The third and fourth favorite shows of the year are perennial favorites Lost and Friday Night Lights. While not everyone on staff was a huge fan of the most recent season of Lost, there was zealous support from many of the newest members of our staff. The reverse was true of Friday Night Lights, which might have managed to win if only the longest contributors to our site had voted. It is apparently a show that is difficult for newcomers to embrace since they've missed so much of its history. Those of us who have given our hearts to Coach Eric Taylor, his family and his players as well as the rest of Dillon, Texas (well, the jerks who didn't get Taylor fired from his prior job anyway) continue to be rewarded for our devotion. Both programs have been the recipient of a lot of praise from us the past three years. After debuting in fourth place in 2006, we punished Lost in our 2007 awards (i.e. the tail of the plane season) by not selecting it. In 2008, it finished in fifth place, fell back to sixth place in 2009 and has now risen to its highest placement yet in 2010, third place. Friday Night Lights debuted in third place in 2007, won the category in 2008, fell back to third place in 2009 and slips slightly to fourth place in 2010. Clearly, we are set in our ways and unless a show is as terrible as Lost was in season two, we keep rewarding it for its consistency.

The final selection in the top five this year is a likely one time selection, Better Off Ted. BOP doesn't want to say that ABC has absolutely butchered their handling of this sitcom, but we can't think of a way to finish this sentence that absolves them of blame. Consider that Better Off Ted has had two complete seasons air in the time period since the end of last year's voting. Better Off Ted debuted on March 18, 2009 and has produced 24 episodes since then. The first six episodes shown prior to the scheduling change had between 4 million and 5.6 million viewers, not a large amount but nothing to guarantee cancellation. At this point, ABC meddled with their lineup and Better Off Ted's ratings collapsed 56% in just two episodes. We had written it off as one season run until a surprise announcement that it would get a second chance to become a hit. Oddly, the network reconsidered almost immediately and wound up burning off the entire second season of the sitcom in the TV dead period of December and January, one of the most passive/aggressive programming decisions this side of Conan O'Brien. While all this was ongoing, the only thing that never changed was the quality of Better Off Ted. Along the way, it managed to perfectly satirize all levels of corporate decision making from racial sensitivity to sexual harrassment to horny magicians (the silent cause of the 2008 global economic collapse). What I said with Modern Family applies here as well: go Hulu or Unbox the show. Right. Now.

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