Thanks to The Intersect for the tip.

by Alan Sepinwall/The Star-Ledger
Friday December 26, 2008, 4:01 AM

In a TV year that was dominated by the writers strike, by one miraculous sporting event after another and by a historic presidential election that had so many fascinating sideshows, it’s tempting to eschew a traditional Top 10 list in favor of a more esoteric look at the big trends and moments that affected what we watched.
But I’m a traditionalist, and even with all the distractions created by the strike (which ended in February but had ripple effects for the rest of the year), there was a lot of brilliant work to be found on series television that deserves recognition.

The 10 best (11, really) TV series of 2008, in descending order of greatness:

1. “The Shield” (FX) It’s been two months since I first saw the cop drama’s final two episodes, and I still shiver at the memory of how uncompromising, how disturbing, how powerful and how devastating they were — the best finale I’ve ever seen for an American TV drama. Unlike “The Sopranos” — the show to which it was so often compared — “The Shield” seemed determined to provide as much closure as possible, and yet there’s a delicious ambiguity to the final fate of Vic Mackey (the brilliant Michael Chiklis) and what it means. Is this — losing his job, his friends, his family and his reputation, and being chained to a humiliating desk job for three years — a fate worse than death? Or did that final glimpse of Vic, smirking as he went out into the night, suggest that he has yet another great escape in him?

2. “The Wire” (HBO) The ending of the “The Wire” — the epic novel for television about crime and decay in the city of Baltimore — wasn’t too shabby, either. The only reason the greatest drama in TV history doesn’t get the number one spot for its final season is that the story arc about a fabulist reporter at the Baltimore Sun seemed to fly in the face of the show’s contention that institutions, not individuals, cause our greatest problems. But if you leave that one flaw aside, “The Wire” was as rich, as moving, as funny, and as generous as ever.

3. “Mad Men” (AMC) “Mad Men” may be the slowest-moving drama on television, but as with a great baseball game, the leisurely pace gives you more time to marinate in the details. As the advertising drama moved deeper into the 1960s, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) let his world crumble and the focus shifted to the women in his life, with small signifiers like a tight bra strap mark or a new haircut saying so much about the roles that Don’s wife Betty (January Jones), secretary Joan (Christina Hendricks) and protege Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) were expected to fill — and the ways they struggled to transcend those roles. Even when nothing seems to be happening, the atmosphere, the dialogue and the performances make “Mad Men” into one of TV’s great pleasures.

4. “Chuck” (NBC) The action-comedy – about a nerdy IT guy (Zachary Levi) at an electronics store who accidentally becomes America’s greatest intelligence asset — was amusing enough in its truncated first season. But the time off from the writers strike allowed its creators to give the show a serious tune-up, and season two has had bigger laughs, cooler action, bolder pop culture references (last week’s Christmas homage to “Die Hard” even featured Reginald VelJohnson reprising his role as Twinkie-loving Sgt. Al Powell), and more heartfelt emotion. It’s not remotely as deep as the three shows above it on this list, but it’s more fun than should be legally allowed.

Keep reading…

Source: TVbytheNumbers

Official: NBC.com

CHUCK = Renewal Likely for 2009-10, by TVbytheNumbers

Whether you were naugthy or nice this past year, we want to wish you and your families, a MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Doesn’t Zac look naughty in this picture?

Not Zac/Chuck related, but still funny… Lol!