TVSquad

Yeah, everyone is going to be voting in the David Cook vs. David Archuleta American Idol final, but there's another contest going on and your vote is needed.

As we've been talking about recently, Redeye in Chicago is having their annual Best Character on Television poll, and it's down to the final four. After weeks of voting, the matchups are Sir Guy of Gisborne (Robin Hood) vs. Michael Scott (The Office) and Benjamin Linus (Lost) vs. Liz Lemon (30 Rock). Right now, Sir Guy is destroying Michael Scott (looks like Scott is going to fail at this too). In fact, I'm surprised that Sir Guy has such a rabid following.

As for Linus vs. Lemon, that's a lot closer, but it looks like Linus is going to win, which will set up a big finale where Linus goes up against Sir Guy. I have to vote for Linus, but I think it's going to be a battle. Voting for this round ends Tuesday at 2pm.

If I was to pick the Top 5 things I hate about television, the coverage of the NCAA Tournament this month would be near the top of the list. It interrupts regular shows, and I truly don't understand why people get so ga-ga over COLLEGE basketball, unless you went there or something.

But I do like the brackets set up, and we can use it for other things in life, including TV! Jacksonville.com has a tournment of their own going on. They're trying to pick the best sitcom character of all-time and they need your help. Go here and vote for your favorites in Week 1 (the second round is this Wednesday). Make sure you read the directions carefully.

Speaking of brackets, I picked up the new book The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything. It's a clever idea: get an expert in a particular field to set up a tournament about everything in life (puncuation, sports rivalries, dogs, political issues, etc) and keep on narrowing them down til you get the champ. There's a lot of TV-related ones in the book, including game show catchphrases (by Ken Jennings), animation characters (by New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast), black and white TV shows, talk show hosts, and several more). Lists like these are argument starters for sure, and the entire outcome depends on how you start the brackets, which is rather random (unless you do something like talk show hosts, which you can at least start by nighttime, daytime, or region). Why are certain people/items placed together and not in another bracket? So it's probably not precise, but it's a ton of fun.

[Thanks to Toby for the tip.]