We've been running a poll all this week allowing you to vote on which comedies you thought were the best of the year. And the results are in! And not terribly surprising!
Parks and Rec and Community were the clear favorites, with Happy Endings taking a strong third place. Following them were a number of worthy shows. Some notable tidbits from the results:
-There's not much love for The Office these days; it received a paltry 3 votes. -The quickly cancelled BFFs beat out a number of heavy hitters, including How I Met Your Mother, Portlandia and South Park. -Animated shows ranked in order: Archer, Bob's Burgers, American Dad, [...]
Wrapping up this season, we asked some of our contributors to write about some of their favorite comedies that have aired since the fall. Instead of handing out accolades to just one show, we're looking at a number of shows that all deserve to be called the best comedy of the season.
Happy Endings was not the best comedic show on television this season. But it was the funniest.
The show's premise is nothing special: A couple break up on their wedding day, forcing their four mutual friends to navigate their way through the subsequent mess. And hilarity ensues? Describing what happens during an average episode in one sentence doesn't [...]
If you haven't noticed, this isn't the end of 2012 (and according to my Mayan friend, Maya, the end of the universe). We are drawing a distinction between a Season In Review and a Year In Review, as to celebrate the traditional television season. But in doing so, I realized the idea of the television season itself doesn’t seem to loom as large as it once did. The excitement over finales and the despair over time apart from favorite shows feels shorter lived. Mostly, it doesn’t feel final, as it's not like television is going anywhere. If anything, the summer is a more exciting time for television as for [...]
Now that we’ve looked at some of the highlights from the past season of SNL, let’s talk about the cast. One thing that often fails to get mentioned is the comedic powerhouse we have in the current ensemble. Save for an occasional low-drama tweak (Paul Brittain was let go from the show in February; Kate McKinnon added in April), there has been relatively low turnover throughout the past few seasons — a sign that Lorne is pretty happy with the way things are going. As he should be! Not since Phil Hartman have we seen performers so clearly suited for sketch comedy the way Kristen Wiig and Bill [...]
So, the 2011-2012 TV season is pretty much finished at this point. Looking back, there's only one question that comes to mind: which single show was the very best? There's gotta be one that stands above the rest, right? Well, there's only one way to determine what that show is, and that's a decidedly un-scientific poll.
Now, before we get to it, a couple of notes. First, this is counting shows from the fall and mid-season (January premieres), so summer shows like Louie, Wilfred, Girls, and Veep do not count. Nor do late night shows such as The Daily Show or SNL. It's all prime time comedy from the [...]
