oh, gosh, I love that series - that couple and Margo from next door are all wonderful characters.
While I agree with you completely about Season 5, you picked exactly the wrong time to quit. Mid-way through Season 6, the show shifted much of its focus on the election campaign to replace Bartlett, introducing a bunch of new characters and injecting much-needed energy and novelty to the show. It never got as good as the first few seasons, and there were still some clunker episodes, but it became a fun series again.
Interesting, that was just about when I tuned out, I’d been watching about one every three months at that point..
Also, the cool thing about it was that it set an Obama-like candidate played by Jimmy Smits against a McCain-like candidate played by Alan Alda, 3 years before the 2008 elections.
I realize this is all personal preference, but I think The Wire is over-rated. Emperor’s new clothes and all. And yep, I watched all of the seasons.
By the way, that actor did that same Sheeeeeee-ittttt! schtick in the movie 24 Hours.
Very true, but the biggest factor was the budget being cut drastically. In the third season, it was only one half-hour episode a week, filmed in studios with sets that looked like cardboard cutouts. The stories really sucked too, along with new villains like Olga, Queen of the Cossacks. 
The series ended so abruptly I don’t think I ever even saw the second half of “The Joker’s Flying Saucer.” (My name for that episode.)
Fun Fact: The Catmobile that Eartha Kitt drove as the new Catwoman was featured in both Bewitched (as the concept car Endora stole and gave to Darrin as a birthday present) and Star Trek (as the Jupiter 8 in “Bread and Circuses”).
“Barry” was tremendous from the first frame to the last.
I quite enjoyed the show, and I agree that no single episode could be disliked. But I’d suggest that the show suffered from George’s inability to separate from her family. Her sister’s habit of decorating trees with toilet seats, and her parents’ impending divorce, were distracting her from Rube’s assignments. I understand that George, being younger than the other Reapers and still living at home when she was alive, would be concerned about home and family; and Rube was pretty forgiving of her faults, but I think that George was overdoing it at times.
Oh well. At least Mom and Sis gave J.D. a good home. And some of the deaths were quite inventive. Up until that show, pianos only fell from the sky in cartoons.
Margo was played by Penelope Keith, who had been around for years—I noticed her in a couple of B&W episodes of The Avengers filmed in 1964 or '65. Her husband Jerry was played by Paul Eddington, who went on to star in Yes, Minister.
Was this before or after the finale of Two and a Half Men? 
Would have been before. The falling piano episode was (IIRC) in 2003.
So that set the precedent for every falling piano in the future! 
Dead Like Me was noted for the “inventive” ways in which the Reapers’ clients died. George’s team was not assigned to hospitals, nursing homes, or deathbeds where it was only a matter of time; rather, her team was assigned to the really odd accidents—George herself was killed by a toilet seat that fell from the Mir space station, and one of the other members of her team killed himself by getting high and taking a power drill to his head.
Death is not funny; it is tragic, but the show has many lighter moments. It has to, when dealing with such a subject, and the crazy ways the Reapers’ clients die helps with those. I’d recommend the show.
This reminds me that a friend had recommended “Sports Night” to me when it was on the air; we were both big fans of “West Wing” and he thought I would also like “Sports Night”. I reminded him that I was not a sports fan, and he said that didn’t matter because you didn’t have to know anything about sports to be able to follow it. I never did get around to watching it; I’ll have to add it to my list of shows to track down.
If you like The Rockford Files (which I do), then it’s perfect, because every episode is pretty much the same.
Season 5 was very good, too. Maybe not quite as good as season 3, but pretty close.
Wtf? The OP wrote:
What shows do you consider to have been perfect?
(Bolding mine)
It was excellent and groundbreaking in its day.
I thought Bojack was a generic adult cartoon until The Telescope, but was excellent afterwards until the end. Is 5.5/6 seasons enough to knock it out of perfect? Well, yeah.
Malcolm in the Middle is my choice out of shows which haven’t been mentioned yet. Every episode was perfectly hilarious. Bryan Cranston pre-Breaking Bad, along with the rest of the cast, were flawless.
I will defend the ‘Shame’ two-parter until the end of my days.