The Point Radio: 2012 The Year Of TV Comedy Gold

We begin our look back on the Pop Culture that was in 2012 as Media Mogul Ric Meyers (ricmeyers.com) runs down the vast array of great TV comedy from the year. From CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL to HAPPY ENDINGS to SUBURGATORY, it’s been a damn good twelve months. Plus what show was downloaded illegally the most in 2012 (we are talking millions here) and how iPads are killing the toy business. Take us ANYWHERE! The Point Radio App is now in the iTunes App store – and it’s FREE! Just search under “pop culture The Point”. The Point Radio – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or on any other mobile device with the Tune In Radio app – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Transcript

Hello, it's Mike Raub. Welcome back to The Point, where all parts of pop culture come together. Well, 2012, almost a memory, but there's things we need to talk about. What was your favorite TV, for example? If Media Mobile Rick Myers is here to cover all that for us. Plus, look out, here comes Arrested Development and Game of Thrones, the king of the illegal downloads. Let's get to The Point right now.

This is The Point, The Point radio, get The Point radio. Ah, the approach of the new year, the perfect time to look back at what's already been done. It's our chance to sit down and talk about some of the pop culture events that hit us all in 2012, especially for movies and television. And to do that, we brought on Media Mobile Rick Myers to talk, first of all, about his cut on TV for 2012.

Hey, everybody, this is Rick Myers, author, filmmaker, in general, all around, know it not quite all, with The Point's year-end wrap-up of all things big and small screen. Now, normally, all we'd have is the best and worst films of the year, but given that television has been routinely better than movies for the last, oh, let's say, two decades, even though it's really longer than that, I'm starting you with the best stuff of all, TV comedy.

Yes, TV comedy. Go ahead, try to name one great movie comedy this year. Try to name two last year. Oh, you might be able to name one or two good movie comedies in the last few years, but great, truly great, laugh out loud great? Well, I can name 20 laugh out loud great TV comedies, and that's this year alone. Don't let anybody fool you. 2012 is not just the golden age of TV comedy, it's the platinum age. Don't believe me? Well,

take a listen. In alphabetical order, the best TV comedies of the year are… Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state, but nearly 14 million years ago, expansion started waiting… A Big Bang Theory. It doesn't matter what Charlie Sheen says. Big Bang's commander, Chuck Lorre, knows what he's doing. What started as a somewhat grating, odd couple meets I

love nerdy Lucy has with the adept addition of new cast members matured into an increasingly satisfying exploration of loving geekdom. The Big Bang Theory is one of those rare shows that gets better as it goes along. Children's Hospital. David Wayne of MTV's The State and the film Red Hot American Summer and Rob Cordry of Comedy Central's The Daily Show have created an anarchic, self-saturizing

repository of talented comedic actors serving to skewer not just medical shows, but all TV genres. Community. Dan Harmon's last gasp as commander of this genre-bending look into the lives of a college study group gave us some of the Swedish? Sweetest. Not Swedish. Sweetest. Smartest. Sharpest stuff ever. With the team returning under new leadership, we can all

see how our favorite community-ers fare in 2013. Cougar Town. This could have been after Friends, but in the hands of Scrubs commander Bill Lawrence, it's become a fitting, unofficial, poorly titled Friends Friendly follow-up spotlighting ex-friend Courtney Cox as the core character in a sun-stroked, wine-soaked Florida neighborhood full of likeable, quip-spouting pals.

Don't trust the bee in Apartment 23. When ex-American dad producer-writer Ninochka Khan got a shot at her own show, she created this wild, profanity-bleeping, nudity-fuzzing, Hollywood-in-New-York skewering battle of, with, and between the oversexed sexes. Go on! Matthew Perry had a couple of shots at following up his friend's stardom, but who would have thought that this tale of a newly widowed man joining a grief counseling

group would be the one that hit anyone who's seen it? That's who. Happy endings. Take the Friends schematic of six loving pals, transpose it to LA, and fill the cast and crew with talented veterans from all over the map, and you've got a snappy, smart, surprising, and sparkling quip-best. How I Met Your Mother Having five friends instead of six is considered

breaking the mold in TV network land, and this show not only does that, but carries the possibly clunky concept of a man telling his children the sitcom's title tale with still and style. I was going to say style and skill, but I combined the both into skilled and never-known. It's always sunny in Philadelphia. Basic cable TV sitcoms specialize in spotlighting unlikable likables, and this semi-improvisational attack on all things sitcom is the granddaddy

of them all. Key and peel. What? Another sketch show? Yes, but it's another great sketch show. One that was inspired by the abortive genius of the Chappelle Show, then went one step further thanks to the nerd-friendly talent and inclusive sensibilities of Mad TV alums Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele. Louis Seinfeld begat this remarkable exercise in poo-tour-dum as revolutionary logical thinker Louis C.K. not only writes direct stars and

often edits his own show, not only pours his heart, soul, brains, libido, and ego onto the screen, but is also the envy of all his peers for creating the Louis C.K. contract. He stays under budget and adheres to a few standards and practices rules. He is uninterfereable. Parks and Recreation, what started as a knockoff of the office, has become thanks to star Amy Poehler's sweet loveability and ingratiating testament to funny, flawed people trying to

do good work in Indiana. Portlandia. Rock musicians Kerry Brownstein and F.N.L., not ready for prime-time player Fred Armisen, extend their internet comedy shorts onto TV by lovingly and insightfully lampooning their title Oregon Town. And Sub-Burger-Tory. What started as a sharp satire of the leisure-soaked upper class has

become a warm telling tale of class war and peace that charmingly and invitingly rests between laughs and sighs. And all this isn't even counting the Colbert Report, the Daily Show, Family Guy, Girls, The League, Mad, The Middle, Modern Family, New Girl, NTSF, SD, SUV, Raising Hope, Robot Chicken, The Simpsons, South Park, 30 Rock, Beat, The Venture Brothers, and even your favorites I've missed.

Things are so good on comedy TV. Most of the worst of the year have already been cancelled. These shows were, and in some cases still are, not only lame and unfunny, but compared to the landslide of greatness all around them, they seem insulting and even inexplicable. But for the record, here's the lame-o comedy crap of 2012. See how many you can even remember. Anger Management. Yes, Charlie Sheen is back and worse than ever, blackmailing TBS with

a full 100 episodes of this pig in a poke that we're all now stuck with. Animal Practice. NBC thought this was so good, they interrupted the Olympic closing ceremonies with it. They were wrong. Brickelberry gives comedy animation a bad name. Guys with kids, some good folk, do good work with this sadly mediocre sitcom. Malibu Country. Reba McEntire going through the motions,

daring her down-home fans to call her on it. The Neighbors. In the tradition of My Favorite Martian, Mark and Mindy, and Third Rock from the Sun, only even more strident and labored. Partners. The men behind Will and Grace try to make lightning strike twice. They don't. Sullivan and Son. Cheers with sad stereotypes and tone-deaf writing.

Whitney. The real comedy will be when we find out why this reviled sitcom got renewed and how it's still on. Work it. An obvious attempt to reboot and re-beat boosum buddies, but without any brains on or offsk. There you have it. For sheer mass excellence, TV comedy can't be beat. For more of my blathering, you can check out my website, RickMyers.com. That's R-I-C-M-E-Y-E-R-S.com. Leave the K off

Rick for karma. I'll be around to talk about the best and worst TV drama, as well as the best and worst movies of the year right here on this channel. Watch out for it. We're going to bring Rick back in a few days to talk about his favorite and least favorite movies of the past year. In the meantime, you can get plenty more of Rick on his site,

Rick Meyer, spelled R-I-C-M-E-Y-E-R-S.com. The fight, radio. Culture never sleeps. Here's what you missed over the past couple of days. Well, here's an interesting twist to the post-holiday sales. Tablets, as you know, like iPads, were a hot gift for the holiday season. But now it looks like they might be diverting

funds that would otherwise be spent on toys, and that could be devastating to the industry. According to an article in the New York Post, the toy business is going to lose about 4% this year. That's a worse loss in three decades, and it's backed up with earlier reports in the season that fewer container loads of toys came into the country before the holiday season sales began. Tablets are given to kids as gifts, and some of those kids are as young

as three years old, which replaces so many toys and gets them out of the idea and the habit of buying things that of course every Christmas season push guys like Mattel and Hasbro to the top of the sales charts. One of our favorite charts to follow at the end of the year is the shows from TV that are downloaded illegally the most over the year. And that honor goes again this year

to Game of Thrones, the number one most illegally downloaded show from the internet, with over 4,280 million illegal downloads for just a single episode. That according to some figures released from Torrent Freak. Also in the top ten, Big Bang Theory, The Walking Dead, Fringe, and Revolution as well. Ever since the news broke that Arrested Development was returning to television, and this time

as an exclusive on Netflix. Well, the big question was when? Now that's been answered. All episodes will debut at once on the 4th of May in the new year. There are 14 episodes in total, and of course all these will point to the Arrested Development movie, which we should start hearing about sometime mid 2013. Actually, I think everybody knew it except Brian Fuller, but it's officially over for

NBC's Munsters reboot, Mockingbird Lane. Fuller made the announcement last week on Twitter that NBC would not be moving forward with the project, which debuted as a Halloween special in the fall, and would be viewed also to some very mixed reviews, due to major changes to a lot of characters we were so familiar with from the original series. You're like me, you're raring to get back in the comic book stores this week, it's

a new year, and a whole bunch of new stuff waiting for you. Here's our first list of the five things you need to check out for 2013. It starts with a collection of Jeff John's Green Lantern stories from the more recent days of the new 52, collected in a trade paperback for just under 15 bucks from DC. By the way, also from DC, one last straggling death of the family tie-in, that's Teen Titans number 15 this week. From IDW, the strangest

one shot I think of any year, it's Mars Attacks Popeye. Figure it out, it's exactly what it says it is, but the great cover, at least we'll get you to pick it up and look at it, and you know you got to. Also from IDW, My Little Pony Friendship is Magic number two. Again, I don't quite understand the draw for this, but you know a lot of people made it one of the biggest selling books of 2012 and well sold out, so grab number two while you

can this week if you're interested. Speaking of sold out, a number of the smaller independent titles from Image are being reprinted this week. For example, Blackacre number one gets a second printing and a new number two this week. Great Pacific number two is reprinted and Great Pacific number three is new this week. And I Love Trouble number one gets a second printing and the second issue of that title out from Image this week. Also just

like Nowhere Men number one also with a second printing. And speaking of second printing, Anna Zoeg's Damsels is one title that a lot of folks are talking about and the first issue has been kind of hard to get. It is now in a second printing this week and the fourth issue of Damsels also available. And finally from Marvel New Avengers number one now another Jonathan Hickman revamp of the Avengers this time with the Illuminati. That's

out this week as well from Marvel. Check all these out in comic stores in your area and be sure to support them because they're going to need it in the new year. Find out the ones in their neighborhood where you live right now with a comic book locator service at one eight eight eight comic book or with that app that's available right now on the iTunes App Store. That does it for the podcast for 2012. Well we're back though right over the

new year's hump with a lot more. We'll see you later in the week as Rick Myers covers the movies of 2012 and a few more surprises as well. Of course pop culture as we always say never really sleep. So we're covering for you 24 hours a day right into the new year on Get The Point radio dot com. You can listen free on your computer. You can use the iPhone app. It's free in the iTunes App Store. Just look under pop culture The Point.

And if you've got an Android or maybe a Blackberry you can listen to us free as well with the app called Tune In Radio. This podcast produced twice every week by Malcontent Media. You'll always find it on websites like ComicMix dot com and Michael Davis World dot com as well. You can subscribe to us in the iTunes podcast directory. You can follow us on social media on Facebook and on Twitter under The Point radio as well. See you in 2013. Happy

New Year! Get The Point radio dot com!