Best TV Drama Series 2009
Best Drama: Lost
Lost has been an enigma since it debuted and has always had fans guessing whether or not this is a series that is going somewhere or a series where the writers are making it up as the go along. Season 5 of Lost, the second to last season, proved beyond any doubt that the writers know what they are doing. This year we saw some of the island’s biggest mysteries solves and yet still new questions were raised each week. Introducing rapid time travel, nuclear bombs and some wicked 70’s time travel season 5 of Lost proved to be everything that a view could hope for and more. Each week more questions were answered and new questions asked leading up to a finale of anatomic proportions, literally. I watched each week with baited breath and could not be more thrilled to see how everything ends in 2010, the final season.
Runner Up: Mad Men
Mad Men is always the sexiest and most intellectually stimulating hour of television. Season 3 manages to move all the most interesting plots forward and still dangles the ever elusive revelation of just who is Don Drapper in front of us. We saw our beloved Sterling Cooper bought and sold, believing that all hpe may be lost only for an 11th hour finale as triumphant as anything else on television. The is we saw Pete and Peggy come into their own and Don question his very existence. Even Betty Drapper, the epitome of subservient housewife, come into her own as full fledged woman. And don’t even get me started on the infamous lawnmower incident!
Honorable Mention: Dexter
If I had made a best of 2008 list there is now question that Dexter would have ranked as the best drama of the year. Unfortunately this year I was only able to watch a few episodes. From what I have seen our favorite serial killer is perhaps in better form than ever before, but I can’t honestly pick it without watching all it had to offer. From what I have seen John Lithgow is sublimely creepy as the Trinity Killer and Dexter is adjusting to the perils of fatherhood with aplomb! Throw in a love triangle for Deborah and an Angel/Laguerta affair and things have so far shaped up to be awesome.
Honorable Mention: Dollhouse
Joss Whendon is a God! There is really no arguing with that, Joss is perhaps the single greatest thing to happen to America television in the last twenty years. Dollhouse struggled at the beginning, with the Fox network trying to push this fledgling series into an episode/issue of the week thriller. But anybody who knows Joss’s work, Buffy, Angel Firefly, know that is not his strong point. Joss’s talent is in long form character and plot development unparalleled by anyone else. Dollhouse started out weak, but continued to get better and better until the sadists at Fox network cancelled it. While the first few eps, airing early 2009 were not the best the back half of season 2 has been nothing sort of amazing. Dollhouse is one of the darkest, most morally complex series ever create and I am devastated that all we are left with is a series finale next month.