So Bob Barker's last Price Is Right aired this week. I have seriously mixed feelings about Bob Barker and The Price Is Right.

I love game shows and want to see the genre alive and kicking. So even though TPIR was far from my favorite game show, I appreciate the fact that it's been able to survive for so many years. But I don't understand its appeal. I like game shows that you can play along with at home and TPIR offers very little of that opportunity. Plinko? You just sit and watch. Spinning the big wheel? You just sit and watch where it lands. There's no trivia, no surveys, no puzzles, no nothing to really grab you.

Except Bob Barker, who is as good a TV personality as there's ever been. Which explains much of the show's appeal. But then you take into account the numerous lawsuits that have been brought against him -- nine in the last 13 years -- along with all the accusations of racism, ageism, weightism, sexism, and sexual harassment against both Barker and TPIR, and Barker comes off looking like a major tool. At least he loves animals, or as a production assistant recently said, "Bob's not sensitive to the human condition. That's why his best friends are dogs."

But I'm still not jumping for joy because Barker is off TV, although I feel I should be. Part of that is my respect for anyone who can survive so long on TV, part is my love for game shows I already mentioned, part is that Bob Barker is always the coolest guy on those endless Match Game reruns that GSN plays, and part is pure nostalgia. You see, when I was younger, my parents used to take my sister and I on numerous road trips. (I was practically a part-time elementary school student.) To ease our boredom, we had a big black and white TV that plugged into the cigarette lighter that we balanced on our knees in the back seat. (This was before the days of factory-installed DVD entertainment systems and still in the days when in-dash cigarette lighters were as standard as an AM radio.)

Since we were almost always on the road at the time of day that The Price Is Right was on, and since The Price Is Right was one of the few shows we could begrudgingly agree on, we watched a lot of TPIR in that back seat. So whenever I think of those trips, I think of Bob Barker and TPIR. (I guess I should think of Yosemite National Park, Disney, etc., but hey, I'm a child of television.) So Barker and TPIR will always conjure up pleasant memories of a time long gone. If only Barker -- allegedly -- didn't suck so hard as a human being.

Anyway, there's been a lot of talk about who is going to replace Bob Barker. I think it'll be Dave Price, the affable weather announcer from CBS's The Early Show. I'd rather see Martin Short (unrealistic choice) or one of those guys from the Sonic commercials (more realistic choice). But ultimately I think without Barker the show is a goner.

Quickly, here's a list of 10 better game shows that TPIR; CBS should think about reviving one of these:

1. Match Game.
2. Press Your Luck.
3. Family Feud.
4. Blockbusters.
5. Card Sharks.
6. Hot Potato.
7. The Joker's Wild.
8. Tattletales.
9. Supermarket Sweep.
10. Tic-Tac-Dough.

So The Sopranos is over. Speaking as someone (or writing as someone, in case you haven't yet subscribed to my podcast, which features my blogs read by none other than Mr. Kotter himself, Gabe Kaplan) who doesn't pay for HBO but who instead catches up on The Sopranos on DVD, I have no opinion on the final episode as I have not yet seen it. (For what its worth, it sounds to me like the producers made the right choice in choosing a "life goes on" style of ending. Having Tony get whacked would have been too easy.)

But the end of The Sopranos made me think of something else. Surely no one who has spent some time over the last eight years watching the series would doubt that the show is "classic television." (Many critics have gone farther, with The New York Times famously stating that the series "just may be the greatest work of American popular culture of the last quarter century," a statement that may be true since SCTV is Canadian in origin.) By "classic," I mean a show that will last for years in reruns, DVDs, and simple visibility in the popular culture.

While I'm sad to see The Sopranos end its run, its final episode makes me sad for a different reason as I am left to wonder what is left on TV these days that could be considered "classic television." Every couple of years it seems that we lose a great show and, with more and more airtime being filled with cheap reality and game shows or with the networks simply not willing to give potentially great shows a chance to find an audience, the list of "classic" shows still in production gets smaller.

Immediately I think of a core group of what I would consider great current shows which includes The Office, 30 Rock, 24, and Lost. While The Office and 30 Rock are terrifically funny shows and are my personal current favorites, I think their appeal is somewhat limited. Which is to say, I can't picture the shows on Nick at Nite any time soon. 24, again a show I consider great even after a difficult season, is too serial in nature to be effectively regurgitated in reruns. Lost? Only if the show can build on this year's successful season finale.

What about long-running shows like ER, CSI, and Law & Order? While these programs have been tremendously successful, the fact that they've been on so long I believe limits their long-term shelf life. When they do finally leave the primetime schedules, I think people will have had enough of them. For the most part, part of the cache of most "classic" shows is that they left us wanting more. At this point, who really wants more Law & Order besides Sam Waterston's agent?

Despite their immense popularity, I can't count reality shows like American Idol, Survivor, Dancing with the Stars, et. al, because the individual episodes have virtually no repeatibility once each winner is revealed at the end of each show's cycle. I know that Survivor seasons have been released on DVD, but whoever's watching them must have more free time than my dog.

Then you've got Two and a Half Men. It's popular. It's a comedy, which is the most easily repeated genre. Seems like a lock for "classic television," right? Only one problem: It's not very good. No, it's not terrible. But it's not very good. I challenge anyone who regularly watches Two and a Half Men to be able to recite a joke or a plotline five days later. I've had interactions with cashiers at Target that stayed with me longer.

So, with all of those qualifications out of the way, here are the current shows on the air that I think may be best suited for "classic" status (no particular order):