I Am A TV Junkie

So I Got Into It a Bit With "The Larmy" Last Night

The Larmy is of course the Twitter account for Laurie Keller who is a character on Cougar Town, and although I don't watch and tweet at the same time I thought it might be fun to "follow Laurie."

So last night I'm sitting right here while the show is playing on the east coast and not really paying attention to Twitter until The Larmy tweeted a follow suggestion for Michael McDonald, supervising producer of Cougar Town and sometime director and of course a former member of the Mad TV cast that I'm guessing is doing some sort of stand up tour this Summer.

Would Laurie Keller ask me to follow Michael McDonald on Twitter? Would Laurie be a fan of McDonald's standup? Does Michael McDonald even exist in the alternate reality that is Cougar Town?

And what about the whole butterfly effect thing? If there is no Courteney Cox (because there IS a Jules Cobb) how does that effect eventual casting of, say, Family Ties?

(It's gonna get weird in the next couple paragraphs, hang in there though.)

More after the jump.

Live Feed From the TV Academy -- Cougar Town Cast and Creators Panel

Did you watch Cougar Town tonight? Now you can watch the cast and creators of the show talk about it live from the TV Academy.

I got nothin' else. The embed's from Ustream, enjoy.

My High Five -- Notes on 2010, Our Most Television-Watching Year in History

Yea! We did it. A round of applause, a slap on the back, a toast to our perseverance. In 2010, according to Nielsen we sat on our asses and watched more TV than we ever have.

Woo hoo!

That's right, even with all the distractions of work and family, great books and music, tumultuous world events ... even with all that going on (including the Bieberpocalypse) we topped our record number of hours per week of viewing.

New York Times:

Americans watched more television than ever in 2010, according to the Nielsen Company. Total viewing of broadcast networks and basic cable channels rose about 1 percent for the year, to an average of 34 hours per person per week. The generation-long shift to cable from broadcast continued, but subtly, as the smallest of the big four broadcast networks, NBC, still retained more than twice as many viewers as the largest basic cable channel, USA.

Lucky for NBC that they also own USA Network, huh? At least the cable channel nipping at their heels is a "sister network."

Of course I take issue with this number. First of all, I watch so much more TV than that. Secondly, I contend that the average American might spend that amount of time in front of TV sets that are turned on, but I don't think they're always watching.

Another stat from Nielsen this year had to do with how many of us are watching TV and browsing the net at the same time and it's a lot us and growing (.pdf file, new window). I've tried watching TV with my laptop in front of me and I invariably have to hit the rewind button on the DVR as I get sucked in by my Twitter timeline. I don't get how people do it.

Of course there are so many more program choices these days it's no wonder viewership is up. The shame of it is that there's much less chance that show you wanna talk about around the watercooler at the office  was seen by any of your friends. That kind of thing used to bring people together and that doesn't happen as much anymore.

After the jump are five things I particularly liked that happened in or on TV this past year ... I was too lazy to do this when everyone else did needed some time to ruminate.

The First 5 of My 43 Suggested New Names for ABC's Cougar Town

This was the first key art I saw on Cougar Town before the season started.

Then ABC had this on the Hulu home page for the show.

And lately this has been the prominent piece of key art for the show.

But you know, these's rumor afloat that ABC might be looking for a new title for the show, which at this point (and particularly after the liplock that ended last night's episode) that the title isn't appropriate anymore.

Shows are live organisms sometimes (when they're good and creative and giving you the best they got instead of just what they promised) and sometimes things, pesky things, like titles of shows, might do well to change to get more people interested in the show. I'm sure there were about 0.0005% of Americans that were put off by the title and what it meant to them.

Personally, I'm not bothered by the name but I can imagine that there might be additional season two sampling of the premiere if there's a new name attached to the show. 

Of course it might take a Summer of reruns and a specific promo campaign to do said attaching.

That costs $$$.

In the meantime I'm gonna come up with 43 new titles for the show before the May upfronts where I think they'd announce a change if there was one. I'll do this five titles at a time, because ... well, because I want to.

Also, because 43 is my lucky number.

Those first five are after the jump.

Video -- Cougar Town's Ian Gomez, An Appreciation

It's about this time in the run of this year's new sitcoms that the writers' room gets around to throwing some good material to the supporting cast and this week on Cougar Town the recipients of this attention were Andy and Laurie (Ian Gomez, Busy Phillips) in a storyline surrounding Laurie's new BF Smith and his dad (Barry Bostwick) who Andy is courting professionally.

Of course, Andy likes Laurie and Andy wants Smith's dad's biz, but Smith's dad just isn't into the bra-strap adjusting, shimmying Laurie. Watch the scene by clicking here.

Later on Andy comes correct, choosing a defense of Laurie over his pocketbook, which I thought would result in wife Ellie (Christa Miller) combusting in some way but she actually stands up for her nemesis (of sorts) and good on her, though we don't want too much nice-nice between Ellie and Laurie. There needs to be some tension between the two at least over who's more important to Jules.

See? I didn't mention Courtney's character till the end of the third graph, which I guess to some extent backs up Gomez's remark to TVGuide.com, "It's funny how Cougar Town started as a show about a woman dating a younger man, and now it's kind of turning into an ensemble show about a bunch of friends and their misadventures."

(Also funny? How Jules is kinda turning into a divorced realtor from Florida version of Monica Gellar, but I don't really mind that, do you?)

Solid show, very funny, great cast and already renewed for next season.

Excellent. 

Watch the whole episode by clicking here (US Only, sorry other people).

Fall Preview Video -- In Which I Take On TV.com's Five Most Promising Shows of the Fall (and how they missed one)

Okay, first things first, Tim Surette is apparently TV.com's editorial king of the hill, he gets to choose two. I'm just sayin', not trying to rile anything up (though Richard Lawson is getting to be my favorite writer there).

Lying, I love stirring up office politics where people I don't even know work.

Also, they missed one show, but we'll get to that later.

Okay, five shows that TV.com thinks will make it, and I agree with four of the five -- Modern Family (Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet pictured left), Cougar Town, Flash Forward (top of post, Joseph Fiennes and John Cho in action) on ABC and Glee on Fox (Lea Michele below right) -- and I could be convinced of the fifth,The Good Wife with Julianna Margulies on CBS, I have a soft spot for her, if CBS would send me screeners like they used to.

Ahem. Throat clearing very loudly. Cough. Cough. Hacking cough.

(Then again, ABC isn't really forthcoming with their stuff, either. Cable channels love me, broadcast not so much.)

Of course we've all seen Glee, though you get another chance Thursday night at 8, if you can stand to have a crawl of Twitter messages from the cast, creators and others (fans?) running under it the whole time.

I can't.

Can't watch the Twit-ty rerun of the first season finale of Fringe for the same reason. Of course, I can just throw the DVD in the machine.

About Glee, Lawson says:

Glee is wickedly funny in the same gonzo way that Popular was, with strange cutaways and almost-cartoonishly manic characters who will stop at nothing to get what they want. Oh, and it has musical numbers! Big, beautiful, clear-voiced pop numbers sung passionately and without any of that irksome irony that's been laid on too thick in most of the things people deem “smart” these days. The cast, led by Broadway vets Matthew Morrison (South Pacific at Lincoln Center) and Lea Michele (Spring Awakening), is attractive and majorly, earnestly talented. And hey, it's nice to see that it’s so gay-friendly, considering that it’s on Fox.

Yeah, what he said, Sean Hannity. And you too O'Reilly you lying sack.

Sorry, can't ever resist the opportunity, you know.

If there was one show I think they missed, it's Joel McHale's Community on NBC. Hey, that gives me an idea -- if you'd like to see either a) the NBC Fall Preview Show which includes clips of Community or b) yet another show where Joel McHale introduces TV clips, you can kill two birds with one stone and watch the NBC Fall Preview 2009 hosted by McHale.

It's the Hulu embed after the jumperoo. Click over, enjoy the lush self-promotion. I'll also include the video widget from the ABC Flash Forward website that you can click around on to find a bunch of clips from and about the show.

Just one more week until actual real Fall TV shows start. Not to diss the Summer stuff, but there just isn't the sense of urgency about Royal Pains and Burn Notice for me that there is about Fall shows.

Don't you think?

I Smell a Hit -- Courteney Cox in Cougar Town

Think I'm kidding? Go watch the clips at TV.com, just so you have a little somethin' somethin' to go on, then come back.

I think this hits. Solid story for the female demo, Courteney is still beloved (check out the ratings for Friends in syndication), she's doing a lot of physical comedy here which we seem to enjoy as Americans.

Bill Lawrence (Scrubs) in driving the bus and brings wifey (Christa Miller-Lawrence, going hyphenate for the first time here). Busy Phillips brings the Real Housewives vibe as the neighbor, Dan Byrd (who I've been touting on this blog since Aliens in America) has the sardonic son thing down, solid TV and film comedy vets Josh Hopkins and Ian Gomez know their way around a joke, and John from Cincinnati's Brian Van Holt as the ex ... it all works for me!

It sure would be great to see a screener, ABC.

(Clearing my throat.)

(Clearing my throat louder.)

Though it's lead-in is also a new comedy, it's the most arguably the buzzed about comedy of the Fall, Modern Family.

The competition (Wednesdays 9:30 eastern) for interested eyes will probably come mostly from the second half hour of Fox's Glee.

(Other shows against it include CW's new The Beautiful Life, L&O: SVU and Criminal Minds.)

ABC's given it a clear path to succeed. Now it's up to the show, and I think they've got the goods.

I guess we'll find out in due time.

Courteney Cox, Bill Lawrence Piloting for ABC on Cougar Town

I find this whole Cougar thing kind of repellent. It's just how I feel. I don't really have a problem with younger men and older women (or younger women and older women) but I just don't feel like we need to find a name for the concept and stamp it all over people.

Having said that I much prefer hearing about Courteney Cox doing a comedy about anything than an hour long maybe funny maybe tragic thing that has no focus.

I love the work of Bill Lawrence. He does the half-hour single camera comedy as well as anyone on television and he should be working with great people. I consider Courteney and example of that.

Variety:

"Cougar Town" would be Cox’s first series since FX’s "Dirt," which she starred in and exec produced. ABC Studios was also behind that show.

More recently, Cox shot a guest appearance on "Scrubs" — which served as a reunion of sorts for the star and scribe. Lawrence was a season one writer on "Friends" before moving on to co-create "Spin City."

Great, a guest appearance on Scrubs this coming season, and I just saw the show promoted on Monday's Samantha Who? for the first time, so it must be coming soon.

I was also a big fan of Dirt. Not so much for Cox (didn't like her character) but for Ian Hart as Don Konkey and in the second season for all the ripped-from-the-headlines stuff they did. I would have stuck with the show through another couple seasons. But they just wouldn't produce the show for me and the other nine people who watched toward the end.