Ranking the CW shows I’ve Seen: 2018 Edition

You might be wondering why I’d do such a post like this randomly. You might wonder that about nearly all of my posts. Indeed, a lot of them are random. But I saw that a site did their rankings of all of the CW shows (although I didn’t read what they were) so I figured that I would do it as well. This will contain a bit of a limit as to what I’m reviewing as I’m only going to cover their primetime shows and not any of their kids shows. In fact, I might put all of the Saturday kids shows that I have seen in some separate ranking all together instead of putting up one network against all the others. With that explained, I will now get to a list of hopefully every CW show I’ve seen without forgetting any. I have this split into three different sections.

List of every CW show I’ve seen: Arrow, The Flash, iZombie, The Messengers, Star Crossed, Riverdale, Black Lightning, Legends of Tomorrow, Life Sentence, Aliens in America, Gilmore Girls, Smallville, Hooten & the Lady, Masters of Illusion, Penn and Teller: Fool Us, My Last Days, The Outpost, The 100, Burden of Truth, Frequency, No Tomorrow, Everybody Hates Chris, The Vampire Diaries, Supergirl, Nikita, Reba, 7^th Heaven, The Secret Circle, Hart of Dixie, Charmed, Mad TV, Farmer Wants a Wife, Emily Owens MD, All American, One Tree Hill, Reign, Valor, The Tomorrow People, Ringer, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Jane the Virgin, Dynasty, Whose Line is it Anyways?

What isn’t ranked and why: Smallville (I don’t think that I saw enough of it in order to rank it in a fair way among the others as I didn’t see enough of it as I would like it), The Outpost (this is another one that wouldn’t seem fair in my mind as I never saw what I wanted to out of it), 7^th Heaven (I only saw bits and pieces out of it and could never gather what I wanted to as a result)

Continued: The Secret Circle (while I was a fan of it, I missed a lot of it and never saw how it ended and thus don’t think that I could rank it fairly as a result), One Tree Hill (while I think that I did gather enough out of it based on the one episode of it that I saw, I don’t think that that I could rank it fairly among the others as a result), Ringer (maybe this should be the lowest ranked one, but I felt that I never saw enough of it to understand it and won’t have it ranked among the others as a result)

The entire ranking from worst to best: No Tomorrow, The Vampire Diaries, Everybody Hates Chris, Star Crossed, The 100, The Messengers, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Life Sentence, All American, Masters of Illusion, Reign, Farmer Wants a Wife, Valor, Aliens in America, My Last Days, Mad TV, Reba, Dynasty, Arrow, Emily Owens MD, Burden of Truth, Riverdale, Black Lightning, The Tomorrow People, Charmed, Nikita, Frequency, Hooten & the Lady, Gilmore Girls, Penn and Teller: Fool Us, Hart of Dixie, Legends of Tomorrow, iZombie, Jane the Virgin, Supergirl, Whose Line is it Anyways?, The Flash

The bad shows

No Tomorrow: It may seem like the worst show in my mind on the network as there wasn’t much to it that I felt was any good. There wasn’t much of a point to it. It might have tried to brand itself as a funny show, but it wasn’t. And it didn’t make that good of a drama either. I don’t even know why enough of the people on the network thought that this would be a good show.

The Vampire Diaries: I liked this show for a while, but had to stop when I realized that it was too much like a soap opera and I couldn’t stay with it as a result. It seemed good in some places, but it was largely just teen angst drama with a supernatural twist. It lasted too long and wasn’t very good in the end, even if it seemed good at first.

Everybody Hates Chris: A lot of these shows on the bad list started out good in my mind but ended in quite a bad way. That alone isn’t enough to hate this show, but it didn’t really offer that much to it in the end. The plots were kind of dumb and it seemed odd that so many bad things kept happening to the main character all the time. It makes me mad that the creator of this show knew it was going to end and still chose to end it on a question the way that he did.

Star Crossed: There were some good points to it trying to teach others that we should get along with others like those of other races. But it seemed too weird in some places. They included far too much teen sexuality and the elaborate cliffhanger that ended the series was terrible.

The 100: While it was promising towards the beginning of the show, it seemed to lose all of what once made it good as it went along. It got too boring and strange. It didn’t make much sense anymore. I do not think that I’ll get back into this, although it is possible and I might watch the last episode if it ends. But I don’t care about keeping up with it long term anymore.

The Messengers: There was far too much strangeness with all of this show. I don’t think that I did myself any favors by watching it out of order and in so many strange ways that I did. But I do know is that it did have some good points to it which makes it on the better end of these bad shows. Still, too much of it did not work such as the many villains and confusing ending.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: I found this to be quite forgettable. There were too many weird parts to it and I do not see what so many critics found good about it. Still, it wasn’t that bad as there was a point to it. But the songs were a bit too weird and not much about this worked.

Life Sentence: The best of the bad shows in my mind, there wasn’t as much wrong with it as other shows on this list. There was a great episode of it, but a lot of it relied on issues that just didn’t seem like they made good ideas as they just seemed like drama for a sake of drama and not good storytelling.

The average shows

All American: It didn’t seem bad to me, but I’ll probably never watch it again. There wasn’t much that seemed to work, although it did have a good plot to trying to change someone’s fate in life. I feel that it relied too much on clichés of sorts in the end.

Masters of Illusion: Sure, the magicians do impressive feats, but the show seems too ordinary in too many places with the same tricks and same magicians seen time and time again. I like the fact that we can see tricks and good ones that you wouldn’t be able to see in most places otherwise. But it isn’t as good as we could potentially see elsewhere.

Reign: While this was based on real events in a way, it largely ignored them and just made up what it wanted to in order to come up with the plots that it did. I don’t have any idea just how much of this show actually happened. There was some goodness in there even if it was far too strange, even for a show that largely wasn’t outside the realm of reality.

Farmer Wants a Wife: It seemed like they should have probably promoted this better in the end and it didn’t seem like much outside of a farmer Bachelor show, but it was still a nice one to all who care about this sort of thing in the end. I don’t always like reality shows as much as you might think. But I did like this one and thought that it was largely good even if it could have been way better. I do wonder if the people in the show are still together.

Valor: While some of it worked out well, it didn’t work as well as it could have. Some of the plot was good and interesting, but a lot of it seemed bland and they could probably have used better actors in this. They could have done better in terms of women empowerment than they did, although I’m glad that they didn’t make it too much about women issues as well.

Aliens in America: There were a lot of good things about this, although some of the plots were bad like you tend to get from certain sitcoms. I did like how it taught me about the discrimination that people of the Islam religion face and other misinformation about them since I didn’t know about it before. And it was nice seeing a social outsider on TV, even if it is often an overused premise. Still, with too many of the plots not focusing on good morals, it is hard to rank this okay show any higher.

My Last Days: Not a bad show by any means, it failed to be outstanding and that great. Plus, it does have a rather grim subject matter, talking about dying people and chronically the rest of their lives. But I still felt that it was good to show this with real people and show what happened. I do hope that this show airs again in the future. It was a pretty decent show.

Mad TV: While it was funny on the CW instead of FOX, it wasn’t that good a show on either network. It worked, for the most part, but wasn’t as good as it could have been. I’m a bit surprised that they didn’t keep this as a summer show when Saturday Night Live is on reruns. It was middle of the road in terms of quality, which is why it is ranked here.

Reba: This show is beloved by many, yet I don’t have it ranked any higher, despite liking it myself. I felt that some of it wasn’t as good as it could have otherwise been or other shows have done. Much of the plots were dumb or flawed in some way while they also somehow did a good job addressing a lot of some serious subjects while keeping it funny. This could have easily been a drama, but it worked out well enough that it wasn’t, even if serious stuff came up a whole lot.

Dynasty: I feel that this show may grow more on me as time goes by. As of yet, I feel that there are good dramas that can happen in any families that are made even more crazy by trying to keep track of money and other issues like that. It doesn’t seem as good as it could be due to issues with some of the writing and acting not seeming as good as it could be. Still, with interesting plots and gripping storylines keeping me more into this than other things I could be into, I think that this could be higher in potential rankings that I might do in the future.

Arrow: Admittedly, this might also deserve more of a higher ranking, but I feel that enough are better than it to put it as low. While it can be better than a lot of other shows, it also often doesn’t seem as good as other shows by being too ordinary and not doing as much to separate it from other shows in the genre. I’m glad that I got back into it when I could have and will probably stick with it until the end. But I will always wonder if I didn’t miss much for the timeframe when I didn’t watch the show.

Emily Owens MD: Outside of its dumb ending, there wasn’t much that I didn’t like about the show. Still, I felt that it could have done better such as focusing more on better medical issues and not making this more about high school dynamics in real life. Even a show that’s not teen based is still into the whole high school cliques and clichés. But it had a lot of heart and good plotting.

Burden of Truth: While it may seem like the single case was too drawn out, it was nice seeing all of the meaning behind the huge case in general. There wasn’t that much time spent in the courtroom, yet we still got what we needed to out of the case in general. More could have been put into it to make it more of an interesting show than it was, but I think that it was largely good, if not good enough to rank with the good shows instead of the average shows.

Riverdale: There were a lot of things that make this show questionable in terms of quality. Yet, there are also tons of things that keep a person like me drawn into it. They make questionable choices such as with the whole Black Hood storyline which went in weird places and brought an off scene end to what was once an important character. It seems to have a lot of weird things in it and can be unrealistic. But I still think that it is a good enough show in some ways.

Black Lightning: The best of the average shows in my mind, this show is a bit strange and can be a bit slow moving to the point of wondering if many important things are happening that much in it. But I do think that it is quite good, even if it can be boring at times and not as interesting as it could be. I think that the addition of human villains is a good one and a lot of it works. But too much of the show is just wasted in conversation instead of more important things.

The good shows

The Tomorrow People: There was a lot to like about this show. I’m not even upset by its ending, because it didn’t seem bad to me. While it was a remake of another show I’m not familiar with and haven’t seen (yet, at least), it seemed to stand out well on its own. I’ll admit that parts of it didn’t always make sense, such as how the main plot was them fighting against other people like them while it seemed like all the regular people were not bad yet bad and things seemed confusing often as a result. Still, I have this with the good shows, even if I have it ranked as the worst of them.

Charmed: While this show is fairly new and could always be judged against the original, I think that it is still fairly good, even if they kind of hammer down messages to the point of it being annoying. They like to keep things simple and they have a recurring storyline thus far to keep us interested. I do wish that they had a somewhat older cast for this than they do, but I guess that doesn’t matter as much for now. I think that it is good so I’m ranking it here for now.

Nikita: This show struggled for a lot of its run to find an audience and stay on the air. It frequently airing at different times definitely didn’t help it. But it did a good job of wrapping things up in the end, even if it had such a short, final season. I felt that it was a good spy show, considering how I often don’t see this type of show on TV. It was nice seeing a female protagonist kick ass, something we sadly don’t all that much of on TV. I wish, in a way, that they kept out the love story aspect and there were a whole lot of unneeded twists and turns along the way.

Frequency: While I liked this show since the pilot, I also felt that none of the episodes were ever as good as the pilot episode was. None of them were bad, but not all of it lived up to expectations. Still, I liked seeing what they could do with the communication between the past and present making those of us wonder how it could affect everything in the show. They even had an epilogue wrap everything up that it could and otherwise wasn’t. Not every show nowadays can do such a simple thing.

Hooten & the Lady: For those of you keeping track, the top ten starts here in terms of CW shows. This show was really good, even if it had a last minute cliffhanger that left the fate of the leads in doubt. It was quite fun seeing the two unwilling partners always working together with hilarious antics often key to the show’s greatness. We got a realistic pair of archeologists doing events that could have happened. I don’t know how much of the mythos might have been true, but I like it nonetheless.

Gilmore Girls: If you missed this show at all, it might be worth something you should watch in the future if you are ever able to. We saw a teen pregnancy storyline much later than usual with the child now a teen herself. It was very quirky and even if it seemed weird, this show could have happened in reality. Nothing about it was something I felt couldn’t be real, although they did some questionable plot choices from time to time. Still, I felt that it was wonderful and am a bit upset that I missed it when it was on the first time.

Penn and Teller: Fool Us: Never, in any episode I saw, has a magician failed to successfully perform a trick on this show. We often see great tricks for free on TV that we would never get to see elsewhere without having to shell out money for it. While we only get cryptic hints into how they aren’t fooled, we do get a good performance to enjoy every time this is on.

Hart of Dixie: Sure, it wasn’t as much about medical issues as it could have been even if it had a doctor as a protagonist, but this show was awesome and I loved the way they ended things. We saw a town full of wonderful people having different adventures and we even saw songs in the show that worked, even if this wasn’t a musical show. Long live the heart.

Legends of Tomorrow: This only issue that I can think of with this show is that it recycles far too much from the rest of Arrowverse. Outside of that, it is hard to think of how this show could be bad. It has a lot of great time travel elements in it and keeps you linked into the larger world that it is part of. I have liked it since the pilot, which I felt was quite awesome, so it is hard not to wonder why one wouldn’t want to stick into it unless you can’t make the time commitment.

iZombie: A reinvention of the zombie genre, it is nice to see something other than just the usual people run from zombies and try to defeat them in a zombie show. Now, we get to see a zombie protagonist who only eats brains because she has to in order to live (interesting, since her name is Liv). It is more than just a standard procedural with a zombie twist and knows how to keep people interested in it over all the time that it has aired thus far. It’s a shame that it is ending soon.

Jane the Virgin: Its premise may be quite odd, but the show is wonderful to keep up with. I might not have seen the show were it not for a dream about it. There are so many twists and turns with it that you would want to make sure that you stay up to date on all of it if you can. You wouldn’t expect a lot of the crazy things that have happened in this show to happen all the time. Yet that is what can make this show quite an awesome one in the end.

Supergirl: Some seasons of this have been better than others so far. Still, it is hard not to like this with it often going beyond just the simple superhero show and into much bigger dynamics than that. We get to see a lot of lessons regarding racism or other issues of our time that need resolved. It doesn’t seem to hammer down a message that is too strong while making sure that we know what is right and not. I do look forward to seeing what else this show has in store for the future.

Whose Line is it Anyways?: Not a conventional show by any means, it is still quite hilarious, even if we often see the same types of things on it from time to time. If you can watch this show without laughing, than I think that you are doing something wrong with life.

The Flash: In my mind, this is the best CW for different reasons. One is that it shows us the real world consequences of decisions in life despite being set in a world that couldn’t happen in reality. We see the flash go after people who are often more than just a villain of the week. There isn’t much wrong with it, even if it isn’t a perfect show. It wasn’t hard for me to rank it here as the highest show on this network. I just hope that they can keep it going for a while.

Before I close this post, I might as well mention what rankings I might do next. There aren’t as many to chose from if I just go through the other four major networks and their primetime shows. I also do not know if I can do the kids shows as well with all the strangeness that has happened with a lot of them. I might, though, go through kids shows in groupings, such as putting those from FOX, the CW, the WB, and cartoon network in one group.

There are also shows on this list that have aired on other networks. I might need to go through all of the WB shows sometime that I have seen. Supergirl has aired on CBS, Mad TV has aired on FOX, and ABC has also aired Whose Line is it Anyways? If you can think of what network’s shows I should rank next, then let me know by commenting on this blog.

Well, I think that I’m finally done with this post. I don’t think that I forget anything that I wanted to rank and if I did, well, I can always update this list in future years. I’m not sure when the next post of this blog will be just yet, but know that I will let you know if I finish with these alternating Monday updates.