Biggest Headscratcher: Between COMMUNITY’s love affair with COUGAR TOWN, THE OFFICE’s shout-out to DALLAS, PARKS AND RECREATIONS’ nod to NCIS: LOS ANGELES and 30 ROCK’s myriad of pop culture zingers touching on RIZZOLI & ISLES, THE VAMPIRE DIARIES, AMAZING RACE, ROSWELL and ENTOURAGE, one can’t help but wonder how the fledgling fourth place Peacock Network might be doing ratings-wise if their own shows paid half as much attention to NBC’s roster as they do others!

Loudest Fan Outcry: Viewers of GENERAL HOSPITAL were so upset about the soap turning four-year-old Jake into road kill that their response garnered attention from such media outlets as The New York Post.

And the Award For Best Ending We Didn’t See Coming But Probably Should Have Goes to…: BIG LOVE, which just about made up for two seasons of disappointment with a finale that gave us the BIG ending we were hoping for. God only knows what we’ll be without you indeed.

Faux Campaign We Can Really Get Behind: All we can say to Ellen DeGeneres’ plea that networks stop airing two-hour episodes of reality shows is… Amen!

Best For Your Consideration Emmy Reel: Following Monday’s fantastic father-son reunion between Barney and his bio-dad on HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, is anyone else up for forgoing all of that silly campaigning by just awarding Neil Patrick Harris and John Lithgow their Emmys now?

Biggest Jaw Dropper: Blake’s revelation that Kalinda was one of Peter Florrick’s ‘Goddesses’ on Tuesday’s shocking final moments of THE GOOD WIFE was the very definition of winning TV.

Smartest Marketing: This season of GLEE has been more hit than miss, but releasing an entire album of Warbler tunes is the best thing to happen since New Directions breathed new life into “Don’t Stop Believing.”

Biggest Jaw Dropper Runner-up: Fox didn’t just reward the critically acclaimed albeit ratings anemic FRINGE with an early fourth season pickup, they gave the best show you — yes YOU — aren’t watching a full 22 episode order to boot. Slushies all around!

Strangest News Of The Week: TMZ reported that AMERICAN IDOL contestants have fled their Beverly Hills mansion… because it’s haunted. (Are they sure someone didn’t just leave a CD of Sanjaya’s wailing playing?)

Runner-up to our Biggest Jaw Dropper Runner-up: Based on his hilarious cameo on Thursday’s 30 ROCK, fast-talking Academy Award winning writer Aaron Sorkin actually has a sense of humor about himself. Who knew?
 
The Charlie Sheen Award For Bad Behavior Being Rewarded Goes To…: Chris Brown, who threw a hissy at GOOD MORNING, AMERICA… only to be invited back and not lose his booking on DANCING WITH THE STARS.

Runner-up to our Runner-up to our Biggest Jaw Dropper Runner-up: Notorious show-killer Eric Balfour was surprisingly stellar as NO ORDINARY FAMILY big baddie on Tuesday.

Coolest Anniversary Gift: THE BOLD & THE BEAUTIFUL celebrated it’s 24th year on the air by sending members of the media a cool lunchbox featuring artwork by Chris Morris.

Runner-up to our Runner-up to our Runner-up to our Biggest Jaw Dropper Runner-up: (Last one, we swear!) Michael Scott’s proposal to Holly managed to outshine a series worth of Jim and Pam’s “Aww-shucks” moments. Now, that we didn’t see coming!

BIG LOVE’s Big Finish
Under normal circumstances, we wouldn’t be celebrating the cancelation of one of the most interesting and unique shows to hit the small screen in years. That said, there was very little normal about HBO’s BIG LOVE. So rather than wallow in today’s news that the cult HBO favorite will call it quits after it ends its fifth season which is scheduled to kick off this January 16, 2011, we’d rather look on the bright side and applaud HBO for giving co-creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer ample time to craft a proper send-off and celebrate the fact that Sheffer told E! Online that, “I think you’ll agree this is definitively our best season to date.”

Bill Carter’s The War For Late Night
Still having trouble wrapping your head around the fact that the once would-be-king of late night, Conan O’Brien, is mere weeks away from unveiling his new show on… TBS? Us too! Which is why we thought that now would be as good a time as any to take a look back at how he got there. And what better way to do that than by picking up the must read tome from Bill Carter, one of the industry’s most well-connected authors. Hitting both digital and analog book shelves on November 2nd, 2011 comes Carter’s highly anticipated follow-up to The Late Shift, The War for Late night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy. But hey, don’t take our word for it, try before you buy courtesy of this awesome excerpt just posted over on VanityFair.com.

Conan O’Brien “Zero Hour”
And speaking of the man, the myth, the keeper of the Masturbating Bear, perhaps the most pivotal characters in Carter’s axis of funny will follow up his “Live Coco Cam” by letting fans in on the ultimate warm-up for his new TBS show. Conan O’Brien will host “Show Zero” on Monday November 1st, at 11PM (ET) / 8PM (PST), which will feature celebrity guests, “The Basic Cable Band,” and Andy Richter as they help O’Brien warm up for the main event. See for yourself at TeamCoco.com, YouTube.com, and Facebook.com.

Paula Abdul vs. AMERICAN IDOL
Now we know what you’re thinking! Just what on earth is the traditionally reality-free TV Addict doing expressing excitement for Paula Abdul’s upcoming Dance Show on CBS? Well, allow us to explain. The exciting aspect isn’t so much that Abdul is returning to our living room with LIVE TO DANCE, but rather that CBS is reportedly pitting her new show up against AMERICAN IDOL. A strategic move that can only mean one thing: Networks smell blood! And come January 2011, rather than continue to sit idly by as IDOL dominates the primetime television landscape, CBS is making the first of what we suspect will be a series of high profile moves by FOX’s competitors to stop the once unstoppable juggernaut that is was AMERICAN IDOL.

That CASTLE Show!
The only thing cooler than the news — first reported by Michael Ausiello — that CASTLE has tapped Laura Prepon to play Natalie Gray (an actress who has just been cast as Nikki Heat in the movie version of Heat Wave) is if the brains behind CASTLE nabbed fellow THAT 70′s SHOW co-star Topher Grace to play her foil. We’re just sayin’

It’s sad when someone who should be an expert on something reveals just how little they know about the genre on which they’re pontificating. Take, for example, Time magazine’s Richard Corliss, who on Sunday decided to declare that BIG LOVE had jumped the shark several weeks earlier. Unfortunately, he gets off to something of a rocky start by wrongly stating that everything from a wedding to a birth is an indication that a show has jumped the shark (as opposed to those being examples of, um, actual plot developments). But he then goes on to claim that the January 24th episode of the polygamy-in-suburbia drama jumped the shark by having Sarah take in an Indian woman and her child, Margene kiss stepson Ben, Alby begin an illicit affair and Nicki pull a gun.

Did a lot happen in the episode? You betcha. Was it a “jump-the-shark” moment? Not by a longshot.

What Corliss fails to get is that BIG LOVE is, at heart, a soap opera. As with any good sudser, there are the haves (Bill and his wives) and the have nots (the Juniper Creek crowd). There is a star-crossed romance (Margene and Ben), the slightly-unbalanced love-to-hate-her vixen (Nicki), a villain you hate to love (Alby, although he’s getting a run for the money in Zeljko Ivanek’s JJ) and a clan so intertwined that the family tree appears to suffer a bad case of root rot.

But most importantly, like any good soap, BIG LOVE is a show that knows a thing or two about plotting and pacing. To hear Corliss tell it, one might assume the events he mentioned came out of the blue when, in reality, most had been building for months and, in some cases, from the very beginning of the series. The budding attraction between Ben and Margene has been brewing since early last season, and Alby’s sexuality has been a timebomb waiting to explode since his first charged encounter with a hustler during the show’s first season.

A good writer figures out ways to have plots ripple across their canvas each week. A great writers knows how to accomplish that while at the same time laying the groundwork for episodes which bring several plots together for an episode which shakes every character on the canvas up and tilts the entire show in a new direction. That was what Roberto Aquirre-Sacassa, writer of the episode in question (titled, appropriately enough, “Strange Bedfellows”) did brilliantly, all the while introducing several new characters who would become key players in the weeks to come (including Sissy Spacek’s colorful turn as lobbyist Marilyn Densham).

Perhaps Corliss — who is a longtime movie critic for the magazine — should stick to the beat he knows best, as it appears he doesn’t understand the difference between the pace of big and small screen offerings. Then again, as the man who declared that Avatar presented an “impossible but completely plausible” world — as if those two words weren’t completely incongruous — it might just be that the plot-light, effects-heavy spectacle ruined him for, you know, actual scripted entertainment.

Three quick observations with regards to last night’s phenomenal instalment of BIG LOVE. 1) In addition to her ‘For Your Consideration’ Emmy clip, last night’s heartbreaking and tearful confession by Margene as to what really went down between herself and Ben just cemented Ginnifer Goodwin’s status as television’s most underrated actress. 2) Almost as shocking as the three whole seconds it took Bill to expell his own son from his house was his treatment of loyal second-in-command Don. Seriously, somebody needs to smack this man upside the head for his continual self righteous and destructive behaviour. And finally, 3) Just how did it take us so long to reach our latest separated at birth comparison: BIG LOVE’s Alby Grant and LOST’s Benjamin Linus. Discuss.

DOLLHOUSE
Pretty girls are literally and figuratively transformed into playthings and sent out into the world to pleasure wealthy men. Sure, there’s Victor, but even he was used by the writers as a way to threaten the position of woman-in-power Adelle!

BAD GIRLS CLUB
Let’s face it, people tune into this mess for one reason and one reason only: To see girls with low self-esteem behave in the worst ways possible.

GENERAL HOSPITAL
A show ostensibly aimed at a female audience which might easily be renamed THE WOMEN IN JEOPARDY HOUR. The end of its much-ballyhooed Franco story saw not one, not two, but three different women (Carly, Lulu and Sam) being held hostage by the madman.

FAMILY GUY
While the animated laugher is an equal-opportunity offender, poor Meg may be the most tread-upon character in the history of television. As Peter once said after his daughter left the room, “Who was that guy?”

BIG LOVE
As polygamy is, in essence, institutionalized misogny, it’s impossible not to put this compelling show on the list despite the fact that it’s female characters are some of the strongest to grace the small screen.

Between three wives, two businesses and umpteen offspring, keeping track of Bill Henrickson’s many problems is easier said than done. Which is probably why HBO has just released — just in time for BIG LOVE’s fourth season premiere on January 10th, 2010 — this clever little refresher highlighting some of the biggest moments from the show’s first three seasons. Big thanks HBO, seriously.

10. DOLLHOUSE
At this point, I’ve given up on Joss Whedon ever getting free reign over his creative works. Yes, lead Eliza Dushku is the show’s weakest link (she has very limited range), but, ah, what a fantastically flawed work of art. DOLLHOUSE may not always work, but when it does, its pure Whedon: deep down, there’s a beautifully complex and dark story of identity.  

9. BRICK CITY
You make your jokes about New Jersey, but this unflinching documentary set in Newark will change your tune. Starring an impassioned Mayor Cory Booker as he works to restructure the police force to combat rising crime, it’s the closest series to get to THE WIRE in terms of tragedy, family, and gloomy hope.  

8. PARKS and RECREATION
Or the comeback kid. At first Amy Poehler’s OFFICE-wannabe about local government was good, but didn’t have much of an identity of its own. But its second season closed up the giant pit and figured out how it use its star and its cast to hilarious comedic levels. Cohesion achieved.  

7. IN TREATMENT
If you think there couldn’t be anything more boring than watching people sit around and talk, then you’re dead wrong. Season two of the therapy drama starring the impeccable Gabriel Byrne as a shrink who’s been shrunk packed more raw, emotional humanity into words than every forensics-leaden CBS procedural currently airing.  

6. TORCHWOOD: CHILDREN OF EARTH
Who would think that a kooky spin-off of the long-running DOCTOR WHO  series about a time traveler and his paranormal crime solving team could tell a story as riveting as this? This was an alien invasion that maturely posed the question of whether the needs of the few outweighed the needs of many, and what tragedy can do to the most honorable of people.  

5. GLEE  
If COP ROCK and VIVA LAUGHLIN have proven anything, it’s that musical dramedies could only go down as gloriously failures. And then GLEE happened, mined for every ounce of chintz, kitsch, and spectacle creator Ryan Murphy could find, it works because it is both ridiculous and a marvelous display of craft. It is the most perplexing show on television, and I love it.  

 
4. FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
Never have I cried, laughed, and cheered alongside a television show. After a wider-audience pandering sophomore effort, this hearty, kicky drama about a high school football team (and the coach and his wife, played by TV’s greatest couple, Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton) in small-town Dillon, Texas turned out a fantastic third season that let us say goodbye to old favorites (Street! Smash! Lyla!) and wait breathlessly for new ones.  

3. BREAKING BAD  
What started out as a dark, desperate attempt to leave his family a nest egg after his cancer claims him, season two brought on a tricky roundabout: remission. So now chemistry teacher-turned meth dealer Walter White (the incomparable Bryan Cranston) continues in the drug trade with less obvious ambitions. This season was arresting, exploring mortality and morality, and everything in between.

2. BIG LOVE  ?Bless, what a season. Shortened by the strike, this polygamist drama packed a tense, hilarious, tragic, and often poignant third season into 10 episodes of familial bliss. This is a case where more does makes merrier – be it a new wife, new prophet, or illegitimate lovechild, this impeccable ensemble piece makes the grade.   

1. MAD MEN
In Matthew Weiner’s period drama set in the 1960s – so purposefully paced, so delicately curated by its art directors – there isn’t episode that isn’t delicious to consume and almost impossible to explain. Season three, set in 1963, tore everything apart: families, careers, and in one instance, a man’s foot. More importantly, it deftly succeeded in not only showing us the past, but making us feel it too.  

Honorable Mentions: 30 ROCK, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, BORED TO DEATH, THE GOOD WIFE, LOST, MODERN FAMILY, THE OFFICE, SONS OF ANARCHY, TRUE BLOOD, UNITED STATES OF TARA.

Related:
• Our Top 10 TV Shows of 2009
• Our 2009 TV Year in Review (Part IV)
• Our 2009 TV Year in Review (Part III)
• Our 2009 TV Year in Review (Part II)
• Our 2009 TV Year in Review (Part I)

10. BIG LOVE
Once thought of as “that show about the guy who has sex with three women”, BIG LOVE has moved so beyond its initial constraints as to feel like a completely different series. Despite it’s odd (and, to some, off-putting) pacing, the tale of the Henrickson family has become as complex as the religion at its center, thanks in large part to the unforgettable performance of Chloe Sevigny as Nicki, the immature second wife who is torn between her fundamentalist Mormon values and her childish impulses.  

9. CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM
It’s odd to realize that there is a huge segment of the population of who have seen this HBO series and probably never even heard of it until the much-buzzed about SEINFELD reunion. Those people will probably squirm uncomfortably upon hearing that this season saw Larry David inadvertently pee on a portrait of Jesus, very intentionally grasp a secretary’s love handles in a bid to save his own life, or wound up in a fist fight with Rosie O’Donnell. Those of us who witnessed his antics also squirmed uncomfortably… while simultaneously howling with laughter. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

8. NBC’S THURSDAY NIGHT LINE-UP
They may not be perfect, but COMMUNITY, PARKS & RECREATION, THE OFFICE and 30 ROCK have come together — flaws and all — to create the best two-hour comedy block since the heyday of Must-See TV. Better, these are not your typical set-up-followed-by-punch-line sitcoms, but rather what we like to think of as comedies for the thinking man in which the unguarded moments “caught” by the camera are every bit as important as the dialogue being spoken. Sometimes even more so. 

7. THE DAILY SHOW/ COLBERT REPORT
Who would have imagined that some of the best social commentary — not to mention concise media criticism and analysis — would be coming from the “World News Headquarters” of Comedy Central? What’s truly amazing about these shows is that they manage to combine politicians, pundits and celebrities into a breathtakingly funny cocktail five nights a week… a feat SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE can’t manage to do once a week.

The TV Addict with a few of Bon Temps’ finest at the 2009 Entertainment Weekly Comic Con Party

6. TRUE BLOOD
Yes, yes, we were a little late to the party. But thanks to HBO on Demand, we’re ready to sing the praises of Bon Temps, the little town where not only can anything happen, but when it does, it’s often in the nude. (Thank you, Cable!) While daughters everywhere were deciding whether to be on Team Edward or Team Jacob, TRUE BLOOD fans knew the real battle is between those who want to bare their necks for Bill and those who’d rather sink their teeth into Eric. That’s what we call a win/win.

5. DEXTER
Let’s have a show of hands: How many of you were reluctant to even start this season, bored at the notion of America’s favorite serial killer being saddled with a wife, two precocious kids and a new baby? Shame on us for having doubted the writers, who turned our notions of family upside down by giving Dexter a new nemesis who, like him, was both a family man and a serial killer. Unlike last season’s somewhat meandering and, in the end, almost pointless Prado plot, season four’s arc was every bit as twisted as the mind of John Lithgow’s Trinity. Better still (Spoiler Alert!) the shocking finale set the stage for the show to re-invent itself yet again, this time with Dexter as a single dad. It’s a tried-and-true storyline that on any show might quickly become trite, yet thanks to the fact that this year’s conventional set-up yielded what may well have been the best season yet, we can hardly wait.

The TV Addict parties with some of your favorite Gleeks at FOX’s Fall 2009 Launch

4. GLEE
After years of COP ROCK punchlines, it looks as if television critics everywhere will need to look for a new scapegoat, because the musical dramedy is officially alive and well thanks to the students and faculty of McKinley High. Like most shows on this list, GLEE is not perfect. But it proves the power (and profit) of thinking outside the box and brings in the kind of demographics that cause happy-shivers to run up and down the spines of network execs.

3. MODERN FAMILY
We come not to bury the sitcom, but to praise it. What many expected to be a typical sitcom quickly proved itself anything but as America met and fell for the extended Dunphey/Pritchett family. What makes this show shine — aside from the wildly talented cast or the exceptionally sharp writing — is the family itself. Gay, straight, young, old, fat and thin, they are, in essence, us. It would be atypical for viewers to relate to any one member of a television family. For us to somehow relate to them all is what makes this FAMILY so dang perfect.

2. LOST
Not willing to rest on their laurels, executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse continued to step up their game with the show’s penultimate season. So much so that we’ll forgive them for raising more questions than answers (as usual), killing off major and much beloved characters (Juliet! Sob!)  and introducing the head-scratching notion of time-travel (Please don’t make us do math) because we know deep down inside that like those pesky Cylons before them, they have a plan. Or, um, they damned well better. Just sayin’.

1. FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
Just how remarkable was FRIDAY LIGHTS this past year? Put it this way: This TV Addict is so desperate to discover if Coach Taylor can turn around the lacklustre East Dillon Panthers that we may have [or for legal reasons, may not have] turned to a life of crime downloading. Fingers crossed the judge is a fan. After all, if anyone will be able to sympathize as we revel in the small screen’s most endearing marriage (that of Eric and Tami Taylor) and the tearful farewell arcs for veteran cast members Zach Gilford and Taylor Kitsch, it’s a fellow Panther. Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose!

Seriously. Just when we thought we couldn’t get anymore excited for the January 10th return of BIG LOVE comes a surprise appearance by one of our all-time favorite EVERWOOD alums. See for yourself in this just released fourth season trailer.