TVSquad

Before pondering the meaning of identity on Dollhouse, Joss Whedon gave us some great shows featuring iconic heroes and some really nasty but unforgettable villains.

Unlike Dollhouse, most of Whedon's earlier shows featured a "big bad," a major villain who caused trouble throughout an entire season, or series, for the heroes and their friends. Luckily, Whedon's heroes always managed to outwit these evildoers, but they couldn't stop them from stealing scenes and making the Whedonverse a very, very dangerous place to live.

Let's take a look back at some of Whedon's best "big bads" that made life a living hell for Buffy, Angel and Captain Mal.

OK, so she turned evil and veiny and almost destroyed the world after someone murdered her hot lesbian lover. But at heart, Willow Rosenberg was always a computer-hacking, research-loving nerd.

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer character landed at number one on Topless Robot's list of "Pop Culture's 10 Greatest Nerds." I was surprised by the pick at first, but I can't think of a better choice to top the list. Willow was a great character, and will probably always be actor Alyson Hannigan's best role (sorry, HIMYM fans, but it's true).

10 - Dollhouse, FOX

9 - Better Off Ted, ABC

8 - NCIS, CBS

7 - Castle, ABC

6 - The Mentalist, CBS

5 - Privileged, The CW

4 - Bones, FOX

3 - Chuck, NBC

2 - Reaper, The CW

1 - How I Met Your Mother, CBS

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Something amazing has happened recently in the TV media: the critics have discovered CBS's stealth ratings champ, NCIS, and it's now cool to come out of the closet and declare your fandom. Articles in USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times have reported the fact that not only is NCIS consistently in the top five of the weekly Nielsen ratings, but it's also a smart, well-acted and compelling TV show.

There are reasons to admire NCIS, and if you haven't been watching, here's five really good reasons to check out the show. I know that before I got coerced into giving NCIS a try, I didn't think I'd like it, but boy, was I wrong.

Liquid Generation has put together the 10 Most Racist Moments in TV. While the moments were extremely racist, I was expecting some more clips from primetime television, cartoons, and soaps. Most of the moments were just evidence of how some people are idiots (idiotic to think the way they do and idiotic to think that they should say something like that on television). I had other choice words in place of "idiot," but it will have to suffice -- trying to keep it clean.

My favorite moment from the video is from Jeopardy. Alex Trebek tells the Indian-American contestant, "Yeah, it hurts to miss that one" after he missed New Dehli as an answer. Got to love the Trebek.

Check out the video below and let me know what you think. Also, they play M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" throughout the video which is a little distracting. I'd rather just hear audio from the clips.

[via Digg]

AOL TV has a list of the top ten longest running TV shows. It's a great trip down memory lane or if your a product of gen-Y like me, it's a good history lesson. I knew one (just one!) show on that list. I thought The Simpsons would be first for sure. Turns out that show is number ten. At least I got one.

The Simpsons has been on the air since 1989 and is still running. AOL TV summed up the animated show's success: "Spawning multiple catchphrases, iconic characters and a 2007 hit movie, FOX's pop-culture cornerstone satirizes overall society." And to think, Jennifer Tilly (once married to Simpsons producer Sam Simon) didn't predict that the show would do well. I remember watching a documentary on poker of all things (Tilly is an avid player as is Simon). She said that she didn't see the allure of people with yellow faces.

My other guesses were even more off-base. The Real World! Friends! Seinfeld! Check out the rest of the list and see how you do.

Brian Heiler over at the Topless Robot website took it upon himself to list the ten worst superhero television shows ever made. I don't know if I agree with every choice, but he's certainly in the right ballpark.

Going through the list, we start with Birds of Prey. The first mistake they made (and there was a myriad of them) was altering Batman's daughter to have superpowers. I guess the WB was trying to copy the success of Smallville into other superhero shows and failing.

I remember seeing one episode of Once A Hero. I'm only sorry they didn't air the episode in which Adam West parodied himself. I missed Exo Man altogether (but only in the sense that I didn't watch it).

Let's face it, we get old. Some of us live a long and glorious life, dying happily in our sleep next to the 26-year-old Penthouse Pet of the Month who is just with our wrinkled old selves because we have money. Others live to the ripe old age of 30 and have a wonderful Lastday ceremony. It really doesn't matter...we get old one way or another.

Most of us try not to admit we are getting old. We use dyes, we have surgeries to move things around, and we pump ourselves with poison so our faces to retain that wonder wax museum sheen. Yet, there are those occasions where you hear about something that triggers that little part of your brain that makes you want to whip out the Bran Flakes and prunes. Here are just a few television-related events that may just have you looking for retirement communities in Florida.

Tired of trying to figure out the status of your favorite shows post-strike? Well, if you're a fan of CBS's lineup, you no longer have to: the Eye Network released a list of shows, when they're likely to come back and how many episodes they have left. I'll reproduce the list for you after the jump.

It looks like some of the shows -- most notably, three of the network's big four Monday comedies -- are going to have close to a full complement of episodes for the season (for instance, there will be nine more episodes of the only show on this list I care about, How I Met Your Mother). It looks like fans of The Unit, Cane, and maybe Shark will be out of luck until fall. And Swingtown, the risque drama about swinging couples, will resume production, meaning that we'll finally see this series the network announced way back at last year's upfronts.

It was nice of CBS to do this. Let's hope the rest of the networks follow suit.

Since the very first season, The Simpsons have had numerous guest stars. Some have only appeared once, while others have returned again and again. Now, with the eighteenth season recently wrapped up and no end in sight, The Simpsons have had roughly twelve billion guest stars. That number might not be accurate, but I think it's close.

I mention this because our friends at AOL (which owns TV Squad), want to know who your favorite Simpsons guest stars are. If your brain needs a bit of prodding, you can check out this list I made a year ago, but I think my fellow Simpsons fans should be able to come up with a list of actors just fine on their own.

Oh yeah, and AOL also wants to know what your favorite episode of all time is, so be sure to mention that, too.

So, start filling up the comments, folks. The most popular choices will be featured on AOL TV sometime in the near future. We'll keep you posted.

Well, CBS hasn't posted the clip, but at least one YouTube user has posted Homer Simpson's recent appearance on Late Show with David Letterman. You can watch the clip below.

In the segment, Homer reads his top ten reasons why he should be president. It's pretty funny, though I think it might have worked better if the segment was just Homer rather than skipping back and forth between Homer and Letterman. I think it kind of threw the pacing off a bit. Also, is it just me or did Letterman not seem especially enthused about the whole thing? The combination of "just okay" jokes and Letterman phoning it in kind of brought the whole thing down if you ask me, which you didn't.

It must be all this 400th episode hoodly-hoo, but I'm getting a lot of Simpsons stuff forwarded to my inbox. Not that I'm complaining.

Following up on my recent post featuring a bunch of couch gags from the Simpsons comes this video list of every job Homer has held from season one through season seventeen. You can also see a list of his various occupations on this Wiki page.

The fact that Homer willing quits his job at the nuclear plant at the drop of a hat has been a running gag on the series for a long time, but it also makes me think about all the jobs I've held (and I sometimes feel I've had as many jobs as Homer) that I wasn't exactly qualified to do. Most of these jobs I held right out of college when I was desperate for any kind of work:

Of all the e-mails and comments we get here at the fictional TV Squad HQ, the ones we see the most -- besides the ones that think we're a bunch of hacks who don't deserve the pay we get -- are ones that ask us how a person can get on one of the numerous game or reality shows that are on the air right now.

I have to tell you, we're flattered that you folks think we have the inside connections within the television industry that will be allow us to fast-track our readers onto shows like Survivor or Deal or No Deal. But, alas, we're just a bunch of grunts like you; we don't have a "guy" who can get us through the back door of these shows. In fact we don't even have a "guy" who can get us a discount at the car wash.

But what we can do for you is comb the web to find the various instructions on how you can get on these shows. And, no surprise, the networks have made those instructions readily available on the web. After the jump is the list of links we found so far. We'll update this list as we find more shows and instructions. And feel free to send us ones you've discovered either via our tips e-mail or in the comments section below. Enjoy and good luck...

Project Runway is gearing up for a four city casting tour beginning March 30th in Los Angeles and continuing to Chicago, Miami and New York City. If you want to make the season four cut, you'll need to bring three garments of your own design, a picture portfolio and your completed application - soon to be available via BravoTV.com. And, don't worry, Tim Gunn will be back despite his many extracurricular activities.

In the interest of helping further your design career, I've put together a brief primer for success on Project Runway - from the auditions to the final catwalk.

...ten Lost mysteries in need a-solving

Lost is one Pandora's Box that doesn't look like it's ever gonna shut. The mysteries unleashed by the series are hardly in short supply, and they are well cataloged online.

In an attempt to not appear entirely redundant, I've decided to focus on the 10 mysteries that I think even the writers can't solve. These are the mysteries that I doubt we'll ever get a truly satisfying conclusion to because, frankly, I'm not sure the writers always know what they're doing. Even if they do, the chances that Lost's eventual payoff could ever equal the energies fans have poured into decoding the show are slim. A false lead here. An obscure reference there. Lost's loose ends are going nowhere.