TVSquad

Remember the episode of Seinfeld where George Steinbrenner told George Costanza's parents that their son was dead? (Frank's response: "Why did you trade Jay Buhner!?") When Jerry told George that his parents think he's dead, the bald one's response was classic: "They could use the break!"

That's how I felt about the spate of reruns we got between the second week of December and now. This past fall season was so intense, with returning shows pretty much airing without a break, and new shows coming on board pretty much the entire fall period, that it seemed like there was a ton of good stuff to watch every single week. Having to blog about three shows (HIMYM, Gilmore Girls, Grey's Anatomy) probably enhanced that intensity, but that's why I get paid the "big bucks" around here. So, having a few weeks off was a nice little break.

The problem is, I'm not quite ready yet for new episodes to return.

One of our regular commenters, Jim, asked us a good question the other day, in response to Rich's post that answered other questions: "I want to know why you've stopped posting reviews of Saturday Night Live."

Others have asked us this question from time to time since the season started. And the short answer is that Jonathan couldn't do it anymore and no one else volunteered. But the long answer is: no one volunteered because they didn't want to write the same review every week.

I don't know if you folks have noticed, but it looks like TVGuide.com is slowly starting to blogify. A few weeks ago, the site converted its Watercooler column into a blog format, covering more shows than they did when it was just a standard online column.  Now I see that they've pretty much converted most of their features into blog format, under an umbrella called Expert Blogs. This includes the Televisionary, FlickChick, Matt Roush's Q&A, and The Ausiello Report. All blogs allow people to comment.

Gee... that format sounds a bit familiar, doesn't it? Wonder where they got that idea from?

I kid, I kid... I only joke out of love. Actually, this is not a big surprise, since Ausiello mentioned this to me in an interview I did with him last month.  The format does seem like it might be a bit unwieldy in some cases (like the Q&A columns like Televisionary), but I'm sure they'll work out the kinks at some point.