TVSquad

Welcome to TV Squad Lists (formerly 'The Five'), a feature where each blogger has a chance to list his or her own rundown of things in television that stand out from the rest, both good and bad.

TV usually gets the writing profession wrong. I've never understood why, since shows and characters are written by writers themselves. Maybe they think they have to dumb it down for the general audience. That's why you have writers like Jessica Fletcher, who just sits down at the typewriter and the words come out fine and she mails it off to her publisher. This happens all the time on television. And have you ever noticed that when you hear the writing that a writer character has done on a show it's almost always terrible? Why is that?

After the jump are six writer characters on TV that were done correctly.

Happy Valentine's Day! I hate February 14th.

But it's a fine day for all you sickening happy lovey-dovey couples to hold hands and skip around your garden and have dirty dirty sex. Below are 5 great TV couples who are probably celebrating the day this way. Well, at least four of them.

1. Rob and Laura Petrie (The Dick Van Dyke Show): Has there ever been a married couple on television that had the chemistry that Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore had? Hell, they both even have three names! You could tell they loved each other and cared for each other, and you could imagine they were intimate, even if they did have those damn separate beds.

So I was watching an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show this weekend. What does this have to do with Buffy The Vampire Slayer/Firefly mastermind Joss Whedon? Read on.

The episode I was watching was "Scratch My Car and Die," the one where Rob buys a new sports car and Laura accidentally scratches it while shopping. Watching the credits (I often watch the credits to see who was in an episode and then I run to the comptuer to check the IMdB to see what else they've done, if they're still alive, etc) I noticed that it was written by someone named John Whedon. Now, Whedon isn't the most common name, and he did work in television, so I checked and...yup, it's Joss Whedon's grandfather! He wrote another episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show and also wrote episodes of Leave It To Beaver, The Donna Reed Show, The Wonderful World of Disney, and several episodes of The Andy Griffith Show (though it's hard to figure out how many exactly with the IMdB's odd credits system).

Whedon died in 1991.

This is a list of the TV shows I could never live without. If I was able to own and watch only five TV shows on DVD (or tape), these are the five shows. My desert islands discs, as they call them.

The interesting thing to me about this list is that these five shows are NOT my five favorite TV shows of all-time. They're in the top 10, sure, but I found making that list that I know only looked at the ones I liked, the quality, but since these were the only five shows I could have (and I'm trapped on that damn island - hope there's electricity), then I'd want a mix of shows to entertain me. A balance of comedy and drama.

What shows would you pick? Remember, you can never watch any other shows ever again.

1. The Dick Van Dyke Show: OK, so the first show on my list just so happens to also be my favorite TV show of all-time. This show is timeless, it's extremely well done, and Rob Petrie is the reason I became a writer, so it has to be number one.

One day, while sitting around the palatial TV Squad offices, a notion came to mind. What would happen if you took all of today's technology and applied it to classic television shows of yesteryear? Would The Fugitive's Richard Kimble be acquitted of his crime after the DNA evidence proved that he didn't kill his wife? Or, would The Mary Tyler Moore Show's Ted Baxter be a better anchor if he had access to all of the day's news via the Internet?

Taking that notion one step further, here are five shows that would have been vastly different if modern technology were applied to them.

The Dick Van Dyke Show: No more schlepping into the city for Rob Petrie; not when he could write his scripts from his home desktop computer. And, if he got tired sitting at his desk, he could grab his WiFi laptop and continue to write from the local Starbucks. He would still need Buddy and Sally, of course, but he could pass ideas to them via Instant Messenger. When they were all done with that week's script they could have a video conference with Alan where changes could be made via NetMeeting.

1. The Dick Van Dyke Show: This timeless classic not only revolved around the domestic lives of Rob and Laura Petrie in New Rochelle, but also around the writing staff of The Alan Brady Show, a hit variety show out of New York City. I think this show still holds up, even compared to classic modern comedies.

2. Sports Night: Before The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin created this really well written and snappy look behind the scenes of a Sportscenter-like TV show. Basically, it was The West Wing at a TV station, which is one of the reasons I'm so looking forward to Studio 60 this fall.