The Best TV of 2010: Like Inedible Comfort Food with Wires and Stuff

We all know the drill by now. 10 of the best dramas of the year, 10 of the best comedies of the year, and a list of almost-made-its and also-rans.

Let's dive. But be cautious. Thar be spoilers ahead, maties!

DRAMA

1. Lost
The final season revealed that John Locke was still dead, with the Smoke Monster (also known as Jacob's nameless brother) assuming his form permanently. We learned that detonating a nuclear warhead at the base of a silo holding together an awesome amount of electromagnetic energy simply transports you from 1977 to 2008. We learned that some of the more well-featured lostaways are actually candidates to protect a light source at the center of the Island, and each were assigned Hurley's supposed "cursed" numbers as they correspond to the direction of a supernatural telescope at the apex of a lighthouse that you cannot see unless you're looking for it. We learned that the flash-sideways world, in which Oceanic Flight 815 didn't crash and most of the series' villains or minor characters appeared as polar opposites of themselves was actually a form of purgatory where Desmond could enter through his being a "loophole" of "the rules" and remind everyone that they all needed each other in order to cross over into the other side. The season wasn't perfect ("Ab Aeterno," which finally provided Richard's flashback; and "Across the Sea," which showed Jacob and No-Name as precocious tykes were more of the "how things happened" category instead of the satisfying "why things happened"), and most people were pissed off about the resolution to the sideways world (some decrying it as a rip-off of The Sixth Sense, some just labeling it retarded), but to me it was the most exciting television event of the year. Every time someone from the past popped up in a different position (Miles Straume as James Ford's partner in the L.A.P.D. was especially fun, mostly because he called him "Jim," just as he did when he was LaFleur's underling in the DHARMA Initiative), I couldn't have been more pleased. It's tough ending a mythology-based show; hell, it's tough ending any kind of show, and Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse deserve a whole shitload of credit for giving the entire series an emotional consistency if not a mythological consistency. I still believe that UnLocke was misunderstood, I still want to know how Libby ended up in the mental institution, and I still want to know what the hell Charles Widmore's ultimate plan was, but in a way that's good. I can imagine as much as I want. You can call it cheating on the part of the showrunners, but leaving certain things mysterious has its value, and I would know. I've been chasing it for six years. The final moments of the show proved what the show was all about. DHARMA didn't matter. The Button didn't matter. The Jughead didn't matter. The Constant didn't matter. Lost was about a group of strangers who were lost in their daily lives and they were found when they managed (or struggled) to live together or die alone. They created purgatory as a way to remove the baggage they had before the crash and, upon transcending their past, realizing that the only way for them to find their way in life was with each other, even if this realization was made after the end of life. I'm a cynical killjoy atheist and, as a man with a pathological fear of death, the last five minutes of the series both overjoyed and terrified me, but I felt that they all deserved to move on to another plane (pun not intended). It doesn't matter if it was the ending that was planned from the beginning. It was the ending that, after six seasons of reflection, was needed.

2. Mad Men
How do you beat Season Three? The answer is simple when you're Matthew Weiner: make Season Four. Making the brilliant Jared Harris a regular was a masterstroke, as was upping the episode order for the criminally underrated and bound-to-be-huge Kiernan Shipka (was there any scene in 2010 more unnerving than Sally Draper's little masturbation moment?). Throwing the characters through time at the speed of light was brilliant, as we got a taste of every cultural landmark from the Playboy Club to "Satisfaction" to Disneyland's greatest and most neglected asset, Tomorrowland. My only complaint? The emotionally underwhelming finale. But after twelve episodes of pure genius (John Slattery's first episode as director was possibly the funniest hour of the year), such flaws can be overlooked.

3. Breaking Bad
Throughout Breaking Bad's third season, AMC aired adverts of Jon Hamm praising Bad, talking about how it's essentially a story about a good man on the way to becoming a very, very bad man. If you were watching the season with open eyes, this piece of information is redundant. After letting Jane choke on her own vomit in Season Two and, this season, driving Jesse back into the drug business, it's clear that Walter White is a Tony Soprano on the brink. His casual vehicular manslaughter and brutal murder of another thug at the season's end did nothing if not show the depths to which showrunner Vince Gilligan is willing to go. It's certainly deep water, and inviting the brilliant Bob Odenkirk, Jonathan Banks and Giancarlo Esposito as morally-ambiguous series regulars didn't hurt. Plus, you have to give a writer credit when a line regarding the charred remains of half of a human body attached to a burning airline seat landing in someone's rose garden makes you snort Coke out of your nose. Just me? Probably.

4. In Treatment
Yes, it's two hours of dialogue every week. Yes, each episode pretty much involves only two people occupying the same room. But as someone who has attended therapy sessions off and on for years on end, let me tell you that they get no detail wrong. If I knew much less about the writing staff, I would swear that every one of them were dedicated psychotherapists. This season also breached my interest level in ways I couldn't imagine. Seasons One and Two were brilliant, but they each had one patient too many. By racheting it down to four patients (including my future wife Amy Ryan as Paul's new love interest-cum-pregnant shrink), the writers could focus more on nuance and personal crises, especially now that they had no Israeli episodes to adapt. I look forward to a fourth season, even if the closing minutes of Three lead me to believe that the fat lady sang.

5. Dollhouse
What? A Joss Whedon show on my Top 10? That's absurd. Who would support the most brilliant writer since that bum Bill Shakespeare? Certainly not I. It's not like I relished every moment of this brilliant-but-canceled program's second season, especially when it went to the future and Los Angeles went batshit. But there was also much more to love. Whether it was Amy Acker's sexual frustration or Sierra's somber dismembering of her former keeper, the season did very little wrong. I'm still nursing a grudge over last year's American Idol episode, but I'll let that slide. But my favorite part? Summer Glau essentially playing Kenneth Mars's character in Young Frankenstein, only without the accent and the dartboard.

6. Damages
Tom is dead. We know this by the end of the first episode, much like this stellar program's first season (that corpse, however, belonged to Ellen's fiance), but, like that season, the questions are numerous. Why? How? When? By whom? Pile on a very timely Ponzi scheme from a Bernie Madoff-like douchebag and Martin Short putting on the performance of a lifetime and you have a twisting, turning thriller of a season that manages to fulfil the series' main agenda and focus more on character than the still brilliant second season, which was certainly plot heavy to a severe degree. And by the way, in case you were wondering? Here are the answers: A) Because he lost his money. B) When Campbell Scott drowned him in a toilet. C) At the end of the season (dummy!). D) I already adressed that. Bring on Season Four, even if I have to subscribe to fucking DirecTV to see it.

7. Justified
Isn't it strange that it took the TV bigwigs (much like the seven Jewish bankers that control the world's money supply in the earth's core) until 2010 to give Timothy Olyphant his own show? The man commands charisma, and when the words of Elmore Leonard and writers aping his style spill out of his mouth, he's fucking hilarious and badass to boot. Add some wishy-washy Neo-Nazi's with rocket launchers, psychotic dentists and ex-girlfriends with terrible taste in character and you have a hell of a time enforcing the law in Kentucky. Season Two starts tomorrow, with the brilliant Jeremy Davies (Daniel Faraday lives!) as the main villain, and I can't wait. With this and Lights Out, FX is still the basic cable station to beat.

8. The Walking Dead
Aside from The Majestic, Frank Darabont can do no wrong. He's apparently a prince of a guy, so when he fired all his writers from the first season of this remarkable program, I knew with utter certainty that the goods were still in the best possible hands. Whether it was the ultra-ballsy pilot (in which a pre-pubescent zombie girl takes one in the melon at point blank) or the fascinating finale (which features the best, most realistic explosion in basic cable history), this show was seven episodes of genius. Like the chairperson of AMC, I too hope this show lasts ten years. That'll show all the haters. Fuckin' chumps.

9. Fringe
Somehow, Akiva Goldsman (one of the most notoriously shitty screenplay authors of all time) managed to make this show watchable by writing and directing more episodes than even J.J. Abrams or showrunners Jeff Pinkner and J.H. Wyman. We finally got to see a lot more of Earth B, including the fact that they use zeppelins instead of planes, have regular flights to the moon, require I.D. "Show Me" cards to be carried at all times, they place Fringe Division higher than Homeland Security, the Statue of Liberty is black, Charlie Francis is alive and scarred, and that world's Walter, affectionately known as Walternate, has a real grudge against his Earth Prime doppelganger. There was a musical episode named after a particular favorite brand of marijuana that Walter loves to smoke (and then tell bedtime stories to Olivia's niece whilst high), there was an entire episode dedicated to the rogue Observer (September) and his seemingly alien race. There was a flashback to 1985 when Walter first crossed over to Earth B, which featured a hilarious and brilliant retro title sequence, the show became more and more serialized week to week, and the creators decided that every Earth B opening credits should be colored red. If The X-Files were any good, it would be Fringe.

10. Parenthood/Caprica
Parenthood manages to be both emotional and way too relatable. Caprica managed to be an epic tale of a future gone mad (and the final ten minutes of the series finale rank in the Top 10 moments of television history--it answers every question left over from Battlestar Galactica at breakneck speed). Unfortunately, only one survived (for now), but we have DVD. Let's just be grateful for that. Sure, it'll be years before Jane Espenson is allowed to run a major show again, but we still have memories, right? Right? Hello?