The Most Wonderful Time of the Year: Sean’s Official TV Show Rankings of 2022

2022 has come and gone and so has 103 more seasons of television. No joke, literally 103. I probably need to go over my priorities for 2023 and keep it below 90 seasons, but for now I will do my duty and rank all these TV shows. Some notes before we get started:

I guess it takes longer than it used to for TV to get made because a lot of shows that were on last year’s list didn’t make the 2022 list. In fact, 16 of my top 20 from 2021 either ended, haven’t had their next season yet, or were one-offs. So without new seasons from the likes of The Witcher, Outer Banks, Sex Education, Succession, Ted Lasso, and more, there was a lot of new blood!

I’ve also realized that ranking shows across a flurry of genres is pretty difficult. A few shows in particular I find myself falling anywhere between spot 40 and 65, so sometimes the tier is more important than the actual position. They can move around quite a bit within their tiers depending on the day. Now moving onto criteria!

Criteria:

• Show had to have a season that ended in 2022 OR contained at least the majority of their episodes in 2022. Majority is subjective depending on the situation, but pretty much if the season goes past January 15, 2023, it’s a 2023 show. Yes, I finally watched Yellowstone this year and no, season 5 is not on this list because they decided to spread it out into 2023. Too bad because I could’ve gone off on that one.
• I ranked the 2022 season itself, not the show as a whole. The ranking of this particular season isn’t necessarily indicative of what I think of the show as a whole.
• I didn’t watch every single show in existence, although I tried! I actually tried exceedingly hard, but sometimes I need to just rewatch Entourage two times in four months. Sue me.
• The following are the four factors (in order of importance) that I take into account when grading each season:

1. How much I enjoyed the show. My enjoyment factor is the most important factor, hands down.
2. How good I thought the show was. I recognize how good a show is, but this ultimately isn’t as important as how much I like it.
3. Re-watchability. I like re-watching shows. A lot. If I don’t want to watch it again, deduct points.
4. How it compared to previous seasons of the show (if applicable). Example: Season 5 of Game of Thrones was always going to have a lot to live up to after Season 4 and while the season sucked anyways because it was literally terrible, it only made things worse following an incredible season like Season 4.

That’s it! Let’s do this.