TVSquad

Ah, 2009. Come in, come in! Have a seat at my crystal ball. Oh, I know it's cracked, but don't worry -- it's still useful.

You are so young, so virile, my little new year. You are also ripe...ripe for me to predict your future. I see plenty in my cracked crystal ball -- yes, yes, it's working just fine. Some of it is good, some is bad, and the rest I can't see because of all the cracks. Those predictions probably don't mean much anyway. I mean, Dustin Diamond being cast in a remake of Cop Rock? Who would believe such tripe?

Oh, don't get up! Yes, Allison gave us her predictions already, but that was with a different ball. So, sit, sit, and let me predict your future in television through my fractured sphere.

What was the top TV story of the year? The choice was obvious to all of us, and probably all of you, too: The election. The 2008 race for the White House was not only historic, it was dramatic and played out more on TV with recognizable star personas than any election in recent memory.

And like a great TV show, it was a season-long run of highs and lows, tension and release, defeat and victory. Along the way, Americans made a choice about who will run the country for the next four years, but they were also entertained by a near constant barrage of media coverage in the form of maximum cable news, thousands of commercials, daily political commentary both serious and comic, a plethora of debates, and -- naturally -- Saturday Night Live's take on it all.

It all started about a year ago in the cold of Iowa and New Hampshire...

Welcome back from your humongous hangover. I just wanted to let you know that you are now in 2009 -- a fresh new year that we should look forward to. However, since you are a common citizen of Earth, you don't look ahead to a future. Instead, you look to the bleak and bloated year that has now passed.

That's why they invented "Best and Worst" lists for the previous year. It gives you a chance to remember last year's crap, get angry, proceed to get drunk, pass out, wake up, and forget it's a new year again. At that point, you get angry again. It's a vicious cycle and we love it! With that, here's my "Best and Worst" list for 2008.

Being that we eat, breathe, drink, sleep, pee, poop and vomit television here at TV Squad, we like to gauge the pulse of the community once in awhile. It gives us a chance to see what others are thinking and doing as well as see what the new and continuing trends are. Plus, it fills up some white space on the site. So, the question I am tabling is this: What are you going to be watching this New Year's Eve and Day?

It's a strange time of year for television as viewing selections are all over the map. If you are a lover of college football this is your Christmas as the tube is filled with the antiquated Bowl games that constitute "playoffs." For science fiction fans there's the annual Twilight Zone marathon on Sci Fi Channel. Those who can barely move from the couch for fear of talking on the porcelain phone once again, there's plenty of inane marathons to provide ambiance while you try to sleep it off.

Does the title of this post have you groaning and asking yourself, "Why are we talking about this again?" If so, I'm familiar with the feeling. It's how I felt earlier this year as the gossiperati (for lack of a more disparaging term) were putting the full court press on Britney Spears. And that was just because she went shopping, or bought a Slurpee, or something ... I didn't really pay much attention to those reports.

Suffice it to say, while it may have been for all the wrong reasons, Britney had once again captured the attention of the public at large. It's an important bit of this story, because it speaks to both why she was brought in to guest on HIMYM, and why I hated it from jump street. I certainly wasn't alone in that, as most of the TV Squad staff, and 36.9% of the readers that voted, named her for the What The *#@#%! Were They Thinking Award.

This is always the most depressing end-of-year list -- the TV people (in front of and behind the camera) who died during the past year. This is a big list, but if we forgot anyone, let us know in the comments (and check out the obituary category for more).

• Tim Russert
• Majel Barrett Roddenberry
• Bernie Mac
• George Carlin
• Estelle Getty
• Jack Narz
• Tony Snow
• Nina Foch
• Beverly Garland
• Bill Melendez
• Jeff MacKay
• Julius Carry
• George Furth
• Bernie Brillstein

Basically I'll try to find any reason to write about Amy Sedaris. And since this is holiday-related, I can justify it.

Sedaris was on the Today Show on Christmas Eve to plug the paperback version of her excellent cooking/entertaining book I Like You and to make Greek spaghetti for hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb. The recipe is in the book, but the ingredients include Parmesan cheese and a whole stick of butter, which you melt and pour on top of the spaghetti and sauce. Probably not the healthiest meal (especially if you include Sedaris' other recipes for various cookies and other desserts) but it looks tasty. I love how Sedaris can show you how to cook the meal and at the same time throw off a bizarre line like "your animals talk for a whole minute on Christmas Eve, did you know that?"

Here's a quick guide to what's on Christmas Day, stuff to watch while you're opening presents, making snowmen, and eating way too much pumpkin pie.

• HGTV and Food Network have holiday programming all day.
• TNT is showing Law and Order all day.
• TBS is showing the movie A Christmas Story all day.
• Nickelodeon and TV Land have Christmas episodes of various sitcoms and dramas all day.
• BBC America also has Christmas episodes all day long.
• At 7am, all of the morning shows (Today, Good Morning, America, and The Early Show) will have Christmas features, music, and recipes.
• At 8, Lifetime has a Golden Girls marathon.
• Sci-Fi has a Star Trek: TNG marathon at 8.
• Bravo has a Christmas episode of The West Wing at 8, then a Top Chef marathon.

I'm sure that many of us could go round and round over the quality of the episodes in this latest chapter of Heroes. If you're following along with the weekly reviews, you've no doubt seen it play out in the comments. The thing that is a little harder to argue is the ratings. Over these last few months, the one time flagship NBC drama has seen its numbers drop to drastic levels. Put another way, if Heroes was a space ship, and dropping ratings signified an increase in speed, the show has gone plaid.

If there's one universal among TV Christmas specials it's this: they all seem to want to tell you what the "true" meaning of Christmas is. There are so many specials trying to explain the true meaning of Christmas, it actually makes you wonder if the power of TV to influence has been exaggerated. I mean, you'd think after watching approximately eleventy-five billion hours of holiday programming, we'd have gotten the point already.

Perhaps the reason why America continues to view Christmas less as a time for spiritual reflection than as one for reindeer sweaters, crass consumerism, and suicide contemplation is because our Christmas specials aren't really sending the messages that they claim to be. Sure, on the surface we're told about "peace on earth and goodwill to men, blah blah blah", but there's a bubbling subtext in these specials if you only look hard enough.

I've decided to put my New Jersey state college English degree to good use and break down what Christmas specials are really saying...

... one great TV moment.

2008 was filled with great TV moments, more than most years. So when I asked the TV Squad crew what they thought the greatest moment this year was, I got a lot of responses: the Fey / Palin "summit" on SNL, Letterman going off an an absent John McCain, any of Michael Phelps' Olympic victories, the spectacular opening ceremonies in Beijing, the finale of The Shield, any of the Presidential / VP debates, the Giants' upset of the Pats in the Super Bowl, and probably more that I can't even think of right now.

But they all seemed small in comparison to what happened in the late-night hours of Election Day, when Barack Obama got up in front of a crowd in Chicago's Grant Park and gave his acceptance speech. No matter what you think of Obama or his politics, it was a historic moment, and not just because Obama had just been elected the first African-American president. But the reason why it's the best TV moment of 2008 is because... well, moments like this don't happen that much anymore, do they?

Um, I don't know if anyone has told you yet, but the economy of the United States, and the world, is in the crapper. Seriously, I saw it one day while doing my business. It was just floating there ... one step away from being flushed into the world of depression. I had to get it out with a piece of toilet paper, and it's now drying on my bathtub ledge. Gosh, I hope it's okay.

Anyhoo, things are bad out there. And, not just for us working peons. This recession is affecting everyone, from the muckity-muck CEOs of the soon-to-be bankrupt corporations, to the hot dog vendor outside of Penn Station whose wieners are spending longer and longer amounts of time in their hot water bath. Somewhere in the middle of this are the television networks. Buffeted by both good and bad news, these former stalwarts of the economy are getting knocked around, as well. The meaning, for us poor schlubs, is a restructuring of television as we know it.

...Ew, not like that, you guys. Although, I'm sure if you did just a few minutes of Googling, you could find that too, in one form or another. What I'm talking about is Tina Fey's brilliant impression of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. How good was the impression? It was so good that the episodes featuring Fey, and the one that featured Palin herself, were some of SNL's highest-rated episodes in years. Tina Fey's brilliant but ratings-challenged sitcom, 30 Rock received a ratings bump, she scored a multi-million dollar book deal, and newspapers sometimes forgot that they were actually two different people.Not bad for a funny lady who had never been known for her impressions and a governor from a small town no one had ever heard of.

Obama may have been our first celebrity candidate, but Palin was our first beauty queen. Whether you loved her or hated her, it's hard to argue that she was a captivating figure.

The web has really opened the doors to the possibilities for what the networks can do. Some haven't done that much, and even the ones that do took a long time to actually harness the power of the web (and if I ever use the phrase "harness the power of the web" again you can punch me in the groin). I like it when cast members of the shows do something online that's in character but isn't just a promotion for the show.

Case in point, this video from NBC. It shows 30 Rock's Kenneth the Page in a Santa hat all excited about Christmas (and the anniversary of the "Parcell Massacre"), dancing around the 30 Rock hallways with a chair. If you're not in the Christmas mood already, this might put you over the top. McBrayer is great because he seems to be up for anything, including being knocked over by Conan O'Brien.

I'd rather watch video sketches like this than those special "webisodes" that some shows have now. More please!

Where would we be without the hallowed television Christmas special? We would be engaged in enthralling conversations with relatives who like to give the backstory about the gall bladder operation pictures they still carry in their wallet. We would be playing defense against every breakable item in the house while the neighbor's kids get enough sugar in their systems to power the Space Shuttle. We would not only have to muster the courage to taste Grandma's homemade rum and Kahula fruitcake, but also to pretend that we like it without our stomach turning inside out, crawling up our esophagus and out of our mouth.

Even if those scenarios will be true for you on Dec. 25, I offer you my pity as my Christmas gift. Plus, you still would rather spend it listening to ol' Uncle Hernia Scar than watching one of these holiday hams.