TVSquad

A few weeks ago, while doing some research on stand-up comedians who became sitcom stars, I ended up Googling a whole bunch of names to get some additional pre-television history on them. One of these was Home Improvement's Tim Allen. While looking up Tim's information I came upon a listing for his personal website. It was a weird listing though -- something like Tim Allen -- T'Avatar. Well, since I know Tim's not a Romulan, I thought this was just an abbreviation of something. Needless to say I clicked in.

Turns out, T'Avatar was short for Tim Allen's Avatar, which appears in an opening video to his website. Folks, this Avatar freaks the living piss out of me.

(S01E13) "Racist." - Tony

So, Andi decided to bite the bullet and tell Sam how she feels. Now I know this could easily be seen as a disastrous turn of events for Reaper but it could very well be awesome. The way I see it, Cady & Sam were destined to break up anyway and now Sam has one more very big reason to show Cady "the gate." The best part will be Cady making Sam's life a literal hell on earth after he dumps her. The whole situation could lead to a very cool cliffhanger for next season. I know what you're thinking but I'm being optimistic.

I'm curious about Sam's discovery that Steve and Tony are demons. I mean, if anyone else had walked in and saw them sanding their horns they would have completely freaked out but Sam, having had experience with that sort of thing, was able to handle it and react accordingly. Does Sam's relationship with the devil make him more susceptible to supernatural events? I think so.

• TV Land is showing Christmas episodes of various shows all night.
• At 8, ABC has Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
• NBC has It's A Wonderful Life at 8.
• CNN has What Would Jesus Do? Holiday Edition at 8.
• AMC has 1984's A Christmas Carol at 8.
• Also at 8: Great American Country has a Holiday Wrapping Party.
• At 8:30, Nickelodeon has a Christmas episode of Full House, then two Christmas episodes of Home Improvement.
• At 9, Lifetime has the movie Deck the Halls.
• Food Network has the All-Star Holiday Party special at 9, followed by All-Star Holiday Dishes.
• Comedy Central has Bad Santa at 9.
• At 11, Lifetime has two holiday episodes of Will & Grace, then two holiday episodes of Frasier.
• At 11:35, CBS and NBC have Christmas Eve Mass.
• At midnight, TCM has The Bells of St. Mary.
• At 12:15, AMC has the 1947 movie Christmas Eve.

Check your local TV listings for more.

I'm one of those suckers who really loves a good holiday episode of a TV show. Whether it's Friends or The Simpsons or The West Wing, I get all choked up when a couple gets together or a family learns the true meaning of Christmas and a carol is played at the end. I still remember the Christmas episodes on Guiding Light in the 80s, with Nick visiting and helping out Philip and Beth and Rick and other Springfield citizens. (Wow, not only do I love Christmas on TV, I love Christmas on soap operas...yikes).

AOL has a 10 question quiz about Christmas TV. How much do you know about The Wonder Years, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and Home Improvement? This is the best I've ever scored on one of these AOL quizzes. I got 9 out of 10. Damn you, Grey's Anatomy!

Recently, The Onion had a really funny article called "Nation Suddenly Feels Old After Seeing Nick-At-Nite Lineup" (funniest line: "Why are they playing shows from 1988? That's only...fuck, that's 19 years ago? Oh God, I've wasted my life."). But it seems like even The Onion can't keep up with the rapid changes in the nostalgia network's lineup. Nick at Nite has not only rocketed past the eighties and started concentrating on sitcoms from the nineties (Home Improvement, Fresh Prince), but they've decided to start airing shows from the 2000s as well.

How do I know this? I turned on Nick at Nite last night and saw an episode of... George Lopez.

TV Land, the network that caters to the baby boomers and everyone else who likes a dose of nostalgia in their TV viewing, is making some big changes. They're rebranding their network from being a retro TV destination to being a network that has a whole lot more. And apparently that strategy involves reality shows.

The channel has picked up reruns of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. They'll start airing on August 7, and its regular slot will be Tuesdays at 11pm.

I'm baffled by this. Why destroy the network theme that has made you as successful as you are? Or do they consider Extreme Makeover a "future classic?" How many times can you watch the rerun of a home makeover show? And at 11pm??

It's great that they're also going to start running some original programming, but airing reality reruns is lame at best.

Here are the new TV DVDs, in stores tomorrow.

• American Dad - Vol. 2
• Banacek - Season 1
• Coach - Season 2
• Curious George - Rocket Ride and Other Adventures
• ER - Season 7
• Frasier - Season 9
• Home Improvement - Season 6
• M*A*S*H - Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen
• Martin - Season 2
• Masters of Horror - Right To Die
• Monarch of the Glen - Series 6
• Playboy After Dark - Collection 2
• A Pup Named Scooby-Doo - Vol. 6
• The Rockford Files - Season 4
• Tom and Jerry - Tex Avery's Droopy: The Complete Theatrical Collection
• Tom and Jerry Tales - Vol. 2
• The War At Home - Season 1
• Wings - Season 4

The wacky neighbor is a sitcom staple. Neighbors like Kramer from Seinfeld, Lenny & Squiggy from Laverne & Shirley, and Carl Brutanunanadilewski from Aqua Teen Hunger Force make for great entertainment. They're always part of some wild adventure or providing comic relief. But, let's face it: these people would make terrible neighbors in real life.

The real neighbors you want are ones who are courteous, quiet, and friendly. Or hot. Here are the seven television neighbors you'd want in real life:

Tom Poston, one of the classic veterans of TV comedy, died earlier today at his home in Los Angeles. He appeared on The Steve Allen Show in the 1950s and Newhart in the 1980s.

Poston played handyman George Utley on Newhart, and was also a regular on another Bob Newhart series, Bob. And to keep the connection to Newhart going, he played Cliff "The Peeper" Murdock on The Bob Newhart Show in the 70s. Poston also appeared on Grace Under Fire, Mork & Mindy, The Simpsons, Will & Grace, Home Improvement, Murphy Brown, Get Smart, Coach, The Love Boat, Studio One, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, Just Shoot Me, That 70s Show, and dozens of other shows over the years.

Poston was married to actress Suzanne Pleshette, who played Newhart's wife Emily on The Bob Newhart Show.

I grew up on a farm, so I could only watch cable when visiting friends in town, at least until I was in high school and my family got a satellite dish. This was in the '90s, and one of our favorite channels to watch as a family was Nick at Nite: we'd watch The Donna Reed Show, The Patty Duke Show and Mr. Ed. You know, classic TV.

Fast forward to today and you have shows like Home Improvement, George Lopez and Saget-era America's Funniest Home Videos slated to appear on the cable channel, none of which feel especially "classic" to me. And George Lopez is still on, for the love of God.

Remember those halcyon days when Nick at Nite used to show TV classics like Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, and I Love Lucy? Yeah, it's hard for me to remember those days, too. Ever since the advent of sister network TV Land, the powers that be at Nickelodeon have seen fit to put old favorites there and leave Nick at Nite for fans of TV's most recent past. Lately, it's been in Eighties mode, with shows like Cheers, The Cosby Show, and Full House in heavy rotation. But the Nineties aren't far behind, with Mad About You recently joining Nineties stalwarts Roseanne and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in the lineup.

Now, according to this press release, Nick at Nite will be becoming very Nineties-oriented over the next year or so, with the additions of Home Improvement, Designing Women, A Different World, and Bob's favorite show, NewsRadio. What's next, Seinfeld?

Also, does this mean that the shows from the Eighties are going to be pushed to TV Land? If so, where will the older stuff go? The dusty confines of our memories aren't enough. I guess I'll have to stock up on the DVDs...

[via The Futon Critic]

Last night Jimmy Kimmel Live had a clever, quick sketch about a Keith Richards sitcom (after talking about a new Mick Jagger sitcom in the works), where Richards would play the dad, mumbling at the dinner table, flicking his cigarette into the forehead of his son and passing out into a plate of spaghetti. It was pretty funny (and, unlike something SNL would do, they didn't drag it on too long), and I thought to myself, "hell, I'd watch that!"

And I keep thinking that sometimes the shows-within-a-TV-show are often better than the shows themselves. Like Tool Time on Home Improvement. I've always wondered why no one has actually done a Tool Time-like show for syndication. Hell, I think it would be great if Tim Allen and Richard Karn got together and did a spinoff. They always treat the shows-within-a-show as not particularly good, but does anyone doubt that a show like Tool Time would be a funny, entertaining half hour, with two comedians hosting, giving home improvement/makeover tips, with a hot girl assistant?

OK, I'll admit it, I love home design shows. Not all of them, of course. Being a single guy living in an apartment, I really can't get into shows where couples or families look for a new house, or shows where a rich couple adds a heliport to their mansion, or even shows where someone puts $10,000 into redoing their kitchen.

But I do like shows such as Design on a Dime, reDesign, and Small Space, Big Style, because I can picture myself doing those types of changes to my place. But I'm getting tired of Small Space, Big Style, because they've forgotten about the "small spaces" part. Just the other night they showcased two "small" apartments...that were 1000 square feet each. 1000 square feet? Sorry, that's not "small," even if it's two people living there. One person? It's a football field.

I'd like to see them focus more on really small city apartments and microapartments, places where you look in amazement at the cool things that people can do in a small space. There's some of that still, but there are too many episodes where they show people who have "small" apartments that are about 5 times the size of mine (note: mine is about 200 square feet). If any of these people who have "small" apartments of 1000 feet or more, I'll switch with them.

Syndicated reruns have been a part of TV since the days of Lucy and Ricky, but what stations actually buy and air in key time slots always seems to change from year to year. Since I was a kid, another twenty-plus years of series have entered the pipeline, giving syndicators and channels a lot more inventory to chose from. And when those stations spend buckets of money on a Seinfeld or Raymond package, they end up running the show two or three times a day in order to turn a profit.  Pair that with first-run "netlet" shows, and there's little time to run repeats of shows -- all-time favorites as well as recent series -- that used to be on the air all the time. Nick at Nite, TV Land, and TBS have helped in this department, but most other channels are too busy showing Law & Order reruns to bother with anything else.

Here are five series that used to be on in reruns all the time, but I don't  seem to see them anymore:

5. Design on a Dime. I've lost track of how many hosts and designers they've had on this show, but it's still entertaining. I get inspired by their do-it-yourself projects, even though I know I do not and never will have any crafty skills. The crew tends to successfully pull off a $1,000 makeover that seems within reach, for those of you with actual skills.

4. Curb Appeal. Being a homeowner, I find inspiration in this show. It's amazing what some planters and a little landscaping will do to improve the look of a home. I also like that they have the homeowners pitch in to do most of the work, which makes the show more accessible.