Ranking J.J. Abrams' TV Shows

11. Six Degrees

Remember Six Degrees? The cheesily devised show about six New Yorkers whose lives serendipitously intermingle? Starring Parenthood's Erika Christensen? And indie film darlings Campbell Scott and Hope Davis? Look, I'm just going to keep asking questions until you admit out loud that you've actively wiped it from your memory. Abrams executive produced this show for ABC, which ran for eight episodes back in 2006-2007 - right in the middle of Lost hysteria. And out of all of Abrams' shows, it left the most meager mark.

10. Undercovers

There was a lot of hype and hoopla behind NBC's Undercovers, which is the most recent series to actually be co-created by Abrams, along with fellow Felicity alum Josh Reims. Abrams himself even directed the pilot episode. The trouble was that the premise would have us believe, at the outset, that "beautiful people" Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw were somehow in a sexual rut. Sure, they were married and it was supposed to reflect certain realities that befall all married couples. But they were both gorgeous former spies and it was just too hard to believe that they'd ever tire of banging each other. More seriously (perhaps), the show also lacked an underlying mythology that Abrams fans craved from Abrams shows, playing it more "mission of the week."

9. What About Brian

Airing on ABC as a 2007 midseason replacement for another Abrams show (see Six Degrees above) was the romantic comedy, What About Brian. No question mark, thank you very much!

Starring 7th Heaven's Barry Watson, the show revolved around Los Angeles bachelor Brian and his circle of friends (including Matthew Davis, Amanda Detmer, Chuck's Sarah Lancaster). Hijinks of the romantic variety ensued. It wasn't must-see-TV by anyone's standards, but it did get a Season 2 pick up after its initial six episodes. So it survived that ever-tough first round on TV, unlike the rest of the bottom shows on this list.

8. Alcatraz

People had high hopes for FOX's Alcatraz, which attempted to blend an over-arching mystery with a "case/prisoner of the week" format - something that NBC's The Blacklist is doing now with much more success (with Alcatraz's Parminder Nagra to boot!).

7. Almost Human

FOX's Almost Human, created by Fringe's J.H. Wyman and executive produced by Abrams, just finished up its first season and...well, it's anyone's guess as to whether it'll return for a second. The show's ratings have been teetering on that all-important fence you hear so much about. If it doesn't come back, fans can certainly throw a few stones at the fact that the show was aired all out of order - a taste of the old Firefly treatment. Though, to be fair, the series still lacked any sort of meaningful follow up to the potential series arc that was introduced in the pilot. Even when FOX did get around to airing the second produced episode of the show (it was broadcast as the 8th episode), that episode didn't pick up on the thread from the pilot. And neither did the third episode, which aired sixth.

6. Revolution

Created by Supernatural's Eric Kripke, with Abrams serving as EP, Revolution has been chugging along over at NBC - having barely eked out a second season after a critically murky first outing. And out of all the shows, even the Lost-saturated Alcatraz, its got the most Lost-iness to it - using flashbacks not only to show us bits of plot that took place in the years following the global power blackout, but also to show all the characters in their old lives, before the lights went out.

5. Felicity

Entering the top 5 here, we get into the better stuff. Abrams' first TV show helped the WB shape its demo and find its voice back in the late 90s. Both a critical and ratings hit (by the WB's standards), the story of Keri Russell's young Felicity Porter derailing her education plan and following her high school crush, Ben (Scott Speedman), to New York City struck a romantic nerve with many a young adult. Many a young adult who freaked the frak out over Russell's post Season 1 haircut...

...Though not as many seemed to mind when the show went bats*** right at the end, and Felicity time-traveled back one year in order to fix her love life.

4. Alias

Three years after Felicity came another Abrams creation - one that he's perhaps most lauded for, in fact, as far as it being completely his show, at least for the first couple of years. Alias, another star-making vehicle, featured hands-on Abrams in both writing and directing capacity. It also represented his first collaboration with writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who would go on to work with Abrams on Fringe, Mission: Impossible III, and the new Star Trek movies.

Alias, the story of Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) and her spyquest to topple a covert fake-CIA branch called SD-6, while also recovering precious visionary artifacts by a Renaissance inventor, helped reinvigorate not only the spy drama but the action heroine drama as well. Looking back, it's still hailed as one of the best shows of the past 20 years, even if the first two seasons were notably stronger than what followed (but damn those two years were good).

3. Person of Interest

As a perfect example of Abrams' executive producer role being used to guide the path of a show into a major network primetime slot, Person of Interest's true spark belongs to creator Jonathan Nolan and showrunner Greg Plageman. But it's still an Abrams series, so it gets to be on the list - despite feeling very very Nolan. Meaning there are definite signs on the show, stylistically and thematically, that harken to the Dark Knight film trilogy. In fact, many viewers see the crime-fighting combo of Reese (Jim Caviezel) and Finch (Lost's Michael Emerson) as Batman-esque, as the show itself comes complete with a fantastic rotating door of recurring villains and evil organizations.

2. Fringe

Created by Abrams, Orci, and Kurtzman, and then run by J. H. Wyman and Jeff Pinkner, FOX's Fringe took big, bold sci-fi risks while also giving us a trio of characters who we deeply cared about (played by Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson, and John Noble). Alternate universes, mind powers, monsters, the disruption of the space-time continuum, visitors from the future all created a wildly involving tapestry of high-tech madness. But at the heart of Fringe was the love between a father and son, who were destined to lose each other and find each other over and over again on a perverse cycle of sacrifice.

1. Lost

Whether or not you felt betrayed or enlightened by the final season and the final episode of Lost, you can't deny that it was a TV phenomenon. So big and bright in fact that many networks (and Abrams himself) tried desperately to instantly recapture the magic and find "The next Lost."

Due to the fact that Lost slowly built up to being a full-blown sci-fi series over time, it also helped open up genre TV to those who wouldn't normally, say, watch a time travel series. Or even, in the case of a mainstream genre hit like The Walking Dead, watch a zombie show. It also used episodic, character-specific flashbacks ingeniously, creating a TV drama format staple that still exists today.

Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/Showrenity.

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