That Championship Season: Seinfeld, Season Four

March 4, 2015April 23, 2024 Dan Seeger

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

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That Championship Season: Gilmore Girls, Season Three

October 2, 2014April 22, 2019 Dan Seeger

I think of the focus on and fascination with television showrunners as a relatively new phenomenon. There were a handful of producers whose names meant something to viewers a generation or two earlier (Aaron Spelling and Steven Bochco, to select … Continue reading That Championship Season: Gilmore Girls, Season Three

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That Championship Season: The Ben Stiller Show, Season One

May 20, 2014May 8, 2024 Dan Seeger

Lorne Michaels has said that everyone’s favorite era of Saturday Night Live is whichever one was taking place while they were in high school. That may very well be true. Similarly, I think it may be possible that everyone’s favorite … Continue reading That Championship Season: The Ben Stiller Show, Season One

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That Championship Season — The Office, Season Two

September 26, 2013November 7, 2018 Dan Seeger

When the U.S. version of The Office stumbled to the finish line this past spring, the consensus was that the show never should have tried to outlast Steve Carell’s interest in playing Dunder Mifflin Scranton brand manager Michael Scott. On … Continue reading That Championship Season — The Office, Season Two

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That Championship Season: Veronica Mars, Season One

April 10, 2013February 14, 2018 Dan Seeger

As with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I was a latecomer to Veronica Mars. Frustratingly enough, it was my overt appreciation of Buffy that got in the way of me trying out Veronica Mars when it arrived to largely positive reviews. … Continue reading That Championship Season: Veronica Mars, Season One

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That Championship Season: St. Elsewhere, Season Four

September 12, 2012October 31, 2019 Dan Seeger

To the degree that enormous permanent changes to any form of media can be pinpointed to a single event, to a pivotal moment, the entire landscape of television underwent a seismic shift on January 15, 1981. That marked the debut … Continue reading That Championship Season: St. Elsewhere, Season Four

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That Championship Season: The Sopranos, Season One

June 7, 2012April 22, 2019 Dan Seeger

A few months ago, Ryan McGee wrote a piece for The A.V. Club positing that the Sopranos ultimately damaged the field of television by completely reconfiguring the relationship between individual episodes and the overall story of an entire season or … Continue reading That Championship Season: The Sopranos, Season One

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That Championship Season: Cheers, Season Five

November 22, 2011April 22, 2019 Dan Seeger

Earlier this year, New York magazine came up with something they called “The Showrunner Transcripts.” They sought out the driving creative forces behind over a dozen critically-adored current series and interviewed them about their influences, favorites and approaches to creating … Continue reading That Championship Season: Cheers, Season Five

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That Championship Season: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Five

August 10, 2011April 18, 2019 Dan Seeger

I believe fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer think of the show in terms of seasons. That’s in large part because show creator and chief creative force Joss Whedon did the same. The show began with a little bit of … Continue reading That Championship Season: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Five

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That Championship Season: An Introduction

August 9, 2011April 30, 2019 Dan Seeger

The band Thirteen-One-Eleven, the brief side project of R.E.M. drummer Bill Berry in the early nineteen-nineties, released exactly one 12-inch single. The a-side of that record was a song entitled, “My Bible is the Latest TV Guide.” That’s a fairly … Continue reading That Championship Season: An Introduction

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