TVSquad

1. I touched on this in a recent Brought To You By... post, but I'm rooting for the cable guy in those Verizon FiOS commercials. I'm not taking sides when it comes to one technology over another, I just think the Verizon guy is a jerk. For example, the ad where the two guys bump into each other on the elevator. The cable guy just wants to know what's going on with his neighbor and industry buddy and all the Verizon guy can talk about is the newest great offer from Verizon. The cable guy is just trying to connect on a friendship level, and the FiOS guy just brags about his company more. If I was the cable guy, I wouldn't have pressed all of the elevator buttons, I would have kicked the Mr. FiOS in the groin, taken his J.D. Power and Associates award and sold it on ebay.

2. I'm not sure the delay in the digital TV switch is going to make a difference to the people who haven't switched already. Not unless they handle it differently and don't just extend the deadline. I worry about people like a certain relative of mine, who is still using a microwave from 1984. It only defrosts now.

3. Here's an idea for NBC: give Ricky Gervais his own weekly show. Just him in a chair, talking, either from a script or just ad-libbing stuff he wants to talk about: politics, comedy in America, shopping, religion, celebrity, whatever. No guests, no plot, just Gervais and a chair, maybe a drink. He could even do the commercials for the products live during the show, or on tape if he doesn't want to do it live. Put the show on Thursday nights before The Office. I'd watch that. It would be different than anything else on network TV right now and get a lot of buzz.

4. Sometimes I wonder if there's no hope for Heroes. Not that it isn't a good show; I still like it and I'll continue to watch it. But when you consider how many people have abandoned it and just the fact that it doesn't have that new car smell that the first season had, it could be the best show on TV and people would probably think bad of it and not go back to it. You can't capture the feel of that first season again. Too much has changed. Even if they go back to the kind of storytelling that they had in that first season, that's over.

5. James Whitmore died last week. An amazing actor, and you don't usually see someone who acted so long he was in a 1949 movie (The Undercover Man) and a 2007 episode of CSI. His son directs episodes of NCIS and The Unit.

6. Not only do I hate watching people lick things rapidly on television, I think the pilot of this blimp died and they don't even acknowledge it:





7. The other night, I swear to God, I almost bought one of these. It makes cooizzas!




8. Why do the employees of Dunder-Mifflin continue to work there? Some of them need to work there, of course: Michael is in charge, Dwight is delusional, and Meredith probably couldn't clean herself up to go to a job interview at another company. But people like Jim, Pam, Oscar, and Toby? They can't be making enough money there to warrant staying. Of course they stay so we as TV fans can watch them every week, but I don't know if that would happen in real life, not when you're a smart, capable person and see the havoc in the office every single day: crazy stunts by the boss, fights, fire, horrifying insults and uncomfortable meetings.

Interviewer: So, Jim, why did you leave your last position at Dunder-Mifflin?
Jim: Everyone there was insane and I feared for my life.

9. This is my new favorite commercial. Who knew that LifeAlert had such futuristic, Dick Tracy technology? They are now protecting you 24/7. I want one of those watches (in black please), and I love how the LifeAlert guy announces to the intruders that they're being watched. They should take this technology one step further and have bars that come down on the windows, trap doors open, or poisonous gas that can fill just the room the intruders are in. The woman can protect herself by wrapping her body in a Snuggie.