I don't think I did one of these lists last year, and I have no idea why. The election all by itself would have generated a pretty fun best/worst list. Maybe we were all suffering from information overload, and were just exhausted. Not sure.

But 2009 had a lot of interesting TV, too, just not all in one category. As I've done in the past, I'll dispense with the usual "best show" and "worst show" lists and just make up categories:

GOODNESS

Best comeback from a shaky first season: Parks and Recreation. As I mentioned in my "return of the sitcom" story, Parks and Rec has made the biggest improvement from first season to second since... well, since The Office. It's no coincidence; Greg Daniels and Mike Schur's Office experience taught them that patience would be rewarded, both on the part of the writers and the viewers.

No, this is not going to be another post about the shoddy umpiring or spittle analysis or any of the other on-field matters that have been going on in baseball since the playoffs began. No, we're on a TV blog, so I'm going to just talk about the things that have annoyed me about FOX's and TBS's coverage of the ALCS and the NLCS. In no particular order:

1. The Fidelity-sponsored Fox Trak. The pitching tracker, which shows if a pitch actually hit the strike zone or not, has been around for years. But, the flight of the ball has been to this point represented by a red streak and a dot. Now that Fidelity Investments is sponsoring the tracker, the red streak/dot combo has been replaced by a green streak/green arrow combo that mimics Fidelity's "stay on the line" series of ads. What financial guidance has to do with balls and strikes, I'll never know.

Didn't Madonna make her mark in New York City years ago? Then how did she not ever have a slice of New York City pizza? Last night she told Dave about that, so he ordered one for her (she doesn't like cheese - that figures). They also touched on A-Rod, her previous appearances, and why she'd rather be hit by a train than get married again.

She's still an idiot, but she really looks great. Here are highlights from the interview.