The Seventh Annual Andy TV Awards: Comedy Acting

If you want to see how these went last year, and how infrequently I blog, scroll down just a bit.

It’s that time of year again when I finally update my blog, pick the very best in the world of television. While most of the TV internet is using the opportunity of the Emmys to pick from the Academy’s flawed list of nominees, I use my time wasted watching too much TV judgement to pick the most deserving nominees AND winners for the acting and show categories. Unlike the Academy, I base my decisions on entire seasons worth of television, and not just submitted episodes (since, you know, no one is submitting episodes to win fake internet awards).

The Sixth Annual Andy TV Awards – Comedy Series

The acting awards are out of the way, time for the big ones. Of note, I don’t do the writing or directing categories, although I think them important, because it’s too difficult to pick six episodes out of the hundreds I see all year. Whole seasons? I can do. Individual episodes? Too much.

The Sixth Annual Andy TV Awards – Comedy Acting

Now that the intro and guest acting awards are out of the way, let’s get to some of the categories you may actually care about. Shows that the Academy nominated here I don’t watch include Glee, Two and a Half Men, Mike & Molly, Hot in Cleveland, The Big C, and Episodes, because I was too busy watching good TV shows. I have seen a few episodes of Raising Hope and enjoyed them, but not enough to nominate anyone from it.

Read on for my nominees and winners in the supporting and leading actor and actress categories.

The Sixth Annual Andy TV Awards

The most prestigious fake television award on this blog

With the Emmys fast approaching, I figured I’d better start posting my traditional Andy TV Awards, not that I have a hope in hell in getting it all done before the show. For the uninitiated, the Andy TV Awards are where I not only pick who should win awards in television achievement, but also where I show who should have been nominated in the first place. No sense in simply picking from the Academy’s flawed list of nominees, when they often can’t even be bothered to nominate the very best performances, much less the six best.

So what makes me more qualified to do this than the Emmys themselves? For starters, I actually WATCH television, so that puts me ahead of a lot of voters. For the 2010-11 season, I watched complete (or near-complete) seasons of 30 different comedies and dramas. So these choices will be fairly extensive. Of course, I still don’t watch everything, so here’s a list of some critically acclaimed shows that I don’t watch, and thus were left off my ballot: Treme, Dexter (gave up on it this season), Shameless, Glee, The Killing (gave up just in time), and anything from the UK. Shows that aren’t necessarily acclaimed (but did get some Emmy nominations) that I don’t watch include Two and a Half Men, House, Harry’s Law, The Big C, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Read on for the ground rules and my nominees and winners for Guest Performances on TV. Stay tuned for Comedy Acting, Drama Acting, Comedy Series, and Drama Series.

Top 20 TV Shows of 2010

This would make my TV watching so much easier.

I had big plans for my year end TV post to finally dive into podcasting to discuss my list with my TV viewing-and-life partner. I did a good amount of prep so we wouldn’t stumble around the whole time, gave my wife the hard sell to convince her to humour me (a pattern in our relationship), and set aside a night to record (cutting into valuable TV watching time). We talked for about 2.5 hours, going over the greatness of the year in TV, each of the top 20, and a little bit about different shows that missed the list. Sure, that’s a long podcast, but with editing and splitting, I think it would’ve been a fun two-parter. It was all pretty cool… until I realized that I completely screwed up the recording (largely due to the high potentiality that I forgot to hit the “record” button before we started).

We thought about redoing it, making it shorter in the process, but never got around to it. Now we’re over two months past the end of the year, which is a little late to be talking about the previous year of a continuous medium like television. Not only are we past the point of relevance for such a list, the past two months for fresh content makes it pretty difficult (how do you talk about a show in terms of 2010 if it’s continued to run new episodes since then?).

But… I already made the list. And the internet isn’t going to break if one more list is added to it, even one that’s a little late to be relevant. After all, I didn’t spend my time watching all or at least a majority of 41 different shows to not tell people what I think of them. So even though it’s entirely unlike me to do so, I’ll be posting them without comment, since I’ve already spent 2.5 hours sharing my thoughts with my number one reader on these, in addition to thoughts I already typed in last year’s Andy TV Awards and thoughts I’ll share in this year’s awards. But I’d love to discuss any show here if you’re interested, so leave a comment and we can chat.

And now, the list.

The Fifth Annual Andy TV Awards – Outstanding Comedy Series

So I worked fast to get the acting awards out before the Emmys, but have now been dragging my feet in posting the two big awards: Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Drama Series. I thought about just rushing through it like actual Emmys did, pushing through the two most important awards as fast as possible because Al Pacino decided to filibuster his acceptance speech for an award no one cares about. But instead, I’m going the other way, and spending more time with these two than the others. Because if you read me at all, it isn’t because of my tendency to be brief. Or timely.

If you’re not caught up, here’s what you missed:
Introduction and Guest Acting Awards
Comedy Acting Awards
Drama Acting Awards

And now for the one of the big awards…

The Fifth Annual Andy TV Awards – Comedy Series Acting

Now that we’ve got the introduction and guest stars out of the way, let’s move on to categories people might actually care about. Comedy always takes a back seat to drama at these award shows, playing as the opening act to the more prestigious drama awards. It wasn’t my intention to that here, the reason is more practical: there’s two drama series I’m still hoping to finish before I write/post that category (one I will, one I probably won’t… unless my posting schedule is even slower than I’m anticipating). But I’m all caught up on every comedy I want to watch, so no need to delay.

The big missing show here is Glee, which got a whole whack of Emmy nominations but doesn’t interest me at all (the things it does well aren’t typically things I enjoy at all). I also never took to Curb Your Enthusiasm, and have never had any interest in Monk or The New Adventures of Old Christine, and proudly do not watch Two and a Half Men. I did watch 17 different shows this past year that classify themselves as comedies, so the list of potential nominees went pretty deep.

The Fifth Annual Andy TV Awards

The Andy TV Award looks mysteriously like the actual Emmy

The Emmys are this Sunday, so it’s time for someone who actually watches television (unlike, say, Emmy Award voters) to pick not only who should win, but who should’ve been nominated in the major categories. Too many posts around award time waste time picking from the group of flawed choices that the various award shows present.

I’ll be dividing these posts up into different categories. Those of you who have been paying attention to my infrequent posting schedule will not be surprised to read that I have little hope in finishing this list by Sunday, but I’ll do my best to get a few posts in before the real show. I’ll start here with my nominees in Guest Actor and Actress categories (Comedy and Drama), then move on to the acting awards for Comedy, then for Drama, before closing out with the Best Show categories.

#16: Hot Fuzz – Top 25 Films of the Decade

Hot Fuzz (2007)

Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Paddy Considine, Timothy Dalton, Bill Nighy

Directed By: Edgar Wright

Give Cougar Town a chance… despite the name

TV Talk: Cougar Town

Starring: Courteney Cox, Christa Miller, Busy Philipps, Brian Van Holt, Dan Byrd, Ian Gomez, Josh Hopkins

Series Creator: Bill Lawrence and Kevin Biegel

#19: Ocean’s Eleven – Top 25 Films of the Decade

Ocean’s Eleven (2001)

Starring: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Don Cheadle, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan, Carl Reiner, Elliott Gould, Edward Jemison, Bernie Mac, Shaobo Qin

Directed By: Steven Soderbergh

TV Talk: United States of Tara

TV Talk: United States of Tara

Starring: Toni Collette, John Corbett, Rosemarie DeWitt, Brie Larson, Keir Gilchrist

Series Creator: Diablo Cody

The wife and I polished off the first two seasons of United States of Tara in the matter of a few weeks, prompting me to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to resurrect an old feature of the blog: TV Talk, where I “talk” about something on TV in a more free-flowing, non-reviewy kind of way (well… if you read it out loud, it’s almost like talking). This talk will be spoiler-free, so if you haven’t watched the show yet, read this to find out if you should.

#23: Lost in Translation – Top 25 Films of the Decade

Lost in Translation (2003)

Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray, Giovanni Ribisi, Anna Faris

Directed By: Sofia Coppola

Bonus Lists: Best TV Shows of 2009

If my top ten movies of 2009 list was late, then what does that make these lists? I’ll try not to think about it, especially since I still have another year end list to go. But, since I’ve spent the past two months writing about the best TV of the decade, I’m not particularly in the mood to spend the next two writing about the best TV of the year. But since my need to list all things chronological is near pathological, I’m still going to post a list. Two, in fact.

Traditionally, I write a top ten list of the best shows of the year, be they drama, comedy, reality, talk show, whatever. But lately, there’s been so many great shows on TV, that limiting it ten was too difficult. My compromise? Two top 10 lists, one for comedy, one for drama, just with less writing than usual. Another new twist for this year: in the past, I ranked shows based on full seasons – only considering shows that had aired a season finale within the year, even if that means taking episodes from the previous year into consideration. It made sense at the time, but had the unfortunate side effect of making much of my Andy TV Awards redundant. Also, it prevented me from talking about new shows. And in 2009, there was a lot of great new shows. So these lists are more traditional, January through December 2009 viewpoints of television (which, admittedly, is a little more difficult since some of these shows have been running episodes for two and a half months since the qualifications for this list end).

But enough of all that. I’ve already written more than I have time for. On with the lists!

Movie Review: Adventureland (2009)

Adventureland (2009) 

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds, Martin Starr, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Matt Bush, Margarita Levieva

Directed By: Greg Mottola