Bones opens this week on a real estate agent giving a tour to a couple. Due to the formula for procedural dramas we know that we will be finding a dead body within the next couple of moments. The title of the episode, in all its alliterated glory, hints it will be some sort of appendage; we are not disappointed on either account.

Elsewhere in Bonesland Booth, Brennan and Sweets are all hangin’. Booth tells them about his grandfather, who is coming to meet them at the diner and is planning on staying at Booth’s apartment for a while. He apparently got kicked out of his nursing home for slugging a nurse.

John Walton (Ralph Waite) of Waltons’ fame plays said Grandfather. When introduced to Brennan he makes references to how Booth must feel towards her and when introduced to Sweets he makes them to Fisher-Price. These continue as B&B leave to answer a case call and Sweets is left to take Hank, the grandfather, to Booth’s apartment. Hank laments loudly that there will not be enough room for his luggage on Sweets’ bicycle.

On their way into the home where the body was found Booth and Bones discuss Hank’s visit. Booth tells Brennan that he is family, “and nothing trumps family, just remember that.” I think that is going to turn out to be one of those not-so-subtle clues the writers are feeding us this episode, so you all remember it too.

Brennan is fascinated, as it seems the body is the only thing to have burned in the room, but she acknowledges the body’s fragile condition and uses the real estate agent’s hair spray as an adhesive to preserve it.

Brennan rules out the fire’s cause being the single candle sticking out of a partially eaten cake sitting oddly on the nightstand next to the body. Booth is thinking spontaneous combustion and although Brennan is adamantly against the theory, she has no alternative answer. GASP.

End of Teaser.

Back in the lab Hodgins explains “The Wick Effect,” which essentially provides scientific grounds for spontaneous combustion. People with a cigarette who pass out from too much alcohol will light on fire and their belly fat will burn inwards containing the fire. Intern of the week, Clark, points out that burn victims will usually struggle, but this one shows no sign of moving.

Conversation flows very easily into plot B of the episode, Booth’s G-daddy moving in. Backstory: apparently he raised Booth after his father left.

Back to the body, it shows signs of Haglund’s deformity, an ugly kankle bump from wearing ill-fitting high heels. So we can now conclude that the pile of ash was a fat chick.

Booth gets a call from a police officer that has his grandfather. Seems ole Pops got lost clearing his head after going to see a friend of his that “up and died” while he was incarcerated at the nursing home. Booth asks to speak to the officer again and then immediately puts him on hold (RUDELY) to speak with the real estate agent, who is wandering about the police station like she belongs there, with a list of the people who had access to the house. Booth is unsatisfied by the list.

In the lab Brennan is looking over a partial 3-D scan of the victim’s hand that Angela is making. Brennan thinks its weird that Booth likes Hank’s nickname for him, Shrimp. It appears she’s never had any other moniker besides Bones, and that only from Seely.  Hodgins finds some of the remnants found with the ash are from a wig. Angela thinks the plastic-type material maybe from something else. She scans the color and finds it’s from PriceCo.

Booth is making his way to his apartment with his grandfather in the car when he lets him know that they are going to have to make a short stop. The two Booths start talking about fastballs and baseballs and life. G-daddy Hank lets Booth know that if he ever needs some “alone” time with the bone doctor he will make himself scarce. When Booth says there is nothing going on Hank asks if he is gay — “She’s a keeper!” Booth assures him that he can take care of his own love life.

In PriceCo (which is Wal-Mart for those visual readers out there) Booth tells Gramps to stand under the PriceCo sign in the entrance and not move while he finds the manager. Apparently Tracey has been missing for a week. When the manager goes to get a company picture Booth see Hank, now wearing a PriceCo vest, helping people around the store find what they need. “ Three people said I was a good greeter so I got a vest.”

In the lab Cam, Intern and Brennan are looking over the company file. It seems the girl in question, Meg Tracey, recently lost a significant amount of weight and went down from some 230 pounds to 120. The reason there was so much ash in the bed had to be because someone else was in it too. So now we’re looking at a double murder.

The Intern says the bones found represent about 380 lbs of human so the second vic’s a heifer.

In the diner Booth and Booth and Brennan are eating Lunch. Booth, Jr. gets called away to question the vic’s roommate, leaving Bones and Gramps. He confides in Brennan that he was the reason Booth’s father left. He found him whaling on Seely one day and told him to get out, that he didn’t deserve to be a father. “ If I had been a better man, maybe I could have figured something else out.”

Booth and Brennan plot device of the episode: “ When the time is right,” Hank says, “ you’ll tell him. And if he needs it, you’ll hold him?” Brennan agrees. If that is how they end up getting together … oh, you Bones writers and your cheap, cheap plot devices!

Booth, meanwhile, chats up Meg’s oversized roommate. She says Meg wasn’t seeing anybody special but she used to meet different guys at Club Jiggle, a club for thin people who like people who, well, jiggle. Before she leaves she writes down the names of some people she was at a house party with the night of the murder, as an alibi.

“You can get the second victim’s height from bone fragments?” Cam asks, sounding just as skeptical as I felt, but the intern spouts a long list of scientific-sounding mumbo-jumbo and I feel thoroughly convinced. The male in question is put at 5’5” and, yep, 260 pounds.

Brennan and Booth are in Sweets’ office where he explains the culture of Club Jiggle world as a “feeder and eater” fetish. Seems there is an explanation for the cake by the bed after all. Meg must have turned into a feeder to quiet her own desire to overeat.

At Booth’s apartment Brennan and Booth eat some grilled cheese Hank has made for them. As they prepare to leave to go to the Jiggle club Brennan notices some of Hank’s pills are out. They decide to take him with to get a quick refill on the way.

Cam and Angela study her finished 3-D model of one of the victim’s hands. By putting something into a wound in the palm they discover an object in the shape of a human nose inflicted the injury.

In the car Gramps is impressed by Bones’ intellect, tells her she should go on a game show, that she’d clean up. “ I tell her that all the time, but you know, she’s already loaded.” Hank laments that he didn’t raise Booth very well to be just friends with a beautiful, smart and rich woman. Cue the stock awkward stares David B. and Emily D. keep on hold for just such occasions.

In the club B&B question the bartender and get a name for the fat man: Hugo. Hank dances with the plus-sized women.

Booth and Brennan question the real estate agent, who has brought them an updated list of people who had access to the house and also has the homeowner in tow. She has convinced him that the police can help him sell his house by putting off foreclosure due to it being an active crime scene. B&B notice a Hugo Tucker on the list of names and it turns out he’s a short fat dude!

In the lab the intern has matched the teeth to Hugo Tucker. Brennan gets a call from Hank inviting her for dinner and dominoes after. Booth says Gramps doesn’t have to make them dinner but he insists.

Hodgins finds a slim ring among the remains, a device inserted surgically to limit the amount of food someone can consume at one time. Turns out that is how Meg lost all the weight so quickly, but the ring wasn’t registered to her medical insurance, it was given out to her roommate!

Booth gets a call, Hank’s started a fire back at the ranch.

Booth brings Hank to hang with Sweets at the office while he interrogates the roommate. The two start playing dominoes as Booth walks Brennan out. He admits that Gramps might need more than he can give and that maybe he should take a leave of absence. Brennan asks if he can afford it, but that whole “nothing trumps family” spiel comes ‘round again.

Booth interrogates the roommate; she didn’t know about the gastric bypass surgery. Booth says that they talked to the people at the party but no one could commit to her being there the entire night.

Intern has found bones that were damaged before the fire. Along the edge there is a resin leading Hodgins to determine that the murder weapon was made from wood. When looking at the wooden bed Angela realizes the finials, the decorative knobs that go on top of the posts, are missing.

From one shot to the next the entire gang, intern and all, jump from the room with the bed to Angela’s room with the computer thingy that shows graphics. She pulls up the virtual tour of the house from the real estate page. The finials were wooden heads of the home owner and his wife. It wasn’t about who was having sex, but where. The homeowner had made the bed for him and his wife. He went back to sleep in the bed and found the two Jigglers having their jiggle sex and killed them.

Booth gets takeout for him and G-daddy Hank, who says, “I don’t think so” for the millionth time. Hank tells Booth that he loves him but he is moving back to the retirement home because people there need him. You get the feeling that the dominoes game with Sweets sent him there.

Brennan and Booth give him a ride back to the center. Hank gives Brennan a goodbye and tells her to remember that although “he’s big and strong” he’s “going to need someone. Everyone needs someone. Don’t be scared.” He hints at her feelings for Booth, then tells her that “it’s all in there, everything you need to know.” Motioning to his heart of course. I am giving you these quotes because yes, it was that painful and awkward and unnecessary, plot-wise. GEEZ, just get them together and stop hurting me with poorly written subplots and dialogue! “You just do what it tells you,” says Hank. Yes, Booth, just tell Brennan you love her. BUT instead they tell each other he said nothing, and leave. Booth does tell Bones he likes “that thing around (her) neck.”

A Compliment. So there’s a start, I guess.

Uh oh! Seeley Booth’s brain lapse from last season is back with shooting ability snatching vengeance. The teaser opens with Booth at a shooting range unable to hit any thing on the target. He goes to see Sweets about it but is miffed when the psychologist treats him as a patient and not as a friend. Good thing he didn’t confide in him that he could no longer shoot a gun, Sweets may have raised concerns about him, I don’t know, not being fit for duty.

Leaving Sweet’s office Booths gets a call, or text message, and by looking at his phone knows he has to go solve a murder. At the scene Bones gets him to talk about his “bad day on the range” and she comes to the conclusion that his inability to fire a gun must be psychological since his tumor wouldn’t have had an affect on it. Booth, having already seen Sweets and gotten the patient treatment, says he can’t go to him because he will just report it to the FBI. He uses the term “loopy doopy,” to describe his current brain function and expresses concern about passing his re-certification in a week.

The body for this week is a small green skeleton found when a road collapsed. Just to make the whole story unbelievably bizarre, as is seeming to be per usage for Bones, Brennan finds a gold coin and a water main breaks causing a rainbow to form in the mist. Don’t look now folks but I think we’ve got a leprechaun case.

Intern of the week is the BRITISH one Nigel Murry and of course he is backing the leprechaun theory, however Hodgins is all for the minerals at the site making the body green.

Knowing he couldn’t go to Sweets, Booth goes and looks up his old mentor Gordon Gordon, who is now a head chef, for advise.

Brennan examines the body and concludes the dwarf had injuries due to fighting. Nigel Murry proposes he might be from Lord of the Rings, but Bones is thinking more along the lines of professional wrestler.

Angela looks through professional fighters with Brennan and they fight one who matches, the Iron Leprechaun. However, that particular Iron Leprechaun is fighting that night, so they decide to see if the one can lead them to the other.

Hodgins examines what was found next to the body, and discovers all the coins were worth a couple hundred dollars and a gun that was found next to the victim was unfired.

Booth enjoys Gordon Gordon’s meal and shares his brain lapses. Gordon feels Booth’s need for helping fire his gun is “desperately phallic,” which of course gets Booth’s panties in a bunch.

That night Gordon joins Booth and Bones at the midget wrestling arena where a bumblebee and an Iron Leprechaun are fighting. Brennan spots a poster of the original Iron Leprechaun beside the rink and starts booing that the one fighting is a fake. The bumblebee wins the match and Booth goes to bring the Leprechaun in for questioning. He ends up fighting the dwarf… of course he does.

It comes out that the original Iron Leprechaun had a fling that went bad with one of the bosses of the fighting ring. When Booth and Bones go to question her she drops the analogy bomb of the episode. “ You know men, they get hurt in the heart department it always shows itself in another way.” HINT HINT.  The leprechaun, Bryce Stefante, had a criminal past and was not aloud to own a gun but the boss lady says she had one that went missing.

Gordon Gordon and Sweets have breakfast at the diner. He quiets Sweets fear that Booth doesn’t want to confide in him by telling him that Booth came to Gordon because he knew that he would confide in Sweets. The two decide to work together to help Booth.

Cam and British intern positively ID the body as Bryce. Cam also signs for two things, which is awkward.  Intern finds three nicks in the victim’s ribs that happened before the car caved the pavement in, but the reason for them is unknown.

Sweets goes with Booth to question the brother of the victim and the brother’s wife, while Angela and Gordon talk about how Booth is sad because he misses his dream life with Brennan.

Booth discovers that Bryce probably was trying to rob the pawn shop across the street from where he was found using an old pedestrian under pass. The security guard confirms that there was a robbery,

Back at the lab the intern and Brennan are still trying to figure out what made those graze marks. They decide it could have occurred if someone leaning forward was shot at an angle from above. The bullet would have hit his liver, and bled out within minutes.

Back in the diner, now apparent home to Gordon Gordon, Sweets and the aforementioned former psychiatrist are looking over brain scans of Booth. Gordon confides that he doesn’t think that Booth has brain damage and asks why Sweets didn’t publish his book on the crime-fighting duo. Sweets says that it surmised that the two were in love. The two psychologist go on to explain to the audience why for the love of god and all things holy the two have not hooked up yet. Apparently its’ all very psychological.

Then comes the Booth and Bones moment. Bones tells Booth his shooting problem may simply be due to the fact that he is over 35, which is when men start to decline physically. He remarks that he doesn’t know why talking to her makes him feel better, it just always does. Aw. Also, its cause you’re in love with her. Good God.

While questioning the fighting boss about the gun they found it comes out that the leprechaun left her because she wasn’t enough woman for him, leading the psychologists to jump to the conclusion that he was seeing his brothers wife. They question her and it comes out that they had been having an affair since “always.”

Back in the lab the would be king, Hodgins, finds a high school ring in the crash debris but it is too small to be the victims. It was his brothers. Murder solved. BUT the Booth dilemma is still out there.

In Gordon Gordon’s chef kitchen Booth pleads for one last time for the good ole doc to fix him. Instead Gordon tells him he is in love with Brennan. GASP. Booth replies that they are not compatible, “ she doesn’t love me. I’d know if she loved me.” Gordon advises hope and patience. I think that is as much to as the audience as it is to Booth.

As for the shooting front, Gordon tells him to “grow a set,” and to invite Bones. He has to protect her on the job, so he better be a good shot. “He won’t fail in front of her.” And you know what, he doesn’t.

This week’s bizarre romp through anthropology, FBI murder investigations, unrequited love and drawn-out sexual tension begins with a gaggle of Woodchucks, a girl scout-type group. They have landed, and expertly preserved as evidence, a floating dead body. This bizarre inclusion of prepubescent girls in awkward uniforms doesn’t appear to have any further effect on the plot, so feel free to forget it as the teaser continues to unfold.

The intern of the week is Wendell Bray. He and Cam take over the investigation of the body to determine why, as the intern puts it, it smells like “farts.” During their examination they realize the body is missing fingers and intern is sent out with Hodgins to the river to see if the Woodchucks missed them. Intern and Hodgins bond in a non disclosed parking garage over a discussion of the body’s sulfur coating and noxious smell, swapping conspiracy theories: mainly suspended animation and super-soldiers.

Booth enters Angela’s office? (room?) and Bones overanxiously tells him that she would have called if there were anything to say. Booth, oddly enough, is siding with Hodgins for suspended animation. At the least military involvement seems possible, since a sergeant recently went missing from some specialized branch of the Defense Department that won’t give out photographs. Bones says Angela should give him the reconstruction of the murder vic’s face, which turns out to be even more bizarre than the Woodchucks: the man looks like a chicken. Pum-pum-PUM! Commercial.

Back in the lab the gang looks over the chicken man. They discover a gapeworm in the body, a parasite only found in chickens, putting the team back on Hodgins’ super-soldier theory.

Booth receives a call from the defense department. Apparently their missing sergeant looks like a bulldog and not a chicken. Good joke. However, the FBI database does get a hit on Angela’s picture, a manager named Nick Raven of Cluckston Farms, a rural poultry farm.

Outside the entrance to the farm Booth and Bones run into a protest against the Cluckston Farms operation. A security guard shows them in and leads them to Nick’s wife. Brennan asks his wife if he took the proper precautions at work, which he didn’t. Apparently the gases in the plant can lead to sinus deformation without the proper breathing apparatus. The pair tell Mrs. Raven that they think there was foul play in Nick’s death. She tells them that he was next in line to take over Cluckston and the people they want to check out are picketing outside the company.

Angela talks with Hodgins about the nearing end of her six-month sex fast. Hodgins says he won’t be the one to break it, and Angela retorts she might go for a year.

Back in the factory, the picketers are hassling employees as Brennan and Booth are entering. Booth asks the security guard escorting them if any of them had a particular “beef” with Nick Raven. Apparently Parsons sneaked in and made a damning documentary of the plant. Booth goes to question more protesters and they pour fake egg and chicken feathers on them.

Back in the investigation room, Booth and Sweets team up to get Parsons to give them the original footage he was anonymously given to make his video under threat of a two hundred thousand dollar fine and one year in prison for assaulting a federal officer.

Intern notices damage to the vertebra that were not post mortem, and therefore not from the river but instead linked with the cause of death. It appears the chicken man’s neck was wrung. Cam sends the intern to Angela to see if her imaging technology can come up with a scenario where this could happen.

Before intern teams up with Angela she is able to trace the serial number of the camera used by Parsons back to Nick’s wife. Angela gets upset over the way the chickens are treated on the tape and draws the conclusion that she must save a baby pig’s life – to the tune of $1,500. She even has a picture. Brennan won’t join her absurd bandwagon; Angela gets upset and questions the entirety of their friendship.

Then comes the Booth-Bones moment of the episode. At the diner Booth notices something is off with Brennan. He comforts her saying everything will be okay and taking her hand. The camera becomes obsessed with this fact over the rest of their conversation.

Brennan and Cam study the human fingers found in the Chicken restaurant and find that they all came from the same person, post-mortem. Brennan thinks they all came from Nick Raven.

Sweets returns to his office after the commercial break to find Angela. She claims she is there for a donation and not to discuss her fight with Brennan. Sweets feels that she should abandon her celibacy pledge early because she is focusing her energies on baby animals because her libido is being rerouted. Angela leaves with Sweets promising to revisit donating if she has sex.

Booth gets the wife to confess to having given the film footage to the activist in order to get her husband away from the company. She tells him that Roy Myers is the main activist trying to get rid of Cluckstons.

The intern meets up with Angela, FINALLY. She ignores his questions about the case and asks him to donate to save the pig. He confesses that he is a “meat eater” and total fan of bacon but empties his wallet for her. She decides to take Sweets up on his advice and macks on him.

Booth and Brennan meet up with Myers and find him waving around a cigar cutter that is sharp enough to cut fingers off.

Back in the lab Angela and Intern share post-makeout affection for each other’s brilliance while describing a light spectrum thing to Cam that led them to discover bruising on the skull. Hodgins comes in and lets them know that the cigar cutter did not cut off the victim’s fingers. The hookup, obviously obvious to those standing round, makes it all feel a little self-conscious.

Booth and Bones question the woman who runs the machine. She filled sexual harassment charges against the vic.

Brennan is called in to Sweets office for a “friendly conversation.” He convinces her that sometimes you don’t save the world, you just make your friend happy. Even if it’s irrational: like this whole episode.

Case in point: the next scene has the intern donning a bald cap while Hodgins and Brennan slap him with read paintbrushes to discover the murder weapon.

Booth rolls the chicken plucker machine into the lab. Brennan deduces that the victim’s necktie pulled him into the machine and wrung his neck, BUT there was another force at work. Someone’s hand had to push him in. Turned out it was the security guard. Pum-pum- …I don’t really care.

Booth feels bad because he couldn’t tell the security guard was lying about pushing the victim. He feels like he is ‘losing it’ due to his accident. I mean, he woke up that morning and couldn’t remember if he liked brown sugar on his oatmeal. Brennan says to call her next time cause he likes brown sugar on everything. Aw. Moment. Brennan asks Booth what he thinks about helping Angela save the pig. Booth tells her to go for it. She interrupts Angela from flirting with the intern to give her a check for all the money to save the pig. She returns to Booth’s table and tells him she trusts him, they clink glasses.

2008 can be said to be a year plagued by tragedy, disappointment and shame. Just like at the movies, the small screen in general didn’t exactly shine this year. Very few movies could even be considered watchable and many shows with an established following, like the hit NBC show Heroes, saw nearly a 50% drop in viewership. So those who managed to make their way to the Top 10 fought through the muck and deserve to be on this list. Number 1 is considered the best show of 2008 in my books.

10. Lost – Lost was considered by many viewers the best show of 2008 but since this position was assumed around May I can officially say now that it is a bogus prize. Lost, while struggling to find its roots between creepy and just too much going on at once, is in concept a very good show. J. J. Abrams is just what everyone thinks he is, a genius.  The man could wrap a warm turd in tinfoil, present it to studios, and receive money for it. Lost, while not completely a turd, can frequently smell like one. The show’s biggest miss is in moving the show too much; supposedly, the island is movable. Locke is dead, Jack is obsessed with going back even though he has the beautiful Evangeline Lily to mack on, and then there’s that scary out-of-nowhere cabin. Lost‘s high point is easily the acting which, in my opinion, can be seen as top notch. Matthew Fox did a fine job as Jack in the previous season playing through the drunk and stubborn phase. During the course of more than one episode I found myself becoming teary-eyed or near bawling, like when he was on the edge of suicide. Lost gets the Number 10 spot because it gives fans questions and answers some of them – which in the eyes of some can be a problem, but keeps some die-hard fans coming back for more.

9. Avatar: The Last Airbender – Call me childish, call me immature, call me anything that will make you sleep at night but not many cartoon are so epic that I actually find myself saying, “Wow” over and over and over. The final four-episode arc “Sozin’s Comet” is probably one of the most powerful endings to a series I’ve ever seen. Aang unleashes the full power of his Avatar abilities to fight the Fire Lord which creates massive destruction across the Fire Nation. Aang literally becomes so powerful that he wipes out all the Fire Lord’s powers and leaves him powerless for the Nations to take pity on him. The act of completely rendering the Fire Lord useless isn’t just heroic; it symbolizes his determination to not fall into the category of murderer, as he had the option of completely obliterating the Fire Lord. The ending, while chaotic, as 3 major action scenes were happening at once, was very satisfying.

8. Battlestar Galactica – Ever have something you waited so long for that was so big that you just couldn’t stand to wait any longer? Then after all those long moments of waiting you get it and it turns out to be something you didn’t picture? Well, welcome to the season finale of Battlestar Galactica. The build up and the let down were so huge that I physically and mentally couldn’t believe it. I shook in horror as the ‘hope’ that Starbuck built up for the Colonial Fleet, that this safe haven or Earth, turns out to be just a planet shattered by a nuclear war. They found their safe haven but it doesn’t have the trees or the beautiful animals they were looking for. Some of the highlight moments from last season were the Colonial Fleet finally destroying the Resurrection Hub, the infamous fight between Tigh and Adama, and, well, any scene that incorporated Tricia Helfer, Katee Sackhoff or Grace Park.

7. 30 Rock – Ever since some of the staple comedians from Saturday Night Live left, I’ve never been interested in the show. It was mostly filled with bizzare and unintelligent humor that usually involved physical humor that never made a lick of sense to me. Never once did it seem like anybody ever sat down and thought of a truly funny joke to say. However, a woman by the name of Tina Fey has saved that show and figured if she can save a show from falling apart, she can create a show. 30 Rock is brilliant, I mean flat-out brilliant and ‘08 has confirmed this. Fey went as far out as bringing in big names like Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Aniston and Steve Martin. Not only does the writing get better but the acting seems to get better and better. Alec Baldwin is brilliant as Jack Donaghy, an egotistical moron, and in the episodes “Cooter” and “Sandwhich Day” show off his sarcastic and fluid humor. Episodes “MILF Island” and “Episode 210” are some of the show’s best episodes.

6. Burn Notice – It’s not often that a show leaves me demanding a  comeback by simply screaming at the TV. The second season of Burn Notice can simply be summarized in one simple word, Amazing. Jeffrey Donovan is in every way the spy version of Jack Bauer. Donovan pulls off some of the best narration work and acting in 2008 that should be considered highly (and I stress highly) deserving of an Emmy. Not only is the acting more stellar than in its previous season, but the writing is way more fluid. Action sequences roll together and blend very well with the narration and wry humor presented by the trio of Jeffrey Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar and Bruce Campbell. Their chemistry is flawless in every way. The addition of Tricia Helfer as the sexy and mysterious Carla creates a new obstacle for Donovan’s Michael which can adding new suspense to an already thrilling plot.

5. Life - Another show that seriously can say it gets better as time goes on. Damian Lewis continues in his second season as the awkward yet charming detective, Charlie Crews. Life shows in its second season that even though its viewership is down, the show is not going to lay down and die. 2008′s biggest episodes, “Find Your Happy Place”, “Trapdoor” and “Black Friday” all show great writing and a great display of character development in both Reese and Crews. The addition of the relationship between Reese and Captain Tidwell (the greasy yet funny Donal Logue who makes his debut this season) helps. This relationship, while being awkward, adds even more funny (nothing like a police captain being denied a bank loan). Crews’s best friend Ted is now in jail and while this subplot seemed to be downright unneeded it has actually turned humorous. Crews’s inmate friends help him by protecting Ted, which adds an added comedic angle when people try to take down Ted. Life, in my opinion, has some wiggle room where it can easily move into that Number 2 or 3 spot but we need to see some more interesting villains before we make that judgment.

4. Leverage – Rarely does a show come on the air that I just cannot stop watching. One that has this season is Leverage. A cute and quirky comedy of the best thieves in the business turning from the dark side to the light side to help everyday victims of unfairness. The closest comparison is probably the Ocean’s trilogy and while it does dance around the thieves’ arena it is nothing like Ocean’s. This might catch you off guard, but Leverage is actually much better than the Ocean’s movies. Timothy Hutton plays that George Clooney role of the planner and let’s just say he does it with better style and acting. The show isn’t just thieving and laughing. It also has some gadgets, some action and mystery-solving. Here you can watch a show for 40 minutes and find out what happened exactly in the last two and be completely shocked. Leverage does that and with a cast of nobodies (excepting Timothy Hutton). Easily, the life of the show is Hardison, the computer whiz who drops a good joke with superb delivery every time he is on the screen. I see big things coming from this show and I can easily see this show taking home some big Emmys down the road.

3. Psych - The most underrated television show on the planet. It’s easy to overlook a comedy that thrives on  pop culture references and jokes that play comically immature characters against one another – and that is a mistake. Psych is a prime example of an ensemble of actors with the perfect chemistry working together. It has a completely fresh premise and every episode is executed with an energy that pulls the viewer along. Unfortunately, Psych now faces competition from a plagiarist, The Mentalist. The Mentalist is just a more viewed version of Psych that CBS has put up. It’s the same thing but with weaker chemistry and mechanics. Psych, with every episode, will bring something great – Gus and Shawn pointing fingers at each other or Shawn  making up new pet names for Gus, or the members of the Santa Monica P.D. Psych just does it better for me than The Mentalist.

2. Bones – A show I always seem to watch when I’m eating and I always think to myself that’s a bad idea.  It’s all gory and its all great. People who stopped watching Bones because of the whole Ross and Rachel theme between Agent Seely Booth (the wonderful David Boreneaz) and Dr. Constance Brennan (the sexy and well-picked Emily Deschanel) will be happy to know that every episode they move closer to that point where the fan shakes their head and says the magical words, “They’re going to have sex!”. Bones is easily one of the most enjoyable television shows of the year. The chemistry is beyond steaming between Booth (who adds the heroic yet cocky and sarcastic elements) and Bones (who adds the strict, by the book and robotic feeling to the show). The best part of Bones is knowing that every episode, someone has died (unpleasantly!), and yet the crime will be solved expertly and with humor. Probably the best addition to the new season is John Francis Daley who portrays psychologist Dr. Lance Sweets who brings a childish angle to the humor of the show. Bones does what its competitor CSI does but better, adding scientific detachment to ensemble chemistry and dry humor to entertain a mass audience. Bones simply delivers.

1. Chuck – Probably the best show since the series finale of the legendary NBC show Friends. Chuck isn’t just the best show for one reason, not two reasons or three reasons but because of all reasons. It’s the funniest show on television, with its quick little references (such as the infamous DMC DeLorean, Lost’s Flight 815 and Call of Duty 4); hot chemistry, as Sarah and Chuck constantly smolder on-screen together – and, last but not least, the action – quick gunplay with great comedy. Chuck appeals because it delivers to everyone, it has something anybody and everybody will like. It’s predictable enough so you know where it’s going but unpredictable enough that it keeps you guessing as to how it will get there. Last season brought some of the best episodes I’ve ever seen on a television show. “Chuck Versus Santa Claus” was a massive twist that was very well written and directed. My all-time favorite is “Chuck Versus The DeLorean” which showed how amazingly crappy the now-infamous DMC DeLoreans are. I’m especially fond of Chuck because of the beautiful and highly talented Yvonne Stravhoski, who plays out the perfect American accent and adds that essential eye candy to the role. This is fine because she can act very well. Probably one of the best casting picks is Adam Baldwin as Agent John Casey who is just downright sarcastic and freaking cool. They make him seem so tough that he hates Chuck and yet trying to kill him almost causes him a nervous breakdown. I’m sure Josh Schwartz and McG both will turn their heads to each other in ten years and say, “Boy, we created one of the best television shows in TV history,” and in ten years I’ll be nodding my head with them.