Best and Worst of 2008: TV

Best:

5. Mad Men

Aside from just being a great show, it's impossible for me to watch it and not feel an urge to have a cigarette and slap my secretary on the ass. Which is even more impressive when you consider that I don't smoke or have a secretary. If only more shows made you feel like that.

4. Chuck

I'm not sure when or how, but at some point this show, which I'd only half-paid attention to last year, became must-see television. The basic premise and the acting were always good, but this year, the humor got sharper, the plots got better, and the previously unwatchable action scenes became...well, watchable. Also, they keep finding new excuses to put Yvonne Strahovski in tiny outfits.

3. Lost

Monster comeback for a show that seemed to have gone past its expiration date. Usually, when a show shoves this many new characters and/or concepts at you this late into its run, it's a sign of desperation and fails miserably. Here, it wound up being a huge improvement. I still suspect they have no idea where they're going with the story, and are just making it up as they go along, but if the end result continues to be this good, I guess it doesn't matter.

2. Life

I'm not a big fan of cop shows. Probably the result of being forced to watch Hunter with my parents when I was a kid. But this one is quirky enough that it almost doesn't even feel like a cop show. The cases are generally creative and engaging, and even when they're not, the real appeal is just watching Charlie Crews zen his way through life. Also, they keep finding new excuses to put Sarah Shahi in tiny outfits.

1. 30 Rock

By far the funniest show on television, even though NBC seems determined to screw it up this season through horrible stunt casting. Liz Lemon is the most perfect woman on the planet (cute, funny, wears glasses, and prefers to discuss pop culture than politics), and Alec Baldwin should win every award ever for his brilliant performance.


Worst:

5. Dirty Sexy Money

I kind of dug this show in its first season. It wasn't anything brilliant, but it was an amusing little series that didn't take itself too seriously. This year, it decided it actually was a serious show after all, and it promptly got canceled. Other than self-professed fan Michael Wilbon, I can't imagine too many people will miss it.

4. 90210

Even though I wasn't a Beverly Hills 90210 viewer back in the day, I watched a couple of episodes of this out of morbid curiosity and was appalled at how bad it is. Granted, I'm not a teenage girl, so I'm not exactly in the CW's target demo, but I can't imagine even they find this crap entertaining. Then again, High School Musical 3 made $90 million, so apparently, teenage girls are a dumb lot.

3. Entourage

I'm completely lost. Am I supposed to be rooting for Vince to succeed or fail? Because by the end of the season, I was hoping he and pretty much every other character except for maybe Turtle would go down in flames. And the end of the finale, where Martin Scorsese just calls up out of the blue and offers Vince the lead in his new film, was even less believable than the mega-happy ending in Wayne's World.

2. Knight Rider

I think those of us who were kids in the 80s tend to romanticize the action/adventure shows we grew up with, like the original Knight Rider, The A-Team, Air Wolf, MacGyver, etc. But as adults, when we're alone at night? When it's just us, a DVD player, a season set from one of those shows, and a half-empty bottle of scotch? We're forced to face the fact that for the most part, those shows really fucking sucked. This remake was even worse. Much, much worse.

1. Heroes

Has any show ever fallen so far, so fast? After a great first season, a horrible second one, and an even worse third season, I'm willing to declare Heroes the champ. Hey, Heroes? Instead of continuing to rip off X-Men stories, why not steal from Crisis on Infinite Earths? Because this is a show in desperate need for multiple deaths and a major continuity clean-up.