This TV Site:

Site FAQ's & Answers:

Last updated: June 30, 2005.

Q: OK, I know you say you don't give out tapes for the shows you do guides for, but you really do have tapes, don't you?

A: No, I really don't have a library of tapes of these shows (or of any shows, for that matter)!

There are several reasons for this: I am not much for watching things repeatedly over the years, and I don't think VCR tapes are of high enough quality (nor do they store enough per tape) to justify taping (though, perhaps, recordable DVD disks will change my mind).

But, basically, there are just not that many shows that I want to watch over-and-over again, so I don't tape.

So don't ask me for tapes!

Also, don't forget to check TVShowsOnDVD.com, and sites like Amazon.com, to see if the shows you're interested are out on DVD.

Q: Do you know the answer to [insert trivia question here]?

A: No, I don't. I really, really don't. And please don't ask me, because I really don't know, and I probably don't care.

More to the point, it has now been years since I've seen most of the shows archived on my site. (I haven't watched an episode Saved by the Bell the original, for example, since probably 1995!)

There are trivia websites (for various TV shows) out there on the web. I advise you do a search for one of those...

Q: Well, do you answer any questions from the public at large?!

A: Sure! I do!

Now that this site FAQ has told you the kind of questions I won't answer or the type of messages I won't respond to. But I don't want anyone to get the idea that I don't answer questions via E-mail, 'cos I do.

I don't mind getting questions or comments, as long as they don't fall into any of the categories outlined in this site FAQ. So, give me your best shot and fire away!

Q: Hey, seeing as you do the guide for [insert show here], you probably know how to contact [insert network here; insert star, cast or crew member here; etc.], right? So do you know how I can contact/write to/E-mail/telephone [insert network here; insert star, cast or crew member here; etc.]...?

A: The first question, I can answer:

• If you want to phone or write a letter to a network, go the rec.arts.tv FAQL portion of this site, and go read Section 3.1 where you will find the regular mail addresses, E-mail addresses and phone numbers for the networks; and/or also check out the "WWW Sites for TV Broadcast Networks" or the "WWW Sites for TV Cable Networks" pages.

As to the second question: NO! I do not know how to write to/E-mail/contact stars, actors, cast or crew! My advice: phone/write/E-mail the network that airs the show in question, or phone/write/E-mail the production company that produces the show, or both. In other words, see the preceding paragraph.

Q: Even if you had them, would you give out E-mail address of famous people/TV crew members?

A: Quite honestly? No!

As it turns out, I did (in the more distant past) get occasional E-mails, mostly from writers and producers, and such, either complimenting my work on my FAQs and episode guides,or critiquing some of the TV show/episode reviews that I've done that those crew members believed were based on incorrect information or were unfair.

Luckily for them (and unfortunately for you), I haven't really kept track of these E-mail addresses, so I don't have them.

But even if I did keep track of them, I wouldn't give them out. My thinking on this is that those Producers, etc. who want to be contacted by fans can be easily found on the net (e.g. in the past, showrunners such as Lee Goldberg and Bill Rabkin of Marshal Law and, previously, J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 and Larry Hertzog of Nowhere Man did post to Usenet; other showrunners/crew members posted to the boards on their shows' websites). Any other producers/writers/etc., I assume, don't necessarily want to be inundated by E-mails from numerous fans.

So I do not pass "famous" E-mail addresses along, unless the authors explicitly tell me it's OK to give their E-mail addresses to other people.

C'est la vie...

Q: Are you doing any new TV show reviews/episode guides/FAQs presently?

A: The only "new" projects I am working on presently are My TV Blog, my general TV show reviews - found in my Mid-Season and Season-End Reviews (see My TV Commentray Page) that I do at the midpoint and at the end of every TV season - and My TV Shows Status Page, which tracks which shows have been cancelled, renewed, etc. in the current TV season.

But, at present, I am not doing any new TV show-specific "Grading the Episode" reviews or Episode Guides. I still plan to keep the rec.arts.tv FAQ & FAQL as up-to-date as I can, however.

But I have no plans to start any new "Grading the Episode" reviews, or any Episode Guides, at this time.

Q: Well then, will you ever stop maintaining the FAQs, Episode Guides and "Grading the Episode" Reviews that you've already done/completed/archived here?

A: Not if I can help it!

After I left Grad School in September 1998 and became a regular working stiff, I lost some of the free-time that I had been devoting to my episode guides, FAQs, etc. So once I started working, I pretty much finished up the few episode guides that I was still working on, once those shows had ended their runs. Indeed, I haven't taken on a new review/episode guide for a TV show since "Roswell" premiered.

Having said that, I have archived all of my old episode guides, FAQs, etc. and plan to continue leaving up at this site for the foreseeable future. (Though, as I said above, I do plan to continue keep the rec.arts.tv FAQ & FAQL as up-to-date as I possible.)

So, no, the guides & FAQs that are presently available at this website will continue to be available, and do undergo minor updates & corrections from time to time.

Q: If you do have to stop updating this site, will you just delete it suddenly and disappear some day, like some people have?

A: No, I really hate it when people do that.

If, for some reason, I have to stop using Mac.com as my ISP (my other ISP, AOL, will be dropped soon), I will leave some pages behind at this web site that will forward users to any new web site I have (which is what I did when I moved this site from AOL to Mac.com in late 2002). I don't expect that to happen though.

If, on the other hand, I am unable to keep updating my site but still have access to Mac.com, I will leave some kind of indication behind that I have suspended my website (and hopefully, some kind of idea when I might be able to start them up again).

Q: Why are you doing guides for all these lame shows when you could be doing guides for cool shows, such as CSI or The O.C. or Charmed, etc.?

A: Well, one reason is that I don't have as much time to do guides/reviews/FAQs these days.

But, were I to start a new guide or FAQ, etc., here are the criteria I would for deciding to do a guide/review/FAQ (or not):

1. I must watch and really, really like the show. (If I lose interest in a show (i.e. if its quality declines greatly), I generally abandon doing the guide, as I've done on three previous occasions (e.g. Buffy, post-season #4), so far.)
2. The show must be easy to do a guide for (e.g. episode titles must be readily available, etc.).
   
   This "ease of guide" issue is why I didn't do guides for nighttime soap operas, such as Melrose Place, 90210 and Party of Five, for example, even though I watched them - properly synopsizing the multiple storythreads of such shows is, frankly, a nightmare, and too time consuming a job for me.
3. Generally, for me to want to do a guide, the show must not have preexisting episode guides, or episode summaries, from other authors all ready out there.
   
   This is why, back in the day, I didn't do guides for, say, ER or Party of Five (though the latter 2 shows are also hard to do guides for, as explained in criteria #2, above), as these shows already have episode guides available from other authors. Indeed, there are several excellent, complete episode-by-episode summaries for many of the more popular shows, so it's not necessary for me to do guides for these shows (check the rec.arts.tv FAQ, if you don't believe me - also see EpGuides.com & TV.com, and Television Without Pity).
   
   There three exceptions to this particular criteria, though:
   
   
1. My Grading the Episodes/Review site for Buffy The Vampire Slayer - I liked Buffy so much during its first 3 seasons that I just got to the point that I wanted to do a comprehensive review of the episodes after season #3 of Buffy had aired. So I did. (Of course, Buffy dived in quality soon after that, and I stopped the Buffy reviews after season #4...)
2. My guide for La Femme Nikita - I liked Nikita so much that I continued and completed my Nikita episode guide, even though there were several other Nikita guides/websites at the time.
   And,
3. My guide/web site for The Nanny, which was the only Nanny episode guide website out there when I started it several years back (though several other Nanny guides/websites from other authors popped up after that).
   

Of these, criteria #1 is the most important factor to me. If a show I really like doesn't have an episode guide (and an episode guide will be relatively easy to do), or I feel that the show warrents actual episode reviews (a la Buffy and Roswell), then I may seriously think about starting one.

Q: Why don't you do full 'episode summaries' instead of doing these simpler 'episode guides'?

A: In case you hadn't noticed, so-called 'episode summaries' are very difficult to maintain!

The closest I've gotten is my Grading the Episodes sites for Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Roswell, and even those episode reviews tend to be 'short' reviews.

In fact, weekly 'episode summaries' are so difficult to maintain that virtually every person who has attempted to write 'summaries' regularly has abandoned the job within three years, or less, of starting the job. (I think one or two people managed to do summaries for Star Trek: The Next Generation for longer than that, but eventually even they gave it up.)

Besides, I don't have unlimited time to spend on this stuff (it's a hobby, for Pete's sake!), and I do have responsibilities beyond my episode guides/reviews!

Comparatively, 'episode guides' are relatively simple to maintain. So don't expect me to start doing full 'summaries', 'cos it ain't going to happen!

Basically, the only people who should attempt to do full 'episode summaries' are the retired or the unemployed. Anyone else who attempts them on a regular basis should expect to lose their sanity in short order...

Q: Say, would you mind starting/restarting an episode guide for [insert show here]?

A: Well, yeah, I might mind.

Aside from the lack of time issue, if I'm not doing a guide for the show in question, there's probably a reason for it (i.e. maybe I don't like the show, maybe the show already has preexisiting episode guide(s) from some other author(s), etc.). See above.

(Still, if you think I'm missing out on a good show, drop me a line. Just know that I won't necessarily start a guide just because you want one...)

Q: Why did you do all those episode guides in the past, anyway?

A: Two reasons:

1. Having an episode guide for a show is, in my opinion, preferable to taping (though the advent of DVDs has changed this equation some) as a way to remember episodes of a show. I have collected a number of episode guides and FAQs from other authors for shows that I don't write guides for, and, of course, I write the guides for the shows that I watch but which don't already have their own guides.
2. I am a fairly strong proponent of promoting "civil society" on the Internet, and making episode guides available seemed to be a simple, but useful, way to give something back to the Internet community.

Indeed, it was the lack of FAQs for alt.tv.saved-bell and rec.arts.tv that got me started doing FAQs and episode guides in the first place back in 1994-1995 (i.e. I saw a need, and I decided to fill it!).

Q: What the heck is the deal with all these guides you do for 'teen' shows (especially 'teen' comedies)?

A: In case you hadn't noticed, I had (and still do, to some extent) a weakness for TV shows in the so-called 'teen' genre. This not only included the 'teen' comedies (for which I have the several guides for on my "TV Page"), such as Running the Halls or That 70's Show, but also more dramatic 'teen' fare, such as FOX's Party of Five or The O.C., WBN's Dawson's Creek or One Tree Hill and WBN's/UPN's Roswell.

Essentially, I think there is something both dramatically and comedically compelling about adolescence. Perhaps the appeal has to do with the fact that adolescents have to start participating in the 'adult' world before they've learned all the 'adult' rules. In any case, I've always liked shows in this genre (with some notable exceptions, like ABC's My So-Called Life), and I suspect I always will.

"Then why aren't you doing episode guides for the 'teen' dramas?" you ask! Because most (all?) of the 'teen' dramas all ready have guides out there from other authors (again, check the rec.arts.tv FAQ and other such TV Index sites, if you don't believe me). The 'teen' sitcoms generally did not have their own episode guides when I started (and several, such as UPN's old Sweet Valley High, didn't have any guides until TVTome.com (now TV.com) came along). So, back in the day, I began writing episodes guides for some of them.

The catalyst for starting these guides was the fact that there was no FAQ or episode guide available for the cult phenomenon Saved by the Bell (the original series) or it's newsgroup, alt.tv.saved-bell, back in 1993. At the time, I was fairly addicted to Saved by the Bell (don't worry! I've since recovered). So I started a FAQ/guide myself.

This first FAQ led me to write episode guides for several other shows (though some of these shows were disappointing - e.g. Hang Time, Saved by the Bell: The New Class and, amazingly, Buffy - so I abandoned guides for those shows before they were over). But I have finished guides for the other shows in this genre (e.g. Saved by the Bell, Running the Halls, Flash Forward, etc.).

Will I continue to do guides for other so-called 'teen' shows? Only time will tell, but I suspect, if I am able (and interested), it's possible that I might.

Q: Why don't you have little in the way of graphics at your site? Why is it mostly text-only?

A: There are several reasons:

1. Firstly, AOL (my original website ISP) only gave its members 2 Megs of disk space per 'screen name', and I used up most of that 2 Megs pretty quickly just with html/text-only versions of my FAQs and guides.
2. Secondly, though, is the fact that I try to keep in mind that a good number of web surfers are surfing the web over (slow) modem lines (even to this day!), and loading graphics can slow the loading of pages way down!
   

   Besides that, I myself find that a lot of the graphics used, especially at people's personal web sites (though a high percentage of commercial sites go way overboard with graphics too!), are extraneous and add little-to-nothing to the site. (The worst offenders are those sites that force you to load graphics and/or sound files, even if your web browser is defaulted to "Auto-Load Images Off" I hate that!!).

3. Finally, I don't have much in the way of graphics because I am no graphic artist! (designing good graphics is hard!), and I don't have any easy access to libraries of clip art. Maybe if I had some good clip at, I'd add some small icons to my pages. But as of right now, I don't.

In any case, I may, one day, add some small graphics to my site. But I sure don't feel that graphics are necessary, and I'm in no hurry to add some...