best and worst 2009

What a year! Once we got over the WGA strike, the networks kicked it into high gear and got busy making TV. Except for NBC. Even Jeff Zucker has admitted that NBCU has failed to respond to the need for new programming.

Fortunately, the other channels have been busy and there's been a lot of great television... and some that's just plain awful. But I'm a half-glass full kind of person and I have good feelings about 2009. However, since I don't want to repeat my list from last year, I'll just mention that I could put these 2008 best choices -- Breaking Bad, Friday Night Lights, NCIS, The Big Bang Theory and Mad Men -- on my list again. But I'm going to go for an all new list and, thankfully, I had plenty of 'bests' to choose from.

Best
1. Glee. If there was ever a show that was made just for my personal taste, this is probably it. I love the singing and dancing. I get the characters. It even tickles me that I had just as much angst with bullies in high school as these kids. Every episode hasn't been perfect, but it's perfectly fine that they keep striving.

What is a best and worst list anyway? Is it truly a list of the best shows of the year and the worst shows of the year based on quality alone or do we have personal "favorites" in there too? Even if you watch 10 hours of TV a day there's no way that any TV critic can watch every single show, so there might be some gaps in what one person considers the "best and worst" and what another person has on their list.

Here are my picks.

The Best

1. Mad Men. There was no other drama this year that did so many things in so many ways. It's funny how a lot of people kept saying that "nothing ever happens" on this show. Actually, everything happened on this show, and it's all acted, written, and filmed in such a gorgeous way. This is a beautiful television series.

Here's one of the more talked about scenes from this season: