Two Awesome New Holiday DVDs

I love holiday episodes of TV series which makes me particularly excited for two upcoming DVD releases from the fine folks at Mill Creek Entertainment. First off, let me say how much I adore Mill Creek Entertainment. Besides Disney, they have got to be my favorite company putting out home video material today. They constantly have imaginative and unique titles on their slate, always at a very low beyond-reasonable price.

Holiday episode collections have become quite popular in the last couple of years, mostly with Christmas episodes but Mill Creek is getting ahead of the game with a fantastic looking collection of Halloween themed episodes of 13 different sit-coms. TV's Spookiest Halloween Episodes collects trick-or-treat fun filled episodes of a wide variety of sit-coms and offers them up in one neat package. What I'm really digging about this collection is the wide range of years this collection represents from early 60's (Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie) to late 90's (Mad About You, NewsRadio.) What's also impressive is the range of popularity of the series represented. Some obscure goodies like Square Pegs and Ned and Stacey are tucked in there along with The Cosby Show and Roseanne. To me, this collection is just about perfect. I'm not sure I ever need to watch an episode of That 70's Show, but all the others I can't wait to dig into, especially The Jeffersons, Square Pegs and The Facts of Life. This is just a solid collection I can't wait to add to my library.

Then we've got Mill Creek's Christmas edition of Holiday themed episodes with TV's Merriest Episodes. I already have an enormous collection of Christmas TV episodes on tape and DVD and I'm really looking forward to making this disc part of the yearly viewing traditions.  Again, there is a great variety as far as ages of the shows although this one is a little more heavy on the mid 80's to mid 90's. The collections two vintage episodes: Bewitched and The Flying Nun are the same episodes that appeared in Shout Factory's (also excellent) 1989 collection Merry Sitcom! But it does feature The Ellen Show, which was a great one season CBS sitcom that aired between Ellen's popular ABC sitcom and her huge hit talk show.

TV's Spookiest Halloween Episodes is released Sept. 16, 2014 and TV's Merriest Episodes is available October 14, 2004. Both have an MSRP of $9.98.

If Holiday episodes are you thing, there are also two new collections of The Dick Van Dyke Show out from Image Entertainment. Halloween Episodes Collection is available now and contains 4 episodes while Classic Christmas comes out October 7 with two episodes.

Look What's Gonna Be On The TV

The new Fall TV Season is just around the corner. Here's what looks interesting to me:

Mulaney  Sundays at 9:30 on FOX First up we have a very traditional sitcom with a great cast. John Mulaney is a pretty funny guy. I'm familiar with him from Best Week Ever, he's made a few appearances on SNL and he's pretty good on Kroll Show. Here he plays a comedian, living in New York...if that sounds familiar, look at his apartment - it also looks like Seinfeld's apartment. The supporting cast includes the great Nasim Pedrad, defecting from SNL to fill the Elaine roll. Comedy legend and one of my very favorite personalities, Martin Short is also on board. It's a multi-camera sitcom, of which I'm a huge fan of the dying art form.



Gotham Mondays at 8:00pm on FOX Premieres September 22. Last year was the year of the Hour Long Drama for me. I've almost never watched any hour long shows until last year when I got engrossed in five different series! This new Batman-less Batman show sounds interesting. It follows the lives of all the Batman characters before they became the characters we know from the comic books and movies. My appreciation for comic book projects in growing, and this new drama feels like it's going to feed my hunger.

Marry Me  Tuesdays at 9:00pm on NBC Premieres October 14. If you've spoken to me in the past three years, then you've probably heard me go on and on about the show Happy Endings, which was in my opinion the best written show on television in a long time! Well, it was cancelled after three glorious seasons but the creator of that show in back with Marry Me, which feels like it will be very similar - it even has Happy Endings' cast member Casey Wilson as the lead!


Selfie Tuesdays at 8:00pm on ABC This looks like a train wreck, but I will watch.

The Flash Tuesdays at 8:00pm on The CW Finally, we have another superhero show - this one looks like it will be fun. I really wished I had got into The CW's Arrow series, so here's another chance for me to jump on from the beginning.

Yeah For The New TV Season!

When I was younger (and only slightly nerdier) the arrival of the new Fall TV Season was a big deal in my little lonely universe. I'd pour over the TV Guide and just imagine how awesome all the new shows were going to be. I'd plan out each night of the week for my optimal viewing pleasure. Nowadays, the return of new shows to Network TV isn't quite as exciting as it used to be. Lucky for me, it's also not as jaw-droping awesome to me as it used to be. But for the first time, in a long time...there's a handful of shows that I'm looking forward to checking out this season. I'm sure most of them will be cancelled before Christmas and the rest of them I'll loose interestet in shortly after New Years but I'm actually kind of excited about a few new shows...

The Playboy Club Mondays 10-11 PM Premiers September 19 on NBC
Ok, I've become a big fan of the Playboy Universe not because of naked girls but from watching my beloved reality series The Girls Next Door. Playboy is so much more than nakedness and when I started to read about the life of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, I discovered that he's an incrdibly fascinating man who is responsible for more change in this country than most people will ever give him credit for. The real life Playboy Clubs were a chain of night clubs that popped up in hot spot cities in the 1960's. They weren't strip joints but sophisicated hang-outs that promoted the finer things in life. The clubs disappeared over the following decades and have only recently started to make a comeback. The clubs of the 60's were legendary and the new series The Playboy Club seeks to reinvent some of that mystery and magic. I'm really looking forward to getting into this show.


Whitney Thursdays 9:30-10 PM Premeres Sept. 22 on NBC
Whitney Cummings is a very funny comedian. I've become a fan of her work through her appearances on the Comedy Central Roasts as well as her own comedy special, plus she's pretty darn funny on Twitter too. When I heard she was getting her own show I was pretty excited and then more so when I discovered that it is a traditional multi-camera sitcom. At one time, NBC was the king of sitcoms and they haven't launched a good straightforward laughtrack driven sitcom in a while. The premise is simple, Whitney and her boyfriend live together and are happy with their lives but don't feel the need to get married. Sounds like a fun addition to Thursday nights, even if it's taking 30 Rock's timeslot.


Pan Am Sundays 10-11 PM Premiers Sept. 25 on ABC
I'm quite sure more than one 60 minute show is going to be too much for me to juggle in a single season, but this period drama about globetrotting stweardesses looks like it might be alot of fun. It's kind of covering some of the same ground as The Playboy Club, so much so that the promo also uses an iconic Frank Sinatra song...


2 Broke Girls Mondays 8:30-9 PM Premieres Sept. 19 at 9:30 on CBS
CBS has always had a strong Monday night comedy line-up. They are adding this promising new sitcom right between How I Met Your Mother and Two And A Half Men, that's a pretty nice slot. This is another traditional multi-cam sitcom with a traditional premise: privalaged girl meets underprivalaged girl and they both have to work and live together. Classic. The cast includes Kat Dennings, whom I've enjoyed in a number of movie roles lately. The show was also co-created by Whitney Cummings, so it's got that going for it too. Which is nice.


Suburgatory Wednesdays 8:30-9 PM Premiers Sept. 28 on ABC
This one doesn't look that great...and it doesn't look like it's going to last very long either but it's totally in my wheelhouse. This comedy looks kind of like Clueless mixed with MTV's Awkward. It also boasts Jeremy Sisto in the cast, who is one of the very few males actors that I can say I enjoy his work.


What new shows are you looking forward to?

Classic Commercial Sunday - #48 Super Jingles

There's two magazine jingles from years gone by that I often catch myself humming for no good reason whatsoever...except of course that I soaked up too much television when I was a kid.



I had a subscription to TV Guide when I was like 13. I saved every issue in a box in my closet until I very quickly had something like 200 issues that I couldn't imagine what I'd ever do with `em. (I'm pretty sure I cut out all the pictures of Alf and then threw the rest away!)