TVSquad

I didn't know Tim Russert on a personal level. I rarely even saw him in his own element as host of NBC's Meet the Press. However, when he suddenly died last Friday, it hit me like a ton of bricks. It was the fact that he was a huge presence on television, particularly during this year's Presidential election. It made Russert feel like he was a part of the family.

So it has been with many television personalities that have left this earth before their time. It's the intimacy of the industry and the fact that this person has come into our homes night after night, week after week, that the unexpected death of these personalities hits us much harder than, say, movie stars. Unfortunately, there have been a number of these surprising deaths over the last few decades. Here are 12 such deaths that affected millions of television viewers.

In my line of work (whatever that is), I am often put in the position of defending the medium of television. There is a large section of the population who is convinced that television is inferior to film and all types of print media. These people love to use a host of specious arguments to prove their point. Some choose advertising, others go with reality TV, I once argued with a guy who said, "Two words...Jerry Springer" and walked away.

I'm not going to use this blog as a way to refute these arguments, instead I'd like to give specific examples to defend the medium that I have come to love.

Television is great because it is directly responsible for the creation of the Muppets.

It's always intriguing when a cable network has two or three original shows they're working on. But TNT has gone project crazy this year, with a whopping 14 shows in development.

It's an interesting mix of shows too. You have your dramas, including a mystery series set in Boston, based on the novels of Tess Gerritsen; a drama about a family in 1950s Indiana; an espionage drama titled Leverage; a drama from Robert Redford titled Generations, which focuses on several families who have lived in the same house over the decades; and Truth In Advertising, which sounds a lot like a modern-day Mad Men (not that I'm complaining) and stars Eric McCormack, Tom Cavanagh, and Monica Potter. Comedies include a show about a single, middle-aged woman, from Betty Thomas and Elaine Pope.

Sheesh, I guess I haven't checked out Muppet News Flash in awhile, and wound up missing out on some cool Muppet news.

First, a Fraggle Rock album will hit stores in October. There's pretty much zero information on Fraggle Rockin', except that it will contain music from the series. Amazon doesn't even have an album image. Did I mention it's a three-disc set? That's all kinds of awesome.

You'll note that I didn't call it a "Muppet short film," because there are no Muppets to be found in the eight-minute short below. It does, however, feature a young Jim Henson. The short, called Time Piece, was nominated for an Oscar in 1966.

Something tells me I would have appreciated this short more when I was in college. Back then I lived for surreal, nonsensical stuff like this: tearing it apart, trying to figure out what it all means. I'd borrow films like this and Un Chien Andalou from the college media center and revel in how different it all was.

The MuppetCast is not a podcast created by the Jim Henson company like the one I mentioned back in August, but rather a simple love letter to the Muppets from Steve Swanson, a longtime fan. In many ways, that makes it better than the other, "official" podcast because it's not simply a plug for upcoming projects from Jim Henson Studios. There's nothing wrong with updates on what's happening, but it's cool for a Muppet fanatic like myself to sit back and listen to someone who loves them as much as I do.

Here's a rather disturbing video (after the jump) of Sesame Street veteran Kermit The Frog singing about all of the people who have left him, the horrible life he's had, and Miss Piggy. This isn't "The Rainbow Connection," folks. This is Kermit doing an acoustic version of the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt" (also covered by Johnny Cash). Kermit has hit rock bottom. This episode has been brought to you by the letter D, which stands for depressing.

I never really noticed this before, but if you close your eyes and listen closely, Kermit sounds a lot like Neil Young.

(Warning: NSFW...especially if your W is touchy about felt puppets masturbating and taking drugs.)

You can watch clips of the Jim Henson Company's Puppet Up! Uncensored improv shows on TBS' Laugh Lab site. New sketches will be added every Wednesday.

Puppet Up! Uncensored is an improved stage show from the Jim Henson Company that's essentially Who's Line Is It Anyway?, but with puppets. A Puppet Up! special was shown on TBS not long ago, and I found myself enjoying it, albeit intermittently.

Like many of you, I've been waiting since the 1999 film The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland for the little red Muppet to return to the big screen. Every morning I would wake up and check all the trade papers to see if li'l Elmo was ready to make his big screen comeback, and every day I was disappointed.

Actually, everything in that paragraph is a lie, though I did see The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland in the theater, along with my then three-year-old nephew and a theater full of little kids (they loved it). Muppet News Flash is reporting that a possible movie version of the "Elmo's World" segment on Sesame Street is in the very early stages of development. So early, in fact, that there's no guarantee the movie will be made at all. If it does get made, word is that it will put Elmo in a CG crayon-drawn world in the vein of Harold and the Purple Crayon or Chalk Zone.

I know parents and those of us who grew up with "classic" Sesame Street aren't especially fond of Elmo, but you can't deny the little guy has his fans. Also, it helps to keep in mind that Elmo is specifically designed to appeal to smaller children, not their older siblings.

We rejoiced when the first two seasons of the Jim Henson Company's Dinosaurs came out on DVD, and now it's time to rejoice again, because seasons three and four will be out on DVD in a single box set sometime this May. There's no official release date yet, and there are no details on extra features just yet, either. What we do know is that all thirty-six episodes from seasons three and four will be included, and that's awesome.

On a more personal note, an incidental character in the episode "If I Were A Tree" is actually named after a friend of mine (actually the younger brother of a friend, but a friend nonetheless) who passed away at a very young age. This is not a lie, the writers changed the name of the character after I wrote a letter to them asking them to dedicate a show to my friend, who liked the show. I consider the name change the next best thing to a dedication. In fact, I still have the episode on tape, and the script they sent me.