TVSquad

Here are the new TV DVDs, in stores tomorrow.

I started watching The Fairly OddParents a few years ago and completely fell in love with it. I have a couple of the DVD sets, but I was never sure how the DVD sets were organized. Sometimes they're by a "theme" and sometimes they're by a season or volume. But now we have actual complete season sets for seasons one and two, and I'm really looking forward to having them. Funny, though, how no one can agree whether it's Fairly OddParents or Fairly Odd Parents. I see it spelled both ways everywhere.

I won't be buying the Highlander: The Animated Series set though., There can be only one animated set to buy this week and I'm going with OddParents.

I took my kids to see The Simpsons Movie this weekend. While it was their first time seeing the film, it was my second and I still enjoyed it quite a bit simply because it's a funny movie.

Because I have kids, I often go see a lot of crappy animated films based on cartoons. I've seen, Rugrats Go Wild, The Wild Thornberrys Movie and The Spongebob Squarepants Movie among others. For the most part, I enjoyed these films but they were little more than a longer version of the TV show. The Simpsons Movie, however, is much more

I always tell people that I'm "Jewish by birth." In other words, my parents are members of "The Tribe," but I'm not a particularly close follower of the religious aspects of Judaism. But I do like to follow the cultural aspects, for various reasons that I won't go into here. One thing I've noticed is the growth in stature of Hanukkah, especially here in the United States, over the last ten years or so. My theory is that my fellow Jews have made the minor holiday into a substitute Christmas so they don't feel left out of the holiday festivities while not completely betraying their heritage.

Anyway, it seemed that the holiday's increased profile was also reflected on television. It was a small presence amongst the snowstorm of Christmas specials, with maybe one or two shows related to the Festival of Lights airing each year. Maybe it was a Rugrats cartoon (the Pickles family was half-Jewish) or Comedy Central showing Adam Sandler's movie Eight Crazy Nights. But it was a lot better than what we used to have, which was local news anchors mispronouncing the holiday's name in the throwaway segment between the sports and the weather report. This year, though? Nothing.

Tonight is the first night of Passover, and in honor of that, I wanted to come up with a list of Passover episodes from my favorite series. But I wracked my brain and came up with very little. Googling "passover" and "episode", or "passover", "seder" and "TV" came up with two examples: a episode of Rugrats (which I always hated) and an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm (which I've never seen -- I don't have HBO, remember).

It's weird; you'd think with all the fellow members of the tribe that work in Hollywood, we'd see more Passover seders on our televisions. Maybe in the past people thought it was too ethnic to be accepted by mainstream America, and now it may be too traditional. But with the whole "hip to be Jewish" movement these days, you'd think there'd be seders all over TV right now, even if they just consist of Sarah Silverman swearing before saying "pass the gefilte fish."

Am I missing something? Have there been Passover-themed episodes of other shows that I'm not remembering? Let me know in the comments.

Herb Scannell, who served as president of Nickolodeon Networks since 1996, recently announced he would be stepping down. Normally I don't get too excited about executive shifts such as these, but Scannell was responsible for giving Nickelodeon the boost it needed, bringing in such humongously popular shows as SpongeBob SquarePants, Blue's Clues, Rugrats, and Dora the Explorer. Scannell also expanded the Nickelodeon brand by adding a new animation studio, launching networks Noggin and The N, and starting Nickelodeon's feature film division. Cyma Zarghami, who has worked for Nickelodeon for the last twenty years and is repsponsible for bringing in live-action "tween" comedies like Drake and Josh and Unfabulous, will take over for Scannell. Animation expert and insider Jerry Beck, who worked with Scannell at Nickelodeon, has a few kind words to say about the man on his blog.