Best of T.V.

For American television, it was the year of teen drama. Everyone, from pre-teens to teens to even adults was infatuated with the slew of high school and college-based shows. The bad, the bold and the beautiful all came together to give us an explosive year of remarkable entertainment.

Shows full of teen histrionics, such as "The Secret life of the American Teenager," warmed our hearts this year, but only one danced and sung its way in. Fox's new musical sensation, "Glee," follows the story of a high school glee club, a choir-like group full of high schoolers who love both the show business and showing off. A wide audience has taken a liking to the show; after all, drama, on stage and off, is universal. The show became mainstream after the school's football team on the show performed Beyonce's "Single Ladies" dance. Web sites, news stations and blogs talked about the characters' performance as if it were the biggest thing since Barack Obama was elected president (maybe not, but it was a pretty big deal). The hip- shaking, hand clapping football players seemed to do the trick for the melodious show, which is one of the first of its kind (take that, Zac Efron).

But in TV, there are still things are not always what they seem to be. For the main characters of "Bones," a show about a FBI special agent named Seeley Booth and a forensic anthropologist named Bones Brennan who work together to solve crime, hate means love, punch means hug and when Booth says to Bones "Use your mutant powers, just talk people to death," that means, "I love you". In this fall's much-anticipated fifth season finale of Bones, Booth realizes that he loves Bones and tells his old friend Gordon. This revelation was a long time coming, but bloggers and TV critics were still surprised because the confession came after seasons of tension and love-hate passion being shared between the two characters.

Just when it seemed like it couldn't get any better, "Gossip Girl" showed us the real meaning of the teen catchphrase "OMG." The drama about wealthy Upper East Side teens is meant to showcase typical adolescent behavior and trials and tribulations, but the acts of these "teens" are everything but that. Serena, Blair and Chuck have more money than most of our parents have in their bank accounts combined. But their rich lifestyles make the show a must-watch among not only teens but even people in their late 20s and early 30s. After all, more money equals more fun. One of the most drama-filed episodes of "Gossip Girl" this season confirmed what we already knew about Dan and Vanessa. After copious drama, Dan realized that he loved Vanessa, and now the tables are finally being turned in their relationship (too bad she doesn't love him back). As if "Gossip Girl" did not already give us enough reasons to be screaming "OMG," now we can scream, re-watch and blog like many of us have been doing all season long.

We love to hate them and some of us even want to be them, but television just would not be interesting if there weren't any mean girls to shake things up. If you could not get enough of wealthy teenagers who party hard, and are even harder to play nice with on "Gossip Girl," the CW's "90210" (remake of the hit show, "Beverly Hills 90210,") has answered your prayers. On one of the most explosive episodes of the show, Naomi sent a sexting of Annie around the school, thinking that Annie had hooked up with Naomi's former love interest, Liam. Of course, Annie was not involved with Liam; but the conflict does make for good entertainment. This little misunderstanding between the girls blew up into a winner takes all competition about who could hurt each other the most, a high school hallway struggle that consumed the whole season. Of course, it was the mean girl in her Naomi's family her loving, pathological liar of an older sister, who turned out to be involved with him as a way to gain her trust (talk about twisted).

From mean girls, revealed crushes to star-crossed lovers, 2009 has given us everything that we could have ever wanted in a jam-packed, entertainment-filled year. As we cool down from all of the sizzling teen dramas of 2009, we await more drama, but newer concepts in 2010. Although teen dramas are fun, it will be refreshing to see new twists and plots involving and older set of people that are more conservative, but still have the same amount of fun and fire.