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In another actor's hands, that scene is just your typical snapshot of a hotheaded patriarch in denial, an Archie Bunker or a Rabbit Angstrom or a "Great Santini" for the new millennium. James Gandolfini, though, knew just how to tease out the storms raging inside Tony Soprano. His bullying always had this faint hint of self-consciousness to it, suggesting the vaguest whiff of guilt behind that surly mug. When Tony felt anxious, Gandolfini made us feel anxious, too. We could hear Tony start to breathe through his nose, like a bull growing agitated at the sight of the color red. His words got percussive and clipped as his heart raced faster.

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The favors (literal and figurative) were flying, of course, with too many satisfying scenes to count: Three-way flirting between Peggy, Pete and Ted? Mrs. Campbell telling Peggy about her sex life? Don actually sticking his neck out for someone other than himself? Of course, whenever Don starts looking heroic, you know there's real trouble ahead. Still, any episode in which Peggy, Pete, Ted and Don all show us their vulnerable sides is a rare and beautiful thing indeed.

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"The poor dope. He always wanted a pool." Those opening lines of "Sunset Boulevard" fit the spirit of the sixth season of "Mad Men" to a T. Delusions and vanities have been laid bare; shallow desires and hungry egos have taken a back seat to existential reckoning; the triumph of paternalism and capitalist grandiosity have been supplanted by an angry uprising.

But near-drowning aside, Don is less struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis than aging starlet Norma Desmond, gracelessly discovering that his best years have passed him by. First he watches the Democratic National Convention riots on TV, but only manages to demonstrate on the phone to Megan that he identifies with The Man more than with the hippies on the street. Like Peggy's comments about Avon's ad campaign, he is "unintentionally old-fashioned." "Can you imagine a policeman cracking your skull?" Megan asks, making it clear where her sympathies lie. "It would change your whole life." Why does that sound like foreshadowing? And speaking of which, the next thing she says to Don is, "Go for a swim. It always makes you feel better." Not always, Megan. Don, though, just tells Megan to go to sleep, see also: Power down that pretty little head of yours, just like I have, and you'll be less tormented by these awful times.

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It's funny how Don and Betty's interaction goes from faintly intriguing to faintly repellent in a matter of seconds. "You'll get eaten alive out here," Don tells her, sounding extra sleazy. "You know mosquitoes ignore me," Betty answers, possibly referring to his tendency to ignore her. "In those shorts?" he asks, and then it's on. Don's pouring Betty booze, reminding us that these two go together like a pair of lying, cheating, remorseless drunks, a moment of mirroring that's echoed throughout the episode. When Don talks about teenagers in revolt, it's clearer than ever that Don and Betty are united in their old-school ways, two conventional mainstream beauty queens who never understood all the fuss about ideals and moral high ground.

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First, there's the dialogue. As longtime viewers, it's easy to get bogged down by the symbolic significance of every scene, and get distracted by Don's downward spiral into damnation, so much so that we can't see the trees for the forest. Maybe we tend to take the crackling, unpredictable dialogue of "Mad Men" for granted; this episode it was too good to ignore.

Second, there are the satisfying scenes. The best TV writers figure out ways to serve up some really tasty payoffs for viewers. On "The Wire," even against a dystopian backdrop, you had these great moments of connection between McNulty and Bunk, or Omar and his boyfriend, among others. On "Six Feet Under," Claire and Nate and Rachel may have been struggling or sinking into a funk, but they'd always have ways of gaining leverage on the people bringing them down. For all of its gloom and doom, "Mad Men" still offers some of the most satisfying payoffs of any drama on television.

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We begin with Bert and Pete scheming with Joan to take the company public, and Pete even has the gall to hit on Joan. (She says no, loud and clear, and then tells him, "I hope Clara reminded you tomorrow's Mother's Day." I love how she has become the moral center of the office – or at least the center of restraint and discretion.) Meanwhile, Roger ditches his inherited shoeshine kit (which signals his reckoning with death) to rush off to the airport to romance not his stewardess lover, but an executive from Chevy. Instead of mourning his eventual demise, Roger is thinking about his legacy – which we can see from the fact that he takes three copies of his autobiography out of his travel bag, but leaves the last one in. This idea of making your mark before you die is scattered throughout the episode, along with lots of talk of death (Roger says, of Jaguar, "This could be fatal"; Ted finds out his art director is dying of pancreatic cancer; Rosen says he has a heart and a kid who needs a heart and both are dead.) Everyone in this episode is looking for salvation, redemption, delivery from history's dustbin – but are they kidding themselves? Is their bravery in the face of absurd obstacles just another way of running away from the specter of death? Is their passion for work meaningful, or is it just a distraction that keeps them from facing the truth about themselves?

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Now that "Mad Men" creator Weiner has come out and told us that the sixth season of "Mad Men" is all about hellfire and damnation, it feels less interesting to sift through Dante's nine circles to try to figure out which one we're in. But then, maybe it's the real-life hell of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination that renders any "Inferno"-specific analysis of this episode, "The Flood," particularly ludicrous. Can you imagine Weiner crafting an MLK Jr. assassination episode that also mirrors the fifth circle, "Anger," or the seventh circle, "Violence"? That sounds about as compelling as watching an interpretive dancer do an interpretive dance about interpretive dancing.

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After the premiere's death-and-paradise fixation, and last week's repeated guilt 'n' betrayal theme, I was starting to worry that every single episode of the sixth season of "Mad Men" would serve up Big, Obvious Themes and Giant, Flashing Symbols. As one of a giant herd of writers who enjoys unpacking these symbols, I don't want to bite the hand that feeds. But there is that point when the subtext upstages the actual text to such an extent that it's hard to focus on the emotional center of a given scene. For example, the second you see Joan's friend, Kate, putting makeup on Joan's mom, Gail, you know you're about to be swept away on a tide of double meanings. "Mary Kay always says it's really all about making yourself feel better," Kate tells her. "And that always starts with you doing something for you." That's the justification of the Glutton, anyway.

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A tone of shameless betrayal holds true throughout the whole episode. We'll start with the most expected betrayer, Don, who rides the elevator past the Rosens' floor, only to see Sylvia and Arnold arguing about money. Sylvia looks vaguely absurd in her hat and housecoat, but she still shamelessly locks eyes with Don while she's kissing her husband goodbye. Minutes later, Don boldly pretends to have forgotten his cigarettes so he can return to the Rosens' apartment for some early-morning action. (Remember how Don's "uncle" Mac later tells Don he's the rooster who runs the hen house and "brings on the day"?)

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"People will do anything to alleviate their anxiety." – Dr. Arnold Rosen

Whenever a wise and heroic character appears on "Mad Men," you know that Don will find some way to destroy him. That's how Don alleviates his anxiety, after all – by crushing all truth and beauty to dust under his shiny black wingtips. So when Dr. Rosen, Don Draper's charming new friend and neighbor, explains Don to himself right before skiing off through the snow to save someone's life, it's obvious that Don's not going to stand for it.

Enter Silvia Rosen, who's chosen a rather literal interpretation of her husband's instructions to "keep it in the building." Don's cheating again – no surprise there. But thanks to show creator Matthew Weiner's knack for sly storytelling and creepy omens, Don's infidelity lands like a baseball bat to the gut. If Weiner opened the episode with the doorman's heart attack, then showed us how Don and the surgeon's wife met and began flirting, not only would that feel too familiar to offer as much dramatic impact, but it would obscure the real object of Don's strong feelings: Dr. Rosen. Ever the paragon of imperialist greed, longing and envy, Don can't handle sharing oxygen with a true hero. This is Don's life-long undoing: He's all hero on the outside, and fraudulent, covetous worm on the inside.

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Heather's top 5:

1. "Girls" (HBO)
2. "Mad Men" (AMC)
3. "Portlandia" (IFC)
4. "Boardwalk Empire" (HBO)
5. "Homeland" (Showtime)

Special Categories:

1. What was the show of the year? Taking an audacious, raunchy, absurd comedy about young women and making it not only relatable but oddly moving? Sounds impossible, but somehow "Girls" pulled it off, thereby upstaging every other female-centric show to air in the last decade.

2. What was the best scene? When a humbled Nucky shows up to beg Chalky White for help in "Boardwalk Empire." Not only is this the groveling Nucky we've been waiting for, but Michael K. Williams is the master of mixed emotions; we can't take our eyes off his face. (Honorable mention: Megan sings the Zooby song at Don Draper's birthday party.)

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From disturbing zombie parables to madcap stoner nostalgia, from grumbling middle-aged men to grandstanding TV executives, the cream of the crop this year transcended their earlier peaks to bring us great entertainment in the comfort of our soft pants. Notable for their sharpness, originality and ability to make us feel uncomfortably human emotions, here are the 10 best TV shows of 2010.

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When we're young, we think old people are nice to each other because they're fake. I was walking the dogs with my 14-year-old stepson yesterday and we passed a couple on the sidewalk. "Hi, how are you?" the man said. "Great, how are you?" I replied.

"That was weird," my stepson said. "It's like he says the same thing to everyone."

"OK, have a great weekend!" I replied.

Old people are a little checked out, it's true. But we're amiably comatose. This friendly state of autopilot is the only way we've found to manage our dashed dreams, our growing contempt for the culture, our creeping disappointments, our fibromyalgia. We grind our teeth at night and have vivid dreams about screwing cheerleaders. We resent the unflattering shape of matchstick jeans and daydream about gigantic claw-foot bathtubs we can't afford. Our elbows hurt and our hair always looks bad and we secretly think all electropop sounds like Kraftwerk.

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But then, if you take the time to flip through the pages of "Metropolitan Life" or "Social Studies" yet again, you'll find two truly great books that stand the test of time. And how many truly great books do most authors have in them?

The answer to that question, of course, is zero. Or as Lebowitz herself puts it when speaking to a roomful of young people, "There are too many books, the books are terrible, and it's because you have been taught to have self-esteem." This is Lebowitz's distinct talent: making elitist contempt sound charming.

Toni Morrison, a friend of Lebowitz's, puts it a little differently. "You seem to me almost always right," she tells Lebowitz. "But never fair."

"That's why," Lebowitz responds. "I'm always right because I'm never fair."

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