In a time when the perfectly unhip twentysomething descendants of Daria saturate our TV screens -- c'mon, you just know Girls' Hannah was a fan -- I think it's worth taking a look back at the animated teens and preteens from a decade ago who rarely, if ever, get any recognition for the huge impact they had on a generation of young women. Speaking as a girl who has always been just a little bit too dorky to actually ever be considered "adorkable," and who was actually lucky enough to have had an uncomplicated happy childhood, I found myself gravitating towards the awkward spazzes who just wanted to hang out with their friends and be accepted by the cool kids without giving up everything about themselves. For that reason, these mostly forgotten characters may have been even more influential than Ms. Morgendorffer.

While there are many already-canned shows from the 2011-2012 TV season that we won't miss, Best Friends Forever is decidedly not one of them. The NBC series only seemed to improve from the fairly strong pilot and I think it wrongly got clumped together with the season's gender-obsessed failures like Are You There, Chelsea? and Man Up!, just because it featured two adult female friends and a slightly overwhelmed dude. In reality, BFF was a fun and promising series that deserved a bit more room to breathe. NBC will be burning the last few episodes off next month, so before the network officially puts a pin in it, here's what I'll miss about the show.

As has been repeated ad nauseam at this point, the release of The Avengers this Friday marks the first time that a batch of individual superheroes who aren't already part of an ensemble (like, say, the X-Men) have teamed up on the big screen in a live-action feature. It's a momentous occasion and all, but it's worth pointing out that television has already beaten them to the punch. Within the past few decades, both DC and Marvel have staged small screen crossover events that united some of their biggest heroes. So why aren't these special one-shots as celebrated as The Avengers? Easy... they're all pretty terrible. For the completest and the curious, though, here are the TV team-ups that pre-date Joss Whedon's new blockbuster. (Note: this list covers live-action TV shows only; these crossovers are a far more common event on the many, many Marvel and DC-related animated series out there, which are a revolving door for special guest stars.)