. Animals will thrive and become plentiful again, the trees will return, and ecological balance will be restored. Life will go on, even if people don't.

Like I said--high-octane nightmare fuel, but thought-provoking nightmare fuel.

-Pawn Stars. I didn't think I'd like this show, honestly. I just tuned in because there was nothing else on, I didn't have any books to read, and it was raining outside. But I wound up liking it. A couple of the guys creep me out a bit, but as with the Antiques Roadshow, I like learning about the history of memorabilia and such. They don't go into quite as much depth as the Roadshow, but it's still cool to learn about little tidbits like how to identify whether something is real or a forgery, or what kinds of maps were produced when, and such like that.

-Batman: The Animated Series. This show is almost as old as I am, but it was always of an extremely high quality. It was truly an all-ages show. In fact... of all the people I know, more grown-ups than children like it. Proof positive that being "for kids" doesn't have to mean low quality or pandering. B:TAS always treated its audience as though they were grown-up and mature; it was a complex, occasionally rather dark series, and I find it somewhat embarrassing that this show is STILL far more mature than a hell of a lot of comics that are coming out today.

And the voice-acting was always top-notch. Kevin Conroy is, in my mind, Batman. Nobody else can be Batman in my mind, no matter how good Christian Bale might be at portraying him in the more recent movies. Same with Mark Hammill's Joker. Heath Ledger's Joker was, of course, brilliantly chilling, but I must confess that I like Hammill's Joker the most.

And besides which, HARLEY. HELL YES. I love Harley! I've never met anybody who didn't like Harley. She's a villain, she's nutty as a fruitcake, she's sympathetic, and she's just lovable!