"Baby, you're the greatest."

Having learned the lesson of just how addictive VH-1's many "top 100" shows can be, TV Land has decided to throw its hat in the ring with the "100 Greatest TV Quotes and Catch Phrases." The shows don't start airing until next week (when I presume you'll get to actually see them all ranked in order), but they've published an alphabetized list of their selections now.

Shocho has opined that whenever someone compiles a list like this, they wouldn't get it perfect even if they could, because introducing imperfections gets people to talk about it. I know I certainly have some issues with this list.

First of all, I don't think that famous historical quotes that just happened to be broadcast on television belong on this sort of list. I think these shouldn't have made the cut:

"Ask not what your country can do for you..."
"Have you no sense of decency?"
"I'm not a crook..."
"One small step for man..."
"Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

And I'm not entirely sure that a line from a single episode of a TV series should get lumped in with the catch phrases, unless they really broke out into mainstream culture. I might make allowances for "No soup for you!" from Seinfeld's Soup Nazi, but I'm not sure Marcia Brady's "Oh, my nose!" was one of the 100 greatest things ever spoken on television. And I don't just think that's a generational thing, either -- I know the list wouldn't be right without real classic lines like "And that's the way it is", "How sweet it is!" and "You've got spunk..."

I got a big kick out of seeing the exact same line, with different emphasis, making it onto the list twice: "Hey HEY hey!" courtesy of What's Happening!!, and "Hey hey HEEY!", courtesy of Fat Albert.

I also found it interesting to see what the modern "instant classics" were in TV Land's view. "Denny Crane", "Here it is, your moment of Zen", "I'm Rick James, bitch!", and "Tell me what you don't like about yourself" all made the list, among others.

Maybe Shocho's theory is spot on: try to provoke discussion.

Did it work?