Week 10 of "My 25 Favourite Episodes of TV"

Ten weeks in! Another comedy episode that I really just love. Something I've learned during this exercise is that the idea I've always had about how much worse I am at writing about a drama than a comedy is probably actually the opposite. In any case, here's a relatively short pre-vacation entry. Because of that vacation, this series (or whatever) will take next week off and then resume on Friday, August 9 (it is important my millions of fans don't wonder where I've gone).

After the break: A little David Cross goes a long way. Or sometimes none at all.

2013 Emmy nominations post-mortem: Good enough?

     Aaron Paul of "Breaking Bad" and Neil Patrick Harris of "How I Met
     Your Mother" (both Emmy nominated, Paul for "Bad" and Harris for
     producing and hosting the Tonys) announcing the nominations for the
     65th Primetime Emmy Awards last Thursday (July 18) morning.

Emmy nomination day! Everyone loves it! And by "loves", I mean "has incredibly mixed feelings about". Sure, the Emmys are never gonna get everything "right" considering there are no right answers.  And they're never gonna make everyone happy. Like every year, I've found that there are just as many nominations that make me incredibly happy as snubs that have left me feeling pretty annoyed. But credit to the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences that I don't think there are that many obvious nominations this year that piss me off or leave me completely baffled, and I've found that far more than last year the person or show I feel is most deserving is actually likely to win. So let's go category by category as I give you expert analysis and reactions and predictions or something. Like last year, I'll be predicting winners in the major categories that will come back to haunt me the Monday morning after the Emmys when I realize I had a success rate of less than 40%.

Week 9 of "My 25 Favourite Episodes of TV"

Rolling right along now, here's an on time instalment that carries over quite nicely from last week's entry in a way that I didn't ultimately plan, much in the same way that following up "Lost" with a parallel narratives episode of "Malcolm in the Middle" was also unintentional. I could have deleted all of that, I suppose, and presented myself as an evil genius the likes of which are written about in today's entry. But this blog and its author are firm believers in journalistic transparency.


After the break: All I can say is that this episode just flat out rocks minerals.

My hypothetical 2013 Emmy ballot

With the Emmy nominations just a day away, it's time for me to once again submit a fake Emmy ballot. I had fun doing this last year when I watched far fewer shows, and though it was a bit trickier this time to weed out some very good performances and such, I think I'm happy with my choices. Of course, none of this matters because tomorrow the Television Academy will give a lot of nominations to "The Big Bang Theory" and "The Newsroom". Sorry, but it wouldn't be Emmy season without outrage and cynicism! If you're wondering what sort of ridiculousness you're in for after the break, you can take a look at my picks from last year, in which I just completely forgot to make picks in the Drama Lead Actor category. I suck.

After the break: Watch as I pad the miniseries categories by giving a lot of nominations to "American Horror Story" actors solely for their participation in the ridiculous but awesome "Name Game" scene. Plus, I only cheated twice!

Week 8 of "My 25 Favourite Episodes of TV"

I regretfully present a late instalment of "My 25 Favourite Episodes of TV," an entry that heads in a number of different directions in the hopes of making a larger point about the series in question as a whole. It's a thing I tend to do sometimes. I hope it makes as much sense on paper (or...Internet, whatever) as it does in my brain.

After the break: Every damn time I wrote it as "Louis" and had to change it back to "Lois".

Week 7 of "My 25 Favourite Episodes of TV"

Another week, another favourite episode. I feel like every week I think "Wow, I'm so happy I get to write about this episode because I think it's one of my favourites on the list," and then I remember what I'm doing and what the point of it is. Duh doy.

But seriously, this is one of my very favourites on the list. I'm fairly confident this is a top five contender, even though this list is in no particular order because narrowing down to 25 was hard enough. This turned out to be more of a piece on why this show works in contrast to lesser copycats, but I do touch on why this episode is great and all in all, I'm very happy with it. Also, new picture!

After the break: I managed to hold off a surprisingly long time before devolving this entry into unrelenting rage minor annoyance towards "The Event".