- - - - - - - - - - - - PLUS: The year in film Charles Taylor finds a few shining glories in a lackluster year - - - - - - - - - - - - ALSO THIS WEEK The Sweet Hereafter Mysterious beauty in the ultimate loss Jackie Brown Tarantino's valentine to Pam Grier As Good as it Gets Jack Nicholson's grubby fairy tale - - - - - - - - - - - - LAST WEEK Titanic Glub, glub, glub Tomorrow Never Dies 007 has lost his verve - - - - - - - - - - - - RECENTLY A full list of recent reviews, interviews and table talk. BROWSE THE MOVIE ARCHIVES TV ARCHIVES

BY JOYCE MILLMAN | THE HIGHS WERE VERY HIGH, the lows were bottomless. Here are 10 snaphots from the year in television: 1. Ellen Sure, the weeks of hard-core hype preceding the April 30 coming out episode of "Ellen" made it tempting to yawn and say, "Oh, she's only doing it for the ratings." But listen: What would be the point of making the biggest, loudest statement of your life if nobody showed up to hear it? Yes, Ellen DeGeneres got the ratings -- the coming out episode was Nielsen's No. 1 show of the week, watched in 36 million households. But here's the really important thing: DeGeneres has held onto a large number of those viewers. No, "Ellen" may not be seen in 36 million homes every week, but it regularly wins its time slot, which it wasn't doing before DeGeneres or Ellen Morgan came out. The first prime-time network series with an openly gay star/leading character is a hit. It's also a better show now. When DeGeneres and her alter ego took that courageous step and said, "Yes, I am," "Ellen" was instantly transformed from a show as meandering and evasive as its star's tongue-twisted comedy style into a sitcom with a purpose and a punch line. As fall-down funny as the show was this season (instant classic: the one where Ellen persuades guest Emma Thompson to "come out"), it has also been wonderfully, boldly gay. Ellen and her girlfriend Laurie (Lisa Darr) kiss a lot, unself-consciously, like couples do. And the scene where Ellen leads Laurie to the bedroom for the first time, pulling petals off a flower and teasing, "She loves me, she loves me not," was sexier and sweeter than any naked hetero hump on "NYPD Blue." The sly pro-gay editorializing that the writers continue to slip into the show -- in one episode, Ellen wakes up in the arms of Laurie on the couch in front of the TV, right at the "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" speech from Laurie's daughter's American Revolution video -- takes the piss out of ABC's paranoid and idiotic pre-show content advisories (Warning! Warning! Lesbians in love!). After the blizzard of publicity the show has gotten, can there really be any viewer who would stumble innocently upon "Ellen" and be shocked? "Ellen" has also been poignant this season without descending into sappiness. Ellen Morgan has been hurt since coming out. Her homophobic boss banned her from contact with his children, her father had trouble accepting the news, her straight best friend Paige feels betrayed. And now Ellen has just split up with Laurie, her first love, because Laurie wanted a commitment and Ellen wasn't ready. But never are we encouraged to feel sorry for Ellen Morgan, as if she's some sort of misfit. The new Ellen is proud and assertive, even as she remains the old Ellen in a lot of ways, still klutzy and motor-mouthed and given to cover awkward situations with jokes. She's the same as she always was, but different. And although her life is more difficult, it's also richer, freer and better for her coming out. So is prime time. 2. Comeback of the Year: The Drama Series During the 1996-97 TV season, prime-time dramas were a vanishing breed -- literally. If a series didn't click with viewers first time out of the gate, it got yanked off the air. The ratings haven't been that much better for dramas this TV season. Setting aside the two heavyweights, NBC's "ER" and ABC's "NYPD Blue," most current dramas (ABC's "The Practice," "Nothing Sacred" and "Cracker," NBC's "Homicide," CBS's "Michael Hayes" and "Brooklyn South" ) linger in the lower reaches of the Nielsens. But for some reason (the alignment of the planets, or perhaps El Niño), the networks have suddenly decided that it's OK for a drama to get low ratings, that it takes dramas years to build followings and maybe canceling them after three episodes is one of the reasons viewers are drifting away from the networks to cable and other alternatives. Take all of the above shows, add "Law & Order" (which won the best drama series Emmy this year after eight seasons on the air) and throw in cult wonders like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "La Femme Nikita," "Xena" and the "Star Trek" spinoffs, plus nightly syndicated reruns of "The X-Files" and "NYPD Blue." The result: There haven't been this many interesting dramas since that flukey period in the late '80s when "China Beach," "Miami Vice," "Wiseguy," "thirtysomething," "L.A. Law," "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Equalizer" were on the schedule together. Not all of this year's dramas were great week in and week out (or even ever), but they all had something that stuck with you, something that kept you coming back: a wrinkle in a character you thought you knew (Kellerman and Bayliss on "Homicide," Greene on "ER," Scully on "The X-Files"), a fresh take on an old theme ("The Practice," "Brooklyn South"), good, old-fashioned pull-you-in writing ("Law & Order", "NYPD Blue"). Maybe that last reason is the key. Why do viewers choose up sides and stick with a drama series through ups and downs and cast changes and time slot shuffles and rumors of cancellation? It's simple: To see how the story ends. 3. Worst Sweeps Stunt Backwards "Seinfeld"? Naked "Drew Carey"? Live "ER"? Musical "Chicago Hope"? All worthy contenders, but for sheer opportunism and Very Special Episode self-importance, the honor goes to ... "Murphy Brown Gets Cancer." 4. World's Scariest Programming Trend Fox loaded up its sweeps schedules with a roster of "World's Scariest Police Chases," "When Animals Attack" and other video snuff specials that broke new ground for cheap thrills. However, a promised "World's Scariest Prison Riots" special for November sweeps never materialized; Fox pulled the show when the surveillance camera footage proved too "raw." The trend spilled over to the other networks, too, with ABC and CBS slapping together various disaster-cam specials. And, of course, there were PBS's shocking "World's Scariest French Food" and "I Survived a Ken Burns Documentary" ... 5. Freak Show of the Year An especially fertile category. Two years ago, if you told me that O.J. Simpson: The Civil Trial would be an also-ran for this weighty title, I'd have thought you were crazy. But, behold, the freakish wonders that held sway over the TV newsmagazines this year: The JonBenet Ramsey case. Michael Jackson's baby. The Marine Corps paratroopers chest-pinning scandal. The Bill Cosby extortion scandal. The Heaven's Gate mass suicide. Andrew Cunanan. The Nanny Trial. Marv Albert. Tiny squirmy septuplets. But the winner (by an ear) is obvious: "Feeding Time for Mike Tyson." N E X T+P A G E +| THE BEST SATIRE IN PRIMETIME HISTORY