What is it we love about The Office that makes it almost our favorite show every year? This sitcom can do the improbable with ease and grace. Ryan can go from the underdog everyone likes and cheers for at the end of a season finale one year to the villainous egomaniac who suffers a humiliating fall from grace the next. Pam starts as a secretary with dreams of improving herself but then when she fails in her attempts at re-education, she returns to her former glory with nothing tangible lost in the process. The show that can allow someone to try and fail sans long term punishment is offering a message about how best to define self-improvement that is not textbook but it is subtly sage. This is what The Office does particularly well although sequences such as the post-Super Bowl office fire (which technically won't count in our voting until next year) are the big comedy moments that we know the show always has in its arsenal when it wants to go big. The Office can succeed on a grand scale and it can excel on a small one, making it a constant source of amazement and popularity for our staff.

Last year's winner, Friday Night Lights, slips back to its 2007 standing with another third place finish. While its 57 votes almost matches last year's winning total of 61, the outpouring of support for the prior two shows is more than the Texas high school football drama could overcome. Of course, the fact the show even exists is welcome news in and of itself. When I relayed the news of its 2008 category victory, Friday Night Lights appeared certain for cancellation. Instead, DirecTV entered the picture as a surprise candidate for renewal, offering to air first run episodes of the show prior to its NBC dates in exchange for covering a significant portion of the show's hefty production costs. Instead of the show ending sans benefit of anything resembling closure, a new 13-episode run provided the creative staff the opportunity to offer resolution to the arcs of injured running back Smash Williams and crippled quarterback Jason Street while introducing new characters in anticipation of a continued relationship with DirecTV. This historically unprecedented working agreement has proven beneficial to all parties and there is cause for optimism about the future of Friday Night Lights. If there is no such luck about future episodes, the show's legacy will be a pair of third place finishes and a first place victory for Friday Night Lights during its three season run. We wish more of you would watch the show as it currently re-airs on NBC to prevent that fate, though. Television simply does not get better than this.

Dexter makes its first appearance as a selection in Best TV Show category this year, finishing fourth with 53 votes. Prior to this year, it had been a buzz show that a couple of members of our staff passionately celebrated, but it wasn't until the DVD releases became readily available and the writer's strike allowed for network airing that the body of our group fell in love. Dexter's quirky, unsettling premise is that the guy doing the autopsies to help track down the killers moonlights as a guy who kills them himself. And there is a much deeper level of complexity than that. Dexter's twists and turns over its three seasons have included multiple people sussing out his side gig, causing some to become friendly and others to become foes. New characters added to the show have been forced to choose alliances, and a few of them have even been afforded the teachings of Dexter's code. Particularly noteworthy among these is Jimmy Smits' season three character, Miguel Prado, who constantly walked a fine line of moral ambiguity while dealing with Dexter. His introduction is a perfect example of how cleverly the Showtime series keeps storylines fresh and ethics situationally fluid.

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