As we bid farewell to what is without a doubt the richest decade in TV history, it’s encouraging that there’s still so much greatness out there. It seems like only yesterday we thought that once The Sopranos and 24 signed off this little wormhole we wandered into where TV wasn’t all doctors and cops would close up. A few years later The Sopranos is long gone and 24 is about as relevant as According To Jim (that’s still on, right?). Without further ado, Sodapop Journal‘s core TV team shares their picks for the year.

Zoe

Friday Night Lights
To be fair, I am a latecomer to the Friday Night Lights bandwagon, but with so many of my Like buttons pushed, how could I be anything but an adoring fangirl of it? It quickly became a top five show, and while it is always good, what really launched it into the number one spot was the episode “The Son”. This episode, dealing with love and anger and life and loss better than I have ever seen (better, even, than Six Feet Under, which made its bread and butter on those themes), is the absolutely best portrayal of grief I have seen in any medium, and is that much richer for the four seasons and hundreds of character moments that proceeded it. Friday Night Lights is great, but “The Son” guaranteed it the top spot.

Honorable Mentions:
The character of Brooklyn on Bored to Death, Sally Draper on Mad Men, Bones for maintaining a decent amount of quality, Pushing Daisies because it technically counts, and Community for actually making me laugh out loud.

Scott

Breaking Bad
AMC hit a home run with their first original series, the sleek, stylish Mad Men, raising the bar impossibly high for whatever was slated as their second original series. They responded with Breaking Bad, a show created by Vince Gilligan, The X-Files‘ best writer, that’s dusty and surreal and utterly unglamorous. If Mad Men takes its cues from The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Breaking Bad is Coen-esque, combining the ramshackle wackiness of Raising Arizona with the inescapable dread of No Country For Old Men. The Writers-Strike-abbreviated first season was good, establishing its knotty characters as imminently relatable everymen and beginning its exploration of an aggrieved chemistry teacher with terminal cancer willing to do whatever it takes to leave his family with enough cash to get by without him. But this year’s second season is, simply put, one of the greatest seasons of television ever, disturbing, hilarious and heart-wrenching. In just a season and a half, Breaking Bad belongs with the greats – in addition to the Coen Brothers, I’m reminded of the ground-level realism of The Wire, the western gallows humor of Sam Peckinpah, the moral quagmires of Krzysztof Kieslowski, and the folksy weirdness of David Lynch. It achieves that greatness on a deceptively small scale, though: at its core it’s about how ordinary people in extraordinary situations are able to throw morality to the wind, and how (or if) they’re able to live with themselves. Never before has a show felt so simultaneously intimate and monumental.

Honorable mentions:
Alan Tudyk in Dollhouse (the network crippled the show out of the gate with unwarranted tinkering and a black hole timeslot, but Tudyk miraculously cuts through the shit to the potential and horror of the show’s central technology), Lost (ingeniously introduced time travel to make its characters active participants in the show’s labyrinthine mythology, once again proving the old maxim “show, don’t tell”), Mad Men (gave us its richest season yet, with a surprisingly optimistic ending)

Ellen

The Office
My fellow panelists are probably tired of me sounding like a broken record, given that I’ve already spoken about The Office in a record four Remote Uncontrolleds this year. But a combination of a few new cast members, plummy roles for some ensemble players (particularly Ed Helms) and the recession have made me realize that I had as little faith in Dunder Mifflin as its stockholders. Its avoidance of sitcommy rhythm had all the hallmarks of a diabolical plan found on the copier. Just as the jokes have built and expanded, so the cringeworthy moments have gotten deeper. Not content earlier in the season with almost ruining Jim and Pam’s rehearsal dinner, Michael Scott finally waded into a situation he couldn’t talk his way out of – not when he quit the company to start an illegal competitor earlier this year, but when he was forced to face up to one of his foolish promises and confront a classroom full of high school students. I’d have exploited Idris Elba’s presence as Charles Miner a bit more, and I still miss Amy Ryan as Michael’s goofy other half Holly, but a show so regularly sublime gets a free pass from me.

Honorable mentions:
30 Rock, “Apollo, Apollo”; The Amazing Race, “They Thought Godzilla Was Walking Down The Street”; Glee, “Pilot”

Robert

Castle
Originally scheduled as a mid-season replacement in early 2009, Castle hit the airwaves with little buzz and even less pedigree to bank on. With cult TV hero Nathan Fillion (Firefly) as a wily novelist and relative newcomer Stana Katic (Heroes) as his muse, the show faced an uphill battle to find ground with audiences but did so with moxie and against expectations landed a second, even better season. Unlike other well-established police procedurals like CSI or Law & Order, Castle changes the formula by focusing less on the crimes and bringing the characters themselves front and center with a good dose of comedy thrown in for kicks. Leave it to Fillion to describe his idea of the show as “a cross between Moonlighting and Murder, She Wrote, having not really remembered Moonlighting that much and never actually having seen Murder, She Wrote.” In fact, for any of its shortcomings as “yet another cop show”, Castle is a delight to watch just to see Castle and Beckett’s banter — she, determined to catch the bad guys, and he, poking her in the arm at every turn — because it never takes itself too seriously; even in heavier moments, there’s an underlying optimism to it all. With hour-longs so inundated with gravitas these days, having a show like Castle to just kick back and have a good time with is enough to make it my must-watch show for 2009 and hopefully years to come.

Honorable mentions:
Modern Family (an even-handed and often hilarious look at the modern family dynamic with a solid cast and great writing); Stargate Universe (Finally I feel at home again with the Stargate franchise, even if some die-hard fans don’t)