Buzz reflected on the year Grey’s Anatomy went totally crazy. (BuzzSugar)This week Team GMMR shared our TV on DVD wish list. What’s TV series are on your list? Here’s to hoping Santa likes TV as much as the rest of us. (Give Me My Remote)

Every day from now until the end of the year Scooter is unveiling a new Best of 2008 list. And in spirit of the holidays, Scooter is giving away a couple of of iTunes or Amazon gift cards to mark the occasion. (Scooter McGavin’s 9th Green)

Which EW 2008 Pop Culture moment photo, recreated by the gang at How I Met Your Mother, do you love best? Vance wants you to vote on it! Vance thinks it’s a toss up between the Michael Phelps Olympics one and The Jonas Brothers one. Either way, Neil Patrick Harris is hot. (Tapeworthy)

This week, Jace once again took a look into the future, offering advance reviews of Season Three of HBO’s Big Love and the Skins season finale on BBC America. (Televisionary)

Amy Poehler’s send-off on Saturday Night Live was bittersweet — Jesse was sad to see her go, but glad that she left on what could be the best episode of the season thus far! (TiFaux)

Heather and Ben warmed up for the final run of Battlestar Galactica and got quite excited about the new webisodes (TV Spy)

This week, the TV Addict poked fun at NBC’s latest attempt to cut costs. (The TV Addict)

Christmas memories from all of our would-be best friend, Tina Fey.

Get ready for the Lost circus! They’ve released a new promo for the upcoming season.

There will be more explosions, more confusion, more Jack beards and more calmly-delivered portents from Ben.

I just wanted to share this clip of Bon Iver with you because it is nice — nothing more, nothing less. He kind of looks like an American Badly Drawn Boy — with the scraggly beard and knit cap — but his sound is that of a haunted folkster with a surprising tenor.

Here’s him performing Skinny Love on Letterman:

In case you haven’t gotten around to watching them, there have already been three Battlestar Galactica webisodes!  And it’s all good, clean fun — in that dreary way only Battlestar can deliver.

The series starts off with Gaeta and Hoshi gaying it up with a cute little smooch and bedroomy eyes (and not to be all “oooooh, boys kissing,” but… well… oooooh, boys kissing!). I’m still trying to get a grasp of homophobia in alternate-reality Galactica-land, but there does appear to be some sort of fleet-wide don’t ask, don’t tell policy given Hoshi’s awkward encounter with Tigh. Or, perhaps, it’s just don’t ask or tell a crusty old cylon with an eyepatch.

Here’s the first of the webisodes, entitled Face of the Enemy.

Watch the other episodes after the jump.

Dexter capped off its third season Sunday night with a snoozer of an episode that was the culmination of an uneven season. Twas disappointing.

The season never really found its focus, floundering among multiple plotlines that never really converged in a compelling way. Last season achieved this feat in an astounding fashion — convincingly (if not realistically) allowing all of the disconnected elements of the season play off one another until they all resolved themselves in an explosive last few episodes.

No such luck this time around. There were indeed a variety of plotlines:

• In Dexter’s personal life (the “play within the play” if you will allow me to be pretentious), he was dealing with Rita’s pregnancy and his impending marriage
• There was the case of The Skinner and Deb’s romance with a key witness
• Most notably, there was Miguel Prado and his friendship with the ‘real’ serial killing Dexter

Then, there was Angel’s romance with a fellow cop, Batista’s complicated friendship with Prado and on and on. There were no shortage of plotlines, but few of them really fully developed or meant anything by the end. The biggest example of this phenomenon was the introduction of the pretty useless (if quite hot) character Quinn. He had an interrupted flitation with Deb and an investigation going after him, but all roads led to dead ends.

The season finale ended without a lot of action. In fact, practically none considering the climax of the season occured on the penultimate episode with Dexter finally taking out Miguel Prado. The Skinner met his end in a hurried fashion and most of the episode seemingly revolved around Dexter’s navelgazing self-analysis — accompanied by hallucinations of his deceased father (who, frankly, is wearing out his welcome with his constant meddling from the beyond).

None of this would be tremendously upsetting if the second season hadn’t ended so spectacularly (killing Lila in gay Paris!). Perhaps next season will further some of the abandoned plotlines from this season, particularly the vague sense of mystery surrounding Quinn.

Any other thoughts?

UPDATE: Via John’s link to E! Kristin’s interview with Clyde Phillips. He basically defends the show from people like me who wanted explosions and mayhem.

Some of the blogs were disappointed [in the finale]. Not enough blood. They didn’t want any subtlety. We stand by what we did, and we did a good job. We didn’t want the ending to be the way it’s been the first two years, where the audience was expecting that whatever the problem in Dexter’s life would be dispatched in the last episode in some wonderful, high-energy resolution. We did that in the episode before the last episode. Then we allowed the audience to think, ‘Oh my god! (A) What is going on, because this isn’t the way Dexter is going to end, and (B) What the hell are they thinking of? What are they going to come up with?’ So it was a conscious decision to kill Miguel Prado in the second-to-last episode.

I get it — that ending every season with an orgy of blood and abnormal psychology might make the show a little less deep than it is. But I still stand by the idea that the overall rising action of the season never really materialized into a great payoff.

Not that you didn’t know this,  but TiFaux has a store up in the right-hand corner of your screen.  Right above our fetching Twitter feed.  We have a collection of t-shirts that fit every frame and, with the holidays around the corner, if you’re like me you really want to make your loved ones say “What does this mean?” when they unwrap their gifts.

That said, we’ve definitely neglected one of our largest readership demographics: infants. And on that note, we have a wonderful new onesie available for purchase. It reads “TiFaux is my Babysitter” and incongruously features an old-timey TV set.

Spreadshirt Market Place Product

Babysitter Onesie

In the 21st century, DVR will enable children will be able to take care of themselves in a whole new way — catching up on days-old shows or re-watching Dora the Explorer. All you have to do is leave out some Cheerios and a bowl of water and you have an instant babysitter!

Buy up!  Commerce!

I watch Survivor every season and watching the finale is probably my least favorite part. Even if my personal favorite wins (which has happened every once in a while), I can’t take the tension. While I realize that Survivor’s cultural relevance has dwindled to basically nothing, I still think it’s one of the most suspenseful and well-edited shows out there.

In some ways, I like it better when there’s no one I’m enamored with. It takes the stomach-churning tension out of the season finale (shut up — I get really worked up over these things), knowing that there’s no way I’ll be disappointed after a whole season of waiting. This was one of those seasons.

For the purposes of this post, the three finalists can be described thusly: Susie the Mom, Bob the Physics Teacher and Sugar the Blonde (just go with it). Bob won, although Sugar proved to be the more diabolical player. Everyone loved him and played the role of tribe work horse, wisely avoided the timeless trap of the elder players yelling about the young folks being lazy and playing with their abs.

So, I won’t do a breakdown here because the season’s over, but I did want to address the most noteworthy thing about this season: the abhorrent social behavior. While there were generally few people this season worth getting excited about, two contestants competed for the title of ‘worst person to ever be on the show.’ Corinne and Randy were two unique snowflakes of hideous behavior, each finding their own ways to alienate their fellow contestants and the viewing audience.

Randy was an out and out disaster — actively terrorizing anyone who he came into contact with. In particular, he clashed with Crystal, eventually making a pretty shocking racial comment a tribal council (referring to her and booted contestant GC’s “posse”). By the end of his game, his behavior had grown so cartoonish he (failingly) tried to use it as a strategy.

So, while Randy’s antisocial leanings are a function of his inherent misanthropy — he has no social skills and never has — Corinne can “pass” as a human being until you realize she’s mentally ill. During interviews on the finale she attempted to explain her behavior essentially by saying that it’s better to be hated and remembered (rather than liked and forgotten). And she certainly won’t be. The turning point came during the final tribal when she told Sugar basically to “stop crying about [her] dead father.” It was shocking, but she basically just proved that she’d rather have negative attention than none at all.

In the future, Survivor would do well to avoid casting people like Randy and Corinne.

People continually shit on the show, but I’ve stuck with it because I find the game play intriguing and the curveballs they constantly throw at the contestants keep things interesting. I think the social relationships are tremendously fun to watch. But casting such mean-spirited people can take the fun out out of the whole affair. These people may cause conflict, but I don’t really have any interest in watching exploitation (a trap shows like Big Brother repeatedly fall into).

So, the show goes to Brazil in February — let’s see if they can successfully cast a diverse set of alpha-personalities (Survivor doesn’t cast betas — that rules out most bloggers) that don’t have personality disorders.

Buzz went looking for opinions about the best underappreciated TV gem of ‘08. (BuzzSugar)

Sandie shared a special Holiday preview of Supernatural’s upcoming January episodes. (Daemon’s TV)

In the latest installment of Take 5, GMMR looked back at the top 5 episodes of Veronica Mars. (Give Me My Remote)

Rae takes a look at one of the shows she’s been anticipating for months, TNT’s new series Leverage. (RTVW Online)

In a year when some of the most inept executives in America got the ax, one man looks to carry the mantel into 2009, and he is scheduling what you watch on your television, well, by his track record you are avoiding them. (Scooter McGavin’s 9th Green)

Vance checks out Toronto’s cast for the play Dog Sees God which happens to look a lot like Degrassi: The Next Generation (Marco! Craig! Jay! Jane!). (Tapeworthy)

This week, Jace was all about looking forward, with advance reviews of Season Two of FX’s Damages and the pilot script for ABC’s Flash Forward, which could just be the next Lost. (Televisionary)

Holy affluent teen drama! This week Gossip Girl featured a funeral, a wedding and a Blair/Chuck meltdown. (TiFaux)

With the shocking announcement by NBC that Jay Leno will be sticking with the network, theTVaddict.com put together a list of Winners & Losers (The TV Addict)

Raoul talked to the winners of The Amazing Race. (TV Filter)

Suffering with an almighty pre-Christmas hangover, TV Spy was, to its shame, a blog of few words, as it looked forward to the new series of Flight of the Conchords and Battlestar Galactica. (TV Spy)