Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Since it's Thanksgiving (or at least it was when I started writing this), I thought it was appropriate to give thanks for all the great Thanksgiving episodes of TV! Here's a sample of a few of my favorite Thanksgiving episodes (limited to 1 episode per show, and limited to whatever clips I could find posted online).

Will & Grace: "Queens for a Day"

While the earlier Thanksgiving episodes such as the one where they spend Thanksgiving for 10 minutes with each person's family, or the one where Jack's mom comes to dinner and she doesn't know Jack is gay (they sound like Friends episodes when I describe them) might be more classic, one of my favorite Thanksgiving Will & Grace episode is "Queens for a Day" from Season 7. In this episode, the gang all goes to Queens for the day (as you might have guessed) to spend Thanksgiving with Will's boyfriend Vince's family. Will spends the day trying to impress Vince's mom with the perfect Thanksgiving dinner, while Grace and Karen both hook up with Vince's teenage cousin and Jack discovers that Vince's engaged sister is secretly a lesbian. This is how the big Thanksgiving dinner goes down:

Boy Meets World: "Turkey Day"
Cory is from a middle class family, and his best friend Shawn lives in a trailer park. Shawn decides it would be fun if Cory's family came over to the trailer park for Thanksgiving. But even though their difference in social class was never much of an issue for Cory and Shawn as friends, they'll soon learn that it'll be more difficult than they thought for their parents to get along. Here's what happens:

South Park: "Helen Keller! The Musical"

While most TV shows have Thanksgiving episodes about families coming together at a Thanksgiving dinner, this episode of South Park features the boys putting on a Thanksgiving musical about Helen Keller. The boys all want the show to feature a great turkey in honor of Thanksgiving, but Timmy, the handicapped kid who plays Helen Keller in the show, insists on using Gobbles, a handicapped turkey.

After Timmy realizes that the Broadway turkey trainer tricked him and sent Gobbles away to be slaughtered, Timmy leaves the show to save Gobbles. The play's director, the guy who starred in Les Miz on Broadway, steps in to save the show. It's a Thanksgiving miracle!

Everybody Loves Raymond: "The Bird"

My favorite Thanksgiving episode of Everybody Loves Raymond is called "The Bird", and involves the Barones having Thanksgiving with Amy's family. They're all getting along fine, until a bird flies into the window, and instead of trying to help save the bird, Amy's mother kills it to put it out of its misery, much to the shock of the Barones. A classic Thanksgiving episode ensues. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a clip of that episode anywhere on the Internet, nor can I find a clip from any of of the other classic Thanksgiving episodes (The one where Debra decides to serve fish instead of turkey, the one where Marie decides to make a tofu turkey instead of a real one, etc.). The only Thanksgiving clip I could find online is the one that follows. Still funny, but not the one I wanted to show. If anyone can find a better Everybody Loves Raymond Thanksgiving clip, please comment here and let us know!

Friends: "The One with all the Thanksgivings"

Friends has kind of been known for their Thanksgiving episodes, as it's a great opportunity to have all 6 characters in one room for one crazy meal. While there has been a great Thanksgiving episode nearly each of the 10 seasons the show was on the air, (including the ones where Underdog escapes, they play football, and Brad Pitt shows up to Thanksgiving and confesses he and Ross had an "I Hate Rachel Club" in high school), my favorite would have to be "The One with all the Thanksgivings". This episode had the friends sitting around and reminiscing about all the worst Thanksgivings that they've had, and is filled with tons of flashbacks to various Thanksgivings throughout their lives. Here are some of my favorite clips from that episode:

Hope you all had a restful Thanksgiving weekend!

TV Star Spotlight: Jim Rash

Our favorite new show of the season is a sitcom called Community. It airs at 8:00, the perfect start to the best 2 hours television (8-10 on Thursdays on NBC). While the show boasts a great ensemble cast of actors (including Joel McHale from The Soup, comedy legend Chevy Chase, and recent break-out star Ken Jeong [the naked Asian guy who jumped out of the car in The Hangover]) there's another actor who I didn't really know on the show, but looked very familiar. His name is Jim Rash, and on Community he plays the hilarious Dean Pelton, who is always trying to gain publicity for the school. Here's a clip of him from the most recent episode of Community (You can stop watching after the first minute and 15 seconds if you want, it's a really long clip. Or if you're enjoying it, keep watching!):

That guy looked very familiar to me, but I didn't know where I had seen him before. So naturally, I turned to the greatest website on the Internet (except for this one of course), www.imdb.com! I looked him up, and he has appeared in two of our favorite shows: Friends and Will & Grace! Even more interesting, in both shows, he appeared as a guy on a plane! In Friends, he was in the series finale as the guy who afraid of the plane's lack of "phalange" and in Will & Grace he played a steward who wouldn't let Grace into first class (until Will flirted with him). Don't believe me? See for yourself!

Monty Python: In Search of the Flying Circus

It all started last Saturday night when we were watching a DVRed episode of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon featuring 4 of the original cast members of the classic British comedy group Monty Python. (You can see some of their silliness here):

While we're fairly familiar with Monty Python (we've seen Holy Grail and Meaning of Life and we loved their Broadway musical Spamalot) we've never really seen the TV show where Monty Python first started, Monty Python's Flying Circus. But after watching the silly antics of these (now older) men on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, we decided that we had to go out and buy the complete series of Flying Circus on DVD. When we finished watching Monty Python on Late Night, it was already 10 pm, and most stores were closed, with the exception of Barnes & Noble, which closes at 11:00.

We went online to see the availability of the set, and we were faced with a dilemma. There are two different complete series sets of Monty Python's Flying Circus! The first one is called "The 16 Ton Megaset", which features all 45 episodes of the series, as well as 2 bonus disks of "Monty Python Live" which features some live shows that Monty Python did.

The other set was called the "Deluxe Mega Set", and in addition to all 45 episodes and the Monty Python Live disks, it also had all of the "Personal Best" DVDs (kind of like the SNL Best of DVDs, it has the best of each cast member's sketches) and also 2 new documentaries. The Deluxe Mega Set is obviously newer and better, but it is also of course much more expensive. On Amazon, the 16 Ton Set sold for $56.99 and the Deluxe Mega Set sold for $84.99. I always do like to get the best set available, but was it worth an extra $20 for the Personal Best DVDs (which is just a compilation of sketches on the other disks) and some documentaries?

After much deliberation, we decided that no, it was not worth it. We just wanted to see the show. We didn’t really need the documentaries (I later found out that the documentaries are available separately). So, we were set, we were going to get the 16 Ton Mega Set! Furthermore, at Barnes & Noble, it was on sale for 50% off! Of course Barnes & Noble is always more expensive then Amazon, but since it was 50% off, instead of it selling for $100, it was no on sale for $50! Plus, I could use my Barnes & Noble membership discount to get 10% off, so now it was only $45! Over $10 cheaper than Amazon (how rare!), and we could watch it TONIGHT! We were very excited, but after checking the "Pick it up now" feature on Barnes & Noble's website, we realized that it wasn't available at the B&N near us, but it was available at the one about 20 minutes away. Unfortunately, it wasn’t there, and it only appeared to be in stock because the website takes a while to update. They did, however, have the Deluxe Megaset, available for $130. We declined this overpriced offer, and went home, defeated.

We checked online again to see where the 50% off Megaset was available, and we saw that it was for sale 30 minutes away at a mall in New York, so we reserved the copy online. We went to Barnes & Noble, and there it was, behind the counter, waiting for us to take it home (this is a great feature!). By the way, for readers who are thinking of expanding their DVD collections, the Barnes & Noble sale is still going on, and as of right now, the Monty Python Megaset is the #1 bestselling DVD! If it’s not available near you, and you aren’t incredibly impatient like us, you can order it.

After going the wrong way on the highway and driving through the Bronx to get to J’s house, we watched the first 3 episodes that night. The show is very unique. It's a sketch comedy show, but unlike SNL, the sketches in each episode usually have recurring themes or references. At the same time, each sketch is completely random and unexpected. They also have these very creative and often hilarious animated segments which act as transitions from one random sketch to the next. Some sketches were funnier than others, but here's a few of my favorites. What do you think?

TV Star Spotlight: Bill Irwin

All of our favorite shows are back on TV, and there's so many great clips from these new episodes that we could talk about today, but today I'm feeling a little retro.

Yesterday, A and I saw the show Bye Bye Birdie on Broadway. The show starred John Stamos in the lead role of Albert Peterson (originated by TV legend Dick Van Dyke), however the guy who really stole the show was Bill Irwin, as Mr. McAfee (originated by TV vet Paul Lynde). A and I actually saw Bill Irwin on Broadway a few months ago in a play called Waiting for Godot" (opposite Nathan Lane), and he was really amazing in both shows. However, we never really knew who he was. While waiting outside the stage door last night to get the actor's autographs, I overheard people talking about Bill Irwin, and how he appeared in an episode of The Cosby Show as a performer on stage that Cliff took the kids to see. I remembered that episode, but I never realized that it was the same guy. Well, here it is, from The Cosby Show, Bill Irwin:

TV DVDs of the Week: The Office!

Last Sunday it was my birthday. I received a $50 bill in the mail from my aunt and uncle. On Tuesday, I went to Best Buy, and used it to buy season 5 of The Office on Blu-ray (the day it was released). Even though I already saw all of these episodes when they originally aired last year, it is still so much fun to rewatch them again. The set is also packed with tons of special features, including deleted scenes for every episode. The Office is in my opinion, the best show on TV, and I just love it more and more every time I watch it. The show is so funny, but also so well written, with a huge ensemble of fully developed characters who the audience really cares about. We've only gotten through about 5 episodes so far, but I'm looking forward to going through the rest of the season as soon as I can. Also, I really can't wait until the 6th season of The Office starts this Thursday, September 17!!! I'm sure it'll be amazing.

Here is a clip from the 2nd episode of Season 5, "Business Ethics", where the employees of Dunder Mifflin discuss some ethical dilemmas they've faced in the office.

TV Clip of the Day: Swiffer Sleepers!

Happy Labor Day everyone! I know I posted a lot of SNL clips yesterday, but for my birthday yesterday I received this SNL Best of Commercial Parodies DVD, and I just had to share this clip. While the DVD contained lots of great commercial parodies, from classic clips from the early seasons of SNL with John Belushi and Dan Akryod, to more recent clips such as "Taco Town" with Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis and Andy Samberg, this one clip in particular (featuring Amy Poehler) just had me laughing hysterically. Here it is, Swiffer Sleepers!

Big SNL Changes!

This past week was filled with lots of big news for the upcoming season of Saturday Night Live. First, we got the news of 2 new SNL cast members!

The first new cast member is Jenny Slate. According to her bio, Jenny had a one-woman show called "Dead Millionaire" at the Upright Citizen's Brigade theater in NY (which was founded by Amy Poehler) and she was also part of the comedy team "Gabe & Jenny". I've never heard of any of these things, however, I do recognize Jenny from her role in the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon fake reality show, 7th Floor West (a parody of The Hills)! If you've seen the show (which really is quite great!) then you know that Jenny plays a character named Jenny, who eventually becomes Jimmy's assistant. She was great in 7th Floor West, so I'm sure she'll be great on SNL! Here's an episode of 7th Floor West that features Jenny:


To see the rest of the episodes (which include lots more of Jenny) head to http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/7th-floor-west/.

The second new cast member is Nasim Pedrad, who I have never heard of and I've never seen any of her work. Apparently she had also had a one-woman show called "Me, Myself, and Iran" and she's done improv with the Groundlings (the legendary improv troupe which produced past SNL stars such as Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kattan, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, and many many more). Nasim is also the first Iranian cast member, so it's definitely great that the cast is showing a little more diversity. Can't wait to see what she'll bring to SNL!

While I was happy to hear the news of these new cast members, the following day I was devastated to learn that 2 SNL cast members will not be returning this season.

The first SNL departure is Casey Wilson. Casey joined the cast in the middle of the 2007/2008 season, and while she never really broke out with any huge characters, I still enjoyed her work. Some of my favorite Casey Wilson memories include her Rachel Ray impression, her low voiced character from the Cougar Den sketch, and her handicap stripper character. However I think my favorite Casey Wilson memory was her Jennifer Aniston impression as a guest host of The View. I've never seen anyone do a Jennifer Aniston impression, so it was really interesting to see what Casey picked up on to do her spot-on impression. Casey, we'll miss you, and we wish you the best of luck. Here she is as Jennifer Aniston on the SNL parody of The View:



The other person who will be leaving SNL is Michaela Watkins. Michaela joined SNL in the middle of this past season, so she hasn't been in that many episodes, but she was really starting to make her mark. Among her most memorable SNL sketches include her teen blogger who runs the site "Bitch Pleeze", her impression of Ariana Huffington, and my favorite, her impression of Hota Kotb opposite Kristen Wiig's Kathy Lee hosting the Today Show. It seems too soon for Michaela, so it's especially sad to see her go. Again, we wish you the best. Here's Michaela as Hota on SNL's parody of the 11:00 hour of The Today Show:



That's all the cast news for now. There are still rumors going around about a few other members of the cast (such as Darrell Hammond, who is apparently in negations to return for his 15th season, longer than any other cast member in the history of the show). We'll try to keep you posted as we learn more.

By the way, SNL returns on Saturday September 26 with a show hosted by Megan Fox and musical guests U2! So be sure to tune into that. And if you can't wait that long, on Thursday September 17, less than 2 weeks away, SNL Weekend Update Thursdays will start airing on NBC from 8:00-8:30 (leading into Parks & Recreation, The Office, and the new comedy Community) so that should be a really great night of comedy!

In other SNL-related news, Amy Poehler will be getting her own "SNL Best of" DVD! If you've been following this blog for a while, then you know that as soon as Amy Poehler left SNL, I said I hoped they'd release a DVD of her best sketches, to immortalize her time on SNL in my DVD collection forever, and they listened! SNL-The Best of Amy Poehler will be released on October 20th, so be sure to get it!

TV Clip of the Day

The other day I was driving to work, listening to my usual classic rock station on the radio, when all of a sudden, the music stopped. I don't know why, but the music stopped playing. So I changed stations, and ended up on on CBS FM, New York's Oldie station. A song came on the radio, which immediately made me think of this clip. Enjoy.



In case you couldn't figure it out, the song was "War".

TV DVDs of the Week: Harvey Birdman and SNL

Usually when we have some down time, we go through our DVR and pick out something to watch (usually an old episode of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, because there's really not much else to watch during the summer). However a few days ago, we decided instead to watch some old TV episodes on DVD! Of course then the issue becomes, what should we watch? As you can probably tell from our banner, we have many TV shows on DVD, and since that picture was taken, we've accumulated many more. So after much discussion, here's what we decided to watch:

Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law

Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law is a very interesting show. The show, which aired on Cartoon Network's [Adult Swim] segment, is about Harvey Birdman, who was previously a superhero in the old Hannah Barbara cartoon Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, back int he 1960's. (This is a real show. We actually bought the complete series on DVD. It's pretty bad, but it's interesting to see how they evolved the character). So basically, this old superhero is retired, and now he's a lawyer, defending other old Hannah Barbara cartoon characters in their lawsuits. The show is made for adults, so of course the lawsuits are of a more adult nature. (In one example, Shaggy and Scooby get accused of smoking pot and being high all the time, so they need Harvey to defend them). What's especially interesting about the show, is how they often mix old classic footage of these old cartoon series, with new animations of the old characters, with current actors doing the voices. In this particular episode, Fred Flintstone is accused of having mob connections (in an episode that parodies The Sopranos). We didn't actually watch this episode, but we thought since everyone knows The Flintstones, it would be a good one to share with you.

I also wanted to point out the voice casting for the show. The voice of Harvey Birdman is done by Gary Cole (the boss from Office Space "Yeah, I'm gonna need you to come in on Saturday...) and the voice of Harvey's boss Phil Ken Sabben and also the voice of opposing lawyer Reducto is the one and only Stephen Colbert! Here's Harvey (Cole) and Phil, the guy with the eye patch (Colbert)

And here's Reducto (also Colbert). He's the little green guy obsessed with shrinking people.

And in case you were curious what Birdman, Phil Ken Sabben, and Reducto were like in the original 1960's Birdman and the Galazy Trio show, here's the original episode of when Birdman meets Reducto. (You don't have to watch the whole thing, it's pretty slow and cheesey, but still interesting to compare).

Saturday Night Live: The Best of Eddie Murphy
After watching a few episodes of Harvey Birdman, we decided to switch it up and watch some classic SNL. You may remember a while back I blogged about all the TV-related Chanukkah gifts I got, and one of them was a DVD of SNL-The Best of Eddie Murphy. Though I got the DVD back in December, I never actually got around to watching it, so when we were looking for something to watch and realized we never watched it, we popped it right in. What's interesting about Eddie Murphy's run on SNL, is that he's one of the only few big breakout SNL stars who never worked under SNL creator and Executive Producer Lorne Micheals (Micheals left the show for a few years in the 1980's, before he returned back a few years later. He has been with the show ever since). Subsequently, Murphy has never appeared in any SNL reunions or special SNL events, and rarely acknowledges his time on the show.
Regardless, he still starred in some great sketches, and they're all captured in this great DVD. We're only about half way through with it right now, we'll probably watch the rest later tonight, but here's a few of the sketche that we've enjoyed so far:
Mr. Robinson's neighborhood, a parody of Mister Roger's Neighborhood

White Like Me

Velvet Jones School of Technology:

The Little Richard Simmons Show (Little Richard meets Richard Simmons)

TV Clip of the Day: Billy Cosby interviews Bill Cosby

I have always been a big fan of Bill Cosby, and as everyone knows, he has a very distinct way of talking when he's telling his jokes. It is therefore no surprise that Bill Cosby is one of the most popular celebrities that people often impersonate. When Nick Cannon was on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last month, Nick Cannon was talking about his early days in stand up, and how he used to do many celebrity impressions, including Bill Cosby. Jimmy Fallon said he does an impression of Bill Cosby too, so they decide to do Bill Cosby interviewing Bill Cosby. Who do you think does the best Cosby?

Bruno!

As you probably know, one of the biggest movies to open this weekend, was the film Bruno! The film, from the comedy mastermind Sacha Baron Cohen, the creator of Borat: Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Khazakstan, was hilarious and we both enjoyed it very much.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Bruno is a film, not a TV show, so why am I writing about it on a TV-themed blog. Well, the character of Bruno (as well as the character of Borat) is originally from the HBO TV series Da Ali G Show, a show where Sacha Baron Cohen disguised himself as either Ali G, Borat, or Bruno, and as he does in the films, he interviews real people who don't realize that he's in character, and films their reactions to his crazy questions. After watching the Borat film, I ordered the complete series on DVD (or "Compleet Seereez" as it's written on the cover) see what the original show was like. We watched a few episodes, and we loved the Borat segments, as well as the Bruno segments, however we didn't really care for the Ali G character too much, and unfortunately, each episode has about 2 or 3 Ali G segments, and only 1 or 2 Borat/Bruno segments. So after watching the first few episodes, we put stopped watching, and kind of forgot about it, until now, after enjoying the Bruno film so much, we decided to give the show another shot. This time, we decided to just skip the Ali G scenes, and watch the Borat and Bruno scenes, and we enjoyed them very much. Although we noticed, that Bruno from the TV show, looked very different from Bruno in the film! In the movie, he has a full head of bleached blond hair, whereas on the show, he kind of has a buzz cut, with a bleached Mohawk. Regardless, it's still the same Bruno, acting flamboyantly gay and making Conservative southerners feel very uncomfortable, while exposing the homophobia that still exists in our country. Enjoy!

Apologies

We would like to apologize for the disappearance of our DVD background in our title banner. We had a few technical difficulties, and we're having problems trying to get it back. (The picture is somewhat outdated as since then, we have gotten many more TV DVDs, so I took a photo of all our new TV DVDs, took down the old picture, and put up the new one, but the picture was too huge, so it didn't look right. I tried to get the old picture back, but apparently it's gone, and we can't seem to find the original file.) I know it's ugly with the plain blue back ground, but don't worry, we promise that either we'll get the old picture back, or get a new better picture up as soon as possible! Please bear with us!

Also, we'd like to apologize by not blogging in a while. I will make up for it by writing a new TV blog now.

TV Actors Doing Voices in Commercials for Random Things

We haven't posted any "TV Actors Doing Voices in Commercials for Random Things" lately, so here's a new one for you! This is a claymation commercial for Hotels.com, featuring the voice of Ed Helms (Andy from The Office)!

And though it's technically not just a "voice" in a commercial, Angela Kinsey (Angela from The Office) is now in a commercial for Clairol Nice 'n Easy!

The Office cast sure seems to be getting lots of commercial work!

MTV Movie Awards!

I'm a big fan of awards shows, so I was very excited to see this year's MTV movie awards, especially when I found out that Andy Samberg would be hosting. While I haven't seen most of the movies that were nominated, I enjoy watching just for the funny bits from the host and the presenters. I thought that Andy did a great job as host, and my favorite part was when a power ballad medley of some of the SNL Digital Shorts songs were performed live on stage by some famous singers (although I never actually heard of them). So, here it is, a medley of SNL Digital Shorts songs!

New Music - More Music Videos

Andy also released a brand new Digital Short, called "Explosions" feauturing Will Ferrell! Check it out:

MTV Shows

Jason Sudeikis on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon!

As promised, here is the updated SNL cast photo with Jason Sudeikis grayed out, as he appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon this past Thursday night. I was out that night so I haven't actually seen it yet, but I got it on the DVR so I'll try to watch that as soon as I can. We're getting close the entire cast! Practically all of the "Repertory Cast" have been on (except for Kenan and Darrell) and then there's just the 4 "Featured Cast" members, so we're almost there!

Also, I just found out that next week, Will Ferrell will be on the show Tuesday night and John Krasinski (Jim from The Office) will be on Wednesday night, so I'm really looking forward to those!

Attending the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon show!

Hello faithful blog readers,

Sorry for not blogging in so long, as always, we've been busy. But for those of you who have been closely following our blog, we attended a live taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon this past Monday! When we booked the tickets, we didn't know who his guests would be, so we were a little nervous, but it turned out we picked a great day, as we got to see Anne Hathaway, SNL's Will Forte, and chef Mario Batali! Before we get into the actual show, I thought we'd give you a little behind the scenes report of how the show comes together.

So, when we first arrived at 30 Rockefeller Plaza at 3:30, (where all the New York based NBC shows are taped. 30 Rock, get it?), we were handed a ticket with a letter on it, and a wrist band to get in, and we were told to come back at 4:30. At 4:30, they arranged everyone with tickets in order of the random letter that they wrote on it (we happened to be V) and that is the order that we entered into the studio. (After all the letters they started going through numbers, and then they had people with stand by tickets in case people with real tickets didn't show up, so even though we were V, we were still pretty close to the front). Once we got in they told everyone where we should sit. Then, once we were all seated, they had some NBC comedian/producer guy come out to give us the ground rules while entertaining us. (No screaming in the middle of the show, don't stick your head into the shot if the camera is on someone else, etc.) He was talking to the crowd, making fun of random audience members, he asked who's birthday it was today and had 2 of them do a birthday dance-off for the audience, and the winner got a used copy of an etiquette book, etc. He was funny, and was obviously sent in to get everyone pumped for the show. Then, The Roots came out, and started playing a song for us, again getting everyone riled up as the show was just minutes away from starting. Higgins, the announcer/side kick came out and tells everyone that they are about to begin and to be quiet as they get everything set up.

And then, it started! The opening sequence plays on the screens in front of us, The Roots start to play the opening theme, and Jimmy comes out from behind the curtain! He does his usual monologue, making some jokes about the latest news headlines, but at one point in his monologue, after making one of his jokes (Microsoft just came out with a new XBox where you can play without using your hands. So now you can play with your XBox while you play with your Wii). he ran up to the cue card guy, took the cue card with that joke on it, and went into the audience and gave the card to a lucky audience member. No, it wasn't us, but she was right in front of us, and when he came up, we were clearly in the camera shot! So we got to be on TV!

After the monologue, he showed the exciting 4th episode of the Late Night parody of The Hills, "Seventh Floor West". It was interesting watching Jimmy Fallon's reaction to the show while we were all watching it. He just sat at his desk, laughing at it, as if he was watching something on TV, as opposed to a show that he starred in. Higgins came over to the couch and sat with him, and they watched together, just like they always joke about on the show, so that was really cool to see.

Then there was a commercial break. I always wondered what happened during commercial breaks, and if there even were commercial breaks during taping. Since the show doesn't air live, there really is no need for them when taping, but apparently they do take breaks. I guess they need to give everyone a little break and keep the pacing of the show. During the commercial breaks, The Roots played for everyone (you know how they always start playing when they go to commercial? They keep playing continuously until they return from commercial) and the hair and make up people come out and give Jimmy and his guests some touch ups. During one of the commercial breaks, The Roots stopped playing and the turned up the house lights, and Jimmy talked to the crowd for a little bit and answered some questions, so that was pretty cool. During another commercial break, they filmed some promos, that would air during the 11:00 news.

The rest of the show was great, Anne Hathaway played some guitar, Mario Batali cooked Italian food right in front of us and we could smell it cooking as we watched, and we even got to see Jon Favreau via web chat from the set of Iron Man 2 (we saw them set up the web chat during one of the commercials. Apparently at one point he could see Jimmy but Jimmy couldn't see him, so they had to fix that). However, out of all the guests, my favorite of course was Will Forte, from Saturday Night Live. He came out and told some funny anecdotes about his MacGruber sketch and about his sister wanting him to film her baby's birth, but my favorite part of the show was when Will Forte sang an original Late Night with Jimmy Fallon theme song that he wrote with all of the facts wrong. You can watch it here:



Also, for those of you keeping track, (and based on some comments we've received, you are!) since Will Forte is a cast member of SNL, we have to update our "SNL Cast Members on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon picture!

Jason Sudeikis will be on the show on Thursday (as well as previous cast member Rachel Dratch) so look for another update with him sometime shortly after that.

Anyway, the show was a lot of fun, and hope we get to go back again soon!

TV Clip of the Day: Lick it for 10!

As I've previously blogged, we are big fans of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. However, I realized that I never actually posted a clip from the show, so you can see what the show is all about. Well, here is a clip of one of our favorite Jimmy Fallon segments called "Lick it for 10". It's pretty self-explanatory. Basically, a few audience members are chosen to lick a randomly selected item, and if they do it, they are given $10. In the past, they have had to lick such objects as a lawn mower, a fish bowl, a tennis racket, and a bowling ball, but this particular installment of "Lick it for 10" has had my favorite assembly of licking items. See for yourself!

SNL Cast on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon Update

As you've probably realized by now, the SNL Cast Member who's appearing on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon is Andy Samberg. (The listing of "Fallon: Andy Samberg" on our What We're Watching calendar should have been a dead give away.) In honor of his appearance, he has been ceremoniously greyed out of our photo. Andy will not only a guest on the show, but the musical guest as well with his singing group The Lonely Island. The Lonely Island is responsible for the amazing SNL Digital Shorts on Saturday Night Live, so I'm very excited to see what they are going to perform on the show tonight. Their latest hit, "Motherlover"? Or perhaps a new unreleased song? An old classic like "Lazy Sunday?" We'll just have to tune in tonight at 12:30 on NBC to find out! Also, former SNL star Maya Rudolph will be on the show Thursday night, so be sure to watch that too!

In other Late Night with Jimmy Fallon news, we have tickets to be in the studio audience of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon! A and I were thinking how much fun it would be to attend the show, since we live so close to New York City, and we realized that there's only a few days that we could go between when we finish college and when I start work, so we just called the number listed online for tickets, gave them my name, phone number and email address, and they emailed us tickets. It was that simple! So, June 1, we will be in the studio audience. Look here for a full report of the experience, and look for us on TV that night to see if we get called up to "Lick it for 10" or participate in a "Cell Phone Shoot Out" or perhaps become the "Late Night Audience President". Tune in to find out!

TV Mysteries: Where Did Grace Go to College?

Today we start a new blog segment called "TV Mysteries" where we will tackle some mysteries within our favorite TV shows. Today's mystery, "Where did Grace from Will & Grace go to college? As we were watching Will & Grace episode "Alive and Schticking" last night, a particular line grabbed our attention. This was the line:



GRACE: Jack, you've had affairs with married men, right?
JACK: I am insulted you would even ask. Of course I have. That's like me asking you if you rely too much on your hair.
GRACE: Guilty. It even got me out of my math requirement at N.Y.U.

Now, this, may seem like a normal exchange of dialogue, but what's interesting about it is that throughout the series, it had been stated that Will and Grace met while attending Columbia University, so therefore, why would Grace have needed a math requirement at NYU? We had a few hypotheses. 1) Grace didn't go to Columbia, Will went to Columbia and Grace went to NYU, she just hung out with Will at Columbia. This was proved false, after we saw episodes where they explicitly said they both went to Columbia, such as in the finale (they met during orientation, there rooms were across from each other) and in the episode where they visit an old college professor (they obviously went to the same school, if they had the same professor) 2) Will and Grace did go to Columbia, as we thought, but then Grace went to grad school at NYU, to get her degree in interior designing. However, we were able to find no evidence of this in any of our research. 3) Debra Messing, the actress who plays Grace, actually went to NYU to get her graduate degree in acting. Perhaps she just said the wrong line. It turns out, we think this is actually correct. That particular episode of Will & Grace, which was the 8th season premier, was a special live episode, that was actually filmed live twice, once for the east coast and once for the west coast. The version that we saw on the DVD (and the version that we saw when it aired live) was the East coast version. However, we found a transcript of the West coast version online, and that line about NYU is apparently not there! In the West coast version, the line is:

GRACE: Jack, you've had affairs with married men, right?
JACK: I am insulted you would even ask. Of course I have. That's like me asking you if you rely too much on your hair.
GRACE: I know, it's good right?

So, it seems that either Debra Messing improvised the line in the East coast and then after it aired live, they told her that Grace didn't go to NYU, so they got rid of the line for the live West coast airing, or perhaps it was actually in the script, but they realized between filmings that it is wrong. Either way, I think we solved the mystery! Grace never went to NYU, she just said the wrong line. Mystery Solved!

SNL Cast on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

As you probably know, Jimmy Fallon was a cast member on Saturday Night Live for many years, before he landed his current gig as host of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Late Night is executive produced by Lorne Michaels, who is also the creator and executive producer of SNL, which films in the same building in New York City as Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Therefore, it should be no surprise that many members of the SNL cast have been members on the show. So far, in the 2 months or so since Jimmy Fallon started hosting Late Night, 5 of the 14 current cast members of SNL have been guests on the show (including Amy Poehler, who left SNL mid-season to have a baby and star in Parks and Recreation). Therefore, we are starting a new recurring segment called "SNL Cast on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon"! Basically, we have a picture below of the current cast of SNL (it's from the beginning of the season, so it includes Amy Poehler who left mid-season, and doesn't include Abby Elliot, Bobby Moynihan, or Michaela Watkins who joined mid-season, so we added them in little circles on the bottom). Those who have already been guests on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, namely Amy Poehler, Seth Myers, Fred Armison, Kristen Wiig, and Bill Hader, have been greyed out, leaving the remaining 9 cast members left. (Technically speaking, Casey Wilson did appear on Late Night in a sketch about a pie snatcher, but I'm not counting that since she wasn't technically a guest on the show). My prediction is that by the end of 2009, the entire SNL cast will have hosted (of course, by then, there will be a "new cast", as some current cast members may leave, and some new cast members may join, but we can deal with that in the fall). Anyway, let's see how long it takes the whole cast is greyed out! And, I happen to know that one more SNL cast member will be on Late Night next week! Who will be the next to get greyed out? Look for a new blog post next week to find out! (Or you can just check www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com. I mean really, I don't have any insider information, I just spend a lot of my free time looking up this stuff on the internet.)

Famous Comedians on Sesame Street 2

Here's another batch of famous comedians appearing on Sesame Street! This time, we got Superbad star Jonah Hill teaching us about the word "mustache", Ben Stiller singing about the people in our neighborhood, and Jack Black returns, to teach us about the word "disguise". Enjoy!

Jonah Hill


Ben Stiller


Jack Black

SNL Returns with Justin Timberlake!

After a 3 week absence, Saturday Night Live is back with an all new episode this weekend, hosted by Justin Timberlake! Now I was never a huge N'Sync fan growing up, and I'm really not into Justin Timberlake's music right now, but you can't deny that there's something special happening with Justin hosts SNL. He's only hosted 2 times, but somehow from those 2 episodes plus a few cameo appearances, he has managed to become one of SNL's greatest all-time hosts. From co-hosting the Barry Gibb Talk Show with Jimmy Fallon (will he make a surprise cameo??? He is in NY now for his new show...) to his break dancing mascot charachter, to his unforgettable SNL Digital Short, Justin Timberlake has definately made his mark on Saturday Night Live history. Just as Steve Martin was the ultimate host of the 70's and 80's, and Alec Baldwin was the ultimate host of the 90's, Justin Timberlake has become the ultimate host of the current SNL era. I would not be surprised at all if an SNL: Best of Justim Timberlake DVD came out in a few years, and I would be the first to add it to my DVD collection.

Enjoy some of these great Justin Timberlake SNL sketches, and be sure to tune in tomorrow night at 11:30 for the newest episode! Also, don't miss another great host, Will Ferrell, hosting next weekend!

The Barry Gibb Talk Show


Give It On Up to Homelessville


Recap of if Justin Timberlake had Hosted


A "Special" Holiday Box

Penguins!

While we are no longer in the Nickelodeon's target demographic, we can't help but watch their newest nicktoon, The Penguins of Madagascar! For those of you who haven't seen the Dreamworks animated films Madagascar and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, the films are about a bunch of zoo animals who escape from the Central Park Zoo to go back to their natural habitat in Africa. The film stars Ben Stiller (as a lion), Chris Rock (as a zebra), David Schwimmer (as a giraffe) and Jada Pinkett Smith (as a hippo). While these main characters are great, the real stars of the film are the minor characters, mainly, the quartet of penguins who are always on a James Bond-style mission, Skipper, Rico, Kawalski, and Private. The penguins were really hilarious in the films ,and when we heard the news that they'd be getting their own cartoon series, let alone a Nicktoon series, we were very excited! The show features the 4 penguins, back at the Central Park zoo with their new friends, the lemurs (from the film), minus the 4 main animal characters (as they are still in Africa, as the second film ended). The penguins go on all sorts of fun missions at the zoo, interacting with other animals, and arguing with the lemur King, King Julian. It sounds silly, but it really is a fun show. It airs on Nickelodeon, so check it out!

Here's one of the episodes, "Penguiner Takes All". Enjoy!

Blog Updates!

Hello again. As you've probably noticed by now, our blog has some new additions. First, we have added a calendar on the side, which shows "what we're watching" in the next few days, so you can watch what we're watching along with us! We Like TV is also now on Twitter! You'll find a link to our Twitter on the right side of the page. If you follow us on Twitter, your Twitter page will receive a notification whenever we update the blog, as well as some exclusive little tweets that won't be on the blog! Follow us!

Also, keep checking back, as we continue to improve the blog, such as updating the picture of the DVDs in the top banner to reflect all our new TV DVD additions!

Edit: We forgot to mention that as of now, the feed going to Twitter updates with current entries but then since we put our Twitter directly on the blog, all blog posts will appear both in the main area of the blog as well as in summary form in the Twitter widget. Until we figure out how to make this not happen, we guess you'll just have to read everything twice. Twice as nice!

Sitcom Moms & Dads: Will's Mom

I actually have been doing a lot of studying since the last blog entry that I posted, but during a short study break I stumbled something so fascinating (at least to me) that I had to post this. On Will & Grace, Will's mother is played by actress Blythe Danner. Blythe Danner, to our generation is perhaps most famous for playing the mother of Ben Stiller's character in the Meet the Parents movies (wife of Robert DeNiro's character) as well as for being the mother of actress Gwyneth Paltrow. I was aware of all of this, however while I was casually perusing her IMDB profile (don't ask me why), I stumbled upon an interesting listing in her filmography. She played the character of Martha Jefferson in the classic film version of the musical 1776. 1776 is one of my favorite musicals, one of the first shows I saw on Broadway, and I always particularly enjoyed the film due to the the fact that the lead character of John Adams was played by William Daniels, who starred on Boy Meets World as Mr. Feeny (in the show, they went to John Adams High School, get it?). Anyway, so I'm very familiar with the film, and I had no idea that Martha Jefferson was played by the same actress who years later played Will's mom and Will & Grace! So now compare for yourself, Blythe Danner as Will's Mom and as Martha Jefferson.

As Will's Mom in Will & Grace.



As Martha Jefferson as she sings about Thomas Jefferson's passion for the violin in 1776.

TV Clip of the Day: Final Exam Procastination Edition!

As I sit in the silent floor of the library, the day before my toughest final exam, I still cannot bring myself to study, and so I check all my usual websites, one of which is http://www.blogger.com/www.sitcomsonline.com. On the site, they had an interesting news item, about how on a recent episode of The Rachel Ray Show, they had an Iron Chef-style cook off between some audience members, and in honor of Mother's Day this weekend, the cook-off was judged by 3 classic TV moms! The first was Florence Henderson, who of course played Mrs. Brady on The Brady Bunch. The second was Marrion Ross, who played Mrs. Cunningham on Happy Days. And the third was Shirley Jones, who played Mrs. Partridge on The Partridge Family. Now I am quite familiar with The Brady Bunch and Happy Days, so I was quite familiar with those two, but I have never seen The Partridge Family before, so I was not expecting to know who Mrs. Partridge was, but when Rachel Ray announced Shirley Jones, and she came out, I thought "Shirley Jones, wasn't she Marrion Librarian in The Music Man?" Sure enough, she was. I had no idea that she starred on The Partridge Family! Maybe someday I should check it out. Anyway, enjoy this Rachel Ray cook-off, judged by classic TV moms, Florence Henderson, Marrion Ross, and Shirley Jones:

Oh no! I can't embed the videos! Grr, I guess you'll just have to click on the link and watch it on the Rachel Ray site:
http://www.rachaelrayshow.com/show/segments/view/elimination-challenge/

TV Clip of the Day: Whose Line is it Anyway?

Wow, it's been a while. Sorry, we've been incredibly busy. We still are really busy, but I saw this clip of Whose Line is it Anyway, which I hadn't seen in a while, and i just had to post it to for you. If you're not familiar with the show, it's all improvised, no script, completely thought of on the spot. This is a clip of a game called "News Flash". They explain how it works in the clip. Enjoy!

Famous Comedians on Sesame Street

I have recently noticed that many big name Hollywood actors and comedians have been appearing on Sesame Street and other children's show. So here are a few, I'll post some more as I find them. Enjoy!

Tina Fey


Jack Black


Ricky Gervais

Short Blog

It's 4:00 in the morning. Yet I'm still awake.
I was watching the Cosby Show tonight. It was very funny.
I was looking for a clip from one of the episodes that I watched, but I couldn't find it.
I found another one that I remebered that was funny.
But Embedding was disabled, so it won't display here.
You'll have to follow the link to YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JRuR98Foqw&feature=channel_page
Good night.

TV DVDs of the Week!

I decided it was time for this blog to get a new recurring segment, so here is the first ever segment of, "TV DVDs of the Week" Basically, most every week, A and I watch some of the many TV shows that we have on DVD (as you can see from the title banner), so I thought, why not blog about them?

Last night, A and I watched one of our favorite shows, Good Eats! Now, I know what you're thinking. "I don't see any Good Eats DVDs in the title banner!" Well, that's true, but the reason is that we have so many of them, that we don't have room for them on our DVD shelf, so we had to put them on a separate shelf (next to my text books). So, last night, A randomly said, "Let's watch Good Eats!" And I replied, "Ok!" So then we took out all the Good Eats DVDs that we have with us (we only have 9 DVDs of 3 episodes each here in college, but we have about 18 other Good Eats DVDs at home, that we just didn't have room for). So after much discussion, we decided to watch the episode "Zen and the Art of Omelet Maintenance" from the "Breakfast Eats 3" DVD. In this very interesting episode, Alton Brown talks about how to make the perfect omelet. Some lessons that he taught were that you should always beat eggs with a fork (not an egg whisk), you should always fry in butter (not oil), and you should make omelets in a rounded pan, so it's easier to flip. Great episode!


Earlier this evening, we popped in another TV DVD to watch. Jon & Kate Plus Ei8ht! Again, I know you're thinking "You don't have Jon & Kate Plus Ei8ht on your DVD banner! Is that on a separate shelf too? Why aren't these other DVDs on your title banner?" Well, no, that one is not on a separate shelf. The Jon & Kate Plus Ei8ht DVD was a gift that I gave A for Chanukkah, and since we got all those new DVDs (remember how I blogged about all those new DVDs I got too?) we never got around to taking a new DVD photo for the banner. But fear not, we'll try to take one soon! Anyway, so we started watching the first few episodes of Jon & Kate Plus Ei8ht". Such a cute show! It's basically a reality show about two parents who had twin girls, and then wanted to try for one more child, but got pregnant with sextuplets (6 babies)! So now, they have 2 6 year old twin girls, and 6 sextuplets (3 boys and 3 girls). We watched the first 3 episodes of the season, "10 Little Pumpkins" (the family goes to a pumpkin patch and each child picks a pumpkin), "Gosselins Go West" (Jon and Kate are invited to speak in California, so they go on a trip with the older twin girls, while the little ones are left with friends), and "Twins Turn 6" (the twins get taken to the American Girl Store in New York for their 6th birthday). The show is very fun to watch, and the kids are very cute. Jon and Kate are always arguing with each other, which is entertaining, but also realistic, as it has to be very stressful to raise 8 children. Whenever I watch this show, it makes me want to have kids really badly! I can't wait to be a father!

Nicktoon Book & Invader Zim

Two posts in one day? Yes, it's true! Since we've been absent for so long, I thought I'd try to make up for the last time by blogging twice today.

Earlier this evening, A and I were walking a Borders, perusing various DVDs and Blu-Rays and we so often do, when a big book caught our eye. Now, we are not big readers, we prefer enjoying something that can be watched, but were were immediately drawn to this book. It was called Not Just Cartoons, Nicktoons! The book (as you can see on the right) had a cover that was filled with green slime (one of Nickelodeon's trademarks) and inside, the book discussed every single Nicktoon ever made, from the early days of Ren & Stimpy and Rugrats, to the most recent Nicktoon The Might Bee (created by and starring the voice of SNL star Amy Poehler, didn't I mention her in my last blog?). (For those of you who didn't grow up in the 1990's, a Nicktoon the term used for a cartoon that was created by the Nickelodeon TV channel.) We saw down at a table and flipped page by page through the book, reminiscing about our old favorite TV shows from our childhood. Though we didn't know each other as kids (we met in high school), we both grew up watching these same shows, and we both immediately remembered specific episodes from our favorite shows like Doug, Hey Arnold!, and The Angry Beavers. The book was not really a children's book, more of a behind the scenes look at the creations of these shows, with interviews from the show's writers and producers. It contained drawings of various characters, as well as stories about the original concepts for the shows, and how they developed through the years. It was truly a fascinating read, and once I graduate college and get my own place, I will be sure to buy a coffee table, and when I do, this book will surely be on it.

As a child, I pretty much exclusively watched Nickelodeon, and while I had those shows that I loved those that were just okay, for the most part, I watched them all. However, there was one Nicktoon that I never watched, and that was Invader Zim. While most Nicktoons were bright and happy, Invader Zim had a much darker style. As you've probably noticed by looking at all the shows we talk about, I'm really into comedies, and I really don't watch many dark or scary shows. So when I saw commercials for Invader Zim as a child, it kind of freaked me out, and I had no desire to watch. However, when talking to A last year, she mentioned on a few occasions how she used to watch Invader Zim and although it was kind of dark, it was really funny and she liked it. This got me thinking that perhaps I should give this show a chance, and also perhaps A would like to watch this show again, so for Chanukkah this year, one of the gifts that I got for A was the Complete Series of Invader Zim on DVD. We've been pretty busy with work (and other TV shows) these past few weeks, so we never got a chance to watch, but after reading about Nicktoons at Borders today (and there was naturally a chapter in the book about Invader Zim too), we were in the mood for some Nicktoons, so we thought what better occasion then now to start watching that DVD. And I must say, as a first time viewer, it's really funny! Yes, a little dark, but overall very funny. The show is about an alien from a distant planet who is sent to Earth to take take over the planet. As he prepares his take-over, he disguises himself as a human so no one will suspect that he is an alien, and he disguises his side-kick robot Gir as a dog. Here, enjoy a short clip from Invader Zim: