2009 was a good year for television. It offered the resurgence of the comedy on network television, and the continuing growth of original programming on cable. In all honesty, I don't think I could just do a list of what was great and what was horrible on television because I would need pages and pages.

Instead, I'm going to focus on the things that really stood out this year. Sorry, Mad Men fans, but even though this was a great third season and an amazing finale, I expect it at this point. It's the only way I could come up with to keep my list manageable.

Also, as a point of protest I did not include Jon, Kate or the balloon boy hoax. These events got more attention than they deserved already this year, and I feel bad I even mentioned them.

Even in the summertime, it took only one week of ratings less than half of America's Got Talent on Tuesday night to get The Great American Road Trip relocated to Monday, starting immediately.

I finally got around to watching it, and after one week, I think I've had enough. Maybe I've been spoiled by the beautiful panoramic views we get of the environs on shows like The Amazing Race and Survivor over on CBS. I thought for sure that this nostalgic trip down Historic Route 66 would offer up some beautiful shots of our own amazing country.

In the first episode, they were going to be coming through my neck of the woods, and we Midwesterners love seeing our cities on the television. Only when the families came into St. Louis, we didn't get a nice shot of the city skyline from the Illinois side, or anything. One shot of the top corner of it and they were on the Arch grounds rolling giant plastic balls through rickety mini-arches. With a budget of about a hundred bucks for the challenges, this show looks like something that NBC had a bunch of interns throw together.