Josh

I now have the finalized list of nominations. Pretty fascinating list, if you ask me - even if only for what didn't make the final cut for the tourney. I'm trying to get the tournament started sometime tomorrow.

Maybe you just shouldn't buy DVDs from the back of a Chinese man's van?

It's tough for me to find any fault at all with Jim Rash as Dean Pelton right now, but I know what you mean. I do feel Abed will be directly addressed as having Asperger's, if only because this is a fairly new discovery for Dan Harmon about himself and he's proven to take the plot and characters in fairly autobiographical directions.

It is not. I forgot to say so publicly. As far as I know, that's the only show that's currently nominated that does not meet the guidelines. Skummy and TCD, you may edit that one and replace it within 12 hours. All other changes and additions are now null and void. I am now tallying the results. I'll double check after 12 hours, for TCD and Skummy's sake only.

You know, I hadn't considered this until you said that, but I wonder if that will ever be directly addressed?

That's on the album! The thing what Cloudy done did, that is. To GoGo's post, it does seem to simultaneously hold great potential for both ridiculous disaster and ridiculous fun.

I may or may not have listened to the entire "Coming Out of Their Shells" album roughly 6 times last night.

But I'm usually kind of just okay with 30 Rock! It's significant that I really dig Kristen Schaal! And yes, I tend to like the things I like a lot, because everything else is stuff I don't like at all. :/

I don't know what you guys are talking about, Kristen Schaal has been tremendous on 30 Rock.

French Stewart was used to great effect in Community. I dig Jeff becoming more self-aware of his ego issues. We'd been told Troy and Abed would go through a rough patch, and it looks like it's begun. I looking forward to where this goes. The first 30 Rock was good, but holy shit that second episode. That was just exceptional. First off, using . . . wait, Daniel? I think that was Daniel Baldwin. Anyway, using him to play Jack was tremendous. Plus, WEIRD AL. Maybe that's just something that I love, but everything including that end tag was so fun. The fake Jack's office scene and "Heart So Proud" in particular had me laughing pretty hard.

I think the significance is more that one of the show's big creative champions is no longer going to be helping out in any significant way.

Pizza Hut. I had the cassette, and loved those songs more than I should. "They said April . . . you can COOOUUUNT ON UUUUUS!"

Looked mine up too: Invasion of the Turtle Snatchers! I cannot read that plot synopsis without giggling.

I totally got one of those! I can't remember which episodes though.

As things have slowed down significantly, I'm bumping the deadline up to this Friday, March 23rd at 11:59:59 PM U.S. Central Time. Feel free to edit your existing nominations until then. The new deadline will be reflected in the first post.

I feel like we need LL on this. I haven't seen the original, but some friends have. They tend to prefer the Swedish version, but that doesn't seem to be connected to either being more or less tame or disturbing. On it's own, the US version is certainly brutal to watch at times.

It's certainly graphic and does deal with disturbing subject matter off and on throughout. I think there's two things that separates this film from many other graphic films: 1. It's graphic about a specific combination of sex and violence. Not simply one or the other. Thematically, there's nothing here you won't find in an episode of Law & Order, but the film doesn't just elude to the brutality. It intentionally makes you very uncomfortable. 2. In the film's defense, it is not at all asking or telling you to enjoy this brutality. With a lot of horror, action, and thriller films these days, I think there's an unspoken understanding that it's kind of cool to see the violence, whatever form it may come in. To me, that's the sick thing. That's what's hard to watch. And that's not the case here. You're being shown these events and asked, "Isn't this awful?", and all the while it absolutely matters in terms of developing the plot and the characters. Hope that helps some. I was trying to avoid specifics, as to avoid spoilers.

I've been doing a midpoint double-check of the nominations, and I gotta say this one probably stretches the definition of "fictionalized television" (as stated in the rules) a bit too far. Can you find a replacement?

Not when a lot of its fanbase seems to be okay with watching via torrents, Hulu, Netflix, DVD, DVR recording that they watch more than 24 hours later, or DVR recording with the commercials skipped (which I used to do, and apparently the fast-forwarding nullifies the ability to count toward DVR numbers.) That's why I was pushing people to watch live this week. John Hodgman (who will guest star later in the season) actually researched the matter and presented the best options to fans prior to this week's airing. Apparently, the ideal viewing methods were either a) watch live or b) watch via DVR within 24 hours of the original airing, not skipping commercials. The whole thing brought more attention to the fact that networks need to re-evaluate how they tabulate viewership and the resulting revenue, given that more and more people are watching a lot of TV shows via methods other than on TV during the live broadcast. Until that happens, fans who want shows to stick around need to be made aware of how to make their support count and increase viewership in ways that networks will easily notice. And they need to not use torrents at all (I know, I know.) That aside, Community does have a sizable audience (scattered in viewing methods or not), but it likely is a niche audience - not one to be ignored, but hardly mainstream-monster-hit-sized. The AV Club recently had a piece on Community that addressed this topic among other things. (This article. It's lengthy and covers a lot of other ground, but skip to the second "Todd" section if you just want to see the three paragraphs to which I'm referring.) The author argued that niche audiences are increasingly becoming the norm with most television - or at least quality television. Yes, there are certain reality shows and a handful of comedies and dramas that still can be counted on to dominate their timeslot, but as options increase and pop culture tastes diverge, networks need to nurture a niche audience model for more of their shows.

Silverado. Absolutely terrific fun. If you dig westerns at all, give this a go.

Just when I think I've covered all of my bases, this happens. Damn, I have some more thinking to do.

I might have ti rethink my "strategic" voting, seeing as how the nominations so far have been FAR more diverse than I had predicted. That's probably good though. Gives us lots of tournament starters.

Again ndqw, no need to make a new post every time you edit your nominations. I won't be counting things up until this is all closed. And holy shit, I forgot Louie.

The rules state no reality shows. I suppose it's early enough in the process that you could try and convince me otherwise, but I feel like allowing them opens a whole floodgate I'd rather not deal with.