TVSquad

Apparently it's just me, but I actually like Paul F. Tompkins as the host of Best Week Ever. And probably because I like him on there, VH1 is yanking BWE for SIX MONTHS (?!) and when it comes back, Tompkins and his crew aren't expected to be there. Which makes sense. That's a hell of a long time for a supposedly topical show to disappear. It's also sad because Best Week Ever is one of the few shows on VH1 worth watching.

Before Tompkins took over last fall, the show was more of a typical VH1 clip show with the narrator running the clips interspersed with commentary from various comedians, including Tompkins. In reading online reactions about the format change, I realized that I actually missed some of the variety we had in commentators on the show. I'm certainly not seeing some of those comedians anywhere else (I am intentionally not seeing Frangelina on I'm a Celebrity...).

A lot of us over here at the Squad are fans of VH1's Best Week Ever. We're either fans of the comedians who are asked to be pop-culture wise-asses, or we just like the format in general. Heck, we even like the website, mainly because it has the same attitude as the show.

However, the network has decided that the multiple talking-head format needs a change, so they've named Paul F. Tompkins as the show's sole host. Tompkins (aka "That comedian in the suits"), of course, was one of the best of those talking heads, and his surreal takes on pop culture's funnier bits were always among each episode's highlights. So it's not like the producers are going "outside the family" in order to find a host.

When you make a living online and a big part of your job is to spend the entire day surfing around a hundred web sites, you begin to think that you've seen everything there is to see on the web. At least the good stuff. But sometimes you come across a site that makes you smile and say to yourself, "this is great!"

That's what I thought when I found the Sound of Young America podcast.

It's pilot season in Los Angeles, which means it's time for underemployed writers to slip on their parkas and head into sub-Artic studios to attend the tapings of television shows that may never see the light of day.

The novelty of attending a pilot taping wears off pretty quickly. If you've ever attended the taping of any television show, you know that there is a copious amount of waiting involved. Sitting and waiting and freezing. Picking out which audience members were bussed in versus which ones actually know what show they're attending can only occupy you for so long.

Sometimes a celebrity will (supposedly) leave his or her comments on a web site, but you're never quite sure if it's really them or just someone impersonating them. But comedian David Cross is online a lot and when he leaves a comment you know it's him. Case in point, this comment left after a SFist review of a recent gig in San Francisco.

You can read the review, but to summarize: the reviewer loved Cross' stuff on Mr. Show and Arrested Development, but she couldn't take his jokes about Mormons (and on Martin Luther King Day too!). Cross doesn't just leave a snide comment or a quick, expletive-filled putdown, he actually goes on at length about the review, how the show was really perceived by the audience (and he has it on tape to prove it), and tries to explain the comedy he was trying to do at the show. Now, it's never good to "explain" your comedy, but what else is someone supposed to do when they are basically called a bigot?

[via Gawker]