1. Mad Men（）
It was a season of big transitions for TV's great period drama, in more ways than one. Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and his wife Betty (January Jones) finally split as the revelation of Don's hidden past (he took a fallen comrade's identity to escape the Korean War) made the consummate adman into damaged goods that even he couldn't sell. Along the way, the Sterling Cooper agency was sold, a couple of key players left the office and one of the company's new British overlords horribly and hilariously lost a foot in an indoor riding-mower mishap. The show set these transformations against the backdrop of 1963, the year John F. Kennedy was assassinated and what we popularly think of as the '60s began. But it avoided period clichés and — more miraculously for a moody cable drama — actually ended its season on something like hope.
(AMC)
2. Modern Family（）
Family comedies are among the oldest staples on TV, but true to its title, this mockumentary refreshes the genre with humor and heart. It follows three branches of an extended family: a May-December second marriage, a gay couple who've adopted a baby from Vietnam, and a nuclear family with three kids. The outstanding broad cast — including Ed O'Neill as the crusty patriarch — allows for endless combinations and family dynamics, playing changes in the family against quirks and grievances that go back decades. The Office uses the mock-doc device to show how a group of unrelated co-workers became like a family; Modern Family borrows it to show that you can be born into a group of people but spend a lifetime getting to know them.
(ABC)
3. Breaking Bad
A show that broke out as an interesting newcomer in 2008 (with a season shortened by the writer's strike) matured into one of TV's best dramas this year. Chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston), disappointed with life and dying of lung cancer, partnered with a former student (Aaron Paul) and used his talents to cook crystal meth so he could leave his family an inheritance. This year, his cancer receded — but seemed to have taken his moral center with it. Cranston, already staggering as a man trying to find purpose in the face of death, is now doubly so as Walter questions whether he can go back to his old life. Raw but often funny, this is a must-see exploration of morality and mortality.
(AMC)
4. Big Love（）
The best season yet for TV's best-acted drama. The hook that gets you in the door of this series is polygamy: the Henricksons' efforts to live as man and wife and wife and wife in Salt Lake City, and the fascinating subculture of the dangerous religious compound that Bill (Bill Paxton) escaped. But really, the show is about community: Can this strange — but strangely functional — family exist as its own unit, not fully contained by either secular society, mainstream Mormonism or Bill's fundamentalist roots? This season tested these bonds for each character, as the family attempted to bring in a new wife, a daughter found herself pregnant, Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn) had her faith tested, and things at the compound went violently askew. Season 4 returns in January; consider me committed.
(HBO)
5. Battlestar Galactica
For four seasons, this ambitious space-opera remake was about character and morality in extremis: what could humanity do to save itself from annihilation? The gripping final run of the series brought Galactica and crew to the dark edge of destruction — supplies dwindling, the ship literally falling apart — before finding a way to the future that relied on what was best in humanity (and in the humanlike Cylons humanity created and warred with). The finale didn't satisfy everyone; the resolution, in which the human survivors agreed to give up their technology after finding Earth, seemed forced, and the last moments too preachy. But given the impossibly tall order of resolving the immense questions the series took on, its closing hours did a great job of satisfying both the head and the gut. Lost's finale next year should be so lucky.
(SyFy)
6. Lost
The pilot of this serial ended with the question "Where are we?" Season 5 asked, "When are we?" One season away from its conclusion, TV's wildest and most inventive mystery felt free to get truly weird, committing to a time-travel story line that delved deeper into the secrets of the Island and took viewers on an Einsteinian ride. But Lost never let its hard-core sci-fi turn get in the way of the characters and relationships that make the show truly compelling. It's a testament to the show's bench strength that it made fans deeply mourn a new character (Jeremy Davies as Daniel Faraday, shot by his own mother — before he was born) while allowing us to see new sides of old friends (especially Sawyer, a.k.a. LaFleur, whose self-discovery and self-sacrifice make Josh Holloway the standout player this season). The finale promises to be the TV event of 2010, and you'd be crazy not to follow it whenever it goes.
(ABC)
7. Friday Night Lights（）
The best thing satellites have done for us since GPS. DirecTV agreed to share the costs of making this small-town drama with NBC, and with the big-network ratings pressures eased, Season 3 stepped back from the overdramatic missteps of the second season and focused on the small-bore personal stories of a high school football coach (Kyle Chandler), his players and the Texas town they help give hope to. Season 4 (on satellite now, coming to NBC next year) sent coach Taylor to restart the football program at a wrong-side-of-the-tracks high school, adding a class element to its underdog story. More than just a high school or sports drama, it's an American story with a heart as big as all Texas.
(101 Network / NBC)
8. Glee（）
Consistency is overrated. This musical-comedy-drama about a misfit high school show choir in Lima, Ohio, succeeds where Viva Laughlin and other small-screen musicals have failed, but it also shows the genre's challenges. Some of its story lines (especially the fake pregnancy of the choir director's wife) are distractingly implausible. But when Glee works — which is often — it is transcendent, tear-jerking and thrilling like nothing else on TV. It takes a gay kid, minority kids, jocks and nerds and explodes their stereotypes, channeling high school's heightened emotions through joyous pop music. It can be a mess, but it's what great TV should be: reckless, ambitious, heart-on-its-sleeve and, thanks especially to Jane Lynch as drill-sergeant cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester, gaspingly funny. When it hits its high notes, nothing else matters.
(Fox)
9. Sons of Anarchy
Did FX seriously think people would identify with a biker club selling illegal guns to gangs? Next thing you know, somebody will make a family drama about a Mafia boss! Seriously, Season 1 of SoA was a little tough to warm to, as it set up the conflict (loosely based on Hamlet) between biker boss Clay (Ron Perlman) and Jax (Charlie Hunnam), whose father used to run the eponymous gang and who believes Clay has betrayed his dad's code of honor. But Season 2 found a higher gear, deepening its supporting characters, giving the Sons a more heinous enemy in the form of a white-power gang and drawing a devastatingly powerful performance from Katey Sagal (wife of show creator Kurt Sutter) as Jax's mom and Clay's wife. In dirty alleys and on the open road, it told a finely shaded story of family and honor and left much of TV eating its dust.
(FX)
10. (Tie) The Office / Parks and Recreation
NBC's corporate mockumentary and its public-sector sorta spinoff were a matching, mirror-image pair. The Office began the year at a torrid pace, with a sidesplitting post–Super Bowl episode and a story line about Michael Scott (Steve Carell) forming a rival paper company that — like Pam and Jim's wedding in the fall — showed that this is both one of TV's best comedies and one of its best light dramas. While it has wavered a bit postnuptials, on a good week it's as sharp and deep as TV comedy gets. Meanwhile, after a shaky start, Parks found its offbeat voice, focusing on bureaucrat Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and the citizens and civil servants of Pawnee, Ind. Knope fights doggedly for a pet project (turning an abandoned pit into a park), battling red tape, an evil library department and her own overenthusiasm. This sly but optimistic civic satire may be the first distinctive comedy of the Obama era.
(NBC)