The fall and spring television lineups (or as I like to call them, the ‘A’ teams) are just about done for the season. It was a pretty good year for A-team television, some new shows like Community heading out with some steam, and some older ones, like Breaking Bad that have made The Leap into Great TV.
I couldn't think of a great way to wrap up the fall/spring shows, so I'll share my favorites from this season. Using pure science I’ve come up with a “Power Ranking” for how these shows fared throughout the season. (Note: no science was used). They go as follows:
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Breaking Bad
- Parks & Recreation
- Community
- House
- How I Met Your Mother
- Justified
- Saturday Night Live
- 30 Rock
- The Office
- The Big Bang Theory
Now that these shows are basically done until fall, in comes summer television programming, which (with the rare exceptions of a 'Mad Men') will consist of a lot of game shows and reality shows. If these ten shows are on re-run throughout the summer, I highly suggest you check them out.
So, on the note that, at least now I’ll have time to watch more Cubs baseball, I give you the Links of the Week:
This week, Megan Fox announced that she would not be joining Transformers 3, even though the first two Transformers movies essentially made her career. Let's ask our ValpoLife Resident 
Transformers Expert, Mark, about how he feels about this revelation:
"Yeah, that sucks."
Insightful, Mark!
Here is a nice piece from FanGraphs.com on former Deadspin-Editor-Turned-NYMag-writer Will Leitch, who has a new book coming out soon about baseball.
Some headlines just jump out at you. "Reasons Not to Save Money" happens to be one of them.
How about a video of a guy doing an impression of Ian McKellen reading the theme song from 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air'?
Here is a great 'Before they were stars' photo gallery for The Second City Theater in Chicago. Steve Carrell, Steve Colbert, the Belushis, Dan Akroyd, and many many more are in there. I think the older you are, the better this link is.
Political Ads + Anger + Shotguns = Funny
TANGENT OF THE WEEK: So, this week NBC released its fall TV schedule, with the biggest travesty of the fall: They're moving Parks & Recreation to start mid-season, a sign that the show is one step closer to being canceled. This is a terrible decision. 30 Rock has had trouble getting good TV ratings (because everyone watches it on the web), so NBC moved 30 Rock to Parks & Rec's spot for the fall lineup in lieu of starting a new show, entitled 'Something Brett Will Protest Watching'. NBC How does this happen? Parks & Rec was almost universally described as one of the best new TV shows and they push it out of the limelight. It makes no sense to me. END TANGENT
For nerds who can't hide their nerdiness for formal events: Xbox Cufflinks! Finally!
Esquire.com (yeah, I know- a lot of Esquire this week) asks, 'Are the Black Keys the Best Rock Band in America'? To that, I say 'yes'. Maybe a 1-and-1A situation with them and Wilco. What say you?
Fact: Any list of "Bad Tasting Beers" that doesn't have Beer 30 on it isn't a real list of bad tasting beers.
If you're a fan of this blog, you know that just about anything that is a list, I'll link to. So why wouldn't I link to the 10 Most Valuable Sports Team Brands, according to Forbes.com? I would, right? Yes, yes I would.
And for your Video of the Week: the reason why, if you can't break wood by headbutting it, the cameras shouldn't be rolling: