Of course, since everyone’s already beaten me to the punch, the only thing left is a list of lists. (Which other people have also beaten me to, but let’s not get hung up on details.) Here are my picks for the Top 10 Ladybusiness-Related Top 10 (or thereabouts) Lists of 2009.

10) Blisstree’s Worst Breastfeeding Incidents of 2009. There are only eight of these — which I suppose is good news — but if you need a handy guide to public figures and corporations that have drawn the ire of lactivists this year, here’s your refresher course on how Denny’s, Dear Abby, Parents magazine, Acosta Tacos, Olive Garden, Chick-fil-A, Delta Airlines and Target all reinforced the idea that feeding your baby in public is a shameful practice.

9) The Sexist’s Decade in Masculinity. Amanda Hess offers a year-by-year breakdown of the hottest trends in maleness, examining the influence of boy bands, metrosexuals, stoners, hipsters, bros and more.

Entertainment Weekly’s 20 Knockout Dresses. At the risk of destroying my hard-earned reputation as an angry, strident ballcrusher: Look at the pretty! Also, it’s nice to have Lady Gaga’s bubble frock, Angelina’s floor-length leather and J.Lo’s pubic-hair-grazing neckline all in one place, along with The Decade’s Top 5 Blondes in Yellow Dresses.

7) While I’m in the shallow end, the sad truth is, it’s hard to make a list of lists about women without at least one “The Hottest Women In…” contribution. So let’s go with the least infuriating: AfterEllen’s Favorite Glasses-Wearing Women. It’s silly and objectifying, sure, but I can’t get too fussed about a hot-chicks list by and for women that rewards the appearance of braininess and ranks Rachel Maddow No. 1.

6)Anna Clark’s Top 10 Reasons Why This Feminist Is a Sports Fan at Bitch. At this writing, No. 1 has yet to be revealed, but her first nine responses “to well-meaning friends who look at me incredulously and point out that the sports world is saturated with macho posturing; it frequently excuses the bad behavior of its heroes; it celebrates brute force; its history is poisoned by cheating and drug-use; and it is often actively and explicitly hostile to women” are pretty persuasive.

5) Jezebel’s Photoshop of Horrors Hall of Shame. The Ralph Lauren debacle is still fresh in everyone’s minds, but let us not forget the lightening (L’Oréal) and darkening (Russian Glamour) of Beyoncé, Keira Knightley’s digital boob job on the “King Arthur” poster, Jessica Alba’s Campari ad diet, Redbook and Newsweek playing mix-and-match with celebrity heads and bodies, and the twig-legged GQ cover that prompted Kate Winslet to say, “I do not look like that, and more importantly I don’t desire to look like that.”

4) Religion Dispatches’ Top 10 Religion & Science Stories of 2009. They weren’t all about women, but the tension between science and religion in classrooms and the debate over stem cell research are intertwined with feminist issues, and 2009 also saw the discovery of two important female fossils. One, unfortunately, was an “evolutionary dead-end” quickly seized upon by creationists as evidence that the whole Darwin thing is crock, but 4.4 million-year-old Ardi, “Lucy’s older sister,” shed new light on how the human race has changed over time.

3) Fortune’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business. That’s like five top-10 lists in one, and it’s full of middle-aged and older women who have actually accomplished stuff! What’s not to love — except comparing their salaries to those of the most powerful men in business?

2) The New York Times’ 9th Annual Year in Ideas. One of the most persistent (and fair) criticisms of blogs like this one is that we ghettoize women’s issues and fail to acknowledge that, to paraphrase Hillary Clinton, women’s interests are human interests and human interests are women’s interests. So here’s a list of interesting stuff — bicycle highways, the drunken version of a classic psychological test, moon real estate, a green alternative to cremation, “undead Austen mash-ups” — presented without regard to lady content.

1) Finally, Mikki Halpin at AlterNet picks the 10 Most Defining Feminist Moments of 2009. “This year, I’m not keeping score of feminist victories and defeats,” she writes. “Instead, I’m looking back on those times in 2009 when feminism felt strong and when feminists spoke out.” From the murder of Dr. George Tiller to Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation as a Supreme Court justice to the increased attention that Chris Brown’s abuse of Rihanna brought to the issue of domestic violence, it’s been a year that demanded fierce feminist action but also offered some important victories. “They’re not all positive — some, like the health care reform process, were mega-downers,” Halpin says, “but they were the moments when I felt the most sisterhood.”

“Paranormal Activity” took this year’s Blair Witch Memorial Award for viral-marketed zero-budget hit — grossing well over $100 million to date — and “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” has defied the film industry’s cumulative demographic and marketing wisdom to the tune of $40 million or so. If the major studios’ Indiewood specialty arms are dead or dying, old-fashioned film-festival acquisitions suddenly look like good business again.

My problem, which may be strictly my own, is that I found a lot of this year’s indie hits to be predictable, formulaic and fundamentally uninteresting. The top-grossing foreign-language film of 2009, to date, is “Coco Before Chanel,” a movie I saw and declined to review because it bored me too much. (Anne Fontaine is one of my favorite French directors, but I thought she was poorly matched to star Audrey Tautou and the orthodox biopic material.) Pedro Almodóvar‘s movie-movie noir “Broken Embraces” may wind up giving Fontaine’s film a run for the money, but while I found many of the individual elements in “Broken Embraces” beautiful — the photography, the seriocomic tone, the central performances of Penélope Cruz and Lluís Homar — it never congealed into a satisfying whole. (I’ve been told to see it again, and I plan to.)

One major foreign release still lies ahead: Michael Haneke’s austere black-and-white period piece “The White Ribbon,” already winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes and the best-film and best-director prizes at the European Film Awards. While it’s a typically dark and enigmatic Haneke work that will surely attract some big-city viewers, it lacks the contemporary setting and the Lynchian combination of violence and mystery that made his “Caché” a surprise hit a few holiday seasons back.

One imported hit that I think is being oddly dismissed by so-called serious critics is Lone Scherfig’s “An Education,” a pitch-perfect pre-feminist coming-of-age fable that ought to make Carey Mulligan a movie star. It struck me as a lovely film with a depth of moral seriousness that’s partly masked by its sets, costumes and charm — and I’m afraid that even in the year of Kathryn Bigelow‘s unexpected resurgence, “An Education” is the victim of some latent sexism.

As for Bigelow’s “Hurt Locker,” anointed by critics’ groups from coast to coast as an Oscar front-runner, uh … how can I put this? I liked it. I’m a Bigelow fan from way back to “Near Dark.” Way worse things could happen than to see her on the stage of the Kodak Theatre clutching a statuette (and looking fabulous while her ex-husband glowers in the audience) come March. But “The Hurt Locker” just doesn’t speak to me the way the films on this list do. It was terrific, visceral cinema — but I don’t treasure the experience of seeing it, or yearn to repeat it. And let’s face it: While the acting was excellent, the film’s dialogue, what little there was of it, was Michael Bay-grade awful.

So what about the movies I did like? From the Hollywood-financial point of view, it’s a whole lotta nothing. Only two movies on my list grossed more than $1 million in the United States — and only one of those made it past $2 million. I’ve got two films by American directors, only one of them made in the U.S. I swear, none of this was deliberate. I’m not consciously trying to come off like that snotty, unshaven alt-weekly critic from 1989, talking up Balkan-dialect movies nobody but him has ever seen. (I wasn’t even that guy in 1989, or not exactly.)

I do think, however, that the aesthetic conservatism that dominates American cinema at the moment — expressed on the indie fringes by a talky, unadventurous and fatally dull strain of neorealism — has taken its toll on me. I’m like a junkie GI who’s come home from Saigon and discovered to his dismay that the shit on the streets just ain’t strong enough, man! Screw these movies where people with bad haircuts sit around and drone on about their relationships, humorously or otherwise! I want Filipina transgender hookers, imitation mid-’60s crime flicks, opaque Argentine class warfare, mean-spirited Jewish fables and the completely inappropriate glorification of violent British convicts! And here they are.

Seriously, though — I didn’t put any movies on this list because I respected them. Fuck that for a game of darts, as my late Uncle Liam said on many occasions. These are the movies that dazzled me this year, that disoriented me and shifted my reality prism and messed with my head. If in most cases hardly anybody else saw them or liked them, if the great humming and coughing steamroller of defective late capitalism squished them flat without even noticing, that is strictly not my fault. Happy happies, everybody. I’ll catch you on the flippety-flop.

“Hunger“ — British visual artist Steve McQueen’s debut feature, about the Bobby Sands-IRA hunger strikes of the early 1980s, is so implausible on so many levels it’s a wonder it works at all. Straddling the boundary between narrative and experimental cinema, between pure visuals and talky drama, between Terrence Malick and, say, Sean O’Casey, “Hunger” is in fact one of the decade’s true breakthroughs. Plus, people on all sides of the Irish-British debate disliked it, which suggests McQueen was doing something right.

“Bronson“ — Another fact-based British drama that isn’t anything like what you’d think when you hear that phrase. Nicolas Winding Refn’s operatic, visionary work about the legendary, ultra-violent English convict who took the name Charlie Bronson shamelessly breaks all the rules and wears a pathological obsession with Kubrick’s “Clockwork Orange” on its sleeve. I shouldn’t rank it remotely this high, but I will anyway.

“Il Divo“ — Rigorous, adventurous and explosive, Paolo Sorrentino’s remarkable film takes the cinematic bravado of Martin Scorsese and the technical wizardry of David Fincher and applies them to the indecipherable story of Giulio Andreotti, the fabled “Black Pope” of 20th-century Italian politics. Part of the dazzling renaissance of Italian cinema, which may look sudden from here but has been brewing for a while. (See “Gomorrah,” below.)

“A Serious Man“ — I blow hot and cold on the Coens, but even their weaker films (e.g., “Burn After Reading,” “The Ladykillers“) reward repeat viewings — and their better films reward them even more. This utterly delicious black-comic Jewish fable, set in a middle-class Midwestern suburb in the ’60s (a place that still carries buried undertones of Eastern European shtetl) is among their funniest and darkest films, both humane and ruthless in a way that’s highly Coen-specific. As the last shot faded to black, I sat up in my seat and said, “Oh my fucking God!” Which is precisely right.

“The White Ribbon” — Michael Haneke’s enigmatic and violent black-and-white yarn, set in rural Germany just before World War I, doesn’t open until Dec. 30. I’ll get to it then in more detail, but as is customary with the chilly Austrian-born director, “The White Ribbon” is a slippery fish. Ostensibly a parable about the roots of fascism, it’s also a tale of faith, punishment, love and the petty cruelties of ordinary life. It’s another of Haneke’s unresolvable shaggy-dog mysteries, and simultaneously the most beautiful, most chilling and most forgiving of them.

“The Limits of Control“ — People I know mostly either loved or hated Jim Jarmusch’s stylish and surprisingly political twist on the ’60s European crime film, driven by Spanish settings, Christopher Doyle’s gorgeous photography and Isaach De Bankolé’s iconic star presence and devastating wardrobe. Seriously, what’s not to like? But then, I don’t think this movie is about its conclusion (which some find dogmatic) or its reiterative-fragments-of-dialogue story. It’s more like a Bach fugue, and it’s about the moments, the silences, the faces and bodies and clothes, the endless cups of coffee. One of the indie pioneer’s best ever.

“Serbis“ — Based on the horrified word of mouth at Cannes in 2008, I didn’t see Filipino director Brillante Mendoza’s heartwarming family saga set in a dead-end porn theater until this year, when it had a very brief Stateside appearance. Last time I depend on gossip from a pack of prudish Europeans! Sure, the Family theater (yuk, yuk) is about the sleaziest place in the world — and the film includes one legendarily disgusting scene — but Mendoza’s portrayal of the struggling family behind it, and the diverse and colorful sex trade it supports, has tremendous lyricism and compassion.

“35 Shots of Rum“ — With virtually no audience outside France, Claire Denis has become that nation’s leading chronicler of social change and dislocation. This hushed, minimalist portrait of an Afro-French father and daughter on the Parisian fringes may be Denis’ loveliest and most challenging film. “35 Shots of Rum” builds slowly toward an enormous emotional payoff, and along the way offers one of the most heartbreaking and unlikely uses of a pop song in film history (the song in question being the Commodores’ “Night Shift”).

“Gomorrah“ — In adapting a nonfiction book by Roberto Saviano about the Camorra (or Neapolitan mafia), Italian director Matteo Garrone draws on his nation’s rich cinematic history for this big-canvas social drama that invokes Antonioni, Fellini and Francis Coppola. A spectacular big-screen accomplishment, whose gorgeous bleakness is well-captured in a brand-new two-disc special edition DVD from the Criterion Collection.

“The Headless Woman“ — Argentine director Lucrecia Martel’s gorgeous and deeply troubling ’70s class-warfare drama was booed at Cannes, which is way beyond ironic given its themes of blind privilege and willful ignorance. Martel tries to break through the language of conventional film and show us how her central character, an upper-middle-class blond woman (María Onetto), lapses into amnesia rather than face the consequences of her own borderline-criminal conduct. Like every other film on this list, “Headless Woman” compels a second viewing — and then compels you to recognize that it’s shown you things you still don’t understand. (Now available on DVD from Strand Releasing.)

Honorable mentions (alphabetical): Lars von Trier’s bloody, beautiful and fatally insane “Antichrist“ established, in case anyone was wondering, that he no longer has an American audience; Andrew Bujalski’s “Beeswax“ was ignored by both the hipster audience that used to like him and the grown-up audience that should; Almodóvar’s “Broken Embraces,” on which see above; Scherfig’s “An Education,” also discussed above; Terry Gilliam’s gorgeous and daring “Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” with a wonderful last performance by Heath Ledger; Götz Spielmann’s twisty Euro-noir “Revanche“; Carlos Reygadas’ Mexican-Mennonite adultery drama “Silent Light“; Nina Paley’s irrepressible (and uncopyrighted!) feminist take on the “Ramayana,” “Sita Sings the Blues“; Pablo Larraín’s demented Pinochet-era disco fable “Tony Manero“; Zack Snyder’s brooding, black-comic “Watchmen.”

Check in tomorrow for Andrew O’Hehir’s picks for best movie of the decade.

The year that’s just passed was a great one for movies, but perhaps not necessarily for mainstream blockbusters that whole clusters of critics automatically got behind. “Up in the Air” and “Up,” both generally well-reviewed, are clearly favorites among many critics; “Avatar” may have made it onto some lists as well, although many critics had filed their lists by the time they were able to see it. But that still leaves dozens — no, hundreds — of odds and ends, smaller movies that any critic or moviegoer may or may not have seen. And unless you live in a major metropolitan area with a good independent movie theater, those movies probably won’t reach you until they come out on DVD. Heck, even if you live in New York City, they may have barely reached you: One movie on my list played in New York for just a week, although thankfully, it can be seen on DVD.

The harsh reality is that theatrical-distribution problems for independent films are only going to increase. Most people will see these smaller pictures at home, although the silver lining to this particular cloud is that at least those movies can be seen, pretty much anywhere. And so I invite you to draw up your own list of favorite movies of 2009, whether you watched them in a theater or at home, with reckless disregard for what anyone thinks you should like. In other words, feel free to be idiosyncratic.

Here are my 10 favorites which, beyond the top three, are not necessarily in any particular order:

“Summer Hours” — Olivier Assayas has made a lyrical, bittersweet picture about preserving the past by letting go of it. Juliette Binoche gives a wonderful, slightly prickly performance as one of a group of siblings who can’t agree on how their mother’s estate should be divided. (Edith Scob, who as a young woman starred in Georges Franju’s “Eyes Without a Face,” plays the matriarch, superbly.)

“Fantastic Mr. Fox” — No movie gave me more pleasure this year than Wes Anderson’s stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl’s marvelously disreputable children’s novel, a picture made with so much care and love that it practically glows. And this is the Clooney performance of the year: His elegance and charm find a natural home in the body of a handsome, wily fox puppet.

“Antichrist” — Hell hath frozen over: A Lars von Trier movie has found its way onto my list. I’ve always found von Trier’s movies pretentious and misanthropic in a self-aggrandizing way, as if he were looking down on his audience and pronouncing them unworthy as human beings. But “Antichrist,” in which Charlotte Gainsbourg gives an astonishing performance as a grief-stricken wife and mother creeping toward madness, is different. There’s more raw pain in this picture than most filmmakers would dare, or be able, to express in a single work. “Antichrist” isn’t easy to love, but I can’t look away from it: This is the movie in which von Trier reaches out to us, instead of just looking down.

“The September Issue” and “Valentino: The Last Emperor” — These two beautifully made documentaries — by, respectively, R.J. Cutler and journalist turned filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer — are ostensibly about fashion. But really, they’re both about the nature of work and of partnership, as well as the value of manmade beauty and craftsmanship in our world. In “The September Issue,” Vogue editor Anna Wintour and creative director Grace Coddington channel two very different, often conflicting visions into the pages of their magazine — the chemistry works in spite of itself. And “Valentino” shows us the Designer Who Needs Only One Name and his movie-star-handsome partner (in both business and life), Giancarlo Giammetti, residing over a dying butterfly of a world, the planet of haute couture.

“Bright Star” — Jane Campion’s film version of the romance between poet John Keats and literal girl-next-door Fanny Brawne is unfussy, passionate and gently erotic. It’s also one of the few pictures I can think of that don’t render the world of poets and poetry dead on arrival. Sturdy but delicate performances by Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw sure don’t hurt.

“Coraline” — Henry Selick’s stop-motion animated picture, adapted from Neil Gaiman’s creepy-wonderful kids’ book, is visually inventive and gloriously tactile. In a movie universe where the human touch is becoming a thing of the past, Selick champions the beauty of visible fingerprints.

“The International” — German director Tom Tykwer makes a smart, quiet, gorgeous-looking thriller for grown-ups, and — surprise! — it tanks at the box office. The cutting here is meticulous but leisurely; the mood is one of restless melancholy. Although Tykwer’s craftsmanship deserves to be seen on the big screen, it at least deserves a second chance on the small one.

“Lake Tahoe” — In 2006 the young Mexican filmmaker Fernando Eimbcke gave us the strange and lovely coming-of-age tale (shot in black-and-white, no less) “Duck Season.” Eimbcke’s most recent picture, “Lake Tahoe,” earned accolades at various film festivals, but was barely released in the United States. (It played for one week in New York.) The movie covers a day in the life of a young man who’s just suffered a death in the family, and it’s the kind of picture in which nothing, and yet everything, happens. Eimbcke’s style of filmmaking is disciplined, serene and ultimately deeply moving, and he knows the value of keeping the camera still. Shaky-cam haters unite! (“Lake Tahoe” is available through Film Movement.)

“Broken Embraces” — Pedro Almodóvar’s latest, a gorgeous melodramatic fantasy about what it means to live for movies, has the go-for-broke passion and lush craziness of early Almodóvar pictures like “Matador” and “Law of Desire.” And he always brings out the best in Penélope Cruz: Here, she’s a dazzling, vital beauty who shows how exhausting it is to be a full-time dream girl.

“Star Trek” — Mainstream sci-fi filmmaking, done with heart and intelligence, courtesy of J.J. Abrams. Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto, as the older and younger versions of Spock, are the tag team of the year.

But wait! There’s more: Claire Denis’ “35 Rhums,” James Gray’s “Two Lovers,” Ruben Fleischer’s “Zombieland,” Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” James Toback’s “Tyson,” Steve McQueen’s “Hunger,” Mike Judge’s “Extract,” Werner Herzog’s “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” Jean-Marc Vallée’s “The Young Victoria,” Scott Cooper’s “Crazy Heart,” Oren Moverman’s “The Messenger,” Sam Raimi’s “Drag Me to Hell,” Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker,” Ramin Bahrani’s “Goodbye Solo,” Richard Loncraine’s “My One and Only,” and, for truly cheap thrills, Pierre Morel’s “Taken.”

Check in tomorrow for Stephanie Zacharek’s picks for best movie of the decade.

Yes, this year, bad TV was still bad. But good TV? Good TV was smart and weird and hilarious and fun and provocative — remarkably so. This year, TV overachieved, and instead of one or two quirky, original, suspenseful, strange shows, we had about 15 of them. If that sounds like an exaggeration, well, maybe you’re watching the wrong stuff.

1. “Mad Men”

“That’s life. One minute you’re on top of the world, the next minute some secretary is running you over with a lawnmower.” In describing the bloody John Deere calamity at Sterling Cooper, Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) might as well have been summarizing the cultural tidal wave about to take America out at the knees. If “Mad Men” seemed to veer off the tracks in Season 3 — Violent bohemians! Grueling childbirth! Betty (January Jones) and Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) making kissy-face with old guys! — the madness made sense against the vertigo of the times. After all, when the advertising gurus go from slinging hairspray and staging chirpy reenactments of Ann-Margret’s “Bye Bye, Birdie!” to grappling with the unexpected brutality of JFK’s assassination, the fallout is sure to extend beyond rumpled hairstyles. The genius of Matthew Weiner’s meticulously imagined drama is that the serene perfection and glossy exterior that the series has become known for feels like it’s about to be blown out of the water like the idealized decoy that it is: Marriages are unraveling, long-held traditions and beliefs are starting to look as outdated as Betty Draper’s 24-hour bra, and Sterling Cooper has been disassembled and reimagined in a scrappy new form. “Mad Men” doesn’t just invite us back into the past, it forces us to question our long-held, oversimplified notions about those times. Or, as Don Draper put it in the first season of the show, “I feel like Dorothy. Everything just turned to color.” Likewise, the vibrant, imaginative world of “Mad Men” sometimes made everything else on TV look as flat as black-and-white.

2. “Modern Family”

Aliens have assumed for years now that family sitcoms were merely government-sponsored cautionary tales of how dangerously lame and devoid of laughter people become the second they get married and have kids. Thankfully, ABC’s “Modern Family” is here to set them straight, proving for the first time since “Arrested Development” that families and comedy aren’t mutually exclusive. Against all odds, creators Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd managed to start with a gay couple who adopt a baby, two middle-aged parents with two school-age kids and a teenager, and an older guy with a trophy wife, and spin the whole mess into comic gold. From Jay’s (Ed O’Neill) eye-rolling acceptance of his odd stepson (“When I first heard Manny wanted to fence I was like, sure, uncoordinated kid, lethal weapon? How could this go wrong?”) to the hilariously coy banter between Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) and Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) (“You had to clip my wings, which you used to be the wind beneath!”), “Modern Family” is packed to the brim with hilarious but realistic characters, pitch-perfect familial squabbling and absurdly ill-fated scenarios that devolve in unpredictable ways (Luke’s elaborate but treacherous birthday party is one recent favorite). And speaking of unpredictable, who could’ve known that the best new comedy on TV this year would be full of beleaguered parents and obnoxious kids? Or as Manny would say, “Ugh, kids! You don’t have to tell me, my school is full of them.”

3. “In Treatment”

No sooner had HBO’s “Tell Me You Love Me” demonstrated that almost nothing under the sun could be more tedious and unbearable than a TV show about therapy than HBO’s “In Treatment” arrived to prove just the opposite. In the show’s second season, the offices of therapist Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) once again unveiled a steady flow of tense scenes and characters so deftly scripted that they had audiences sniffing and weeping their way through big boxes of tissues right along with them. How could therapy be so riveting? In part, “In Treatment” works because the show’s writers acknowledge the limitations and frustratingly distancing language of therapy even as they explore its benefits for the emotionally shell-shocked clients who find their ways to Weston’s door. As tough as it was to invent a worthy follow-up to “In Treatment’s” dynamic first season, all of the new clients were compelling, from retiring business executive Walter (John Mahoney), with his alternately infuriating and heartbreaking self-protective tics, to biological time bomb Mia (Hope Davis), who may be my favorite complicated, conflicted female character ever to appear on a drama other than “Six Feet Under.” And of course, Byrne was utterly believable as the sensitive professional who remains confused about his own issues. “In Treatment” offered the immediacy and emotional impact of an engrossing play, while showcasing the most intricately drawn, exquisitely performed characters on TV this year.

4. “Parks and Recreation”

After an amusing but unremarkable first season, NBC’s “Parks and Recreation” leaned into the seemingly limited comedic possibilities of small-town government in Indiana and pulled out one absurdly funny episode after another, from the dismissive Venezuelan officials visiting from Pawnee’s sister city to the soft-porn appeal of local beauty pageants. Whether Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) is trying to save an empty lot from the malevolent forces at the library or trying to broach the subject of Tom’s divorce (“And … how are your institutions … that you’re a part of?” she finally asks him), she sticks to her principles. When Ron Swanson’s (Nick Offerman) ex-wife Tammy (a great guest spot by Megan Mullally) asks whether Leslie would rather be unscrupulous but sexy like Cleopatra or principled but plain like Eleanor Roosevelt, Leslie is incredulous: “What kind of lunatic would want to be Cleopatra over Eleanor Roosevelt?!!” Thanks to some smart character development and some ridiculously entertaining stories this season, the female leader we really want to emulate is Leslie Knope. Three cheers for Leslie and three cheers for Pawnee. 

5. “30 Rock”

Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) and Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) may be searching for a new star for TGS, but “30 Rock” itself doesn’t need any new curveballs to keep our attention this season. Despite the sudden rush of fine comedies on TV this fall, there’s just something special about this depraved gaggle of industry weirdos that makes our hearts sing. “30 Rock” successfully dramatizes everything from class differences to the unbearable preciousness of actors to thirtysomething biological clocks, veering into the absurd, the outrageous, the utterly freakish with equal abandon. Whether the show is taking on Facebook (“Those sites are for horny married chicks with kids who want to exchange pervy e-mails with their old high school boyfriends,” offers Liz) or meaningless book blurbs (“Lemon numbers among my employees” is Jack’s blurb on the jacket of Liz’s book), the show features a reliably steady flow of great pop cultural commentary. Throw in a three-ring circus of unhinged characters and bizarre outbursts, and you have one of the best workplace comedies ever. How do they do it? Just don’t ask Liz. To her, “Your hair is looking less weird,” is a glowing compliment.

6. “Friday Night Lights”

Instead of keeping its high school graduates around indefinitely, all of them becoming general managers at Applebee’s, doomed to comp Coach Taylor’s (Kyle Chandler) barbecue rib platters until the end of time, the show’s writers wisely chose to send these kids off into the world on their own. A third season dominated by long goodbyes should’ve been an intolerable, uneven mess, but “Friday Night Lights” milked every moment for all it was worth, and in so doing, sent Smash Williams (Gaius Charles), Jason Street (Scott Porter), Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly) and the others off in style. Only Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) and Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) remained in the show’s fourth season this fall on DirecTV (the show will air on NBC in 2010), but the writers have wisely taken their time to weave new characters into the mix. Coach Taylor’s new gig at East Dillon High has proved a rich and necessary source of story lines. While the “bad boy gets drunk and reckless” plot is probably repeated a little bit too often, ultimately the emotional impact of “Friday Night Lights” remains as strong as ever, most recently evidenced by an unexpected major turn in Matt Saracen’s life that led to the show’s strongest episode this season. Although its odd on-air schedule makes it challenging to write about “Friday Night Lights” in anything but veiled terms (to avoid spoiling it for those who’ll eventually watch it on NBC), thank the good lord that DirecTV and NBC found a way to keep this sweet, humble, yet utterly original drama on the air for as long as they have, because, in its best moments, “Friday Night Lights” is simply transcendent.

7. “Dollhouse”

Joss Whedon’s “Dollhouse” has been canceled, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t the best sci-fi drama on TV right now, and yes, that includes “Fringe” and everything on SyFy. (While they “Imagine Greater,” as their logo goes, how about imagining picking up “Dollhouse” once Fox drops it? Might just fill that “Battlestar Galactica”-shaped hole in their lineup.) While Eliza Dushku’s star turn as Echo has always been the show’s weakest link, Whedon’s fantastical army of brainwashed whores has remained unnerving and clever in all of the ways you’d hope, despite the obvious push to minimize the overarching narrative in favor of standalone procedural episodes. Fox just couldn’t blot out Whedon’s brilliance, from his ethically challenged characters to his layers of thoughtful reflection on conformity, societal pressures, loneliness and free will. Could some second-rung cable channel with lower expectations for ratings please, at long last, give Whedon a blank check once and for all, without any talent attached, and let him work his magic? This man was born to write twisted, witty, diabolical tragicomedies for the greater good. Of course, as Echo (or a Fox development executive, for that matter) might put it, “Is this some sort of fantasy scenario, ’cause I don’t get it. When do we get naked again?”

8. “Community”

How could a comedy about community college be anything but silly? NBC’s “Community” proves that it can’t, yet this show still bounces along like an empty kegger, giddy and foolish and ready to brain anyone who stumbles into its path. From the Greendale Community College mascot (a grayish, faceless “human being” chosen for his/her inability to offend some segment or ethnic group) to Jeff’s (Joel McHale) aggressive dalliance with debate team grandstanding, “Community’s” finest episodes are direct parodies of the enforced p.c. climate of academia, the adorably provincial notions of academic administrators, and the specific built-in insults of so-called second-rung institutions of higher learning. Beyond the rich subject matter, “Community’s” cast pulls off even the most juvenile of plots, from Pierce’s (Chevy Chase) drug-induced existential crisis to Jeff’s continuing struggle to grow beyond his flatly selfish existence. Danny Pudi is deliciously off-kilter as Abed, Allison Brie is hilariously prudish and spot-on as Annie, and Yvette Nicole Brown masters the alternately aggressive and retiring Shirley. In short, “Community” is all about community — albeit, one filled with pure-hearted but deeply disturbed individuals.

9. “Big Love”

While Bill’s (Bill Paxton) choice to find a new spouse at the end of “Big Love’s” second season threatened to make him look like an unscrupulous horndog, it’s really the female leads that make this show so transfixing, from sweetly naive Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin) to fiercely protective Barb (Jeanne Triplehorn). The third season was even more fraught with peril than usual, thanks to Roman’s (Harry Dean Stanton) trial, Nicki’s (Chloë Sevigny) increasing alienation and the countless unnerving twists and turns along the way. Without careful storytelling, of course, a show about polygamy would feel like a attention-seeking gimmick (as it sometimes did in its first season). But “Big Love” keeps our interest by staying focused on the ties that bind this odd family together, their very earnest interest in making their bizarre collaboration work, and the challenges of living in ways that the wider world openly discriminates against. Whether or not we understand their motivations perfectly, through moving performances and riveting storytelling, “Big Love” makes us care about this odd family and its endless tribulations.

10. “Damages”

Glenn Close’s restrained intensity as high-powered lawyer Patty Hewes was reason enough to love the second suspenseful season of “Damages,” but when you threw in William Hurt’s great performance as the perplexing Daniel Purcell, Rose Byrne as fallen ingénue Ellen, and Timothy Olyphant as Ellen’s double-dealing lover Wes, you had the kind of cast that directors’ daydreams are made of. Although this twisty tale of blackmail, lawsuits and countersuits, hired thugs, dirty deeds and vengeance isn’t exactly notable for its layers of meaning or insights into the human condition, what it lacks in weight it more than makes up for in breakneck, head-spinning plotting and truly nasty dialogue. (My personal favorite Patty line? Her warning to her son’s older girlfriend, “You will break his heart, and when you do, I will tear your face off.”) Other TV writers may loudly fret over the challenges faced by serial dramas to hold an audience’s interest over the course of a season, but the “Damages” scribes seem to have stumbled on a clear solution: Offer up a few revelations and one or two major twists per episode. The resulting wild ride of repositioning, scheming and backstabbing adds up to one thing: riveting television.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: “Hung,” Glee,” “Bored to Death,” “Flight of the Conchords,” “Survivor,” “The Office,” “Kings,” “Saving Grace,” “Burn Notice,” “Men of a Certain Age.” 

Check in tomorrow for Heather Havrilesky’s picks for best TV of the decade.

As Rachael Larimore said at Double X, it’s not like there’s “a burning need for affirmative action in the meaningless-year-ending-attention-grabbing awards department. I don’t care who Time picks. (And, believe me, I’m not sad it wasn’t Nancy Pelosi this year.) But if Time is so uncomfortable with itself because its ‘Carbon-Based Life Form of the Year’ award comes across as sexist, it should, you know, give the honor to a woman once in a while.” Time did award Pelosi runner-up status for 2009, but like Larimore, we knew there were even better candidates going ignored. “If ladybloggers were in charge,” we asked ourselves, “who would be the Female Person of the Year?” And then we set about answering that question.

Four women tied for the most nominations (three each) in a highly scientific poll of noted women writers who responded promptly to my e-mail. “I know it’s an obvious answer, but I must vote for Hillary Clinton,” said Double X’s Jessica Grose. “She’s just done a fantastic job as Secretary of State. She hasn’t showboated, she’s just put her head down and worked — without compromising any of her core beliefs. No wonder her approval rating is soaring. Also, I think Americans don’t put enough stock in being able to handle defeat gracefully. It’s all about the winners. Clinton lost the election and yet has become the consummate team player.” Shakesville’s Melissa McEwan added, “she gave us a hell of a gander at what a feminist looks like during her first year in President Obama’s cabinet, whether it was delivering some major pwnage on reproductive rights or speaking out against sexual and gender-based violence while doing a little globetrotting awareness-raising. She also showed what it looks like to keep a campaign promise, by making good on her vow to make global gay rights an active ‘part of American foreign policy,’ in response to proposed legislation in Uganda to make homosexuality a crime punishable by death.” “The Curse of the Good Girl” author Rachel Simmons also called Clinton the “duh” answer, but Bitch Ph.D’s M. LeBlanc countered, “Duh! It’s fucking Sonia Sotomayor. Obviously” — a sentiment reinforced by Veronica I. Arreola, director of Women in Science and Engineering at University of Illinois at Chicago (and Viva la Feminista owner) and Pamela Merritt, the Angry Black Bitch.

Jessica Valenti of Feministing went with yet a third “duh”: “Um, Maddow. That is all,” and her colleague Ann Friedman elaborated, “Over the past year, Rachel Maddow has proved that there is still an audience for substantive television. She balances a serious news-anchor persona with a friendly and down-to-earth off-camera image. Plus, she manages to be openly and proudly gay, but not defined by her sexuality. It’s a feat far too few people have managed to pull off. She is truly a journalist for the Obama era.” Friedman was also among the three who named Neda Agha-Soltan — “the young Iranian woman who died on YouTube a million times over,” in Simmons’ words — as a contender for woman of the year. In fact, she expanded that nomination to encompass all “Iranian Women Activists. Yes, that includes Neda Agha-Soltan — but is certainly not limited to her. When Iranians rose up to demand democracy and rights in June, women led the charge. And they paid the price — the government is cracking down on women’s rights organizers now more than ever. I know this isn’t a stand-alone woman nomination, but — despite the attention Neda garnered — this just goes to show that sometimes women can’t stand alone. We are more effective when we fight together.”

Two women who changed the American pop culture landscape in 2009 garnered two nominations apiece. Women and Hollywood’s Melissa Silverstein and Tiger Beatdown’s Sady Doyle both picked “The Hurt Locker” director Kathryn Bigelow, for, in Doyle’s words, “making a really great movie, blasting down stereotypes about which movies women can and cannot direct, and presenting us with a future in which a woman, FINALLY, might win a Best Director Oscar. For an action movie!” Doyle also suggested Lady Gaga, “for winning over all haters, claiming her feminism, being perhaps the only non-runway model in the history of the world to successfully wear those terrifying lobster-looking McQueen heels, and turning pop music into a venue for a funny, fun, powerful, daring expression of female sexuality that doesn’t just recycle the same handful of boring old sexy-virgin tropes.”  Friedman adds, “Rah rah ah ah ah roma romama gaga ooh lala. Duh.” (To recap: We are now at four wildly different nominees who have  earned a “Duh.”) Silverstein gave an additional nod to Meryl Streep, “for making 60 look fantastic on the screen,” and Salon’s Sarah Hepola offered a love letter to “Twilight’s” Kristen Stewart: “She may be famous for playing an irritating heroine — hey, even she makes fun of “Twilight”! — but at 19 years old, she’s on the cover of every tabloid, starring in the biggest movie so far this year, and has rammed a stake into a boring rut of bubbly, gleamy-toothed teen queens like the (I’m sure she’s lovely) Vanessa Hudgens and the (does a lot for charity) Hayden Panettierre. Kristen Stewart is smart, talented, dark, slightly pained by gobs of attention and hugely successful. She’s playing Joan Jett, OK? I don’t give a damn about her bad reputation.”

Friedman wasn’t the only one to violate the “stand-alone” rule. Arreola’s second choice was “The Nobel Prize winning women, especially the women who won the Nobel in Medicine. When I heard that Elizabeth H. Blackburn and Carol W. Greider had been awarded the Nobel Prize and that Greider had been Blackburn’s graduate assistant, I immediately sent it out to my students. The win is not just a win for women but also a win for mentoring.” And after acknowledging that Sonia Sotomayor was the first name to spring to mind, Merritt added, “But there is a huge part of me that thinks the woman of the year is the re-awakened feminist — the women who pulled together in coalition to protest Stupak and defeat Nelson, the women who are now organized to demand reproductive justice in a way that has never happened before.”

Simmons had two other picks, “The retroactive: Claudette Colvin, the woman who was the ‘real Rosa Parks’ but who has lived her life in anonymity even though she was the first to refuse to move to the back of the bus. An award-winning children’s book was published about her this year” and “The slightly undeserved but so was Barack’s Nobel: Michelle Obama.” Lesley Kinzel of Fatshionista suggested breakout star Gabourey Sidibe, who’s consistently charmed audiences in interviews just as much as she moved them in “Precious.” M. LeBlanc and The Frisky’s Jessica Wakeman agreed with Time that Nancy Pelosi deserved a nod; said LeBlanc, “The house has passed all manner of incredible legislation this year.” Most of my selections have been mentioned at least once, but I’ll throw two more into the mix: Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the journalists who, while reporting on trafficking of women along the North Korean border, accidentally crossed it themselves and spent nearly five months in prison there.

Who, then, is Broadsheet’s official pick for Female Person of the Year? None of them. Which is to say, all of them — and undoubtedly many more we and our prompt responders didn’t immediately think of. (If more responses come in, I’ll update the post throughout the day.) But we can agree on one thing: as Friedman put it, “these are my Person of the Year nominations,” not just women of the year. Too bad Time didn’t consult us.

Updates: Nona Willis Aronowitz, co-author of “Girldrive,” checked in to say, “I second Rachel Maddow and Sonia Sotomayor, but I’d also like to give a nod to Sarah Palin, solely for providing a platform for feminist writers and activists everywhere to call out exactly what’s wrong with the GOP’s opportunistic, hypocritical co-opting of feminism. (I guess that’s 2008, too, but her memoir just drove the nail in deeper.)” Dodai Stewart of Jezebel made a similarly contrarian choice: “Most of my picks — HRC, Lady Gaga — are in there, but instead of Kristen Stewart, I’d say Stephenie Meyer — I don’t think the “Twilight” books are very well written, but she had the ability to energize a huge fanbase and get girls and moms reading and going to the movies. We haven’t seen that since, well, J.K. Rowling, ha!”

Finally, two other nominations came in via Twitter and Facebook: Canadian activist Muriel Duckworth, who passed away in August, and Elouise Cobell, lead plaintiff in a suit against the U.S. federal government for mismanagement of the Individual Indian Trust. After 13 years of litigation, the suit was finally settled this month, and according to Mother Jones, although Cobell says “Indians did not receive the full financial Settlement they deserved,” what they did receive is “believed to be the largest ever against the federal government and dwarfs the combined value of all judgments and settlements of all Indian cases since the founding of this nation.”