How many Oscar winners are on TV in 2014?

TV is truly in a Golden Age right now. Can you imagine TV would be this great 10 years ago. It was in the 2004-2005 school year that I declared a minor in film studies with aspirations to gobble up everything I could about film. TV wasn't even in my radar and rightfully so. It was a wasteland at the time.

The only shows I watched at the time were "8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter" because I thought David Spade and James Garner were both pretty interesting additions, "Arrested Development" which was constantly on the verge of being cancelled and "Conan O'Brian" because, hey, I was in college. Occasionally I caught "CSI: Miami" and "Monk" and that was about it.

2004 was a year in which "Friends" and "Frasier" went off the air with "Everybody Loves Raymond" on the way and the attempts to replace it were pretty lackluster with the exception of programs on HBO. Nowadays, when a great show ends there's hardly reason to worry as there are dozens of great shows right around the corner. The last time I mourned a show's departure was "The Office" but "Sillicon Valley," "Go On," "Review" "Broad City" and "Archer" quickly filled that void.

When "Frasier" and "Friends" went off the air, NBC filled the void with "Joey" and the animated "Father of the Pride" both of which were terrible. Nowadays, Matt LeBlanc's comeback vehicle is "Episodes" (nurtured on a network like Showtime which allowed for the proper creative freedoms) and comedies thrive on networks such as Adult Swim, FX, and Fox's animation block where they are encouraged to be offbeat and quirky.

 2004 was a year in which reality TV was threatening to take over programming. "The Apprentice," "Survivor" was as strong as ever, "Fear Factor" had been added to the mix, and there were dating shows galore. Behind the scenes, the WGA was pushing for more inclusive credits for writers on reality TV shows as if those writers were never gonna get their names on scripted shows and it was the best they can do.

These days, reality TV is an afterthought except for a few established brands. There's little fear of good TV being programmed out.

Pretty soon, things would change as a couple of the 2004-2005 hits started to grow "Entourage" "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" and this was followed by great shows. "Desperate Housewives" the ratings darling of 2004-2005 might not be that memorable in retrospect but it did have a star-studded cast and was jumped time shifts.

Also of note, the talent is going to television now. In 2014 alone there were 17 Oscar-winning actors and actresses who had won the highest honor filmdom can bestow and were acting on TV in either a recurring guest role, a miniseries, or a full-fledged credit. They are: 

Kevin Spacey (House of Cards), Marcia Gay Harden (The Newsroom), Jane Fonda (The Newsroom), Frances McDormand (Olive Kitteridge), Halle Berry (Extant), Jessica Lange (AHS: Freak Show), Kathy Bates (AHS: Freak Show), F. Murray Abraham (Homeland), Adrian Brody (Houdini), Robin Williams (Crazy Ones), Matthew McConaughey (True Detective), Anna Paquin (True Blood), Marlee Matlin (Switched at Birth), Chloris Leachman (Raising Hope), Geena Davis (Gray’s Anatomy), Linda Hunt (NCIS: LA) and Octavia Spencer (Red Band Society).

Why we can't leave Brittney alone

That person YouTube who got some publicity a couple weeks ago for proclaiming that we should leave Brittney alone actually had a valid point despite the fact that he appeared overemotional about the subject.

Few people realize how inherently wrong it is to pick on celebrities, but the vast majority of celebrities the general American public does have the decency to leave alone. Others like Brittney, Lindsay, Clay Aiken, Christina Aguilerra, and recently Tom Cruise serve an important need in the entertainment industry: Material for talk show hosts' opening monologue jokes. Of course, there are the awkward occasions when one of these guests is actually on the show (rumor has it that J.Lo refuses to be on Conan O'Brien, for example) but it puts the talk show hosts in the good graces of the public as well as their other celebrity guests in the leave-their-private-lives-alone class who enjoy a good laugh as much as the next person.

You would think that these talk show monologues are a small part of a talk show and therefore insignificant, but keep in mind that this industry is expanding to include the likes of Best Week Ever, The Soup, Chelsea Handler, and the TV Guide Channel. I saw Chelsea Handler's show and while she's an admirable comedian, her list of people it's OK to make fun of consist of only five people. If Brittney were to suddenly live a noble, decent and healthy life, Chelsea Handler would lose 20% of her material! So, therefore it's in the interest of people like her to make sure Brittney keeps screwing up in life and to portray her that way

New Rules

This is my version of New Rules. It's based off the comedy bit that Bill Maher does on his HBO show. I'll keep adding to it as I think of more:

If you've joined the cast of ER, and find yourself successful there, that doesn't mean you can count it as a career resurrection. I saw John Stamos the other night (by the other night, this was some time ago) talking about how while his attempt to helm a series in Jake in Progress was admittedly a failure, he's happy to have found his groove on E.R. Newsflash: John Stamos, you are still not a successful TV actor. Joining the cast of E.R. is like being traded to the San Antonio Spurs as their 12th man and picking up a championship ring with them. Carrot Top and Fran Drescher could join the cast of E.R. and the show would still live to see another season. E.R. is just one of those shows like The Simpsons, Law and Order, and Meet the Press, that is no longer amazing television but has been going on for so long and is in such a secure timeslot that the networks just leave it alone. There kinds of shows don't end until way after they have passed their prime.

Conan O'Brien (and probably David Letterman too) can no longer use people as punchlines to his monologues that he has as guests on his show. I saw Lindsay Lohan on his show the other day and he was as cordial to her as can be for someone who exploits her family dysfunction on a weekly basis. Conan O'Brien also cannot use the star of a just-cancelled NBC sitcom like John Lithgow, Matt LeBlanc or Whoopi Goldberg as a punchline to a monologue joke if he had that guest on at the beginning of the TV season to plug their show and he himself noted how much he "just loved their show."

All the major newspapers should collectively limit themselves to a quota of ten stories on how handsome and dashing George Clooney is to a minimum. And if we're gonna praise George Clooney for his ability to bring publicity to the misery going on in Africa, then why don't we write articles about what he actually does in Africa rather than write articles about how great of a guy he is because of what he does in Africa.

Anyone who acts as a first career gets priority in casting to anyone who acts as a second career and uses the publicity to promote their first career, whether it be stand-up comedian (Dane Cook, Kevin James), actress (Mandy Moore, Alicia Keys, Jessica Simpson, 50 Cent, Justin Timberlake, Li'l Bow-Wow, Drew Lechay, Nelly), basketball players (Shaq, Darius Miles), or rich girl (Paris Hilton). Speaking of which, Joe Simpson cannot be allowed to make movies (Employee of the Month or Blonde Ambition) simply because he wants to find something for his daughter to do.

No more commercials for movie promotions saying "It's official. Jackass 2/Saw III/RV/Silent Hill/Failure to Launch is the #1 movie in America. Come see what all the buzz is about" without enclosing a disclaimer to the public that you're film is the #1 movie in America for this past weekend and not the whole year. You must also disclose that in any given year about 30 pictures share that honor with you and that you're only competition was:
-Fearless and Flyboys in the case of Jackass 2,
-The Departed in its 4th weekend of release in the case of Saw III
-United 93 which only had a 1/3 the number of theaters that you did for opening weekend and Stick It in the case of RV
-Two equally forgettable movies like The Sentinel and American Dreams in the case of Silent Hill
-The Shaggy Dog and The Hills Have Eyes in the case of Failure to Launch

The Late night talk show wars

I was watching David Letterman last night for about 15 minutes because Rachel Ray was on, and I wanted to see what she was all about, and I just can’t stand him. It just baffles me that 10 years ago our country was engaged in a debate over who should be the next Tonight Show host and our only two options were Jay Leno and David Letterman, because neither of those 2 are particularly good.

Jay Leno is a pretty good stand-up comic and seems like a genuinely nice guy but when you get down to it, he’s a poor conversationalist. In other words, he’s a boring guy to talk to and an even more boring guy to watch having a conversation. He asks the guests really obvious and boring questions like “how’s your marriage going?”, “how are your kids doing?”, “what do you like to do with your kids?”, “how do you like to spend Christmas/Thanksgiving/The 4th of July/[whatever holiday is coming up]?” He also asked a lot of people when the Olympics were on if they watched the Olympics and what events they liked and stuff (It’s kind of a promotional thing because NBC broadcasts the Olymnpics), which is funny because most of the guests talked excitedly about the Olympics with him, while I’ve heard a lot of celebrities (like Bryant Gumbel and Charles Barkley) speak out about how boring the Winter Olympics are. For the record, I personally like the Winter Olympics, but I’m getting off track.

I don’t really feel a need to attack Leno because, despite the fact that he apparently gets better ratings than Letterman, I’ve never met a single fan of Jay Leno. Theoretically, some people must be watching somewhere, but it doesn’t seem like criticizing Leno is doing anything more than preaching to the choir. Letterman, on the other hand, has a cult following of people who love him. Just turn on his show and you’ll see that the audience wildly applauds at anything he says that’s even a remote attempt at humor. They applaud twice as much as they actually laugh, which says a lot because laughing is a physiological reaction to something funny whereas clapping is something a brainwashed audience does. He also gets claps for things that aren’t funny, but are things he says that the audience agrees with. He might say “New York is a great city” or something and the audience goes off on. (I have that same problem with the Daily Show. Not so much John Stewart but the way audiences tend to hang on every word of his and clap and laugh too much). The problem is the difference between the actual number of funny things he does vs. the number of times they applaud or laugh. My theory is that he used to be funny, and that things like “Will it Float?” or “Is This Something” were at the time revolutionary. They’re both kind of funny once, but he hasn’t changed his act in years. Conan O’Brien does the same kind of acts like “Celebrity Signatures” or “New State quarters” but each new act gives us a new set of state quarters or signatures. That sums up Letterman as a whole: You know how sometimes a funny comedian tells a few jokes to warm up the crowd so that they’ll laugh at anything for later comedians? Letterman warmed up the crowd ten years ago and those people come back to watch him and laugh at what he does now, but for those of us who just turn on his show now and watch, there’s not much to watch. He’s also a poor conversationalist like Leno (slightly better, though) and he is often rude with and disinterested in his guests.

Conan O’Brien, on the other hand, does have the qualities that a talk show host should have and I think that most people my age know it, even if the demographics don’t reflect it. He is genuinely interested in his guests, self-aware, and he works for his laughs every night.