It has four major things going for it: Beautiful people who can act, a genre premise that doesn't take itself too seriously, some very good dialogue, and more damn plot than I've ever seen. Man, they burn through plotlines as if they're actually creative, imaginative storytellers with a million more tricks up their sleeves and the confidence to sell them. Supernatural, to take but one obvious example, has been known to spend an entire 22-episode season doling out the amount of plot that TW has covered in the last three eps.

Also, great adult characters, a range of types of people, the most normalized approach to sexual and gender variations I've ever seen on TV, almost Joss-level humor...

...and homoeroticism out the ying-yang. Especially that.