The Bob Newhart Show never won an Emmy. In fact, the seminal sitcom was almost a non-presence at the annual awards ceremony meant to identify and honor the best of the best of broadcast television. Across six seasons, The Bob Newhart Show earned a mere four nominations, and one of those was in the category of “Outstanding Film Editing in a Comedy Series.” It’s easy to attribute that to the series built around a certain button-down mind existing at the same as some of the most important, groundbreaking sitcoms in the history of television, such as All in the Family … Continue reading That Championship Season: Parks and Recreation, Season Three

By now, there are enough smart, fitting adaptations of Elmore Leonard’s work to the screen — big and small — that it obscures the long, problematic history the prolific writer had when turning his work over to Hollywood. And it wasn’t from lack of trying. According to some sources, there have been over two dozen whacks at transforming Leonard’s fiction, which is lean enough to sometimes read as if it’s a script treatment, into film or television. Even though it seemed the curse was broken with 1995’s Get Shorty, a story fittingly inspired by Leonard’s dismal encounters with Hollywood studios, there … Continue reading That Championship Season: Justified, Season Two

Aside from The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its “Chuckles Bites the Dust,” perhaps no other sitcom has such a clear single-episode high-water mark as Seinfeld. Airing right in the middle of the show’s fourth season, “The Contest” find the four main characters engaged in a wager inspired by one of them, George Costanza (Jason Alexander), recently suffering the humiliation of being caught by his mother while he was masturbating with a copy of Glamour magazine. Each of the quartet puts up a hundred dollars that says they can go the longest without engaging in that particular activity. Actually, Elaine … Continue reading That Championship Season: Seinfeld, Season Four