Posts with tag ken levine
Posted Jul 8th 2008 1:04PM by Keith McDuffee
Filed under: Retro Squad, Reality-Free, Cheers
One of our writers,
Bob Sassone, introduced me to
Ken Levine's blog a couple of years ago. Within a couple of weeks I had his RSS feed in my "Must Always Read" category, and there it remains.
If you don't know who Ken Levine is, if you're any sort of fan of television, it's likely you've seen something he's written: His credits include 36 episodes of
Cheers, 16 episodes of
M*A*S*H, seven episodes of
Frasier, seven episodes of
Becker, four episodes of
Wings, two episodes of
The Simpsons ... and a partridge in a pear tree. In short, the man knows how to write; he's won an Emmy for his writing and even sometimes offers a highly-regarded course on comedy writing, called
The Sitcom Room.
Levine's blog is filled with stories from his days with the aforementioned shows, and they're sometimes hilarious, always fascinating. As a friend of TV Squad, and to celebrate the all-things
Cheers week of
Retro Squad, he's taken the time out to share a new story below. Enjoy!
Continue reading The Cheers episode Ken Levine's still writing in his head
Posted Apr 7th 2008 1:02PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, OpEd, TV Squad Lists, Reality-Free
I was looking over a "Where are they now?" feature our friends at AOL put together on
the cast of Cheers, and a few of the mysteries of the long-running sitcom classic came to mind. These were head-scratchers big and small that made me wonder if the writers are the most clever geniuses ever to man a word processor (it
was the '80s, after all) or, like in most sitcoms, consistency of story was the first thing to go if a good joke came up in the writers' room.
I guess I should just go over to
Ken Levine's blog and ask him, since he wrote for the show for many years. But if I did that, I wouldn't get paid for it. So, after the jump are the biggest
Cheers mysteries, starting with the biggest and most obvious one:
Continue reading Five biggest Cheers mysteries
Posted Sep 18th 2007 10:41AM by Liz Finn-Arnold
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, TV Royalty, OpEd, Early Looks
In July, I was at a
sitcom writing seminar in which
Sam Simon (who helped develop
The Simpsons)
declared: "the sitcom is dead." Veteran comedy writer
Ken Levine (who hosted that sitcom seminar), however, disagrees. Ken believes the traditional multi-camera sitcom
might be on a respirator, but still has a pulse. Levine said, "I would amend Sam's statement and say that yeah, the bad, stale, family sitcom with tired rhythms, forced laughs, and bogus characters is dead."
I guess if you're trying to revive the dying sitcom, a good way to start is by assembling a top-notch team. And Fox's new Wednesday night comedy,
Back to You, does just that.
Continue reading Back to You -- An early look
Posted Sep 2nd 2007 2:15PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Industry, Programming, Web, Celebrities
Posted Aug 5th 2007 11:01AM by Adam Finley
Filed under: Web, Celebrities
If you read this blog on a frequent basis, you know a few of us are fans of TV writer and blogger Ken Levine. The man has written for The Simpsons, MASH, Cheers, Everybody Loves Raymond, Wings, Dharma and Greg and many other popular and enduring series.
In a recent post, Levine explains how to write for a medical series that uses a lot of jargon: ask a doctor.
Continue reading Ken Levine explains how to write for a medical series
Posted Jul 26th 2007 11:21AM by Liz Finn-Arnold
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Industry, OpEd
How many times have you watched a sitcom on TV and thought, "Hey, I could do that?" Last weekend, twenty aspiring writers came together at the LAX Hilton to test that theory.
The Sitcom Room, an exhausting, yet exhilarating two-day event, was the brainchild of veteran TV sitcom writer
Ken Levine. To me, the event was the ultimate summer camp for aspiring writers and/or TV geeks.
Continue reading The Sitcom Room: So you think you can write?
Posted Jul 11th 2007 10:02AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Web, Celebrities, Game Show
There's a funny
post by Ken Levine over at his blog. He talks about how it seems that the goal of standup comics now is to host a game show. Think about it. Howie Mandel, Bob Saget, Jeff Foxworthy, Drew Carey. They've all gone from having sitcoms and dramas and doing standup to hosting network game shows like
Deal Or No Deal and
Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader. Ken wants sitcoms to make a big comeback, so the talents of comics can truly be showcased and not put into that game show personality machine that either makes them annoying or (even worse) lame and bland.
But what if Sam Kinison had hosted a game show? After the jump, Ken's very NSFW scene from a Kinison-hosted show.
Continue reading What if Sam Kinison had hosted a game show?
Posted Jun 13th 2007 11:03AM by Liz Finn-Arnold
Filed under: OpEd, The Sopranos
I'll admit I was first "miffled" by most ambiguous ending ever in the history of series endings. But I'm beginning to come around to the the side that sees
The Sopranos finale as "brilliant" rather than "lame." David Chase left us wanting more, and that's pretty awesome. Besides,
according to Ken Levine, it could have been a lot worse.
On his blog, Ken, a veteran sitcom writer, hilariously reminds us just how annoying
The Sopranos finale would have been on network television. For starters, a countdown clock would have run across the bottom of our television screens for at least a month leading up to the finale. The two-hour finale would have been preceded by a one-hour clip show hosted by Bob Costas. Janice would have gotten her own spin-off called
Widow With Children.
Continue reading If the Sopranos were on network TV
Posted May 27th 2007 10:31AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Industry, Programming, Lost, Web, Celebrities, Heroes
Posted Mar 17th 2007 1:43PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Industry, Programming, Web, Celebrities
Posted Feb 27th 2007 9:06AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Web, Celebrities
Posted Feb 21st 2007 8:34AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Industry, Programming, Web, Celebrities
Posted Jan 31st 2007 2:02PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Industry, Programming, Web, Celebrities
Posted Jan 12th 2007 8:39AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Industry, Programming, Web, Celebrities
Posted Dec 30th 2006 3:53PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: TV Royalty, Industry, Programming, Web, Celebrities
Next Page >
Do you remember the show 
Best Week Ever 
Ken Levine has some thoughts on 
Hiccup girl goes on The Today Show, so Good Morning America 
How can you tell if an actor is funny? Ken Levine 
Do you want to start watching 24 but you're not sure who's who? Ken Levine has 
Over at TV Barn, Aaron Barnhart has 
The Cheers episode Ken Levine's still writing in his head
Giveaway Tuesday: Fastlane - The Complete Series
Giveaway Monday: The X-Files: Revelations on DVD
