TVSquad

Thanksgiving is coming and for many of us it's time to eat, drink and watch football. It's also a time to reflect on the things you're grateful for and since TV Squad is all about television, here's what I'm grateful for this holiday season, with regard to the tube.

Mad Men season finale
There was really nothing as satisfying in the entire year for me. Matt Weiner promised a game-changing episode and he delivered it with a whopper of a wrap up. Actually, nothing was really wrapped; it was more like the cards have been dealt and we're still waiting to see how the hands are played.

The folks at our sister site Cinematical are working hard to give you news and reviews of the best -- and worst -- the silver screen has to offer. Here are some of their musings on the latest blockbusters, indies, and everything in between:

• By now, there's a good chance you've seen Watchmen. Alan Moore, who wrote the graphic novel, never wanted the movie to be made, because in his eyes, it is "unfilmable." Cinematical discusses when a faithful adaptation turns into a bad adaptation.
• Hey, have you ever wanted to be on a movie poster? Apparently, all it takes now is to comment on a trailer you watch on You Tube. Seriously.
• Oh, man. I have become completely obsessed with Twitter lately. Apparently Cinematical has, too, and they've posted the twitter handles of most of their writers, so check it out if you're into 140 character musings. (You can find a good chunk of TV Squad writers on there too. I'm kona99).
• Hey, remember when you were going to jump off that bridge, and a kind stranger came along and said, "hey, buddy. I know things are bad, but pretty soon there's going to be a Marmaduke movie," and you didn't want to believe him because you thought he was just saying what you wanted to hear to keep you from killing yourself, but you allowed yourself that glimmer of hope anyway? And you lived? Well that dude was totally right. There is a Marmaduke movie being made.
• Now that Mickey Rourke has had his comeback, Cinematical discusses who should be next. They say Eric Roberts, but I say, how is that possible when he never went away, baby?
  

OK, let me start this off by saying that Weezer is one of my favorite bands and that I haven't stopped listening to their new self-titled "red album" since it came out on Tuesday. It's their best stuff in a long time. So what I'm about to say is more of an observation than an accusation.

Alright, so am I nuts, or is there a striking resemblance (or at least some obvious similarities) between the video for Weezer's new single "Pork and Beans" and the South Park episode "Canada on Strike?"

Japanese television makes American television look sleepy. Especially their game shows. I don't even know the official name for this game show, but it's essentially a human version of Tetris. Big walls of styrofoam come flying at contestants who have to contort their bodies to fit through the shape in the wall, or be pushed into a pool of yellow water. It's sort-of like Tetris. I've attached a four-minute clip to this post. For some of those challenges, I have no idea how a human body would get through the space (I think that's the point).

I want on this game show more than I want on The Price is Right.

Video is after the jump:

I will never forget being in high school and hearing the news that a new network would soon be premiering. It was only going to be on a couple nights a week, but instead of airing reruns and crappy local shows, it would air all new programs; it was unprecedented.

That network was called FOX, and while many of the programs were of no interest to me, I was really impressed at how they followed through with their promises. Specifically, cutting edge programming and big budgets. I watched Al & Peg Bundy say things that my parents didn't want me to hear. I watched George C. Scott in the only sitcom he ever starred in. Most importantly, I was witness to the phenomenon that became The Simpsons.

At her doctor's urging, MySpacer 'J' has ended her "Starvation for Sanjaya" hunger strike after 16 days. In her latest YouTube video, J urges others to give up their hunger strikes too, as it can end "badly."

However, Sanjaya-hating J is not giving up on her fight, and informs us that she will be organizing a voting strategy for the upcoming weeks. Meanwhile, fellow protester, "Matt," continues his hunger strike, which he is also documenting (naturally) on YouTube.

I think J and Matt are really STARVING FOR ATTENTION, and that 's what these pathetic "YouTube protests" are really about. Come on, people, we're at war in Iraq, and you've got your panties in a bunch over a TV show! Get a grip. And a life. And find something useful to do with all of that misdirected energy.

[via tvtattle.com]

David Caruso is so over the top as Horatio Caine and I'm not the only one who thinks so. Someone has edited Horatio one liners in a seven-minute long video clip and posted it on YouTube. It's a compilation of all the super-cool lines he has before the opening credits of CSI: Miami. And each one ends with the opening note of the theme song. By the way, you don't need to watch the whole seven minutes to understand that Horatio Caine is the master of the ellipsis (...). And, he uses his sunglasses as a prop way too much.

Video is after the jump:

If you've got eight spare minutes and don't mind seeing cartoon nudity and hearing animated flatulence at work, then take a look at this video: someone has compiled what he or she thinks is Family Guy's ten funniest moments and clipped them together. It's kind of odd how some of the selections are maybe 15 seconds long, while others -- especially a clip featuring Quagmire -- seem to go on forever. But I think that's the nature of Family Guy: just when you think a gag should end, Seth MacFarlane purposely extends it to the point where it becomes funny again.

Anyway, I don't agree with all of this person's choices, but it's not a bad way to spend eight minutes. The video is after the jump.

Boy o' boy, you can't click into TV Squad anymore without having Stephen Colbert's mug staring you right in the face. First, Colbert fans attempted to add fake information to Wikipedia, then someone decided to create an electronic version of Stephen's "On Notice" list and finally, to complete the Colbert trifecta, Stephen asked his viewing public to vote online to name a Hungarian bridge after him.

We thought that would be the end of that. But, no. He decided to top himself. Taking an example from the popular Star Wars Kid video on YouTube, Stephen grabbed a lightsaber, went in front of a greenscreen and put on moves so smooth and dangerous that they would make Obi-Wan cower in the corner. Why did he do this? Well, to let fans create their own video mixes.

The thing about this video made from clips of the original Star Trek crew singing and dancing to Monty Python and the Holy Grail's "Knights of the Round Table," is how many situations from the 60's scifi show fit perfectly into the absurd set-up.


We've got the space hippies, awesome George Takei's shirtless D'Artagnan moves, and of course, Kirk dolled-up in everything from Roman laurel leaves to faux Native American buckskin. Also, seems to have been much more finger-snapping and Irish-jigging in the original series than I recalled. Hilarious.

Video below the jump! [via The Island of Doubt]

In today's New York Times, Bill Carter recounts the journey the pilot for Nobody's Watching took from network reject to YouTube hit. In the article, Carter interviews co-creator Bill Lawrence (who is the genius mastermind behind my favorite show, Scrubs) who describes how the WB came very close to picking up the pilot after NBC rejected it, but turned it down after the dreaded test-screening panel thought it's "sitcom about two guys who write a sitcom and live on sitcom sets" might be too confusing.

Since the video of the pilot was posted on the video site, it's been viewed over 300,000 times and has gotten very good feedback from viewers. Because of this, it's getting another look by various networks, including Comedy Central and ABC. But since NBC owns the show, it still has the first shot at it. And the show with which NBC is thinking of pairing Lawerence's baby? You guessed it -- Scrubs.

Here's what I remember about most of the toys my parents bought for me and Rich in the 1970's: most of them looked great in the commercials but in reality were either crappily made or poorly conceived. We'd either break them (for instance, I rendered a See 'n' Say -- with the old-fashioned pull string -- useless soon after receiving it) or quickly get bored of them. These commercials, which all seem to be from around 1972, reinforced that notion to me. There's a glow-in-the-dark owl game which looks cool but has no point to it, an SSP demolition derby set whose parts would be lost five seconds after it left the box, and a Parker Brothers game where you bid on works of art! It's amazing what toymakers thought kids would be interested in buying in those days. Makes me wonder if, with all the money our parents spent on those cruddy toys, we could have gone to Ivy League colleges if we just stuck to Tinkertoys.

(Though the first product in the reel, Bing Bang Boing, looked pretty cool. Though in the Keller household, the ball bearings would have disappeared within a week.)

The embedded YouTube video is after the jump.

[via BoingBoing and Pop Candy]

While YouTube isn't getting any love from networks like NBC and CBS, cable channel E! recognizes a good thing when it sees it. E! will spin-off a web-only segment of its original series The Soup, exclusively for YouTube. It's called Cybersmack and it's described in The Hollywood Reporter as "a compilation of user-generated video clips that satirize pop culture." I suppose that includes all those mock Narnia raps and all the videos making fun of the "My Humps" music video by the Black Eyed Peas. Cybersmack launches Friday. Best clip wins $25,000. The deal also gives YouTube permission to provide clips from other E! programs.

There has been a lot of uproar over the 'Come out of the Closet' episode of South Park from both Isaac Hayes (allegedly) and from Tom Cruise lately. Maybe you're getting sick of hearing about it. Or, maybe you're wishing you'd seen it when it aired a few months ago. I think it's pretty safe to assume the episode-in-question is never going to see the light of day again on Comedy Central, but the cool cats over at YouTube have been kind enough to post the ENTIRE EPISODE on their website.

They also have clips from a hilarious bit on Jimmy Kimmel where Isaac Hayes' new job is to do all the voiceover for Tom Cruise.

[Via The Superficial]

Lawyers. They're the real "Debbie Downers" of this world. The fellas over at YouTube have been told by NBC that they can no longer play the now-infamous Lazy Sunday rap from SNL. That rap was huge for SNL, which has been at rock bottom for several years now. After it aired on Dec. 17, Lazy Sunday spread rapidly on the web, including at YouTube, which reportedly had 1.2 million downloads of the video within ten days. The popularity of the rap led to an article in the New York Times about the song and the "viral" power the internet has when people think something is cool. NBC finally got a clue and put the video on its website (for Windows users only) and in iTunes, where it now costs $1.99 to download.

Boing Boing has a really good argument about why NBC should be "sending flowers and chocolates to YouTube, not love notes from lawyers."