TVSquad

About a month ago, I mentioned my television summer project. The West Wing was such an excellent series that I stampeded by way through the episodes and am done already. In fact, if you summed up the quality of every reality show on television, it wouldn't come close to the quality of The West Wing (thus furthering the argument that writers are mandatory for good television).

I agree with most of the critics that the series took a drop in quality in Season 5. With the departure of Sorkin, the characters began to make decisions that seemed inconsistent with the first four seasons (I'll write more about that in a separate article). Seasons 6 and 7 saw an upswing in quality, mostly due to the change in the whole premise of the show (making it about the Presidential Election rather than the Presidency).

The West Wing was a very deep and intelligent program and probably better than we deserve. Next up: Aaron Sorkin's other television contributions, Sports Night and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

In Plain Sight has become one of my favorite TV shows. I didn't think that way last year, its rookie season, when the show lurched a bit to try and find balance between Mary's professional life as a U.S. Marshal in the Witness Protection Program and her dysfunctional personal life with an alcoholic mother, a troubled younger sister with a drug-dealing boyfriend, and an on-again/off-again relationship with a hot Latin minor league baseball player.

When it went well, it was very satisfying, but the show seemed to be struggling to find its tone. Well, this season is a whole new thing. Perhaps there were changes behind the scenes, perhaps the first year was about shaking out all those story strands and building a stronger foundation, perhaps it was simply the actors getting more comfortable in their roles. Whatever the case, In Plain Sight is now hitting on all cylinders.

According to PopWatch, Aaron Sorkin might be returning to television. And for the third time, it might be a television-show-within-a-television-show (his first two in this vein were Sports Night and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). This time, the fictional world would be a cable news program such as the one hosted by Keith Olbermann on MSNBC.

His last show utilizing this concept, Studio 60, didn't fare so well and was cancelled after a single season. However, this program concept would also incorporate the discussion of politics, which Sorkin excels at, as proven in The West Wing. We may have a winner here.

Sorkin is certainly a multi-talented writer. He's written movies and plays as well as television. I believe he can make this sort of program work. I even confess to liking an earlier incarnation of this concept, Al Franken's Lateline.

So what do you think? Do you welcome a return by Sorkin to television or is his reputation overblown?

Everybody loves lists, right? That's why I was attracted to this AOL Television list of the best TV shows of the 1990s. Lots of good entries, some head-scratchers, and two incredibly glaring omissions.

You can immediately guess which shows are on the list: Seinfeld, The X-Files, Sports Night, Oz, The Sopranos, The Larry Sanders Show. There are some shows that I certainly would never put on such a list, but I can understand why they were chosen, such as Party of Five, Dawson's Creek, and Ally McBeal. I think this is probably yet another example of "best" being confused with "popular" or "buzzworthy." Actually, I would never include Ally McBeal on any sort of best of list.

But what really confuses me? There are two major shows, two shows that are often mentioned in a "best of" list (not just the 90s, but all-time) that aren't on the list! Can you guess what they are? Both appeared on NBC, and one of them was created by someone who created one of the above shows.

Here are the new TV DVDs, in stores tomorrow.

Glad I held off on getting the season one set of Banacek, as the complete series gets released on DVD tomorrow. I'm also interested in The Starlost, since I think it's something I haven't seen before but I've heard many things about (not all good).

Of course, you Sports Night fans are going to want the new 10th Anniversary complete series set, even if you have the old set.

• Adam-12 - Season 2
• B.L. Stryker - Complete Series
• Banacek - Complete Series
• Beauty and the Beast - Complete Series
• Click & Clack's As The Wrench Turns
• Edward the King - Miniseries
• Laredo - Best of Season 2, Part 1
• Mr. Bean - Best of Mr. Bean, Vol. 2
• My Name is Earl - Season 3
• My Three Sons - Season 1, Vol. 1
• The New Fantastic Four - The Impossible Man
• Numb3rs - Season 4
• Lewis Black's Root of All Evil
• Sports Night - Complete Series
• The Starlost - Complete Series
• When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions

Fans of the short-lived ABC comedy Sports Night were disappointed when the DVD set for the show came out in 2002. We were really happy that there was indeed a complete series set for the show, but there wasn't any extras in the set at all. No commentaries, no features, no interviews, no booklet. Some people even reported that the discs didn't work that well, that they would stop and start or freeze altogether on some DVD players (I have the old set and never had this problem). Fans were happy to have the show, but still wanted more.

Well, now we do. Shout! Factory has released a new 10th Anniversary set for the show, and all of the the extras that were missing in that set are here, and then some.

Remember Studio 60? It was a little show that not many people had opinions about, and no one here really talked about it that much. But creator/writer Aaron Sorkin is talking about it, to GQ.

Sorkin actually feels guilty about the entire thing, because he knows he screwed it up. He tells Mickey Rapkin that the ultimately the show didn't work because he made too many mistakes:

I was too angry when I wrote Studio 60. The show became like the cover of Abbey Road. Everybody was trying to figure out who this character was in real life or what that incident was trying to be.

All of these lists are starting to get more and more specific. This one is a list of the ten best sitcoms since 1980. Soon we'll have the 8 1/2 best hour long dramas that appeared between 1988 and 1994 on Sunday nights (that start with "J").

But lists always get us talking and this one has some great picks. Arrested Development fanatics will be glad to see their show on the list (I won't tell you where you'll have to click the link above), along with shows like Scrubs, Cheers, and Sports Night. But there is one show that is obviously missing. There might be more than one show that isn't on the list that should be, of course, but this show stood out to me immediately. Can you guess what it is? I'll name it after the jump but don't click ahead until you read the list and guess yourself.

Who says you can't learn anything from television? We talk about a lot of things here on TV Squad each week, and it's amazing what TV Squad and TV in general can teach you about life.

TV ... it's like the Bible!

1. America likes making a point rather than rewarding talent. Let me say upfront that even though I wrote this, I still think that David Cook is a good singer, and it was great that the American Idol final came down to him and David Archuleta. But I'm baffled as to why he won by 12 million votes! It's almost as if viewers were voting for Cook not just because they liked him, but because they didn't want to fulfill the predictions many had weeks and weeks ago that Archuleta would win (as if the kid could control any of that). They didn't want to prove to everyone that American Idol is predictable, or that Simon's comments about Archuleta winning the final night of singing meant anything. And what about that night? Come on, Archuleta clearly won that night, but it's almost as if they don't even have to have that final night of singing, because fans are clearly voting for other reasons. The Archuleta backlash has to be one of the weirder things that has happened this TV season. I have a very good friend who is a Cook fanatic. Nothing could make her say anything bad about him and I think she broke her phone calling in to vote for him, and even she admits that Archuleta did better that last night. I think fans convinced themselves that they had to vote for the "rocker" (cough cough) and not the kid who sings well (and I have to disagree with my cohort Debra - there's nothing "unique" about Cook).

Last month Bob Sassone mentioned a rumor that a 10th anniversary Sports Night DVD set was in the works. Fans will be happy to learn that the anniversary edition of Sports Night: The Complete Series has a release date of September 30. Shout! Factory is releasing the eight-DVD box set, which includes all forty-five episodes of the series as well as two discs of new bonus features.

The box set costs $69.99 and contains a 10th anniversary book, behind-the-scenes featurettes, new interviews, blooper reels, commentaries by the cast and creative team, and deleted scenes. A complete series box set has been available since 2002, but that version had no special features.

This news could make Sports Night fans go crazy like ... well, people who go crazy and stuff.

TV Shows On DVD is reporting that a 10th anniversary set for the short-lived ABC comedy is in the works, to be released this fall. As fans know, a complete DVD set for the show was already released a few years ago, but it didn't have any extras on it at all (and I remember that some of the first DVDs had a lot of problems with skipping and freezing, though I've never had a problem with my set). This set is rumored to have extras on it, and we can only hope that includes commentaries by the cast and Aaron Sorkin.

No word yet on who is putting it out or even why this set is getting the anniversary treatment (other than it's a great show and deserves it!). Maybe the success of Felicity Huffman and Brenda Strong on Desperate Housewives helped.

Veteran actress Paula Marshall is joining the FX show Nip/Tuck this fall. She'll play Dylan Walsh's love interest for at least four episodes.

I call her a veteran actress even though shes not that old (her birthday was last week - Happy Birthday Paula!). She's been on a ton of TV shows over the years. Some should have lasted longer than they did (Sports Night, Veronica Mars, Cupid), and some probably lasted longer than they should have (Out of Practice, Snoops).

A few weeks ago, AOL Television editors and TV Squad bloggers teamed up to name the shows they wished could come back from the dead.

Many of you wondered, "Where's Arrested Development? Freaks and Geeks?? Sports Night???" You took issue with some of the choices -- especially shows that had long runs, like The West Wing. For others, our picks were too edgy, like Keen Eddie.

So, we gave you the chance to strike back: We asked fans on both sites to nominate the shows you'd resurrect from the graveyard of television. Boy, was there a long list. We gathered together some of the best posts and here are the results.

Keith Olbermann has a new gig.

Or should I say "another gig," as he'll still be host of MSNBC's Countdown. But he's going to add a co-hosting position on NBC's Football Night In America, the pre-game show that airs at 7pm on Sunday nights before the NFL game that NBC telecasts.

Olbermann has a long history in TV sports, having hosted ESPN's SportsCenter with Dan Patrick years ago (he was one of the models for the characters on Sports Night) and his own show on FOX Sports Network that was good but didn't last too long. This will be his first job in network sports in several years, other than what he does on Dan Patrick's radio show. Olbermann will join Bob Costas, Cris Collinsworth, Jerome Bettis, and Tiki Barber, who started on NBC this morning.

[via TV Newser]

"Bush-bashing accidental liberal hero." "Keith the Impaler."

Those phrases were used to describe MSNBC's Keith Olbermann in a New York magazine profile of the cable talker who first earned fame as the wise cracking sports guy on ESPN's SportsCenter, which later inspired Aaron Sorkin's SportsNight.

The article -- which describes Olbermann as a "world class agitator" and "sworn enemy" of Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly -- says Olbermann appeals to liberals like radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh appeals to conservatives.