best of 2009

2009 was a big year for American Idol. After airing for seven wildly successful seasons with three judges, Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul, producers decided to throw a fourth judge into the mix, bringing songwriter Kara DioGuardi on board for season eight. It was a controversial move, and to the surprise of very few people, it went ... poorly.

The judges, who had spent seven seasons learning the rhythm of the show, were suddenly forced to contend with a fourth voice. As none of these folks were exactly shrinking violets to begin with, this led to a lot of jockeying for the mic, which in turn wasted a lot of time. It wasted so much time, in fact, that critiques would get cut off, the show would run long, and at times, judges wouldn't be allowed to speak at all.

So at the end of this harried season, it was no surprise that someone would be shown the door. Many thought that it would be newbie judge Kara DioGuardi. Instead, it was Paula Abdul who was given the boot, and replaced by music legend ... Ellen DeGeneres?

A year has passed and there has been a lot of best and worst lists here at TV Squad. I know tons of reality television shows have grazed my TV so I've compiled a list of the best and worst reality shows of 2009.

Finding the best shows are easy, but it's hard to pare down the worst list. I define "worst" as shows that had potential and never did anything with it. While shows like I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here and anything involving the words "Real Housewives" aren't mentioned, they aren't the worst because they started at rock bottom and had nowhere to go. Several of the worst shows I've mentioned could just go through some tweaking and it could have been amazing.