We put our noggins together at Character Grades to decide who made the most exciting, enthralling and entertaining power plays of 2012. Take a look and vote for your fave!

1.Wedding Planning Dowager-Style on Downton Abbey

Oh, Cousin Violet, that naughty minx. When the vicar of Downton refuses to marry William and his (completely unwilling) fiance, Daisy, Violet sits the man down, lays out every way in which he depends on her family’s kindness, and asks again with a smile. William makes an honest woman of Daisy for approximately two hours before passing on to his shared servants’ quarters in the sky, and Violet gets to be smug about it for the rest of her life. What else would you expect from a dowager who prefers not to know about “weekends?”

 2. Hannah Plays Dirty on Dexter

After spending 7 years rooting for a serial killer, the audience has grown a bit tired of the “dark passenger” excuse. Enter Hannah McKay — Dexter’s most recent female counterpart with no fictitious backseat driver to slow down her killing sprees. When Deb becomes all Lieutenant-y (and a bit jealous – ew) trying to put Hannah behind bars for good, Ms. McKay decides to rattle her cage while also completely indicating herself by using her signature flower-power poison to put Deb in the hospital. Bitch, he’s mine! Something close to love (with a dash of Stockholm syndrome) motivates Hannah to go the dark route to protect herself and her budding relationship, but why is Dexter so surprised? It’s like he’s never seen a villain before.

3. Joan Harris Sleeps with Herb on Mad Men

Joan has always been the walking, talking human sex popsicle that leaves the boys of Sterling Cooper Draper Price dragging their tongues on the floor. And unlike plenty of ladies in the beautiful people bubble, Joan uses her power for good. She nudges with gentle flirtation and persuades with doe-eyed glances – all for the greater good of the company she loves. It’s all fun and games, until a whale of a man named Herb drives onto the scene and offers SCDP a contract with Jaguar in exchange for a night with our ginger heroine.

It’s hard to throw the word “best” around when you’re talking about a situation that skates over the disease-infested waters of prostitution. But with this power-play, Joan proves just how far a woman had to go to get 5% of a company in the late 1960s. Her act explored the depths of desperation that surround passion, the nuances of relationships built on mutual respect, the heartbreak of a decision you can’t undo — and a redemption that will never come. Mad Men at its best.

4. Klaus annihilates the entire Hybrid population on The Vampire Diaries

What does any king do in the face of a coup d’etat? He slaughters every person involved and their mothers. Literally. When Klaus learns that Tyler and his merry band of hybrid vampire/werewolves are going to attempt to take him out, he beats them to the punch and rips them limb from limb while “Oh Holy Night” plays in the background. Then, to add insult to injury, he drowns Tyler’s mother in the town fountain… just because he can. Tyler’s left with a family of mismatched body parts and Klaus barely breaks a sweat. How’s that for a power play? Klaus may be a sensitive, lonely, sociopathic painter, but you best believe that when confronted with a revolution, he won’t hesitate to completely destroy anything that stands in his path.

5. The Great Train Robbery of Breaking Bad

“Just because you shot Jesse James doesn’t make you Jesse James,” everyone’s favorite voice of reason Mike Ehrmantraut once told Walter White. Yet this year we found Walter wearing the (cowboy) hat of an old-time, gun-slingin’ outlaw and going so far as to commit a good, old-fashioned train robbery. This is just one of many schemes that have punctuated Walter White’s evolution to becoming a sociopathic, merciless king of meth. Every time Walter completes a Hail Mary, his ego inflates a bit more, until it dwarfs any reasonable motives and poisons all logic, creating the monster in a human shell known as Heisenberg. With each success, the stakes are raised, and it’s a credit to Vince Gilligan’s brilliance that this nuanced evolution feels believable when it’s only taken 5 seasons for Walter to go from wetting his tighty-whities in an RV to hijacking a moving train in the middle of the desert. The scene itself is wildly suspenseful, brilliantly shot and edited and capped off by a shocking turn (LANDRY, YOU BASTARD), that shows that, for all his rootin’-tootin’ scheming, Walter is just a man who won’t yet admit how heavy his head is with the crown.

Click here to vote for your favorite!