'Community' Watch: "Paranormal Parentage"

Which one of these should I dress up as next year? 

Sitcoms tend to excel at Halloween episodes. From funny costumes, to trick-or-treat, to haunted houses & other horror tropes there's a lot of potential fun to be had with a Halloween episodes but over its first 3 seasons Community clearly established itself as the king of Halloween episodes. The first season's "Introduction to Statistics" was the first great episode (Abed as Batman!) & where the show hit stride. Season two's zombie epidemic, "Epidemiology," is maybe the funniest episode the show's ever done. Last year's "Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps" was a fun look at the psyches, & storytelling abilities, of the Greendale Seven. So this episode had a lot to live up to & thus it's no surprise that Megan Ganz, one of the best writers of the last 2 seasons, was handed scripting duties for this episode & she delivered.

If I Ran the Emmys: Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy

Community pulls a hat trick in my version of the Emmys. 

We're on to the 2nd round of my "If I Ran the Emmys" series, Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, which is designed to give praise to those performances & shows I consider most deserving of recognition. As I've mentioned before I watch more television than most Emmy voters, who are busy actually making TV, so I'm catching some performances & shows that they may be missing out on, & of course actual TV critics see more than I do so here's a professional's take.*

*Again these posts are absolutely ripping off Alan Sepinwall's Emmy posts. In fact we even chose 5 of the same actors in this category & the one we did disagree on we just chose different actors from the same show, & that ratio isn't really going to change. So yea... You could just read his stuff, & if you enjoy television criticism than I highly recommend you do, but I hope you'll read mine anyway. 

It's important to also note that like actual Emmy voters I'm restricted by whether or not an actor submitted themselves & where they chose to do so, so while I may think someone's a lead character if they submit in supporting I'm bound to honor that (I'm also not nominating anyone from shows I didn't watch at least a few episodes of, sorry Downton Abbey). Click here for the actual Emmy ballot. As for the actual Emmys two years ago voters & I agreed on two nominees, last year that number shrunk to one & now I'm afraid, as with the Supporting Comedy Actress category, we couldn't find one nominee to agree on. Once again I leave it to you to decide who did a better job of singling out the best performances.

My (faux) Emmy Ballot: Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy

Now that's an Emmy worthy handshake.

The Emmy nominations were just announced last Thursday (see the list of nominees here) I thought I’d give my thoughts on who/what should have been nominated in the major categories. Last week I detailed my list of Outstanding Supporting Actresses in a Comedy, & today we move on to their male counterparts.

No category gave me more trouble to narrow down to six nominees, as you’ll be able to tell from my honorable mentions list, than Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy (For a look at a professional critic’s opinion click here, & for my picks last year go here). There are just so many great comedic actors & roles in television that you could pick at least a dozen different actors & be able to make a fine case that they should earn a nomination, however Emmy voters are restricted to six votes so I am as well. Without further ado here are my six picks (click on their names to see one of their highlights from this season)…