Way back in September, Kyle, Friend of the Faux Katie, and I attended a taping of the Parker Posey/Lauren Ambrose/Amy Sherman-Palladino sitcom The Return of Jezebel James. I’m excited to say that the episode we saw is airing tonight! (Unless they cancel the show between now and 8:30. Which is… possible.)

This is our episode! That kid with the horns on the right is based on this kid.

Living in New York, and in the age of the single-camera sitcom, we don’t get a lot of opportunity to see scripted shows being taped. I’ve been to the Daily Show, which was awesome, but it was also remarkably similar to sitting at home watching the Daily Show (for example, it took almost exactly a half hour to tape). Seeing Jezebel James taping was completely different and fascinating. Watching the crew at work, manipulating these giant cameras at insane speeds and making instant decisions and changes and improvements, was like watching a whole other show in addition to the one being taped. I loved it. I could’ve stayed there all night just to watch them do their jobs.

… Which is good, because the taping went until after 1:00 AM! Keep in mind these numbers: Taping began at around 7:00. About 8-10 minutes of the show had been previously recorded. That means that we spent 6+ hours taping 12-14 minutes of actual show. Now, if this were a movie, that might not be so insane. But according to the audience’s cheesy host/comedian(?), who’s been a host/comedian(?) at dozens of tapings of many shows, in his experience, this was the latest a sitcom taping had ever gone. (Also, his family owns Town Shop. FYI.)

Like I said, I had no problem with this, because I was loving the whole experience. However, it did not bode well for the show. The problem seemed to be the house style of dialogue, those lovely convoluted twisty-turny sentences that tripped so lightly off of Lauren Graham’s tongue. Apparently, not everyone is so adept at turning the Palladino witticisms into natural speech. I adore Parker Posey, and she was delightful to watch, but it was not a natural fit for her — not the speeded-up rhythms of taping a TV show, not the mouthfuls of dialogue, not the increasingly late and exhausting night. Not any of it, really.

Her assistant was our favorite. Great timing. Get that guy his own show!

I’m very curious how it all turned out. Critics and audiences don’t seem to like it so far. For the crews doing overtime last September, that may turn out to be a relief. But for poor me who likes seeing TV being taped, that’s a shame.

So is anyone going to watch tonight? I’d recommend it, even though it’s not a slam dunk show. It’s worth taking a look, and not just because you may hear my laughter.

Recently, TV Blog Coalition member Scooter recently sent out a call for TV bloggers to submit their lists of the top ten TV characters currently on TV. No old folks (not even recent favorites Veronica Mars and Arrested Development) and no one from unscripted TV.

Here’s my list, complete with rationales. I realize that I probably have some glaring omissions, considering there are quite a few critically-hailed shows I don’t watch (so feel free to submit your “what abouts” in the comments)

10. Jack Donaghy - 30 Rock

For this list, I tried to limit myself to one character per show. However, 30 Rock is the one show that has two representatives (this and number seven). The first reason for this is because I don’t know that I watch enough shows to make this a definitive list (although, to be sure, I do watch more TV than is really recommended). The second is that there are so many great characters on 30 Rock it was hard to pick just one. Jack Donaghy isn’t necessarily the most imaginative character (power mad CEO), but between his one-liners (on Liz calling herself a businesswoman: “I don’t think that’s actually a word.”) and his brooding portrayal by Alec Baldwin — it’s just a great role.

9. Noah Bennett - Heroes

Noah’s probably the one character on Heroes that I can’t quite make my mind up about. I hate him sometimes, sometimes I’m rooting for him. And that’s the way he’s written. Regardless, he’s easily the most complicated character on the show.

8. Nick George - Dirty Sexy Money

There are so many wacky characters on Dirty Sexy Money that the one who stands out is the straight man — the protagonist, Nick. There way he responds to the characters around him, all tugging him in their own directions, is one of the best parts of the series.

7. Kenneth the Page - 30 Rock

When I think of Kenneth the Page, I associate him with pure joy. He’s so sweet and weird (not drinking coffee or other hot beverages because they’re at the “devil’s temperature”) — it makes him one of the funniest characters in recent TV memory.

6. Ben Linus - Lost

There are a lot of possibilities for the most interesting character on Lost, but you really can’t get away from Ben. Between Michael Emerson’s dead-eyed portrayal and the seemingly never-ending well of secrets he possesses, Ben is the source of never-ending mystery.

5. Starbuck - Battlestar Galactica

The obvious choice for Battlestar. I’m not going to say anything about this because I’m sure I don’t know the half of it (I’m six episodes from the end of season three — don’t spoil me, even though I know crazy shit goes down).

4. Nancy Botwin - Weeds

Nancy Botwin is probably one of the most complicated characters on television. She makes mind-blowingly awful decisions sometimes, usually motivated out of desperation, but she embodies both strength and weakness

3. Olive Snook - Pushing Daisies

The way I see it, Olive is really the strongest independent character on Pushing Daisies. You’ve got the romantic leads, Ned and Chuck — and while they have clever dialogue and interesting personalities, they’re too caught up in each others’ orbits to really show too much eccentricity. And Emerson is primarily there as both a driving force for the plot and a sour counterbalance to the happy couple’s ultra-sugary romance. Olive is the one character who could really just not be there at all from a plot standpoint. But, as a result, she compensates in quirk. Kristin Chenowith sells the hell out of her, between the singing and the endearing, tiny cutesiness.

2. Dwight Schrute - The Office

Pam and Jim are too cute and ordinary. Michael is too obvious. Phyllis and Stanley are too minor. Dwight is the most original character on The Office. He’s a little terrifying, especially because you probably knew someone exactly like him in high school (or, God forbid, right now). But he’s in his own world that, even though you don’t know anything about it — you know exactly where he’s coming from.

1. Dexter Morgan - Dexter

I chose Dexter as my top character — a decision that I surprised myself with. I think I chose him because he challenges viewers like few other shows on TV. You can’t really back him 100 percent, but you always root for him. During the second half of season two it was like his house of cards was falling, but you couldn’t stop rooting for him — even when the monster within him was bubbling to the surface.

Those were my answers — here are what I and my fellow bloggers decided on for the master list.

1. Kara “Starbuck” Thrace (Battlestar Galactica)
2. Tami Taylor (Friday Night Lights)
3. Barney Stinson (How I Met Your Mother)
4. Benjamin Linus (Lost)
5. Dexter Morgan (Dexter)
6. Coach Eric Taylor (Friday Night Lights)
7. Landry Clarke (Friday Night Lights)
8. Dwight Schrute (The Office)
9. Lily Rush (Cold Case)
10. Omar Little (The Wire)
11. Gaius Baltar (Battlestar Galactica)
12. Olive Snook (Pushing Daisies)
13. Shawn Spencer (Psych)
14. Sheldon Cooper PhD (The Big Bang Theory)
15. Dr. Juliet Burke (Lost)
16. Michael Weston (Burn Notice)
17. Captain Jack Harkness (Torchwood)
18. Dr. Miranda Bailey (Grey’s Anatomy)
19. Chuck Bartowski (Chuck)
20. Brenda Leigh Johnson (The Closer)
21. Emerson Cod (Pushing Daisies)
22. Ned “The Piemaker” (Pushing Daisies)
23. Liz Lemon (30 Rock)
24. Stephanie Lane (My Boys)
25. Stewie Griffin (Family Guy)

Also receiving multiple votes: Desmond Hume (Lost), Major John Casey (Chuck), Jack Donaghy (30 Rock)
Voters: Dan, Ducky, Jo, Kate, Sandie, TVFan, Vance

Like I mentioned before, TiFaux is taking part in the Adopt a Writer project. Participating TV Blogs are finding writers, finding out what their lives are like with the strike and helping them to tell their stories. For our first assignment, we interviewed Michael Jann of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Ask Michael Jann what the hardest part about being a striking writer is and this is what he’ll say.

“Besides the loss of paycheck, a loss of erections.”

Ask Michael Jann what his daily routine consists of during the strike and this is what he’ll say.

“Hoping and praying the strike ends. Working on a book: The Five People You Meet In Hell. It’s about the AMPTA.”

Needless to state, Michael is a professional cut-up. For the past 15 years, he’s been writing monologue jokes for Jay Leno from his office (a media hub where he scans newspapers, surfs the internet and sets the television to blare news, sports, Dr. Phil, Oprah and his self-professed favorite, Blind Date).

“I write and write and write and hand pages of jokes to Jay — the greatest boss in the world, always says thanks — and then [he] tells the jokes in front of about ten million people that night.,” he said, adding “I get paid for this.”

Now that the strike has hit, Jann, a Connecticut native, has found himself in the surreal position of picketing with his fellow writers.

“The picket lines are drudgery and boring beyond belief. But there’s one that is 90% Tonight Show writers, so I get to joke around with them and stay connected. We accomplish nothing picketing, except for providing moral support for one another. On windy days I throw my sign up in the air, and pretend it’s a kite. The sad thing is, it never really blows away.”

Jann’s comedy career began in Catholic school back in Connecticut, getting in trouble for cracking jokes in class. In fact, he once claims to have had a yardstick broken over his back (“Giggling in church was a felony”).

After going to school at the University of Connecticut and diverting from his original plan to become a veterinarian (thanks to a D in botany), he went into advertising as a temporary career. Over the course of ten years, he wrote TV commercials in Hartford, Philadelphia, Boston and New York.

After that, though, he decided enough was enough and he switched coasts to move to Los Angeles. He bided his time writing for National Lampoon magazine and Nick At Night until Jay Leno began guest hosting on the Tonight Show and was accepting submissions from freelance jokesters via fax. Jann started writing for Leno at fifty bucks a joke and when Johnny Carson retired, Leno hired Jann on full-time.

Jann has nothing but effusive praise for his boss Jay, although some union members might still be fuming about his decision to write his own monologues.

“Jay was super supportive for two months, visiting the picket line every day. He had to go back — he is a brand that must maintain its viability. He is a force of nature — hasn’t taken a sick day once in fifteen years. I don’t begrudge him going back.”

For now, though, Jann is still on the picket lines.

“Picketing is surreal. No other word for finding yourself out in the street, walking in circles, holding a sign, accomplishing nothing.”

For now, he vents by doing personal writing.

“I hope that’s not against the rules.” he said. “I’m not being paid.”

It’s pretty to look at, but at the end of the day it doesn’t leave you with much to think about.

Listen, I like reality TV as much as the next obese, intellectually lazy glutton. It’s a fact.

I watch Survivor even though it’s way past hip. I’ve been known to keep up with what’s going on during the current season of Big Brother. I’ll even catch up with Dancing With the Stars so I’ll have something to talk about with my mom.

But the writers strike is really testing the boundaries of my brainlessness. I mean, I found myself watching the premiere of the Real World/Road Rules Challenge (The Gauntlet: Part Three, if that means anything to you) and wondering who in the hell these children were, why they were drinking so much and whether the crew supplied them with the proper prophylactics. God knows we don’t need another generation of angry, sweaty emotion machines supplying MTV with more product.

What I’m trying to say is that there is a lot of crap on TV right now. If the strike weren’t going on, we could be watching Milo and Hayden acting on Heroes and wondering if it’s weird for them to be dating AND pretending to be uncle and niece. And projecting the whole Jim and Pam situation onto our real lives. And not-so-secretly wishing that Tina Fey would be our awesome older sister/best friend.

But no. All we’ve got is American Gladiators, that stupid lie detector show and a lot of time to sit alone and weep.

So here’s a poll. Because I can’t think of anything else to offer you.

Lately, I’ve become obsessed with the idea of “safe words.” That is, the words people say when they’re in some sort of kinky S&M kind of situation and they’ve decided they’ve had enough. Because, you know, if they just say “no, stop, you’re hurting me,” that could be part of the fantasy.

In any case, I just think that it’s really funny to think of shouting the least erotic, most incongruous word in the heat of the moment — at the peak of the psychological and physical intensity. Like — you’re all sweaty and leathery and weird, and then all of a sudden you have to shout “Delaware!” to make them stop whatever they’re doing.

On that note, I’ve created TiFaux’s Top Ten Suggested TV-Related Safe Words.

10. The Dharma Initiative
9. Celebrity Fit Club
8. L.C.’s headband
7. Michael Chikles
6. “Gossip Girl does not accurately depict Brooklyn”
5. “Bravo: Watch what happens”
4. Lifetime Movie Network
3. Cylon resurrection ship
2. “Utensils down, hands up”
1. Moesha

Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing with my life.

We all go through that, right?  Unless you’re one of those people who has gone through their entire life wanting to be, say, a doctor.  And you just power through high school and college with that goal.  You go to medical school, graduate and then you’re finally a doctor.  No hesitation, no wavering.

On that note, what exactly leads you to be one of the dancing dudes for Bindi Irwin — daughter of the late Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin?

You’ve already got the threatened masculinity of being a singer-dancer, but it’s also compounded by the fact that you’re doing it on a children’s show.  And doing back-up for a wee Australian lass just takes it to a whole new level.

Needless to say, I find the gents both strangely humbled and strangely alluring.  Here they are backing up Ms. Irwin on a song about elephants.

And here’s a feature on the men themselves.

Closing out the year…

• Maggie revived the I’m Sick of Your Shit series, focusing her ire on Top Chef’s Tom Colicchio.
• I created some equations inspired by The Pick-Up Artist. This is my second best post of the year.
• I reviewed the pilot of Gossip Girl.
• I broke the news to Tim Gunn that his new show kind of blew.
• Maggie identified another contemporary TV archetype in the Superpowered Nerd (think Chuck and Reaper).
• I came around on Aliens in America, but not enough to watch it on a regular basis.
• I created a Grey’s Anatomy mad lib.
• I pronounced The Bionic Woman DOA.
• Maggie took a shine to a show in the new old-ladies-on-cable genre: Damages.
• TiFaux readers helped us come up with potential season four plotlines.
• David Chase got me all riled up again with some snooty remarks.
• We analyzed the season’s new shows and whether they lived up to their promise.  It’s on a chart!
• Cristin popped in to proclaim the glory of Friday Night Lights.
• We got nominated for another Weblog Award!
• Kyle gave a sneak preview of Battlestar Galactica: Razor.
• I talked about the semi-awesomeness of Project Runway Canada.

Okay,  that’s more than enough.  And everything else should be recent enough that you remember it.

We wrote a lot of stuff this year!  Good job, team!

Summer’s always rough in finding things to write about. But we managed to find stuff.

• The Who Would Win in a Fight series heated up with a bout between the matriarchs of Arrested Development and Heroes.
• Kyle was grumpy and took it out on Studio 60. Maggie tried to keep the peace.
• Maggie fell in like with Greek.
• Cristin talked about The Best Years — a show we haven’t heard from since.
• Maggie wondered why everyone is so worked up over Mad Men.
• I wondered if straight boys actually liked it when Giada DeLaurentiis looked like she was covered in menstrual blood (I’m sorry, was that too much? I can never tell.).
• I described my disappointment with the Jezebel James pilot (which, by the way, is that show ever premiering?).
• I also doted over Barefoot Contessa (this post, by the way, got me my full-time job).
• Maggie gave intense analysis of the High School Musical 2, including posts on Ryan Evans and Sharpay.
• Kyle wondered why “Lindsay Lohan’s well-manicured lady parts” was our number two search term.
• We began our Friends of the Faux series, profiling our chattiest commenters, starting with Tapeworthy’s Vance.

Here’s what we had to offer for the year’s second quarter.

• I took a trip to Savannah, Georgia and ate at Paula Deen’s Lady and Sons restaurant.
• Cristin love-hated the Pussycat Dolls reality show.  Actually, maybe it was just more hate-hated.
• I felt shame for my love of Work Out and Sam Champion.
• Maggie looked at the big picture on Heroes.
• Kyle did a post-mortem on TiFaux Madness — the wildly successful event that nearly made Maggie lose her faith in humanity.  Or, I don’t know, maybe it actually did.
• Cristin cried shenanigans on TV Turnoff Week.
• Kyle recommended solutions for fixing Studio 60 (too late, buckaroo).
• Cristin and I did a sweeps death-likelihood analysis.
• I broke up with Grey’s Anatomy (although it didn’t actually follow through). By the way, this is my best post of the year.
• Maggie sums up all of the seasons upfronts with a series of polls.
• Cristin went through the stages of mourning for Veronica Mars.
• Maggie dedicated an entire week to the celebration of Judd Apatow.
• I didn’t watch Shear Genius and freaked out about it. All went back to normal with my ill-fated recaps of Top Chef.
• I went ballistic of the bullshit series finale of The Sopranos.
• My favorite Cristin post of the year: I’m Sick of Your Shit — Age of Love.

No new content this week, kids.  It’s all because of Jesus.

But, to tide you over, this week we’ll be supplying y’all with links to the best crap we wrote all year. Chances are you’ve forgotten about it, so it’s just like real new content.

Here’s a look back at the first three months of the year:

• Remember that show with Courtney Cox-Arquette called Dirt?  Well, after watching the series premiere, Maggie and I posted virtually the same thoughts the next day. Read Maggie’s here.  Read mine here.
• In a personal post, Maggie links sex, High School Musical and ballroom dancing.
• Cristin began her recaps of season two of The Hills.
• I detailed my fascination with Food Network’s Sandra Lee.
• Maggie was aghast at a suicidal robot commercial during the Superbowl.
• Kyle recapped his and Maggie’s trip to the Buffy sing-along.
• This post makes me wonder “What ever happened to internet-in-her-brain woman on Heroes?”
• Maggie looked back on the insanity of her “Soaring, flying” High School Musical post. Just to give you some perspective, that is still one of the most viewed pages on the site.  To this day.
• I looked back at the glory of the gay-themed reality show “Playing it Straight.”
• Lost had one of its best episodes of the season starring (surprise, surprise) Nikki and Paolo.