Ellen Gray: The 2011 TV rewind: Ellen Gray flashes back on a year of triumphs, flops & quirks

MAN didn't walk on the moon and the Berlin Wall did not fall in 2011. No one even shot J.R. (who'll be back in TNT's "Dallas" update next summer). And if Janet Jackson had a wardrobe malfunction, I'm happy to say I missed it.

Still, it was a year in television like most. More happened than could fit in a Top 10 list (not that I ever get mine narrowed to 10, anyway).

Here's how I'll remember it:

Word of the year: Vagina. (Runner-up: penis.) Not since Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues" have so many actors had so much to say about a body part possessed by 51 percent of the population. From CBS' "2 Broke Girls" to ABC's "Suburgatory," broadcast TV was apparently on a mission in 2011 to educate Americans in basic anatomy. Maybe 2012's word will be "patella." Not only would the jokes practically write themselves, but they'd all be knee-slappers.

"Bad" guy we'll miss: Gus Fring. The "Breaking Bad" fried chicken-and-meth entrepreneur played by Giancarlo Esposito was evil's suave face - while he still had one - as well as a character whose backstory probably deserved its own TV series. Which, sadly, would now have to be a prequel.

Bait-and-switch that left us howling: AMC's "The Killing." Not just that infamous season finale, in which we learned that the case against mayoral candidate Darren Richmond (Billy Campbell) rested on evidence that couldn't actually exist, but a good chunk of the season. Adapted by Veena Sud from a Danish series titled "Forbrydelsen" (which, no, doesn't mean "The Cheat"), "The Killing" started out promisingly with the story of a young girl's murder in atmospheric Seattle but quickly turned into a weekly exercise in frustration, thanks to a plot that owed its movement to a veritable school of red herrings.

Creepy cable trend: Incest. It started with the Lannister twins (Lena Headey and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) on HBO's "Game of Thrones" and ended (one hopes) with that twisted near-declaration in the season finale of Showtime's "Dexter" (where, for added oomph, the amorous sister is played by Jennifer Carpenter, who used to be married to Michael C. Hall, who plays her adoptive brother Dexter).