1. Lost – If you regularly read spunkybean, or have ever talked to me for more than five minutes, this won’t come as any surprise. Lost is one of my favorite shows ever, and I thought the final season was excellent. Yes, people are going to complain that not all of their questions were answered, but I contend we got all the answers that we need. And I think it was exponentially more important to tell the story and give the characters the resolution that they’d earned than to bog down in the secret history of the Hanso family. When we look back at the final season, what we’ll remember is Benry’s eulogy for John Locke, Jin staying with Sun as the submarine filled with water, the twisted relationship of Jacob and Smokey, Sayid’s sacrifice, and Hurley channeling Richard’s wife. This is the stuff that mattered. We cheered when Frank got Ajira Flight 316 in the air, we cried when our favorites died, and we screamed involuntarily when that sweaty dynamite claimed another life without warning. Lost hit all the right emotional notes and delivered a satisfying conclusion to one of the great TV experiences of the decade.
While I stand by my Top 10, I actually feel bad about Eastbound & Down and Louie not being on it! They are both so fabulous. And I know how much I’m missing out by not watching Breaking Bad…I will just have to hibernate with the DVDs one of these days, although it sounds like I may end up suffering from clinical depression if I do that.