TVSquad

(S01E01) You might think that you're watching a variation on Law & Order when the first few minutes of The Good Wife commences. It's not just that Chris Noth is in the scene, looking every bit like Mike Logan. It's more that the scene is ripped from the headlines. Disgraced politician -- Elliot Spitzer, David Vitter, Jim McGreevey -- caught in a sex scandal. His innocent, good wife, standing beside him.

As Alicia Florrick, the wife of a Chicago prosecutor who was caught sucking the toes of prostitutes and forced to resign, Julianna Margulies masters the shell-shocked, distant gaze. Her eyes, in fact, fixate on a stray thread on his suit. But the fog lifts quickly and away from the podium, reality comes in the form of a smack in the face. She delivers the smack, and from that moment, you're on her side. Maybe it was a cheap trick, but it worked.

Pop culture lists that have 100 or more entries, whether it's a list for television, film, music, books, advertising, whatever - are too long. When you list 100 of anything, you're not really getting down to the "best" (or "worst," if that's the theme of the list), you're just giving a list of 100.

Supertremendous.com has their list of the 100 most iconic TV show intros. You can read the first 90, but I wanted to concentrate on the top ten. That list includes The Brady Bunch, The Simpsons, M*A*S*H, Knight Rider (???), and The Twilight Zone, along with the number one pick after the jump. Can you guess it before you click?

Is television taking up too much of your time? Do you find yourself spending night after night on the couch, spending hours of quality time clutching your remote in the hopes it will lead you down the primrose path of perfect entertainment? Have you wasted entire days of your life decreasing the firmness of the coils in your couch with your ever increasing ass planted firmly in front of the idiot box?

If so, maybe a more physical activity would perk up your droll and dull life. Why not put down that remote, throw that TV Guide in the trash compactor and pick up that video game controller for a few hours of TV-related interactive entertainment? Because exercise is for people with no creative thought for self-entertainment.

Here is just a sample of some TV show game spinoffs headed to an XBox, Playstation or coffee table near you.

Since its premiere in 1959, The Twilight Zone has gone through several revivals and one big-screen movie in 1983 that involved such directors as Steven Spielberg and John Landis. Now, Leonard DiCaprio's production company, Applan Way, wants to make another big-screen revival of the franchise.

I'm not sure what DiCaprio could do with the franchise that hasn't been done before. It's basically science fiction, fantasy and horror stories with a twist ending (M. Night Shyamalan owes his entire career to The Twilight Zone). Rumor has it that the new movie will be a set of interwoven stories based on classics from the original run of the show that were written by Rod Serling himself, albeit with more pretty computer-generated special effects. For some reason, I find that unoriginal and possibly downright scary.

Still, The Twilight Zone was groundbreaking for its time and a very flexible concept. If Star Trek could be successfully reinvented for the movies, why not this franchise?

The image to the right was taken from an episode of The Twilight Zone, a show that sits in the top 10 of television's all time greatest mindf*#ks.

It took audiences on an out of control thrill ride that zigged and zagged in directions that no one saw coming. The stories would lead viewers one way and just when they thought they had the ending figured out, it took them down an emotional corkscrew that could melt their brains. It was and still is digital acid, minus the waking up in a dumpster with a head of hair that smells like raw chicken.

But picture if you will, an even bigger twist lying inside this twisted wasteland of shock and discovery. A twist that smashes the fourth wall of television with the brute force of a charging rhino strapped to the front of a nuclear warhead and reveals the true identity of the man who pulls all the strings....in The Twilight Zone.

Being that we eat, breathe, drink, sleep, pee, poop and vomit television here at TV Squad, we like to gauge the pulse of the community once in awhile. It gives us a chance to see what others are thinking and doing as well as see what the new and continuing trends are. Plus, it fills up some white space on the site. So, the question I am tabling is this: What are you going to be watching this New Year's Eve and Day?

It's a strange time of year for television as viewing selections are all over the map. If you are a lover of college football this is your Christmas as the tube is filled with the antiquated Bowl games that constitute "playoffs." For science fiction fans there's the annual Twilight Zone marathon on Sci Fi Channel. Those who can barely move from the couch for fear of talking on the porcelain phone once again, there's plenty of inane marathons to provide ambiance while you try to sleep it off.

I'm sorry, but while I think that everyone is entitled to their opinion about "best this" and "best that" (not to be confused with "favorite this" and "favorite that"), sometimes such a list has some entries that just make you scratch your head so much that you have to throw the whole list away and start over. Case in point, this list of the 10 Best TV Pilots from the new issue of TV Guide.

While I'm not going to sit here and argue about shows on the list like Lost, The Sopranos, and Alias, I am going to take issue with the inclusion of Desperate Housewives, The Shield, and Football Wives. Honestly, are these true representatives of the best first episodes of TV shows? Forget about what the shows became (great shows can often have so-so early episodes), just the first episodes themselves. Was there truly anything special about Desperate Housewives that would place it ahead of...oh, I don't know, 400 other shows in the history of television?

Recently, when I interviewed Matt Weiner, the creator of AMC's Mad Men, we talked about the movies, books and television shows that influenced the inception of the show. The 1960 Oscar-winning best picture The Apartment was one, so were the sitcoms Dobie Gillis and The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Of all the television shows he mentioned, though, there was one that was the most influential. "You can't have the '60s without The Twilight Zone. It is a mind opening experience for a generation," said Matt. "It was not just science fiction, it dealt with social issues. It's filled with the texture of real life. Just the idea of having a show every week where you don't know who is going to be in it and what it's going to be about, to have this acceptance of the fact that we don't know everything about the world. That in itself was something."

Going through The Twilight Zone episode guide, there are quite a few shows in which you can see where Mad Men could find inspiration. Here's four that reminded me of Don and Betty and Pete and Sterling Cooper:

When Matt Weiner was a successful sitcom writer -- CBS's Becker -- he had this idea for another kind of show. He couldn't figure out how to pitch it, so he wrote a sample script. The Sopranos' creator David Chase read it and hired him. After copping a couple of Emmys for his work on that HBO drama, Weiner finally got his spec script sold. Now, Mad Men has earned 16 Emmy nominations and Matt Weiner is working on the second season of the show.

Recently, for TV Week, I interviewed Matt about the Emmy nominations. Here are some other thoughts he shared with me about Mad Men:

TVS: What's the show all about to you?

Matt Weiner: A lot of the episodes are about "who am I." A lot of the shows are about what's embarrassing. A lot of it's about denial, about how we juggle our work and our private lives. A lot of the issues that came up in the early 1960s are really hitting us right now.

Here's a story that sounds like something out of The Twilight Zone. The episode could be titled "No Man Is an Island?" Or maybe "Perchance to Dream," although that title was already taken.

It's the story of Hedviga Golik, a woman who brewed herself a cup of tea, then settled down to watch some relaxing TV in her hometown of Zagreb, Croatia. Apparently, the show was either really boring or the tea was ultra-relaxing, because Golik died that same night.

Okay, all this sounds plausible, but not this next part: According to an Associated Press report, forensics experts believe Golik likely died in 1973. Her mummified body was just found, 35 years later.

Recently, TV Squad reported that NBC has added all kinds of classic TV shows to their online outlets. Now comes the announcement that CBS is also bringing a variety of well-loved TV dramas to the web. CBS Interactive is raiding the CBS Library, which is "one of the largest television programming libraries in the entertainment business," to present TV series online across the CBS Audience Network.

Like the NBC fodder, the CBS offering is gangbusters: full-length episodes of classic Star Trek, Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone, MacGyver, Hawaii Five-O and Melrose Place. CBS plans to add more programs and clips in the coming months, including sports and other kinds of entertainment.

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Lois Nettleton: She was a veteran TV, film, and stage actress who appeared in a number of TV shows, including The Twilight Zone, Seinfeld (she played the mother of the woman George was dating when he ate out of her garbage), Crossing Jordan, Babylon 5, Coach, Murder, She Wrote, The Flash, Full House, In The Heat of the Night, The Facts of Life, The Golden Girls, Love Boat, Medical Center, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and dozens of others. She was also in the films Come Fly with Me, A Face in the Crowd, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and The Bamboo Saucer, and the plays A Streetcar Named Desire and The Biggest Thief in Town. She died of lung cancer at age 80.

I got a great letter this week...

"I remember watching a documentary, I believe it was about Rod Serling, & on it was mentioned a Western series the producer had developed, starring Lloyd Bridges & Brock Peters. Any idea what this show was called? Or, was it maybe Gene Roddenberry's show? Thanks for the help! Steve Atwell"

Everyone's got their own idea of what's truly frightening. I'm not talking about people or things who just are scary because they're dangerous or despicable. I mean things that truly keep you awake at night, afraid to turn out the lights. Afraid to be home alone. Afraid to fly on a plane. There are a few characters on television over the years who've stuck out more than others as being truly frightening to a handful of us TV Squadders, and we've put together a list (surprise!) of characters who have haunted us for years. If we're digging up old unforgotten nightmares of your own, well, sorry about that.

The list is numbered, but it doesn't necessarily mean these are ordered. Like I said -- we all have a different definition of what truly frightens us. Make sure you list your own in the comments. Click on a number below to get started.

#10 #9 #8 #7 #6 #5 #4 #3 #2 #1

Character: Widow Fortune
Show: The Dark Secret of Harvest Home
Episode: Mini-series

I recently watched R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour: Don't Think About it with my children and I had an epiphany -- TV was a lot creepier when I was a kid. We didn't watch water-downed kiddie horror. We watched what the adults watched when they obviously didn't know we were watching.

My parents didn't allow me to see scary movies, such as The Amityville Horror or The Exorcist. Yet, somehow they didn't stop me from viewing all sorts of frightening TV, including the The Twilight Zone , Chiller Theater, Salem's Lot, Frankenstein: The True Story, The Dark Night of the Scarecrow, and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.

However, it was The Dark Secret of Harvest Home that left the greatest impression on me -- thanks in a large part to Bette Davis in the role of the creepiest senior citizen ever. Davis played the sinister Widow Fortune so brilliantly that almost 30 years later, I still remember it vividly.