Tag: year in television

The Year in Hollywood 2008

The year 2008 will go down in history as the final year of the presidential primaries, which started approximately three years before any of the candidates were born. That was highly entertaining for everyone except the American people that had to suffer through approximately 10,000 hours of political commercials per day.

Having said that, let’s look at something slightly less entertaining, what Hollywood was up to:

January – Lost debuts, giving people hope that all the weird questions about the show will be answered.

Hollywood was in the midst of a writer’s strike, which meant that a lot of people who you’ve never heard of were running around with picket signs. Hollywood executives were very concerned, and said so through numerous very sincere press releases from their limousines.

People were just beginning to realize that what was going on meant disaster because it meant more reality television. By the end of the month, all the experts were saying that the writer’s strike was going to last for at least another six months.

February – Listening to the experts in January, the American people brace themselves for a long strike, which ends in early February.

Big Brother 9 starts up, answering the question, “They’re not really going to do a ninth season, are they?”

March – The show “New Amsterdam” debuts and is watched by literally several people;

The show “The Return of Jezebel James” proves that some shows weren’t meant to show up, let alone return from anywhere.

April – Miley Cyrus poses for photos for Annie Leibovitz in Vanity Fair, and everyone is actually shocked when they turn out to be a bit provocative. They use the excuse that all the adults went to the bathroom at the same time while this was happening, and they promise never to do that again.

May –Survivor Micronesia’s biggest Survivor fan ever, Erik, must have missed all the shows where people scheme behind each other’s backs and gives up an immunity idol on the show. He’s completely shocked when they actually vote him off the tribe for being stupid.

Indiana Jones returns in “Indiana Jones – Raiders of the Lost Teeth”.

Lost’s season ends, leaving us with a lot of old weird questions unanswered, and a whole bunch of new weird questions unanswered.

June – Jamie Lynn Spears gives birth, trying to top her sister in the “I’m Crazier Than You” category by naming the kid “Spearmint”, before later changing it to “Maddie Briann”.

George Carlin dies, causing everyone else to say seven dirty words.

Pixar knocks another animated movie out of the ball park when it debuts “WALL-E”, a movie where a robot discovers a group of humans that just sit around in front of screens and do nothing but eat. This movie goes over very well with a bunch of humans who sit around in movie theatres, watch a large screen and do nothing but eat.

July – Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie give birth to twins – This was mostly Jolie’s role, although Pitt said he could have done the birth himself, if the role had called for it. They’re both surprised when they realized they could have their own kids, rather than traveling around the world looking for them.

August – Summer Olympics starts up in China with a spectacular show that can be seen in high-definition, even from the moon. They use humans to form a large pyramid, letters of the Chinese alphabet, and the stadium itself. Controversy unfolds as Europe accuses a 6 month old Chinese child wins the gymnastics all-around, and also accuses Michael Phelps of being part dolphin.

The press announces that Madonna turns 50, still performing in her “I might break a hip” tour.

September – New Kids On The Block release a record – again; 90210 debuts – again; People begin to wonder if any new things are going to ever come out, or if we’re doomed to recycled television shows.

SNL returns for it’s 600-th season, and breaks it’s own record for actually being funny twice in one season.

Heroes starts a new season, which promises to be all different this time around because this time they’re going to save the whole world!

October – Madonna and Guy Ritchie divorce, causing people to ask, “Wait! When did she get married?”

“High School Musical 3: Senior Year” debuts, millions of parents pray that none of them end up in college for a four movie sequel.

November – The election finally ends; half the country is upset, half the country is overjoyed, and half the country doesn’t understand there aren’t three halves in a whole.

“Twilight” opens, which is yet another story about vampires falling in love, which was never done on a show like “Angel” or “Moonlight”.

On Heroes, the “Villains” episode is shown. This proves to be a turning point in the show because things are a lot more interesting when the Heroes have someone to go up against; unfortunately, there aren’t many new characters, just a lot of old ones behaving badly.

“24: Redemption” is shown, but it turns out that it has nothing to do with S&H Green Stamps.

December – NBC announces that Jay Leno will now be on at 10 pm, allowing everyone to go to bed an hour earlier.

See you in 2009!

The Year in Television 2007

The Year in Television 2007

It’s 2008! You know what that means, lots and lots of lists about various things that happened in 2007. You can add this one to the list of those lists.

January

The very popular show“24” started up again. What would Jack do this time? Who would he go after? Well it turned out that Jack did what he does best, which is shoot people, and it pretty much didn’t matter who it was. What else did we find out? We found out that Jack Bauer’s tears cause nuclear weapons to go off, and that after seeing that at the very beginning of the season, the show pretty much went down hill from there. I mean, how do you top that? Let’s hope 2008 is a better year for Jack.

February

With football season at an end, and the Superbowl right around the corner, most of the country found out that teams that didn’t come from either coast of the United States were about to be locked in battle. I speak of course, of “Survivor”. This go ‘round, they are in Fiji. In this all new “Survivor”, they sat around and complained about each other, ate really nasty things, and voted each other off the island, which was completely different every other “Survivor”.

America was further astonished to find out about two teams that are just over 200 miles away from each other, in mysterious places called “Illinois” and “Indiana”, and which reside someplace called the “Midwest”. Americans are even more surprised that these places have football, and that, somehow, they are both going to the Superbowl.

After getting over this whole “Midwest” thing, organizers logically held the Superbowl in Miami, Florida. Miami is basically very much like New York, except New York cab drivers are scared to drive there. Many, many people came to the Superbowl, and advertisers spent millions of dollars on ads. There was also a football game. The Indianapolis Colts won.

March

In March, a show about a bunch of people who have done terrible things and lie about it came on television. It looked like it was going to be a hit, until everyone realized it was just the presidential candidates starting up earlier than ever before.

Someone in Hollywood must have had the inside scoop on this, since they were able to create a show based around a similar set of circumstances, where people pretend to be someone else: “The Riches”. The show starred that great comedian Eddie Izzard, who creates great dramatic performances while still making things funny at times, all while not wearing a dress.


April

In April, shows that started in the Fall of 2006 were already starting to end. The shows “30 Rock” and “Studio 60” both started in the fall were each about late night comedy shows except that one was actually good, and lived through the entire season.

“The Sopranos” returned in April, and people were very anxious to see how, in just a couple of short months, Tony Soprano’s fate would be resolved in a nice uncomplicated and unambiguous way.

May

The season finale of “Lost” came in May, and as usual, everything that happened in the show was completely crystal clear. That is, if you wash your crystal with butter. After audiences had gotten used to seeing a lot of flashbacks, this time the writers turned things around and did a flash-forward. I look forward to the next season of Lost when they start doing flash-sideways.

A show called “On the Lot” debuted. It aimed to find the next Steven Spielberg, and it turns out that people were pretty much satisfied with the Steven Spielberg they already had and didn’t watch the show.

A nation was shocked to find out that Rosie O’Donnell was leaving “The View”. A nation asked, “That show is still on?”


June

People were very upset when “Jericho” was cancelled, and they decided to send CBS a message. After thousands of pounds of nuts were sent into CBS headquarters, the network said that they understood, and were going to take immediate action: They announced that Dan Rather was coming back. This announcement was short-lived when CBS realized that what people really wanted was Jericho back. CBS agreed, and later in the year said that it would be back in 2008. Dan Rather lobbied to be on “Jericho” as a newscaster, but executives thought it would be completely implausible.

“The Sopranos” ended, and someone thought it would be a good idea to end the show by abruptly going to black. Most of The Sopranos audience thought it would be a good idea to go see the writers of the last episode and abruptly make them black and blue.

Take a group of people, have them dress up funny, do strange tasks and pay the winner million dollars at the end. “Survivor”? No, unfortunately, it was “Pirate Master”, and it made its debut in June. To say this show stunk like Limburger cheese would be just mean and nasty to Limburger cheese.

July

CBS, hoping to appease the steaming, frothing mouths of “Jericho” fans, started rerunning the show in hopes it will buy the network some time until new shows can be produced.

Final episodes of the show “Drive” started to air. The show tried to be mysterious as “Lost”, except without the island, weird smoke monster, and the excitement.

August

“High School Musical 2” debuted, and thousands of teenagers fainted in all the excitement. Parents everywhere were bewildered how a musical could do that to today’s youth.

Bob Barker said goodbye to “Price is Right” after approximately one million years of hosting the show. He will be missed.

September

Millions of “Lost” fans started searching their dials for where “Lost” was. That answer: January 2008. The writers for the show struck a deal in which they could run all the shows back to back, without doing any reruns. Everyone seemed to be satisfied by this, and the only thing that could through a wrench in those plans would be a writer’s strike, which seemed HIGHLY unlikely.

A nation watched as Whoopi Goldberg joined “The View”. A nation asked, “I really wasn’t kidding last time, the show isn’t really still on is it?” A nation would be disappointed by the answer.

“Moonlight” premiered. This was a show about a brooding vampire that helps people instead of sucking their blood. This show was much better the first time around when it was called “Angel” and had different actors and characters.

Heroes season 2 debuted, but started somewhere in the middle of the story which confused the living heck out of people. Most of the new characters are interesting and include live versions of the Wonder Twins from the old Justice League cartoon. Instead of having the ability to morph into different objects, when their Wonder Twin powers give the brother the ability to make his sister stop crying, which is a good thing since her tears are black and kill people. Another new character seemed to have a mysterious stalking ability which he used on the cheerleader, Claire, but it was later revealed that was wrong. He could fly AND stalk her.

“Chuck” debuted. This show was about a clerk at a big box store that had all of the national intelligence secrets downloaded into his brain, leaving him a complete moron. Well, that’s want would happen if that were really true. What happened on the show was he, naturally, becomes a spy and helps the real spies thwart bad people from doing bad things, all while retaining his original job.

“The Office” debuted, and we finally found out that Jim and Pam were dating. Not in the open, (at least at first), but dating none the less.


October

Everyone was waiting for a new program people will be talking about all week after each show. That program was: “Cavemen”. The things people were saying were, “Urgh, Wurf, and Blech”. Those aren’t cavemen words either. Fortunately, by now most of those people have finished having their stomachs pumped, and are now able to watch regular programs again. They have, however, been asked to step away from any shows with the words “cave” or “men” in them.

“Big Bang Theory” was another new show, this one about a group of nerdy types that hang out with a girl that lives across the hall. The entire basis of this program was to show that making jokes about topics in nuclear physics, Greek philosophers, and chemistry was a completely untapped resource… and for a good reason. It was hard to tell which was more implausible, that people with high IQs could be so social unaware, or that the socially aware could have such low IQs.

“The Next Great American Band” was a show in search of the next great American band. There are many talented people on the show, just chomping at the bit for an opportunity to be taken to the cleaners by the record industry.

Drew Carey started on “Price is Right”, taking over from Bob Barker. Drew was on a lot of game shows this year, including the “The Power of 10”, “Whose Line is it Anyway”, and the newly announced, “The Power Price is 10 Right Lines Anyway”.

November

The Writer’s Strike started. The writers were trying to get a little more money for each DVD sold, and, horror of horrors, they want to get paid for programs that others were making millions from. With everyone in Hollywood making money on shows, it is hard to believe that the writers are usually the low people on the totem pole. Even the sewer cleaners in Hollywood advised the writers, “You really need to get a better contract”.

Having no new shows struck fear into the hearts of the Hollywood moguls, and they’ve already taken steps to deal with the strike. Most had already switched from lighting cigars with $100 bills to $20 bills.

What this meant was shows that should have been off the air sooner than they were (like “Cavemen”) stayed on longer than they should have.

December

Many TV shows came out on DVD in time for the Christmas season, and even TV shows that were made into movies and then put on to DVD, to later be put back onto TV after DVD sales die out. This includes “The Simpsons” Movie, which asks the question: What does a spiderpig do?

David Letterman made an end run around CBS which doesn’t actually own “Late Night with David Letterman”, and struck a deal with his writers to come back to work. The other late night shows are going to try and do this without writers, and we’ll just have to see how that’s going to turn out when they debut in 2008.

With Thanksgiving and Christmas over, and a lot of football still to play, most of the programs that have already gone into re-runs because of the writer’s strike have gone unnoticed, and probably will do so until the beginning of 2008 when people start to realize what a real horror this could all be. There is going to be a lot more reality programming headed our way, so be careful not to step in it.