Watch with Intelligence

The Emmy Nominations Shortist: Who Should and Will Be the Final Five

The top 10 series vying for Best Comedy and Drama categories have been revealed quite a bit ahead of time by the none other than the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences itself. It looks like the Academy is taking a proactive approach this season, probably because they finally realized that we'll find out anyways whether they tell us or not. Below are the series on the shortlist for the final five (Battlestar Galactica reference intended!) nomination slots (to be announced July 17), including the five I think will be nomination and should be nomination.

BEST DRAMA SERIES:
Boston Legal
Damages
Dexter
Friday Night Lights
Grey's Anatomy
House
Lost
Mad Men
The Tudors
The Wire

Who (I Think) Will Be Nominated:
Boston Legal
Damages/The Tudors (Dark horse)
Grey's Anatomy
House
Mad Men

Who Should Be Nominated:
Friday Night Lights
House
Lost
Mad Men
The Wire

BEST COMEDY SERIES:
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Entourage
Family Guy
Flight of the Conchords
The Office
Pushing Daisies
30 Rock
Two and a Half Men
Ugly Betty
Weeds

Who (I Think) Will Be Nominated:
Entourage/Family Guy (Dark horse)
The Office
30 Rock
Two and a Half Men
Ugly Betty

Who Should Be Nominated:
Flight of the Conchords
The Office
Pushing Daisies
30 Rock
Weeds

Gossip Girls Returns...to TV Screens Only

In the latest episode of Television Networks Do the Darnedest Things, CW poster child Gossip Girl returns with five post-strike episodes to be aired in a new, Monday nights at 8 p.m. timeslot -- and the thousands of 15-year-old girls who watch it better remember to set their DVRs, because TV's the only place where they're going to get their Gossip fix.

In a harebrained scheme, The CW has decided not to stream the remaining five episodes on its website after they air, in what C-Dub President Dawn Ostroff calls in an interview with TV Guide, an "experiment," to "see if we can grow the ratings by keeping these five episodes exclusive to our airwaves."

Yeah, I know: Huuuuuuuuh?

Mischa Barton and Marissa Cooper Are Possibly the Same Person

Mischa Barton: Los Angeles County Sheriff's Dept.

Mischa, Mischa, Mischa. Please don't act like your TV counterpart...you'll never get to be in the obscure indie movie of your dreams if you keep this up.

Keep acting like Marissa, and you might end up doing this:

Best of '07 Runners-Up and 5 Shows to Look Forward to in '08

Gossip Girl: Goivanni Rufino/The CW

So now that my best of '07 list has been funneling in much-needed traffic, I thought I should take some time out to mention the shows that just missed the list -- the shows that were good, but just not the best. All of these were at some point on my top 10, but were later eliminated in favor of shows that were more all-around great. After the jump: five shows to watch in the new year.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Lost
Season three was particularly tough for me to stomach -- it was so uneven, especially the first six-episode arc. It turned itself around though upon its return in winter, and the finale alone made it a serious contender. But then I thought it just wouldn't be fair to put it on the list only with the strength of the finale, so it was eventually beat out by Weeds.

The Sarah Silverman Program
When this foul-mouthed comedy premiered earlier in the year, I thought it was the most creative and hilarious half-hour I'd seen in years, and Sarah Silverman, if you don't already know, is a hoot. But then the first half of season two rolled around, and it just didn't live up to the fantastic first season. I'm hoping for a revival when the second half of season airs next year.

Gossip Girl/The O.C.
Josh Scwartz's teen dramedies proved to be satisfying romps with crafty storytelling, but both faltered in the long-run for sort of the same reason: Gossip Girl, one of my favorite new series, just wasn't ready to be the best, and has yet to truly prove itself worthy of the title. The O.C., which truly did return to some form of goodness, had a nice final run, but was knocked out in the final decision making process by Pushing Daisies. If I could, it would have been an easy number 11.

How I Met Your Mother
Easily one of the funniest comedies on TV, I couldn't bring myself to keep it in its original number nine spot for such a heavy reliance on gimmickry: every episode works so hard to incorporate some sort of theme-y element (realizing your friends' annoying habits, why you shouldn't date your doctor, etc.), that it really hindered itself into being a consistent source of humor.

Chuck
Josh Schwartz had a great year, as both of his new series are invariably good. Chuck was initially a series I wrote off as mediocre, but then I started to mesh with its breeziness and began having fun with it. Zachary Levi is great, and I think that this cast as a whole is a gem. But when it came down to compiling my top 10, Chuck didn't have much of a case to argue. It's good fun, but I doubt I'll ever think of it and the word "best" within the same context.

Battlestar Galactica
Gods, what a fight I had with myself over this one. Battlestar is probably one of the best shows on TV -- but its recent season could only be classified as OK. The second we left New Caprica was when things got way too muddled, and I think it was a creative breather for Ronald D. Moore and his crew. Hopefully they were just building up for a phenomenal final season in March. 

What Was TV's Worst in 2007?

Larry King Live: Kyle Christy/ CNN

Yesterday's post about 2007's potential best of listmakers got me thinking of my supplementary worst of list, where I fully plan to chastise the world's brief uber-obsession with heiress Paris Hilton and her fellow hyphenated socialite friends, including that of the TV world. This summer had me scratching my head more than after the recent trailer for NBC's Clash of the Choirs (it baffles me that such a thing could even be brainstormed): Why is Paris featured on Countdown with Keith Olbermann? Why is Paris being fed to me on CNN as hard news? Why does Nicole Richie suddenly get press whenever Paris screws up? Is Lindsay going to be able to survive the remainder of 2007? Is it possible that the hand-slap-and-guffaw masters at The Soup are talking too much about celeb antics? Saturation point!

And that's only one thing I have to gripe about. I'm stretching my list of TV's worst from five to 10 this year, and going any further would be to court serious depression, and I haven't even caught-up on the Meredith Grey Depression Hour this week. My love for TV is hopefully obviously signified by this blog, but I'd be a fool to not to despise the feeling of death's hand slowly suffocating me during truly awful TV.  So you know what I want to know: If you had to put fingers to a keyboard and compile a list of TV's truly suck-tacular moments/shows, what would you be sure to include?

Who Will Be Number One on TV Critics' Year-End Top 10 Lists? The Sopranos Obviously. But Who Else?

The Sopranos: Barry Wetcher/ HBO

As the 2007 calendar year comes to a close, TV critics' top 10 lists will start spouting out of the gate like an exploding artery, including myself. I've been working on my list since early November, where I had about 20 shows to consider, and as of now I've cut that number down to 12. I've recently realized that my abstaining from all things Sopranos is going to make my list unique, namely because I don't have The Sopranos as number one -- I don't even have it on there at all. Seeing how I've never seen a single episode in my life, I wasn't going to bother considering it.

But what can we expect to see from the professionals? The Sopranos. Duh. HBO's flagship series ended its run with annoyingly hard-news-worthy buzz, both for its genius and rage-incitement. It happens every year. There's a critical consensus with two or three shows that are reflected in nearly every list : last year The Wire and 24 took top nods, while 2005 saw particular adoration for Arrested Development and Lost. 2007 will be the year of The Sopranos...but what else? I'm guessing Pushing Daisies, which premiered to both universal acclaim and top-notch ratings. It's going on my list, I just don't know where yet.

If you got paid to watch TV, what shows would you consider in making a logic-defying (when has TV ever followed the calendar year?) top 10 list?