Christine Becker — a professor of film and television at Notre Dame who also runs the phenomenal News for TV Majors website and the Twitter account @GoodTVeets — has assembled a massive collection of the Best TV Tweets of 2011. You can read the extensive list here, but I’ve taken the liberty of narrowing them down to the 30 Very Best TV Tweets of the Year, in no particular order. Click on the links to follow their Twitter accounts.

30. Troy/Abed is my forever ship. #Community — Carrie Reisler

29. “I was in Sideways you a**holes!!” – Sandra Oh at the table read for the #GreysAnatomyMusical — Sara Schaefer

28. Inspired by Extreme Couponing, our third child will be a roomful of mustard. – Scott Tobias

27. The promos for NBC’s new series seem more like warnings than promos. — Andy Borowitz

26. At the pace The Walking Dead is going they’ll never find Rosie Larsen’s killer. – Miles Kahn

25. Was disappointed when I heard today’s Community news. Mostly because my jetpack fueled by Internet Outrage is still in prototype. – Jeremy Mongeau

Read the rest of this entry »

In a startling and abrupt change of course, NBC has decided to let people widely considered to be funny and talented make television shows for them. Deadline has more on this risky, daring maneuver:

The Office and Parks & Recreation executive producer Greg Daniels is teaming with a writer from each of his two NBC series to develop new animated comedy projects for the network. One of the projects will be written/executive by The Office co-executive producer/co-star Mindy Kaling, who will also voice a character, the other – by Parks & Recreation producer Alan Yang. Daniels and his manager/producing partner Howard Klein will executive produce both comedies. The Mindy Kaling project revolves around a girls high-school volleyball team. Alan Yang’s toon is about a group of 20something guys sharing a house in Los Angeles’ upscale community of Hancock Park.

I know this is where I’m supposed to say something about how “The Office” fell off or whatever, but I’m not going to do that. Maybe it’s gotten a little stale lately, but when it debuted, it was really good, smart television. And “Parks and Recreation” is one of the best comedies on TV. Putting the people responsible for those shows in charge of new, fresh offerings seems so smart and obvious that I am literally in shock that NBC actually thought of it. Greg Daniels has an excellent pedigree, based on his work with “The Simpsons” and “King of the Hill,” in addition to the two shows mentioned above. Mindy Kaling is really funny, and a refreshing alternative to the “acerbic, raunchy lady” styles of Whitney Cummings and Chelsea Handler. And Alan Yang gets forever love because of his involvement with Fire Joe Morgan.

I fully expected these shows to be hilarious, critically acclaimed, and unceremoniously yoinked off the air somewhere between the first and second commercial breaks of their premieres.

People Magazine’s “Most Beautiful” issue has always been a joke — part reach-around for the stars whose PR flacks give the magazine the best fodder, part pandering to the women who read it on the treadmill — and the sneak peek at this year’s edition is no different. Among the stars deemed “most beautiful” are tabloid headliners Katie Holmes, Jessica Simpson, Sandra Bullock, and Jennifer Lopez, charity cases like Dana Delany, and pretty boys Zac Efron and Ryan Reynolds.

But that’s not the point. The point is that “Office” stars Mindy Kaling and Ellie Kemper (both former interns for Conan O’Brien) are also on People’s list. Here’s their blurb:

Being book smart didn’t help Kemper, a Princeton grad, when it came to Beauty 101. “I have learned to moisturize,” the 30-year-old star of The Office tells PEOPLE of what she’s picked up from Hollywood. As for costar Kaling, the fellow Ivy Leaguer – a Dartmouth alum – is ready to embrace beauty over brains: “I identify as a comedy writer, so to get compliments on appearance, that’s the nicest compliment – to be shallow!”

Awww, c’mon People! These women went to Ivy League schools, became accomplished writers and actresses in one of TV’s most successful sitcoms — and they’re both perfectly attractive. Do we really need to blow smoke up their asses? The only thing that was keeping them grounded was their feeling of inferiority when compared to all the super-hot women in Los Angeles. Why, we were THIS close to giving Mindy an eating disorder!

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What with me being on the West Coast and writing about sports this weekend, I wasn’t around to watch “Saturday Night Live.” And yet, somehow, the world continued spinning. Crazy but true.

Strangely enough, the last time I didn’t watch “SNL” was the same time that the first of Kenan Thompson’s “What Up With That?” sketches aired. I loved the first one because it turned so many “SNL” conventions on their heads: it’s a talk show sketch that isn’t the usual lame talk show sketch, it features guest stars and blatantly refuses to use them in any meaningful way, and the fact that the skit goes on too long is part of the joke. That said, I REALLY hope this doesn’t become a recurring skit. Because this could get old real fast.

Anyway, I didn’t catch anything on Twitter about people thinking it was a terrible episode, so I’m going to assume that host Joseph Gordon-Levitt did a decent job until I finally get around to watching this a week from now. I like JGL despite the three names thing. Brick was awesome, and he was really good in Mysterious Skin despite that movie creeping me the hell out. It’s pretty funny to joke about beating and raping someone with a shampoo bottle, but it’s something else entirely to watch it happen.

In advance of tonight’s episode of “The Office,” here’s a music video starring Mindy Kaling, Ed Helms, B.J. Novak, and the new girl on the show. I guess I should look up her name. Ellie Kemper. She plays Erin. It’s all auto-tuned and spoofy of the Lady Gaga hits that I wish I’d never heard (Get out of my head, “Poker Face”!).

Anyway, I don’t think this is the greatest thing ever, but I spent so much time trying to get NBC’s retardedly crappy video player to work that the only way I could justify the use of time was to make a post out of it. Way to make a video player that doesn’t work in Firefox, NBC. Also, there’s a skit about the fictional “making of” directed by Kaling that I actually found that funnier than the music video.

But seriously, the real point here is how much the video player sucks. Hey NBC, don’t get all snippy with copyright claims on YouTube if you can’t carry your weight online, jackasses.