What’s The Number One TV Show You Love To Hate?

We’re living in the golden age of hate-watchable trash television.

13. Pretty Little Liars

Pretty Little Liars is totally stupid. There’s no denying it, but sometimes you just have to find out how something ends. That feeling by the way is called “The How I Met Your Mother Conundrum.”

12. The Office (Post-Michael Scott)

Let’s start with an easy one. The Office had a few good years, but after Jim and Pam got married it just got lazier and lazier, and now that Steve Carrell is gone the show feels a lot like visiting your grandparents in an old folks home. Still you can’t deny that seeing some of your favorite characters every week isn’t nice. You just kind of wished it sucked less.

11. Girls

Lena Dunham’s Girls sure made a lot of people write and say a lot of really self-important things about comedy and women and television. But after the dust cleared most people agreed Girls was mildly funny, but more than anything else, tremendously frustrating.

10. Whitney

Whitney is just a horrible show, but it’s that special kind of horrible show that makes you want to watch it, almost out of spite. It’s even more fascinating now when you consider that it got a season renewal, beating out 30 Rock, Parks And Rec, and saddest of all Community.

9. The Newsroom

It’s obnoxious, garish, completely self-involved, and totally unfair to its female characters but damn if it isn’t compelling. Every week it frustrates the ever-living shit out of you, and you come out of it all in a huff complaining about how “that’s not even how it would happen” or “they wouldn’t say that,” but you can’t deny it’s a lot of fun.

8. The Bachelor / The Bachelorette

These two shows weren’t great when they started, but over the years the producers have conveniently cast more and more horrible people making it much easier to hate-watch. It’s a perfect formula: Bland, mildly attractive white people saying and doing horrible things in dumb places. What’s not to hate/love?

7. 2 Broke Girls

Hate-watching 2 Broke Girls is almost the exact opposite experience than hate-watching Whitney. 2 Broke Girls is this weird thing where you tune in hoping and praying it’ll turn into the awesome show it could be. But 30 minutes later you’re left bummed out and hoping next week it’ll finally turn into a great sitcom and stop being bafflingly racist.

6. American Horror Story

There is something so exciting about a show that understands how campy and ridiculous it is. Most people thought it was going to try and bring real scares to television but by the middle of the season everyone got the full picture. American Horror Story is the best kind stupid guilty pleasure, awesomely combining campy 70s horror with this weird sexy and violent Rocky Horror Picture vibe.

5. Project Runway

Project Runway was a fine show in the beginning. But as you got more invested in it, it just got worse and worse. Now you’re stuck, watching every week, but damned if you know why.

4. Smash

There’s just something about Smash. It’s poorly written, disastrously acted, and an all around miserable television show. But somehow when you take all of their awful acting and terrible dialogue and contrived plot lines and combine them with genuinely good broadway musical numbers it becomes something great and awful and exciting. It’s weird how that works.

3. Here Comes Honey Boo Boo

Yo, okay, so this show about a baby pageant queen and her swamp people family is a straight-up car crash. Like someone decided they wanted to capture cinematic proof that the American dream is dead. Like an Arthur Miller play acted by the cast of The Hills Have Eyes, it’s a spectacle of unfathomable weirdness that you just can’t stop watching.

2. Jersey Shore

We get one more season.

1. Degrassi

Drake in a wheelchair, Taking Back Sunday talking about not doing cocaine, lot’s of life lessons about not doing ecstasy or not dressing slutty for school. Really, there’s nothing better than watching a Degrassi marathon and screaming about how stupid everyone’s acting. But also, you kind of love them for it too.

There are a bunch more great bad shows out there, put your must-hate-watch TV shows in the comments!

(cough, cough, Walking Dead, cough, cough…)