Best TV resumés

Betty White, whose Emmy nominations span the years 1951 to 2012.

 

--Chuck Lorre (executive producer of Grace Under Fire, Two and a Half Men, Big Bang Theory, Mike and Molly, Dharma and Greg, Cybill, and a co-executive producer of Roseanne for a while).
--Norman Lear (executive producer of All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, Sanford and Son, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman; and Jeffersons was spun off from All in the Family)
--David E. Kelley (Executive producer of L.A. Law, Picket Fences, The Practice, Boston Legal, Boston Public, Ally McBeal)

 

I know a few people who like The Newsroom, but I don't think I'd ever heard it called "top quality."

 

Yeah, I'd agree about Here's Lucy and Life with Lucy, but not The Lucy Show. She won two Emmys for The Lucy Show and it ran six seasons to pretty strong ratings.

Also, the Lucy Show was quite groundbreaking in being a show that focused on a single (well, widowed) woman. A show with two adult female friends living together in 1962 was far from the norm. And a lead character (Vance) being divorced in 1962 was a bit ahead of its time, too.

 

David Simon. David Chase. Joss Whedon.

 

I was hate-watching The Newsroom by the end of the season. I think I'll start watching this season, but I don't know if I will stick with it. Studio 60 fell apart fast. Sorkin struggles with female characters and both The Newsroom and Studio 60 did a lot of telling us how amazing the characters were at their jobs while hardly ever showing it.

Sorkin belongs in the conversation, but he's hit and miss.

 

I didn't like Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and I haven't liked the dozen-or-so episodes of The West Wing that I've seen. I liked Sports Night more for the premise and the acting than the writing. Everything Aaron Sorkin writes feels so written and rehearsed and perfected, with Charlie Wilson's War being the biggest offender. Maybe that makes sense when your lead character is a Harvard-educated Internet genius.

 

I wasn't originally thinking along these lines when I started the thread, but network executive Kevin Reilly might fit the bill. Early in his career he helped develop Law & Order and then ER. He turned FX into a cable player with The Shield and Rescue Me, then went back to NBC and got (and kept) The Office, Friday Night Lights and 30 Rock, among others, on the air.

He's running Fox now and not necessarily championing the low-rated critical darlings, but putting on some good shows with good-to-great ratings.

 

Jason Katims has a hell of a résumé (which has accents over both E's, incidentally): He had very large roles in Relativity, Roswell, Boston Public and Friday Night Lights, and Parenthood is basically his own device. He also wrote three episodes of My So-Called Life, one of which was the show's crown jewel, "Life of Brian."

 

James L. Brooks was the Executive Producer or Producer for "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", "Rhoda", "Lou Grant", "Taxi", and "The Simpsons."

His movie credits are amazing, too.

 

Brooks and James Burrows are the giants of TV comedy.

 

Dictionary.com has it both ways and with no accents. But actually I don't know how to type the accent so I copy and pasted it and forgot to replace the first one.