The Year's Most

MOST SATISFYING ACTING OUT OF A NATIONAL FANTASY: When as Cher's closing credits rolled Guest Star Jerry Lewis simultaneously pulled the star's hair and tickled her tummy button.

MOST SCROOGELIKE CORPORATE BEHAVIOR: The networks' insistence on spoiling Christmas before it gets started by scheduling annual reruns (some for the eighth and tenth times) of animated fairy tales that were lousy to begin with. Like the broken-down crooners propped up in front of too many holiday "specials" this time of year, the cartoons cannot be said to improve with age.

MOST SALUTARY CONTRIBUTION TO THE CREATION OF THE PROPER BICENTENNIAL

SPIRIT: Frederick Wiseman's Welfare (PBS). With his customary cool compassion, TV's only great documentarian showed us not a bland and idealized portrait of what we have been but the inhumane and bureaucratized future that has already arrived for the poor and could dominate everyone's life by our 300th birthday.

MOST DISMALLY EARNEST TOOTH

FAIRY: Mr. Goodwin, the busybody druggist who is letting his musty store run photogenically down while he campaigns against cavities. Maybe a discount chain will drive him off the block in the new year.

MOST UNDERRATED SHOW: Lily Tomlin's comedy special (ABC). Audiences and critics generally ignored the year's brightest hour of humor by the medium's most solidly gifted talent.

MOST ABSORBING PROGRAMS NO GROWNUP SHOULD HAVE BEEN ABSORBED

BY: Tie between Guilty or Innocent: The Sheppard Murder Case (NBC) and Valentino (ABC). Trashy subject matter redeemed by the total sobriety--and professionalism--of its presentation.

MOST PROMINENT THIRD WHEEL: Dan

Rather on 60 Minutes (CBS). The program remains the best commercial TV has to offer and its rescheduling in prime time is the only known benefit of a disastrous season. But Mike Wallace and Morley Safer really don't need any help from underemployed White House correspondents.

MOST IMPRESSIVE EVIDENCE THAT AGE

HAS ITS BLESSINGS: Laurence Olivier (68), Katharine Hepburn (66) under the direction of George Cukor (76) in the delicious Love Among the Ruins (ABC).

MOST EFFECTIVE COUNTERPROGRAMMING TO THE COMMERCIAL NETWORKS:

Great Performances and In Performance at Wolf Trap (PBS). The Fifth Freedom--freedom from yammer--is eloquently defended in programs that do not educate us about music or sell it to us, but offer it well performed without self-congratulation or apology.

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