Festivus

More of our best of the decade coverage, which started on Tuesday. You can read the other posts at the link above. Here, we talk about a major category that came of age in the aughts: Reality shows.

While I would never call myself a reality TV junkie, it really bugs me when people make blanket statements like, "I hate reality TV," or, "Reality TV is the bane of my existence." The genre has grown so much in the past decade that it has become just like scripted television, in that there's good and there's bad. Even though we're splitting this up into two lists, "Reality," and "Trashy Reality," you won't see a single show that starts with, "Who Wants to Marry" on either list.

This list is dedicated not to the guilty pleasures, but to the shows that you wouldn't be embarrassed for your neighbors to know you watch: the classy reality, if you will. So without further ado, here is TV Squad's list of the best reality shows of the decade.

Ooh! Is it that time of year again when I get to ask for things and then receive none of them? Fantastic.

Okay, I don't ask for very much each Festivus, but all my choices are very carefully made. I'll even put aside my desperate need to hang out with The Roots for a day or wish to surgically replace my own legs with those of Blake Lively. I can work on all that stuff next year. For 2009, these are all I want for Festivus!

I love Christmas. It is the best holiday. If all of the holidays grew asses, Christmas could kick every other holiday's ass by ripping off their ass and beating them to death with said ass.

It's perfect on every conceivable level. It aims to achieve total peace and tranquility of the human spirit and singularity of the soul through the selfless act of giving. Of course, in order for that to work, someone has to be on the receiving end and I'm more than willing to have my every dream fulfilled in the name of calming the cosmic waves.

So here's my wish list to Santa or Jesus or Buddha or whomever holds the universe in balance for things to suck less until the next holiday.

Merry Christmas! In this pre-holiday podcast, Brad Trechak and Jason Hughes join me to talk about our favorite holiday episodes (think Festivus, folks), as well as the following:

• Brittany Murphy's death and how it caused NBC to pull a SNL Weekend Update bit from a few weeks ago,
• It's David Tennant's last days as Doctor Who, and we talk about his popular run and what's in store for his successor, Matt Smith,
• What TV-related items you can buy with the handful of gift cards you received during the holidays,
• How we might be watching TV during the next decade. Will the 30th season of The Simpsons be available telekinetically?
• Ask TV Squad, Comment of the Week, our picks of the week, and more!

Run time is 1:14:14.

You can listen to the podcast below, or download from here or by subscribing to our RSS podcast feed. It is also available via iTunes. Feel free to leave us feedback in the comments or drop us a line at tvsquadpodcast [at] gmail [dot] com.

As usual, the music at the beginning and end of the podcast is "Life" by Justin Trawick. Note that we recorded the podcast on Monday, and my pick of the week -- Jay Thomas on Letterman -- has already aired. Huh. I figured they'd wait until at least Christmas Eve for that one.

Susan Boyle was a feel good story almost from the first minute she took the stage on Britain's Got Talent. She walked on as frumpy contestant 4321, which turned out to be just the countdown to the first nationally televised standing ovation of her career.

It was clear she had, as they say, spunk, then the judges asked her age and she rolled her hips and said, "I am 47. And that's just one side 'o me." It was clear she had ambition and a theatrical bent when Simon Cowell asked her whose success she'd like to mimic, and she named English theater star and singer Elaine Paige. And when she said she was going to sing "I Dreamed A Dream" from Les Miserables, it was clear to the audience that she was delusional. That is, until she opened up her mouth to sing.

Boyle didn't finish the first verse, barely finished the first line, before the judges raised their eyebrows in surprise and the audience started cheering and getting to their feet.

I'm watching the Price is Right Christmas episode right now and thought to myself, I wonder if there's any old Christmas episodes of the show online. OF COURSE THERE IS! Here's Part 1 of the Christmas episode in 1983 (you can watch the other parts here). The show really hasn't changed all that much.

On the first day of Festivus, TV gave to me... one great TV moment.

Unlike last year, which had a ton of major TV moments to choose from, this year had a whole roster of moments that seemed major at the time but ended up being minor in retrospect. Obama's inauguration feels more like a leftover moment from 2008. ER's finale would have been huge if it aired in 2004 instead of 2009. Letterman talking about his affairs and the corresponding blackmail incident would have been huge if Tiger Woods didn't run over that fire hydrant. Balloon Boy was a hoax, and Jon and Kate's divorce announcement had more of a rubbernecking feel than one that was communal.

No, the only TV moment that seemed to give us all a reason to talk around the Keurig machine (no one talks around watercoolers anymore, do they) was a moment that a) didn't even happen in the US, and 2) the vast majority of people discovered via YouTube.

Yep, I'm talking about Susan Boyle. The famous video is after the jump.

You know those video yule log's you can watch every Christmas on WPIX or On Demand? Well, Conan O'Brien has one this year too, available at ConanYuleLog.com (or just watch it below).

It's ho-ho-horrifying (and not particularly funny after about 20 seconds).

On the second day of Festivus, TV gave to me... two series finales.

Shows end all the time. Sometimes shows purposefully bow out to end on a high note, and sometimes shows unexpectedly get axed. Some pack a punch in their short lives, some get drawn out over several decades and end amidst a chorus of "Finally!" Seriously. Shows end all the time.

Which is why it's absolutely cruel that I was assigned to pick only two 2009 series finales to write about. Come on! Two. That's a lot of pressure to put on a girl.

NORAD is already tracking Santa Claus and his airborne reindeer team as it heads south from the North Pole and ignores boring Canada to give delightful Christmas presents to all the good American boys and girls. Fortunately, the U.S. Air Force apologized for that anti-aircraft missile that almost nicked Dasher. They sent a fruit basket and everything.

The point is that you don't have much time to snag holiday toys for your TV fan friends and those few kids you actually like. Fortunately, there still some popular toys out there that can serve multiple gift giving purposes.

The I Love Lucy Barbie from Mattel (right) sells for $45, so it might be more appropriate for an adult toy collector (an adult who collects TV-related toys, I mean). But, a Barbie is a Barbie, and few girls would turn one down -- even if it features Lucy Ricardo auditioning for a part in Ricky's show at the Copa.

I am knee deep in the holiday spirit and drunk on power. Only I can reach the top of the tree, so what goes up there is up to me ... so long as my wife approves. With television mostly in reruns, I find myself with extra time in my head, and when I spend time in there I find things. Things like what I want for Festivus!

• MTV and VH1 to play music videos. I'm from the MTV generation, which means I have no problem sitting around watching music videos for hours and hours. I love music. I love videos. The music industry would probably appreciate it, too. I don't like feeling like I need to take a shower while watching any one of their trashy reality shows.
• Lost to blow us all away with a SATISFYING conclusion. No fade to black, no comas, no Bob Newhart waking up next to his wife. Make it work and make it make sense. If you do that, you'll have one of the greatest shows in television history. So, no pressure guys.

On the third day of Festivus, TV gave to me ... three reality disasters!

For every good reality show that emerges, there are several horrid shows green-lit, giving reality television its negative light. I could have gone for days talking about tons of reality shows that were disastrous. Jon and Kate Gosselin became national disasters, but even their show had some merit watching a now single Kate deal with her family.

Here are three of the worst offenders of 2009, from least to most disastrous. Oh, and if you're wondering why a certain VH1 show that had Ryan Jenkins as a contestant isn't on the list, don't worry; we'll get to that later this week.

On the fourth day of Festivus, TV gave to me... four webby series.

There's probably more original content being created for the internet than there even is for television. A lot of that is your neighbor sitting in his basement in front of his webcam seeing how many croutons he can shove in his mouth in thirty seconds, but there are places to find great original content, many times on par with what you'll see on television.

Syfy's Sanctuary is a show that began as a web series and has since become a successful TV series. But many web series live and thrive on the web, and belong only there.

A lot of our favorite celebrities have turned to this unrestricted format to create gems, like Will Ferrell's modern classic "The Landlord" from a few years back, or even last year's sensational Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog that brought Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, Simon Helberg and Felicia Day into a mad scientist musical world created by Joss Whedon. Even the networks have gotten in on the action, creating original content for their own websites.

On the fifth day of Christmas, TV gave to me ... five cancelled shows ...

Every new season, a network will cancel a show (at least) that a ton of people like. Of course, every year the networks cancel shows that nobody likes. The five shows on this list include a little of both. Feel free to list other shows in the comments, but these are the five that stood out to me in 2009.

1. Guiding Light. I had to put Guiding Light at number one. You can't put the cancellation of a show that was on every weekday for 72 years at number three or number five. It just wouldn't be right, even if the show did limp to its end. The longest-running soap opera (and one of the longest-running shows on TV, period) started on radio in 1937 and switched to television in 1952 (it was actually on both radio and TV for a while). The last episode aired in September.