With Hulu’s second annual Best in Show winner announced, we spoke to “Chuck” co-creator Chris Fedak to see if he’d share some thoughts on his show winning the competition and talk to us about the series and the growth of its characters over the last four years.

Hi Chris, we were hoping to talk to you about “Chuck” and how it won Hulu’s Best in Show. I have to admit I was surprised a little bit, because it won by a landslide, over “Dexter.”
Chris Fedak, co-creator, “Chuck”: Well, first of all, thank you so much. It’s great to win, and we’re always in awe of our fans. They’re an amazing group. They’ve been fantastic to the show in years past and we’ve always relied upon then. I guess it’s kind of a testament to how much they really did the show, and we really like making the show for them, so it’s really cool.

“Chuck” beat out three other critically acclaimed shows — “Modern Family,” “Community,” and “Dexter.” We asked this of Josh Gomez [who plays Chuck's sidekick, Morgan, on the show]: Do you think this indicates that “Chuck” belongs in the pantheon of all-time greatest TV shows?

Wow. I think it when it comes to the greatest of all time TV pantheon, I’ll let the critical historians 100 years from now make that decision. We’re just excited to be on the air, making our show, and being the absolute best action-spy comedy set inside a big box store that we could possibly be. We’re of course huge fans of all of those shows. It’s great, but I think I’ll leave the absolute pantheon to the experts.

Speaking of big box stores, I have to ask how that came about. “Chuck” came out at about the same time as “Reaper,” both taking place inside megastores. What is it about that kind of environment that inspired you?

Essentially, you have to go back to 2007. Imagine the fact there was actually two shows with a strong big box component that also had a strong genre component. At the time, Josh [Schwartz, co-creator of "Chuck"] and I were just amazed that there was going to be two shows. We thought obviously we would be the only show doing this. It didn’t turn out to be the case. The show is a mash-up. It’s a combination of one part “The Office,” one part “24,” one part “Alias.” When you mash those shows together, what happens? What we were really excited about is if you built the show like something like “The Office,” where you essentially met all these characters and you loved them, and then how terrifying it would be if Sydney Bristow or Jack Bauer came into the office, because you knew, when those people showed up, that someone was going to get shot, and someone was going to get tortured, and someone was going to get killed. That’s where the initial germ of the “Chuck” show came from. So the big box store was always there at the beginning. That was the basis for the idea: what happens when people from another genre, from an action show, walk into that world. It’s made for a really fun show that’s always been about bending genres. It’s been a lot of fun for us to be working with something so unique.

We asked our guest critic, HitFix’s Alan Sepinwall, what he thought was the secret formula to “Chuck.” And he said it was made with a lot of love directed at its characters and pop culture. What do you think of that?
I think it’s spot-on. I think this is a show designed for people who 1) love pop culture, 2) love TV, and 3) love movies and music. And in some ways, it’s also a love letter to spy shows from the past. When you take all those things together, we don’t have the largest audience in the world, but we do have an audience that just adores the show and really digs what we do. It’s made for that kind of passionate fan base that we talked about earlier. For us, it’s exciting to make as how that can be that specific and have fun with that.

Much has been made of the Subway campaign from 2009. Are you guys still seeing some sort of residual impact of this?
Well my father tells me he still goes to Subway every night we have an episode air, so I think there is some residual. You’d have to ask the experts at Subway if they see an uptick on Monday nights from “Chuck” viewing parties. It’s one of those things where it was very exciting in Season 2 when it was a toss up if we were going to come back or not, and the Subway campaign was a really clever idea by our fans to show how they could influence the show — and of course, looking at our integration partner Subway was a great way to kind of show their support for the show. It was a very clever and savvy campaign by our fans. I think that also speaks to our fans: it’s a very bright crowd. Our fans know about every campaign associated with our show. It’s kind of amazing. We’ve had two seasons since then.

I think that’s a true testament — people typically hate product integration.
The one benefit we have with product integration with our show is that we did set our story inside a store. So that helps a little bit.

Let’s talk about Season 4. I’d say the characters have grown a bit; you’ve shown that they can progress beyond that post-college world where they don’t know where their future lies. What have been some of your favorite moments this season?
I think this season has really been about change, especially for our characters. The show started off as a show about a quarter-life crisis, with Chuck not sure what he wanted to do with his life. But it’s now four years later, so he’s much more of a man than he used to be. Just from Chuck’s perspective, we’ve had some great moments this season where he’s coming to realize that he needs to take the next step with Sarah Walker. Just looking at this season, I immediately think about episode 13 when he finally asked Sarah to marry him. It’s really bookended by episode 11, where he starts to ask her to marry him, and in episode 13 after the birth of his niece, in the hallway with the someone vacuuming at the far end of the hall, he decides to ask Sarah to marry him. I think for us, just working on the show, that was just an epic moment that we’ve been building to for four years. Much like, in the same episode, Ellie and Awesome giving birth to their child. It’s so interesting to take these characters who in the pilot only had a couple of lines and progress them through the show this season.

I think that Chuck seeing his mom for the first time and beginning to understand her backstory and why she left so many years ago was also a very important component to his journey this year. We’re working on our season finale now where, for him to have a happy ending and for him to survive, he’s going to have to become the hero he has to be. If he can do it, this is his greatest test. The finale will very much be a giant moment for Chuck Bartowski moving forward.

You’ve had an incredible run of guest stars through the years. Who have been your favorites, and who can we look forward to seeing in the rest of the season?
Back in the day, we’d say we were the “Love Boat” of spy shows. We found it really fun to write for guest stars. Just off the top of my head, I’d say there’s people like Chevy Chase who, in Season 2, was amazing to work with and actually write that character, Chevy Chase as a villain. I think we were the first show to kill off Chevy Chase, which is kind of a shocking thing to do. I’m kind of amazed my that. We’ve also had John Larroquette. I was a huge “Night Court” fan for many years. It was great to not only introduce him as Roan Montgomery but also to bring him back this season. That’s the kind of fun thing about our show. We’ve built this spy world, much like “Alias,” which is one of my favorite shows and helped to rejuvenate the genre. In Season 4, we revisit this spy world with guest stars like Dolph Lundgren. But I really enjoyed the character of Alexei Volkoff [played by former James Bond Timothy Dalton, and named after the Russian wrestler Nikolai Volkoff, a nod to Chris' days as a WWF fan]. We’ll get to see him again in our next episode.

Now what about the season finale? Since the fate of “Chuck” hasn’t been decided yet, will you leave things hanging?
We’ve always been inclined to do really crazy season finale episodes. This one is called “Chuck vs. the Cliffhanger,” so you know it’s going to be a big one.

Hi, I’m Todd, the professional doodler behind “Trailer Trash.” Otherwise known as the most awesomest job in the world. If you know my art, you know I’m no stranger to pushing the envelope — and if you don’t, you’ll understand after watching “Trailer Trash.” From my art to my clothing line, or my books to my latest entertainment projects, it’s important for me to stay true to my voice … and I don’t mean singing.

Speaking of stirring the pot, my latest Web series “Trailer Trash” just premiered exclusively on Hulu. It’s a squirrel munchin’ good time, more fun than watching a three-legged catfish on a broken ferris wheel! The concept is pretty simple: four redneck trailer trash — Billy Bob, Cooter, Light Beer and Peggy Sue — watch movie trailers. In front of their trailer. In a trailer park. Basically movie night at my parents’ house.

For this project, I joined forces with Lionsgate Digital and Hud:sun Media to bring the world an animated series that is funny, raunchy and most importantly, distasteful (of course, in the most creative and innovative way imaginable.) We wanted to create a show for the people out there with the same sense of humor as me (meaning: just plain wrong). “Trailer Trash” is like a 5-year-old kid who doesn’t know any better — there are no politics, no morals, and absolutely no filter. We say what everyone else is thinking, but is too afraid to say.

With tons of user-created content flooding popular video sites it can be hard to decipher the good from the ugly. Now I’m not saying we’re not ugly. But we’re good. Real good. Lionsgate recognized this, and made sure “Trailer Trash” is the same great quality as all of their other programming.

Lionsgate breaks down boundaries and delivers content that is edgy and unlike anything people have seen before. (Lionsgate brought us “Mad Men” and “Weeds,” for example.) Getting into web production was something the studio put a lot of thought into, and they patiently waited for the right time, the right project, and the right platform for people to view it on. Hulu was our first distribution choice because we understand that audiences know and trust Hulu as a premiere viewing destination for the best premium content and we wanted it to be showcased among the finest. We basically put the Dream Team of digital animation together … even though we’re all white and none of us can play basketball.

I truly believe “Trailer Trash” will resonate with online audiences. Whether it’s for the ridiculous stupidity of the characters or the blatant stereotyping, it is guaranteed to make you laugh, cringe, wet your pants … or get so offended, you write us a letter. Please make sure to spell my name right! [Hulu Ed Note: Please direct all correspondence directly to Todd Goldman.]

People are drawn to animated humor because it appeals to our imagination. With animation, we’re allowed to take our imaginations to places you can’t with live action.

I really hope you enjoy watching “Trailer Trash” as much as we’ve enjoyed creating it. And most of all, I hope the whole fist-bump-flick-off thing catches on!

Now go squirrel munch yourself! I gotta go!
Todd

There are times in business when you get to do things that that just seem right. I’m lucky that I have a job where this is fairly common. And today is definitely one of those times.

Hulu’s mission is to help our users find and enjoy the world’s premium content when, how, and where they want. And we think you would be hard pressed to find content more premium than the TEDTalks from the prestigious TED conferences. Incredible people. Amazing ideas. With the launch of our partnership with TED today, it’s our honor to offer millions of Hulu users 50 of the most popular TEDTalks from the last few years. More are coming soon, including select new talks from the 2011 TED Conference that’s just about to begin.

For those of you who are not familiar with TED, think of TEDTalks as a smart and concise way to explore new ideas and gain exposure to concepts and innovations you may not have ever seen before, all in 18 minutes or less. All TEDTalks share a common thread: ideas worth spreading as told by the most inspiring and passionate doers and thinkers around. Through Hulu and Hulu Plus, we hope to extend the reach and impact of TED, because the more people who hear and understand an idea, the more powerful that idea becomes. To introduce these talks, which focus on technology, entertainment, and design, I’ve included a few of my favorites at the end of this post.

All TED content on Hulu will be available on Hulu.com and on the Hulu Plus subscription service. Through Hulu Plus, it is now possible for TED fans to watch TEDTalks on demand, in HD when available, in the living room and on mobile devices. It’s a whole new way to experience TED. We hope Hulu Plus users gather family and friends in the living room to watch the talks together through their Internet-connected TV, gaming console, Blu-ray player, or set-top box, and then have a conversation inspired by what they just saw.

Many thanks to our friends at TED for doing what they do so well, and for letting us be a part of getting this great content seen in new ways.

Andy Forssell (andy@hulu.com)
SVP Content & Distribution

Sir Ken Robinson talks about the importance of creativity and how schools can kill it.

Aimee Mullins talks about her 12 pairs of legs, completely turning inside out the idea of disability.

Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen. An absolutely amazing and entertaining look at what incredible stories data can tell.

A few hundred people this morning woke up and typed “I must be dreaming” into their status boxes on Twitter.

This raises the question: What’s the best way to get a few hundred people to type the same cheesy, four-word phrase on Twitter within a three-hour timespan?

Money, primarily. Money would probably be the best way to do that.

Or you can just sling an injustice at Christopher Nolan, the beloved director of “Inception.” He was robbed of a Best Director nomination this morning for what is largely considered his magnum opus.

Here’s friend of Hulu Richard Roeper’s first sentence written about the Oscar nominees. Let’s say he didn’t bury the lead.

“No offense to the five immensely talented individuals nominated for ‘Best Director’ on Tuesday morning, but members of the Academy must have been smoking something powerful to snub Christopher Nolan’s astonishingly creative work on ‘Inception.’”

Twitter exploded with variations of the same joke—Twitter’s Faliq Fahmie simply beat everyone to the punch, saying “Chris Nolan didn’t plant the idea inside The Oscar’s board members’ mind to nominate himself”—but Chris Rock won the morning, taking a line from Nolan’s Batman masterpiece “The Dark Knight.”

“It’s okay though, Chris Nolan is the director the Academy Awards deserve, but not the one it needs right now.”

Agreed. Plus, the publicity of Nolan getting snubbed for David O. Russell (“The Fighter”) or Tom Hooper (“The King’s Speech”) will probably get the last four Americans who haven’t seen “Inception” yet (they were presumably incarcerated until yesterday) to go out and buy the DVD. That wouldn’t have happened if he was nominated and lost unspectacularly.

Still, the snark and hate parade soldiered on. @Ghostparticle on Twitter busted out this sort of xenophobic gem, effectively blaming all of us for Academy’s Nolan slight: “So the Americans think Chris Nolan is not a worthy director…”

Hey, man, don’t drag the whole country into this. We don’t blame Europe for Uwe Boll. Not every day, at least. It’s been about 13 days since I blamed Germany for Uwe Boll movies. Show some restraint.

There’s the only-slightly less egregious snub of Mark Wahlberg, who wasn’t nominated for Best Leading Actor for his role as Mickey Ward in “The Fighter.” Even though Christian Bale, who played his brother, is up for Best Supporting Actor. Ditto Melissa Leo and Amy Adams, who won Supporting Actress bids.

Wahlberg got edged out by Javier Bardem in a rare Spanish-language nod in a major category. The committee must have forgotten that Wahlberg is bilingual, as well. He speaks a little bit of animal in “The Fighter,” as he does in the following clip.

At least Weird Al Yankovic was able to provide a reasonable explanation as to why Wahlberg wasn’t nominated: “No #Oscar nomination for Mark Wahlberg? I suspect it’s that bitter Funky Bunch voting bloc.”

But Nolan’s snub? Seems inexplicable. Hopefully he won’t lose any sleep over it.

Let’s pretend like I didn’t just type that.

Ben Collins is an Assistant Editor at Hulu. You can find him on Twitter @globesoundtrack or email him here.

At Hulu, we pay a lot of attention to what users say about us, and how Hulu fits into your lives. For many of you, we know that Hulu has become an important way to catch up on current TV — the place to go when you missed last night’s episode of Glee, 30 Rock, or Modern Family. And when we read the discussions boards on Hulu.com and tweets from our users, it’s clear to us that enjoying Hulu is about more than any one show. It’s also about how your favorite shows relate to the rest of what is going on in pop culture.

Part of the fun is connecting the dots … TV, movies, web video, Twitter … what’s hot, what’s trending, and what‘s over. Lately, our users have been asking us for a quick and fun way to stay current on the latest in pop culture. We looked far and wide for a show that struck the right balance between being entertaining and being informative, but we just couldn’t find something that hit the mark.

So today, we are previewing The Morning After, a new initiative from Hulu Labs designed to help our users stay current on the water cooler chatter of the day. Hosted by Brian Kimmet and Ginger Gonzaga, and available daily Monday through Friday on Hulu.com and Hulu Plus, The Morning After is a smart, daily shot of pop culture to help Hulu users stay up to date — all in less than five minutes.

In developing The Morning After, we were inspired by shows like The Big Show with Olbermann and Patrick, which blended the love of sports with brainy cultural references that easily move from emotional to funny in one segment. The Morning After aspires to be that kind of show, but for all things pop culture.

To build The Morning After, we selected Jace Hall and the very talented team at HDFilms, a production company devoted to creating extremely high quality content spanning multiple media. When we saw the caliber of work produced by HDFilms, we knew they were right the production team for this project.

We consider this our “preview” period for The Morning After. It’s a chance for us to develop and evolve the show with your input. So please let us know what you think. We’re at TMA@hulu.com on email or @TMAonHulu on Twitter, and we’re looking forward to your feedback.

Andy Forssell (andy@hulu.com)
Senior Vice President, Content & Distribution

Well, it’s time to start clutching your World’s Greatest Boss mugs and begin crying loudly in a corner. Not only is Michael Scott leaving The Office, but he’s leaving the show about a month before the end of its season.

Deep breaths. It’s going to be okay.

Remember, as Michael once said, “Don’t ever, for any reason, do anything to anyone, for any reason, ever, no matter what, no matter where or who you are with, or where you are going, or where you’ve been ever. For any reason whatsoever.”

Sure, that doesn’t make any sense. But feel free to construe it as something positive about his departure. We’re sure he’s going to leave in a dignified and respectable manner.

Yep, that was a joke.

But his exit will be a calculated one, Office head writer Daniel Chun told E! Friday.

“He will earn the ending he gets. I think there are multiple plausible endings for him. He could get fired, he could get promoted, he could decide to quit it all and go to Hollywood. He could find love or he could crash and burn romantically. He’s poised for a number of things but the thing that’s a promise is that he will deserve what he gets.”

With that said, here are our guesses for how he’ll leave Dunder-Mifflin. — Ben Collins, Assistant Editor

Holly breaks up with her fiancé to be with Michael. They move back to Nashua, marry in a MacGruber-themed wedding, and raise three infinitely quirky, gaffe-prone children.
Odds – 10,000,000:1

Glad we got that out of the way. Admit it: You’re rooting against this while simultaneously hoping it happens with every fiber of your being.

It would be perfect: Holly is the only woman who makes sense of Michael’s impossible demeanor. It allows him the opportunity to have kids, which he’s wanted since he welcomed cameras into his Scranton office. And it would give hope to all of humanity that even the Michael Jordan of relationship failures will eventually find his long-lost, sexy Scottie Pippen.

It would also make too much sense. Even if we hope it doesn’t.

One of Ryan’s ridiculous startup concepts proves relatively profitable; Michael’s secret share in the company lets him retire.
Odds – 112:1

A social networking site that pumps disgusting liquids into your waterbed. Jet skis for dogs. How-to books for how-to books. All of these ideas are awful. All of these ideas are slightly better than temp-turned-sales guy Ryan’s WUPHF.com.

Something involving Creed, loose cattle, a hand dryer, and a debilitating injury.

Odds – 40:1

Is it possible that they’d kill off Michael? Would we cry if this took place? Better question: Would everyone in the world cry if this took place? This would be the national equivalent of drinking a tub of hot sauce while watching the end of The Notebook and Field of Dreams simultaneously.

Maybe that Friday would be a national holiday.

Parkour accident.

Odds – 275:2

Self-explanatory when you see the Dunder-Mifflin team in action.

Michael gives a long, involved speech that he’s certain will unite a nation and dramatically announces his departure. To everyone but Michael, the speech means nothing at all.

Odds – N/A

Wait, this has already taken place?

Ousted by David Brent (Ricky Gervais) in international Sabre merger and subsequent shakeup.

Odds – 150:1

A man can dream.

Befriends crime-fighting dog; saves Scranton from Gabe’s underground narcotics and terror organization; disappears mystically, a beautiful crusader of the night, into the vast nothingness. No one asks questions.

Odds – 2:1

The Top Dog ending is the leader in the clubhouse.

On Saturday, the iconic anime series Dragon Ball Z launches on Hulu with the first 15 episodes from the show, available with subtitles or dubbed in English, with fresh episodes rotating in on a regular basis. To introduce — or, in some cases, reintroduce — us to the eye-popping series, FUNimation copywriter Aaron Anderson wrote us a guest blog entry.

Entertainment is escapism. We fall in love with television shows, movies, comics, and manga because it’s a blast to fantasize about strange, far-away worlds where the unthinkable is an everyday occurrence. That, in a nutshell, is the magic behind the international phenomenon that is Dragon Ball Z. Any scenario you can dream up can likely be found in one of the 291 mind-blowing episodes of DBZ. This is, after all, a show where heroic mortals fall in love with high-tech androids and produce impossibly implausible offspring. Yup. It happens.

When they asked me to blog about the reasons to love Dragon Ball Z, I spent the next couple of days communing with the hardest of hardcore Dragon Ball Z fans. I discoursed with the devoted men and women who’ve watched every episode of every installment of the franchise. I looked for old-school Otakus who decorate their dwellings with Super Saiyan figurines. And last but not least, I sought the wisdom of wild-eyed, spiky-haired dreamers who are doggedly determined to live their lives according to the code of Goku. Their collective reasons for loving DBZ filled 14 legal pads, seven external hard drives, and a supercomputer named Earl. It was a literal barrage of fanboy gushing. Tears were shed, hugs were exchanged, and Kamehameha Waves were blasted into the night as we howled at the moon.

But enough about my decent in to Dragon Ball hysteria, let’s get down to business. The following is brief rundown of the most popular answers for why fans love Dragon Ball Z. Here we go!

Action! If you want an endless supply of martial arts mayhem and bombastic battles, Dragon Ball Z is what you’re looking for. This show is all about fighting. If the characters aren’t actually fighting, you can bet they’re immersed in grueling training for an upcoming fight against an opponent more powerful than anything our world has ever seen. Goku and the Z-Fighters battle dinosaurs, alien warriors, seemingly-indestructible androids, and a host of other bad guys that would leave ordinary men shaking in their boots. But not these heroes. In DBZ there is always a way to power up or an amazing new technique to master. This is a big part of the magic that makes the show so addictive.

Heroes and Villains! Simply put, Goku is the greatest hero the world has ever known. Forget about those other comic book chumps because they’ve got nothing on Goku and the Z-Fighters. No matter how bleak the outlook may be, Goku never gives up fighting for all that is good in the universe. Not even death can stop this legendary warrior from unlocking the secrets of his mysterious origins and attaining a level of power that strikes fear into the heart of the vilest villains. Speaking of those villains, nefarious ne’er-do-wells such as Vegeta and Piccolo give the show an extra kick and an edginess that resonates with fans of all ages. These cocky, smack-talking villains get increasingly more powerful as the show goes on, and sometimes, they even defeat the heroes — which is a nice change of pace from typical good versus evil plotlines. Furthermore, a particular villain’s story arc doesn’t always end with his — or her — defeat. Sometimes, losing is just the beginning of the adventure for a DBZ bad guy.

Endless Possibilities! There is no such thing as impossible in the DBZ universe. Death is not the end. Time travel is a reality instead of a science fiction fantasy. Pigs can talk AND shift their shapes. Dinosaurs walk the Earth. Heroes grow stronger by training in special rooms with increased gravity. Entire buildings can be carried around in your pocket thanks to the advance technology of the Capsule Corp. And as if that weren’t enough, any wish you could dream up can be granted by the awe-inspiring powers of the seven magic Dragon Balls.

Space Ninjas for the Win! This is what it all boils down to. Action aficionados of all backgrounds love ninjas. It’s a proven fact. They also love space. The unprecedented genius of Dragon Ball Z is the combination of space AND ninjas. We’ve got ninjas fighting on Earth, ninjas fighting in space, ninjas fighting in the future, ninjas fighting in the past, and ninjas fighting in otherworldly realms that may not even exist on this plane of consciousness. These ninjas fight anywhere, anytime, and against any foe. It’s nothing short of amazing.

To close this demented DBZ diatribe, I’d like to borrow the words of one particularly enthusiastic fan who said: “the show is about karate men that fly around in space and shoot out energy beams from their hands. No concept is better than this.” Well said, sir. I must concur. No concept could ever be better than this. — FUNimation copywriter Aaron Anderson

Reality TV has come a long way. In the past 10 years, it’s gone from just being a cheaper alternative to scripted shows to a powerhouse phenomenon that has infiltrated all facets of media and politics, and is also a cheaper alternative to scripted shows. Even if you never watch the shows … well, you’re a liar, but you know who Speidi, The Situation and the Kardashians are, although you might not be able to explain why they’re famous. This year, the influence of the genre was felt far and wide … even in the White House! Let’s take a look back at the top moments of what may be the wildest year of reality TV to date. — Martin Moakler for Hulu

President Obama Enjoys ‘The View’
In July, President Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to appear on a daytime talk show, and the ladies of The View grilled him on everything from war and the economy to what is on his iPod. The Commander in Chief even got tested on his pop culture IQ, wherein he confessed that he had no idea who Snooki was, despite using her as a punch line for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in May. Perhaps he was just flustered trying to get a word in edgewise with the notoriously fast-talking quintet.

Mr. Colbert Goes to Washington
With the President’s visits to The View and The Daily Show, Washington certainly went to the talk shows, but the talk shows also went to Washington when Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report testified before Congress on behalf of migrant farm workers. After slipping into his on-air persona during his testimony — despite having submitted a report that he would address the lawmakers as himself — he received fewer laughs than he was used to and was even asked to leave … by a Democrat!

Oprah OWNs Up
Media mega-titan Oprah Winfrey announced that she would be shutting the doors on her successful, eponymous talk show in 2011 after 25 years to focus her attention on her new television network, The Oprah Winfrey Network (or “OWN,” for short). Even though OWN will be open for business on New Year’s Day, Oprah made sure her last season will be her most notable, with huge publicity stunts including flying her audience to Australia in a plane piloted by John Travolta, expanding her popular “Favorite Things” episode to two days, and, most recently, nearly gouging out Hugh Jackman’s eye by accident.

‘Dancing’ with the Tea Party
The midterm elections spilled over to reality shows when Bristol Palin outlasted Brandy on Dancing With the Stars, stirring up quite the scandal. Despite consistently being on the bottom of the leader board throughout the season, teen activist Palin made it all the way to third place. Conspiracy theorists postulated that Tea Party activists rigged the voting after message boards instructing Tea Partiers to vote for the daughter of the former Vice Presidential candidate multiple times were discovered. Host Tom Bergeron shot down the scandal, noting that those complaining probably didn’t even vote at all, but a nation learned that politics can rear its ugly head onto the most unlikely of dance floors.

A Rose for Any Other Name
The bitter breakup between Bachelor Jake Pavelka and his fiancé Vienna Girardi played out in the tabloids mere months after he gave her a rose and ring on the popular ABC show in March. More shocking than the end of a Bachelor relationship, however, was when Chris Harrison interviewed the former couple on a special episode in July. The cold, calculated Pavelka accused Girardi of cheating, while the frazzled Girardi accused Pavelka of only playing out their romance when the cameras were rolling. The truth may one day come to light in another reality show, but legions of stay-at-home romantics were forced to grapple with the possibility that people go on reality shows for their own personal gains instead of love.

Weave Got the Beat
The kids from Jersey Shore went to Miami this year, but there was still plenty of drama to be had in the Garden State. The Jersey girls of The Real Housewives of New Jersey made last year’s table-flipping incident seem subdued when what started as a civil (by Real Housewives standards, anyway) conversation between Teresa and Danielle erupted into the North Jersey equivalent of the last two minutes of The Blair Witch Project. And after Danielle’s hair extensions were ripped out, she made young Ashley out to be the most feared Jersey resident since Tony Soprano.

‘Idol’ Hands
The popular karaoke contest received more attention for its judges this year than its contestants. In January, Simon Cowell announced it was his last season. Ellen DeGeneres followed suit, citing that the show was not a “right fit.” Kara DioGuardi left because the other judges didn’t know she was even on the show. Jennifer Lopez signed on as a new judge, as did Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler. Randy Jackson is staying right where he is, dawg, and Paula Abdul is still off the show but remains forever our girl. (Her new show, Live to Dance, premieres on CBS January 4.) Oh, and some kids sang some songs.

Housewife in the White House
With all of the energy exerted to keep terrorists out of the United States, Homeland Security let under their radar a more imminent threat: reality stars. Last year, DC socialites Michaele and Tareq Salahi crashed a State dinner at the White House, where they mingled with various Heads of State, including President Obama. When it was revealed that they were participants in another edition of Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise, The Real Housewives of DC, and the events leading up to the dinner had been filmed as a plot line, a nation wondered to what ends hopeful reality subjects would go to get attention.

XXI Olympic Winter Games
One could say that The Olympics is the original reality show: the heightened drama, the fierce competition, and athletes who go there to win, not to make friends, and the Vancouver Winter Games lived up to that tradition. The International Olympic Committee praised the Canadian city for having a “great atmosphere for these games,” a fact with which the Americans can no doubt disagree, as we brought home the most medals. In fact, the general consensus throughout the world was that the Olympiad was a success, although there were a few negative reactions to the cold.

Aisle Be Seeing You
Scores of reality shows over the years have well documented the stunts and sociopathic behavior in which people are willing to engage in order to win a reality competition, but this year marked a new level of outrageousness with the premiere of Bridalplasty. On the E! show, brides not only competed to get a dream wedding, but also their dream plastic surgeries before their big day. Of course, this isn’t the first reality show to offer plastic surgery as a prize; The Swan did it six years ago. But, whereas The Swan at least made the pretense of rewarding hard work and inspiring behavior, Bridalplasty unleashed twelve bridezillas on a wild free -for-all chase of Who Wants a New Nose!

The Death of Fox Reality Channel
This year, the Fox Reality Channel went off the air. At first glance, one might assume it was taken down because America ran out of reality subjects to film, but many wondered if it marked the beginning of the end for the genre. Probably not, but it could well be an indication that the viewing public reached a saturation point for reality shows about former reality stars who compete to get another reality show (yeah, that’s a thing).

It’s been a tough year for TV comedy. We lost a Golden Girl, a Designing Woman, and Gary Coleman. Party Down was canceled because the cast was just too successful on other shows. And, worst of all, Ke$ha was on $aturday…er, Saturday Night Live. But no matter to what depths our hearts plunged this year, our desire to laugh allowed us to persevere. And laugh we did, at this year’s outstanding funny television moments that made us feel totally double-rainbow. — Martin Moakler, Video Publisher

Glee Theme Episodes
The musical phenomenon had already proven itself more popular than The Beatles, but this year the kids from McKinley High’s New Directions became event television with theme episodes that utilized the collections of Madonna, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears and The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the story’s narrative. Certainly some of the most talked-about television of the year, these Glee episodes revered these musical icons and whetted Gleeks’ appetites for the next target of the show’s adulation.

Katy Perry and Elmo-gate
Katy’s décolletage proved a bit too scandalous for parents who protested her appearance alongside Elmo on Sesame Street this fall, prompting the PBS children’s series to pull the clip altogether from the show. It would seem that Katy got the last laugh as she made a provocative cameo on The Simpsons’ Christmas special, in which America’s favorite yellow family was re-imagined as puppets in honor of her arrival.

Betty White Hosts Saturday Night Live
The power of the Internet was never so apparent as when a random Facebook campaign convinced NBC to invite comedy legend Betty White to host Saturday Night Live … and Betty had never even heard of Facebook! The episode, which honored SNL’s funny ladies past and present, was just one jewel in the resurgent crown of popularity she experienced this year, proving that funny (not to mention muffins) has no expiration date.

Modern Family Wins the Emmy
In their second season, The Pritchett-Dunphy clan proved that they were no sophomore slumps when Modern Family snagged the Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series, and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for Eric Stonestreet’s performance as the hilarious Cameron.

John Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear
In the midst of the mid-term election, political pundits who preach rather than report and government officials telling us the latest thing we need to fear, Jon Stewart of The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report banded together to host the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. Created as a means to hold up a mirror to the three-ring circus that our news and politics has become, the D.C. rally boasted an attendance estimated at 215,000, with an Internet and television viewership of close to 2.5 million. Of course, the rally didn’t solve our current societal woes, but perhaps it did as their motto instructed: “Take it down a notch for America.”

The Office’s In/Out Tray
Less than nine months (ahem) after their wedding, Dunder-Mifflin power couple Jam (Jim and Pam) gave birth to Cecilia Marie Halpert. This joyful arrival was quickly obscured, however, by Steve Carell’s summer “WUPHF” that the 2010 season would be his last, leading to wide speculation as to who in the office will fill Michael’s void. (That’s what she said!)

Late Night Wars
After handing over the reins of The Tonight Show to Conan O’Brien last year, NBC gave them back to Jay Leno in January after his ten o’clock talk show failed to gain any momentum. Outrage from O’Brien’s minions passionately rang in the form of organized protests and Facebook groups, and a Che Guevara-esque icon as your avatar instantly demonstrated that you were “with Coco.” After months of gag orders, high-profile interviews, and a summer-long touring show, Conan is back on the air, albeit basic cable. The hullabaloo has almost totally died down, but it was sure a heck of a ride.

30 Rock Live Episode
There was more frenzy than usual in the halls of 30 Rockefeller Plaza when the madcap comedy did not one, but two shows in front of live studio audiences in Tina Fey’s old SNL stomping grounds, Studio 8H. With the help of Julia Louis-Dreyfus as “Past Liz” to smooth over the sitcom’s trademark jump cuts, the live 30 Rock event was a wild success, and even managed to include jabs at more timely events like the Chilean miners and Brett Favre’s … um, photographic largesse.

Eleven INTs in his last three games. A three-game losing streak for his team — a team with Super Bowl expectations that’s now sitting with a .500 record in December. A quarterback in a late-season swoon after making critical mistakes at the worst possible moments. It’s just another mercurial stretch for a former No. 1 overall pick from the NFL’s premier QB family, the Mannings. Even though he has a Super Bowl victory and Pro Bowl appearances on his resume, his play is still being questioned by the fans and the media.

Poor Eli, he just can’t catch a …

Wait a minute. Something doesn’t add up here. Eli’s NY Giants are tied for first place. But that means — no, it can’t be! PEYTON?!

Shocking as it may seem, the four-time NFL MVP is currently going through one of the rockiest stretches of his career. With the season nearing completion, Peyton and the Colts find themselves in an unusual spot: they’re on the outside of the playoff picture. Yesterday’s loss to the Cowboys was punctuated by four interceptions thrown by Manning: two were returned for touchdowns, and his final pick in overtime led to the Cowboys’ game-winning field goal.

All great players are going to have their bad games. Sometimes, they may even have a couple bad games. But when one of the all-time greats has such outrageously poor performances three games in a row, and at this time of year, it’s more than fair to question what the heck is going on.

This is Peyton Manning we’re talking about, though. If his past performance show us anything, it’s that we should never bet against him, even when things look their worst.

Michael Rosenblum
for the Hulu Blog

It’s been 24 years since the Bears last hoisted the Lombardi Trophy. They came so close three years ago, but their surprise run to Super Bowl XLI came to crushing end when the Indianapolis Colts outplayed them to the tune of a 29-17 defeat.

Somewhere though, Bill Swerkski and his Super Fans are smiling. Thirteen weeks into this season and “da Bears” are in first place in the NFC North, and hold the second-best record in the NFC. After enduring a rough stretch in the middle of the season — they went 1-3 — the Bears have rebounded with a perfect record, going 4-0 since, including an eye-opening win against the surging Eagles last Monday night.

The team’s recent streak can be linked to the resurgence of their Pro Bowl quarterback, Jay Cutler. In Week 4, Cutler was knocked out of the game with a concussion. He didn’t return until Week 6, but his play was suffering from the effects of the injury. Following their bye week, Cutler started putting it together again, with a solid performance against the Bills in Week 9. Since then, Cutler and the Bears haven’t looked back. After a so-so first year with Chicago, it seems Cutler has finally hit his stride with his new team, and the Bears may once again surprise everyone, and plow their way into another Super Bowl.

The Super Fans always knew they were good. Maybe it’s time for the rest of us to jump on the bandwagon.

Michael Rosenblum
for the Hulu Blog

Unfortunately, the majority of the stories on this blog revolve around a negative topic. It’s not that I prefer writing about the ugly side of the game. It’s simply due to the fact that players stepping out of line and coaches getting fired is what makes headlines — not playing by the rules and doing what is expected of you as a professional athlete. Well, I am happy to say that today, I get to write a positive story about one of the NFL’s good guys: The Saints’ Drew Brees.

As I mentioned above, it’s rare for a player to be recognized for doing simply what is expected of him, but on Tuesday, Drew Brees, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback for the New Orleans Saints was honored by Sports Illustrated as their “Sportsman of the Year.” Aside from his absolute domination on the field last year, Brees received the award for his year-round work with charities that bring aid to schools and organizations that were affected by Hurricane Katrina.

What truly makes Brees so unique and so remarkable, though, is the quiet way in which he carries out his work. He is the antithesis of many of high-profile NFL stars: loudmouth athletes who seem more interested in their own image and self-worth. Brees, on the other hand, is a family man and philanthropist who plays with passion and grace. He is the consummate professional. And in this tumultuous NFL season, it is certainly refreshing to recognize the greatness of an athlete who represents everything good in and around the game. — Michael Rosenblum for Hulu

Watch Brees lead his team to championship glory in this Super Bowl recap.

Teams down on their luck — those who have had difficulty over the years — are sometimes referred to as a franchise with a “losing culture.” For years, the New York Jets have been one of those teams (the video below just proves that point). Since their first Super Bowl victory, all the way back in Super Bowl III (!), they’ve seen their New York counterparts, the Giants, win three championships. Their rivals, the New England Patriots, have become a veritable NFL dynasty over the last decade — and that’s a tough pill for the fan base to swallow. Last year looked to be the same old-same old with a rookie QB (Mark Sanchez) and a rookie head coach (Rex Ryan), when suddenly in the last few weeks of the season the pendulum started to swing the other way. Ryan started talking with a little swagger in his voice, and Sanchez matured before our eyes. The team found ways to win games, whereas in the past it felt as if they were constantly snagging defeat from the jaws of victory. This change in attitude propelled the Jets to a surprise appearance in the AFC Championship Game where they held a halftime lead before losing to the more experienced and, admittedly, more talented Indianapolis Colts.

Despite the loss, those final weeks signaled something bigger. The losing culture that for so long plagued the New York Jets franchise was dissipating. To say that the team came in with high hopes this season would be an understatement. After all, the team was proclaiming “Super Bowl or bust!” this time around. Despite a disappointing setback in Week 1, the Jets have been on a serious roll. At 8-2, they now have the best record in the NFL, thanks in part to a miraculous comeback yesterday: After squandering a seemingly comfortable lead in the fourth quarter — a demoralizing turn of events that would have sent most teams packing — the Jets marched down the field with 49 seconds left and no time-outs to score the game-winning touchdown against the Texans with just 10 seconds left on the clock. Had this team been the Jets of old, they would have folded and chalked the loss up to bad luck or an inability to finish, but not this Jets team. The Jets have a new identity, and a new culture.

They win.

— Michael Rosenblum for Hulu

This week, filmmaker Ondi Timoner (DIG!) guest blogs about her Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning film We Live in Public for Hulu. — Editor.

“Are you interested in documenting social history?” Josh Harris, the subject of my documentary, asked me in an unexpected phone call in 1999. Josh didn’t seem to know exactly what he meant by this yet, but he knew he wanted to do something spectacular to mark the turn of the millennium. He believed this next century would mark the takeover of man by machine. The result was the most bizarre and fascinating social experiment I had ever witnessed. “Quiet: We Live In Public” was a bunker which included a “pod” hotel that slept 150 people beneath New York City for 30 days. These “Podwellians” or “citizens” lived together, ate together, showered and went to the bathroom in public, slept together, and shared everything with hundreds of cameras that captured it all. “Everything’s free, except your image,” Josh stated slyly. “That we own.” Little did I know at the time, Josh was yet again predicting the future. He had, after all, built his fortune creating the first-ever Internet market research company, Jupiter Communications, and founded Pseudo.com — the first Internet television network — long before there was broadband. Though socially inept himself, Josh knew human behavior, and he knew that when broadband made it possible to share our lives, we would trade our privacy, and eventually our freedom, for the recognition and connection we so dearly crave. Ten years later, the “pod hotel” has turned into websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube — and we are the Podwellians.

After the SWAT team shut down the bunker on New Year’s Day 2000, Josh rigged his loft with 32 motion controlled surveillance cameras and 66 microphones and announced that he and his girlfriend were going to be the first couple ever to live in public, 24/7 for six months straight. This is the beginning of the biggest, most chilling chapter of this cautionary tale.

We Live in Public explores the dark side of one of the most important and powerful inventions in the last century. Without it we couldn’t have edited or released the film in fact, but any bright light has a dark side. We Live in Public captures the draw and the effect of the Internet on our human psyche and society. While our film premiered at Sundance in January 2009, almost two years later, I’ve noticed a sudden spree of films that are also exploring dark side of the Internet. Films like The Social Network and Catfish also look at the risks of deception in identity and failed intimacy in the digital realm, as well as, once again, the aspects of human behavior that drive us to connect and make the “in” crowd above maintaining our privacy and integrity. Catfish is especially relevant and eerily frightening here. We cannot forget that this is a virtual world and that people can represent themselves any way they want, whether or not its real. And I was particularly struck with the similarities between Josh Harris and the character of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, in The Social Network. They both dearly craved to be the center of the social scene, but were instead the architects of social networks they could observe and exploit. They desired to control and rule a world they manufactured themselves, but also always wanted to be known and recognized in the physical world. The destruction in this human drive becomes starkly evident when Josh turns the camera on himself and lives six months of his own life in public. Zuckerberg never seemed to have this desire, or courage, but he and Josh were both enraptured with the aspects of control that the bunker “pod” hotel and Facebook provided them. It is interesting to consider the control we all feel we have online, as we willingly forfeit our data daily.

We Live in Public is the favorite of my menagerie. The message it carries is so vital, both in looking at the star of the film: Harris is the puppeteer turned puppet — a man who was raised on the electronic calories of TV and mediates his whole life with cameras, eventually ruining even his only chance at intimate love; as well as the people who willingly make themselves the pawns in his chess game, as we do online today, without thinking twice. In fact it wasn’t until 2007, when I saw the first public posting on my wall on Facebook, that I realized Josh’s predictions were coming true. We at Interloper Films pushed to finish the film in eight short months of editing (that’s 5,000 hours down to 88 minutes) to make the Sundance 2009 deadline. I realized we were on the precipice of all that Josh had predicted. Like the Quiet bunker experiment, websites like Facebook and Google had users thinking they were living their lives in public with no cost. However, just one month after the film premiered at Sundance in January 2009, it was discovered that Facebook changed its privacy policy to state they owned any content its users published on the site. Furthermore, Facebook can make changes to this privacy policy without telling us at any time, and our continued use of the site acknowledges these terms of agreement. So tread carefully, for now we are all citizens of the bunker. And your reactions to my film on Hulu are being recorded as you watch… (just kidding, I think!..)

Bon Appétit,
Ondi Timoner

In his Week 9 game against the Indianapolis Colts, Michael Vick had the proverbial “statement game.” Leading the Eagles to victory over the vaunted Colts was Vick’s pronouncement to the league that he can still be the electrifying and potentially game-changing player that had the NFL buzzing in his early years with the Atlanta Falcons. Of course, Vick’s off-the-field exploits and subsequent legal issues have been well documented. After two years in jail, a full season as a glorified back-up, and almost universal vilification, his performance this year seems all the more shocking. The last time he made this sort of impact on the field was back in 2006 — the best example being the four TD game he had in Week 7 against the defending champion Steelers (video below), when he was still with the Falcons. On Sunday, Michael Vick made the statement that he is back … and that is bad news for the rest of the league. — Michael Rosenblum for Hulu

“I’m just a bad boy who don’t take no mess.” — Randy Moss

On Monday, Randy Moss was waived by the Minnesota Vikings in a move that was almost as abrupt as their trade for the troubled superstar earlier this season. Throughout Moss’ career, he has been a lightning rod for attention, both good and bad. Sadly, the bad has largely outweighed the good, and it came to a head for the Vikings this week. Take a look at what the receiver has to say about himself in this video from 2005, when he was first jettisoned by the Minnesota franchise. — Michael Rosenblum for the Hulu Blog

Browse our full lineup of NFL content at www.hulu.com/nfl.

He’s famous for such catchphrases as “serenity now,” and she’s famous for her sharp wit. The husband-and-wife comedy duo Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara saw their careers take off in the 1960s with appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show; Jerry later became a familiar face for his portrayals of Frank Costanza on Seinfeld and Arthur Spooner on King of Queens, while Anne starred on Archie Bunker’s Place and had recurring roles on ALF and Sex and the City. These days, you can find the couple on their web series Stiller & Meara, produced by none other than their son, Ben Stiller. To learn more about the show, which focuses on current events and pop culture, we spoke to them on Anne’s birthday in September, when they were on their way to honor F. Murray Abraham (“Amadeus”) at the National Arts Club. — Rebecca Harper (rebecca.harper@hulu.com), Editor

First, I wanted to talk about your new web series, and how it’s a family affair.
Anne: Yeah, it is, it’s good. We have doing it. Ben puts us at ease.

Jerry: He created it, which is kind of funny. One day, he just decided to put us on video, just a little test video, in which we sit down and the questions come up as to what’s going on during the course of the year or in front of us, and we try to deal with it in our own way, spontaneously and without a script. A lot of stuff comes out which is wild and crazy, hopefully. But Ben is not in the show; he is just the guy who’s created it for mom and dad, which is very nice for us.

It’s great, having him behind you guys and supporting you. Do you have any idea what is going to be asked of you when you go into these tapings?
Anne: You mean subjects covered? Not really, in the sense that there’s a blanket of subjects. You can take everything from the current culture if you want to call it that, which is like anything from Lady Gaga to Jersey Shore to Sarah Palin.

Jerry: You can pick up the newspaper and turn to Page Six, and everything is flying at you, you know. People who are in the news at that moment who are making it happen, like Justin Bieber, for instance, and then we start talking about Justin Bieber or Susan Boyle …

Anne: And he never mentions us.

Jerry: Yeah, it’s that kind of thing. So stuff flies and what comes out is spontaneous. Basically it’s true feelings, stuff that you haven’t monitored. You haven’t allowed it to go through a filter in your own mind, or tried to slant it your own way. It’s tough to talk about baseball, you know …

Anne: It is for me. I hate it!

Jerry: Teams like the Yankees, w hen somebody asks me about the Yankees, I tell them that I was a Yankee fan as a kid. I was also a Dodger fan. Now when I see the Yankees, all they have is players — their farm team is the whole American League. They pick a guy from the Chicago White Sox, they get a guy from Detroit, they fill in people. That, to me, is not even baseball.

Anne: Jerry, half of the people watching are like me! They don’t give a shit about baseball.

Jerry: I’m just telling you, you know. I get involved with the art of baseball, or the way it works.

Anne: I don’t want to talk about baseball anymore!

Jerry: Alright, you don’t want to talk about it, then. Do I have to talk about it then? Should I shut up?

Anne: Let her ask a question.

Jerry: Ask a question.

I feel like you guys could never run out of things to talk about. I see that there’s a Stiller and Meara Twitter account. What do you think of all this social networking stuff, things like Twitter and Facebook?
Jerry: I’ll let Anne handle that.

Anne: I don’t know about the Twitter and Facebook. I guess it’s OK. With the help of people who work with us, we do that Twitter stuff. I like plain old email, but Twitter — you can find out who’s sort of honed into you. I guess it’s good for something you’re trying to do, if you’re trying to do a show. Because even though this is the two of us sitting on a couch talking, you know, ruminating on the things going on in the world, two altakakas sitting there, talking …

Jerry: We’re not altakakas.

Anne: Alright, Jerry. Live in your own world, whatever.

Jerry: We’re 85 going on 2.

Anne: Anyway, Twitter is good. You get immediate feedback from people. I don’t know what they do all day. I guess they just Twitter.

Jerry: I don’t know if I want people to be too much into my life. I mean, I would be swamped. I have a lot of fans right now — I’m at a point in my life where this is called rejuvenation, and I really am amazed by everything that goes on. But I really couldn’t handle Twitter if it came my way. As far as the Facebook goes, I was just recently … My daughter Amy was cluing me in on Facebook, and it sounds like I’m a little bit retro, but I am. It occurs to me, why would you want to contact people? My age, they’re all dead! I mean the ones who might get back to me are the ones who might hate me or not like me.

Anne: But you have to take that. Not everyone’s gonna love you, dear.

Jerry: Yeah, but if some woman comes in and says I had an affair with her 25 years ago and there’s a child …

Anne: Then you would be lucky.

Jerry: Well, I don’t want to become what a lot of actors have become, you know, hit with lawsuits for patrimony and alimony. One thing we’ve got going for us is we don’t have palimony. If she left me today …

Anne: Who are you talking about?

Jerry: I’m talking about you. The only thing we could split is a rug! That’s already laid down, so you’d have to cut it up into sides.
I saw on Twitter, actually, Anne, that you were commenting on the Jersey Shore and Snooki. You called her a troll of all things.

Anne: I did, I did. I feel very bad about that. She’s not a troll at all. She’s a little person. You know, she has that little bump on her head, that little hairdo or whatever, and she’s like a very tall, thin, sexy woman who has been squashed down by something. She dresses kind of like, I don’t know. I can’t watch them too long. I don’t think they have — not that I have …

Jerry: I have a lot of Italian friends and …

Anne: I’m not talking Italian, I’m just talking about them. The other guy goes around, showing his abs and his washboard belly. See, I gotta tell you: When someone says “Look at me, I’m sexy,” that immediately louses up the deal. The moment someone becomes aware of their sexuality or the fact that they’re hot for the other sex, or the other sex is hot for them, they become unsexy. So this guy, this Situation guy, is the most sexless person I’ve ever seen.

Jerry: She’s right.

But did you know anyone like the Jersey Kids back in the day — did people like this exist before?
Anne: Well, I’m sure they did, but they didn’t become a “thing.” See, now everything becomes a thing. It’s labeled, it’s put on, it’s put in residuals, it’s syndicated, and people can make millions from it, so it’s an industry. When we were growing up, we had Jewish friends, Italian friends, black friends, Irish friends, all different.

Jerry: But you see, the whole nature of it, this was given birth from The Sopranos, and now we’re going to have another one called Boardwalk Empire from Martin Scorsese. Italians are becoming a piece of our culture today. In the old days, Italians were the people who were hard-working guys who came from the old country. They raised a family and lived on Mulberry Street. Now, with the Jersey Shore we forget these are the same people who were the great artists of the world.

Anne: Nobody on the Jersey Shore is a great artist, Jerry.

Jerry: What I’m saying is we’re missing out on Toscanini, we’re missing out on the great opera stars. These are some of the greatest people in the world, who have given us some culture. Some of the great doctors in this world were Italian.

Anne: But a lot of people watch this. It gets them off their own troubles. They say, “Gee, I’ve got more class than those people.”

Jerry: Yeah, but why do you always feel that it’s kind of labeled about Italians? My friend Danny Aiello, who I love, I asked him the question how he feels about all of this, I guess Danny being Danny, he said, “Why aren’t I in that show?” The thing is, Danny is a class guy. He wouldn’t be in that show.

Anne: Alright, can we move from Italy now?

Have you learned anything new about each other since working on the Stiller & Meara show?
Anne: Absolutely nothing.

Jerry: Not to interrupt Anne.

Anne: Absolutely nothing.

Jerry: Let her roll! Takes a few minutes to get her warmed up, but once she’s on it, the gems come out of her mouth, usually, and I just kind of stumble.

Anne: Nothing new, nothing new about Jerry.

Jerry: I tell you what it’s about, really. This is something Anne and I never really did, except for our personal appearances in clubs when we were starting out. So this is the first time we’ve done this in front of a hopefully national audience that’s going to be watching us. We talk like people …

Anne: Yeah, but we’re just talking on this show. Remember what Ben said? He said, “Just remember one thing: it’s a conversation.” That’s what it is.

Jerry: Nobody ever saw us converse.

Anne: Those that want to watch can watch. Those that don’t, the hell with them

Jerry: We might say something that’s valuable or intrigue you.

Anne: Or not.

Jerry: Yeah, it goes both ways.

Do you ever cross the line and hurt the other’s feelings?
Jerry: Absolutely.

Anne: Constantly.

Jerry: When we’re finished with this …

Anne: If you can’t hurt the other person at least once a day, then you’ve got no relationship.

Jerry: Listen, when this interview is finished, blood will flow. I mean, verbally.

Looking back over your careers, who are some of the funniest people you’ve worked with?
Anne: I thought Ed Sullivan was hilarious. He was such a block of granite. I really couldn’t stand him. Jerry liked him because he was afraid of him.

Jerry: No, Ed Sullivan …

Anne: Oh, you thought he was like the pope.

Jerry: No, you said he was the pope. I said he was the papal saint of our careers. But people who make me laugh? I’ll tell you who they are, and you might think I’m nuts. Patton Oswalt makes me laugh, because I worked with …

Anne: Patton Oswalt is very funny. He’s also very cerebral. Sarah Silverman makes me laugh. Wanda Sykes makes me laugh.

Jerry: Patton Oswalt has got a brain. Jason Alexander makes me laugh. He’s an incredible performer.

Anne: That’s right. I’ll tell you who we don’t see anymore. He quit his show, and he was brilliant. Dave Chappelle. What happened to him?

Jerry: I’ll tell you that people that I really adore, and I’m going to leave some of them out, are people like Jason and Michael Richards, who when I was doing Seinfeld, they literally turned the show over to me. They started feeding me, they started connecting. There was no air between us. Kevin James is another one of those people who I think is something between Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. He’s got a body that’s bigger than it should be, but he can move and say things and make you laugh. He’s a wonderful writer, and nine years with him was something special. And then there’s the old people who nobody on this show are going to connect with, people who have been nice to Anne and myself. People like Henny Youngman, who invited into his home.

Anne: Oh, you’re going to get into the deceased now.

Jerry: But they were great. These are the people that I would put up on a special plague.

I wanted to ask you, Jerry. How are you and Frank Costanza similar? Is he you? Are you him?
Jerry: Well, I’m always asking myself that. I think I’m channeling somebody, and I know who it is. He’s really my father, but not the way my father is as Frank Costanza. He’s what’s underneath the iceberg, my father. He’s the kind of man who, if he let it out, would be Frank Costanza. The kind of man who could talk to you and say,” Yeah, I’m in the world that has been pushed down, been suppressed, by life, by social values.” He goes into Christmas being commercialized, and he picks up on Festivus, which was an old Roman holiday, which actually did exist in the 1500s, with the masters and the kings.

Anne: Are you going to go through all the old Seinfeld shows now?

Jerry: No, I was asked a question.

Anne: I think Jerry was the real Frank Costanza. I think the real Frank Costanza is Jerry. They all say he’s so quiet and nice. He’s the good cop, and I’m the bad cop. In reality, he is Frank Costanza, screaming out of his mind.

Jerry: No, I’m not like that at all. Let me just interject. A couple of weeks ago, the Daily News wanted to go to the home, the Costanza home in Queens. They said would you want to go over there and make a comment about what it was like. We went over the bridge, road out to Queens, got to the apartment — it wasn’t an apartment, it was a little house. At that point, I suggested to the reporter that we go upstairs and say hello. I never in my life thought I could do something like this, but since I’ve become so free — that’s what Anne’s and my show is all about, freedom — we actually knocked on the door. There were these two people, their names were Bessie and Jack Lopipero, and they said “Come on up.” They were both in their cups, in their ’80s.

Anne: In their cups?

Jerry: Yeah, they were so happy.

Anne: When you say you’re in your cups, that means you’re drunk.

Jerry: With love.

Anne: Oh, OK.

Jerry: They went crazy, and we talked for about two hours. Not about Seinfeld — it was interesting how Seinfeld was the hinge, kind of the catalyst that brought us into talking about life. I guess that’s one of the nice things about this situation I’ve got in my later life, from being this character. It’s brought me in touch with people. I can’t believe what people say to me on the street, because I am this guy. “Hey, you want a piece of me?” and “Festivus for the rest of us,” and “serenity now.” I mean, these things go on, and I’m absolutely thrilled. It’s nice to be an actor. I mean nobody pays you for anything except for when you’re working, but here I am, getting paid every time somebody opens their mouth to pay me a compliment. I’m so needy, I’ll invite them over for dinner. Anne used to use that joke.

Anne: You’re desperate.

Both of you have worked with Ben on various projects, so I wanted to ask you: what’s it like working with your son?
Anne: I like working with my son. I like working with my daughter, too. She’s a very talented actress. Ben is a very wonderful director to work with. I worked with him on Night at the Museum, the first one, and I actually got the part through sheer nepotism, since I’m his mother — which I’m all for. He came looking for a job and I was the employment lady. It was a lot of fun. Well, he didn’t direct that one, but he and I did that scene together.

Jerry: He directed that movie we did, what’s that one based on a male model?

Anne: Zoolander. Oh yeah, I had one line in Zoolander. I threw an egg at Will Ferrell.

Jerry: Well, Ben … I can’t get over the fact that Ben can act at the same time. He directed me and was in the same scene with me. I was in terror, to be honest with you. I said, “My god, that’s my kid. That’s the boy I gave a Super 8 camera to when he was like 8 years old.” Now he’s a director and he’s pushing his father around. He was not an easy guy to work for, because he kept telling me to do it this way, to do it that way. Finally, the crew said “Ben, leave him alone. He’s your dad. He’s doing fine.” But he was also in the scene. I never asked him to be in any of his movies. I did another with him, which was Heartbreak Kid, and we did something years ago, which I thought was really wonderful, called Shoe Shine, which was a film done by a Columbia University student that got nominated for an Academy Award. It was a short subject about a guy who shines shoes — that was me — on the Staten Island ferry and each morning, I would pick up shoe shines as people came in. There was this one guy, and we talked about this and that. It turns out that he’s a stock broker. And who is he? He’s my son. Ben got me that role. They wanted him to be the guy, but they needed someone to play his father, so he said “Why don’t you take dad.” I’ll never forget that. It was a lovely piece.

Anne: You were the shoe-shine guy and Ben was the stock broker. This is like an episode of the Twilight Zone.

Well, we’re looking forward to seeing the show. Thanks for talking to us — on Anne’s birthday, no less!

Like indieWIRE‘s parent company, SnagFilms, who have been showcasing documentaries tied into Tuesday’s important midterm election in their Midterm Madness series, our curated Hulu Documentaries this week are also tied into the election. This week’s selections take a look back at various elections, on the local and national level, as well as the impact of particular politicians or would-be politicians.

With so much divisiveness in play with this election, a good place to start to make sense of it all is Kelly Nyck’s Split: A Divided America. Traveling across the nation to speak to ordinary Americans as well as politicians and pundits, Nyck’s seeks to uncover the reasons for the partisan divides that inevitably do more harm than good, examining how religion, economics, race, and geography interact with media to foster the red state vs. blue state, Republican vs. Democrat divide.

Focusing in on one red state, and one small town, Crawford, directed by David Modigliani, tells the story of the site of President George W Bush’s ranch “home.” Using the less than a thousand strong population town as a microcosm of the US under Bush’s administration, the film shows the powerful impact that his residency had on the once obscure place, from his election onwards.

Texas is also the subject of Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck’s The Big Buy: Tom Delay’s Stolen Congress. The filmmakers build a case against the Texan Congressman, as he faces a criminal investigation into campaign fundraising and his role in attempting to redraw the state’s Congressional districts for political gain.

Moving West to California, director Dan Cox follows Austrian-born Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fulfillment of the American Dream when the former Mr Universe sets his sights on the Governor’s seat in Running With Arnold. With a tongue-in-cheek approach, the film takes an often critical look at the path “the Governator” has taken towards his political career.

Marlo Poras takes a look at another seemingly unlikely political candidate in Run Granny Run, 94-year-old Doris Haddock, frustrated with the state of politics, decides to make an unexpected bid for the US Senate just months before the election in this entertaining and inspiring doc.

Finally, the humorous Anytown USA, directed by Kristian Fraga, looks at small town Bogota, NJ, where three candidates (two of them legally blind!) enter a fiercely competitive mayoral race, revealing the highly polarized and counterproductive nature of partisan politics.

As an added bonus, if you didn’t have a chance to take a look at last week’s Halloween selection, The Impaler. W Tray White’s film also fits into this week’s theme as it follows a vampire/dark priest/witch in his Minnesota gubernatorial run.

About the writer: Basil Tsiokos is a Programming Associate, Documentary Features for Sundance, consults with documentary filmmakers and festivals, and recently co-produced Cameron Yates’ feature documentary The Canal Street Madam. Follow him on Twitter @1basil1 and @CanalStMadamDoc and visit his blog.

Actor Mark Duplass is a familiar face to fans of the FX fantasy football-centric guy show, The League, playing the charming troublemaker, Pete, but he actually got his start working onscreen and off with his brother, Jay, on short films and, in 2005, The Puffy Chair, which is now streaming on Hulu. Mark stars in the movie with his now-wife, Katie Aselton — also one of his co-stars on The League — as a young couple who embarks on a road trip unlike any other. In the first segment of our two-part interview series about The Puffy Chair, we asked Mark about the film, his relationship with his brother, and how the more subtle humor of The Puffy Chair is different than the raunchier jokes of The League. Coming soon: an interview with Katie Aselton. — Rebecca Harper (rebecca.harper@hulu.com), Editor

Hulu: The first thing I noticed about The Puffy Chair was the music. There’s lots of indie favorites in there. How did you choose the music and go about getting it in the movie?
Mark Duplass: We were very naïve when we were making The Puffy Chair. We had about $15,000 of our parents’ money to make that movie. I used to play in bands a lot and I was on this label called Polyvinyl Records that had some cool bands like Of Montreal that are on the soundtrack. And so was really easy, because those guys were really friendly and willing to hook us up; I had toured with them. When it came to Spoon and Death Cab, what it really came down to was the bands were just tremendously generous and nice to us. I learned a lot about making indie movies, just lucky. The last thing you want to do when you go to bigger, cool bands like that is say, “Man, I’ve got this awesome indie movie. You totally want to be part of this because it’s going to help out your band.” I really just went to them and just said, “You have no reason to be in this movie, other than the fact that I will die if I can’t have these songs in the movie, and I need them because I am addicted to them. Please try to remember seven to 10 years ago, when you were scrapping, trying to put your stuff together and how great it was then to have one of your heroes to help you out. This is what I’m asking you to do.” And they did it, and that is very, very cool.

Let’s talk about the casting a little bit. You’re in the movie, obviously, and so is Katie Aselton. [They were dating at the time; now they are married.] Did you write the movie with yourself in mind?
Yeah, we designed the movie with something we call the “Available Materials School of Filmmaking.” We knew that we had $15,000 available, so we didn’t write anything that wasn’t readily available to us. We didn’t have money for a casting director or anything like that. Often when you’re casting indie movies, you just don’t get the talent you want. So what we decided to do was write a movie for myself, for Katie, and for Rhett. We knew that we were good and we knew that it would work, and so we designed the roles kind of around our strengths and avoided our weaknesses as actors, and likewise, that was my touring van from my band. Katie grew up in this little town in Maine, where her dad was the doctor and everybody loved him, and we knew we could get them to support for free. That was my apartment in Brooklyn. We did have to buy two chairs — two twin, matching chairs because one of them was going to get hurt. Otherwise, it was really us saying, let’s try to build this around what we have and not try to dream too big so we know we can make it.

What inspired the story?
It was a desire on the part of myself and my brother to make a feature along the lines of how we made our shorts, which were big, long scenes, cheap production value, focused on acting, story, faces, human emotions. We figured if we did that and set it in an apartment, it was basically going to be a Woody Allen movie. So we wanted to try to do something a different, so in order to give it a little momentum, we said “Let’s stick it in a genre.” The road movie seemed pretty obvious to us. And it was just this kind of conversation where we said we’re going to be dealing with some serious issues in this movie, with relationships, and it’s going to be a little sad in places. We want this movie to be fun and to have that silliness to it. So we were like, what if he’s just delivering a piece of furniture to his dad, something stupid like that? Then we just batted it around, like is it a table, is it an armoire? It was almost like it hit us at the same time: “Oh no, massive recliner!” It was more of a feel-based thing, rather than an intellectual decision.

Were any of scenes that depicted you interacting with Rhett Wilkins, who played your brother, based on any of your experiences with your brother, Jay?
You know, at the time it didn’t feel like that at all. When I look at it now… Jay and I basically share the same brain. We share the same taste, and we share a love of the same things in the world, but our modes of operation have grown vastly different as we’ve gotten older. So there is a little bit now, I would say, be being the Type A maniac, and Jay being a bit more sensitive, careful and wary. We call each other jokingly — but very seriously — I’m the bull and he’s the brakes. The way we talk about it I think is, I think we’re a perfect complement for each other. If it was just me, I’d probably be making 10 bad movies a year. If it was just Jay, he would make one half a movie over the course of the next 60 years. Somewhere in there, we kind of curve the edges a bit.

I was drawn to the relationship between you and Katie in this film. There are some dark and twisted moments between your character, Josh, and her character, Emily. Did she have any influence on the development of Emily?
Katie had a ton of influence on the character. Just to be point blank, perfectly honest. Jay and his wife were going through a lot of those things, and Katie and myself were going through a lot of those things, and a lot of our best friends were going through a lot of those issues. We were all in our 20s, dating for a bit, and we were all scared shitless about getting married. We were doing irrational things to each other on all kinds of fronts. You know, Jay and I wrote the script, but there were moments, like the big fight in the hotel room between us, and the breakfast scene the next morning when Katie’s character really rips into Rhett about marriage and what that means, where Katie would say “Guys, can I just go off here? Will you just let me say what I want to say?” And every time she did that, it was always right. I wouldn’t say they were necessarily Katie’s beliefs, because Emily is an extreme character, but they were certainly fueled by things we were all going through. There’s this quote that says anybody under 30 who tries to make a good movie better try to make it about themselves. We believed that at the time, so there’s a lot of us in there.

Your style of filmmaking is known as “mumblecore.” Can you shed some light on that movement — and is it a badge of honor to be considered mumblecore?
In my opinion, it was a cool time and place in 2005, when someone in the press made up the term “mumblecore.” None of the filmmakers ever called themselves that; it was a press item. There wasn’t a dogma movement where we all decided “Hey, we’re mumblecore!” It was really cool at the time, because we were making tiny movies and the New York Times was writing about them, selling our movies. It was giving a name and a face to something that was completely indecipherable to the public. That was nice. But now, it’s become a bit limiting, I think. Quite frankly, it came out because a certain camera came out. It allowed us to shoot good-looking stuff for cheap. That’s literally why that happened, and that’s why things look kind of similar. But now we’ve grown and we’ve branched out, and our movies have become much different. Mumblecore has become a bit limiting now, because when a movie like Cyrus comes out, and someone in the middle of the country hears it’s mumblecore, they think “What’s that? I don’t know what that is, but it’s not me,” I tend to think our movies have changed a bit and they’re not like that. Mumblecore used to be about completely anonymous people and long, drawn-out conversations. That’s kind of not what Cyrus was. So it was great for a certain amount of time, but now, like anything, you sort of want to distance yourself from it.

You star in The League, which has a totally different sense of humor compared to The Puffy Chair.
The truth of the matter is, Jeff and Jackie Schaffer run The League. We are a creative arm in that insofar as we inhabit those characters, but at the end of the day, we the vessels of Jeff and Jackie’s and their vision for this show. Those characters are basically nothing like us, I would say. Pete is overly confident and calm and secure, and I’m totally neurotic. Katie might be a little closer to her character, because Katie is a total guy’s girl. She’s very good with boys and stuff like that. I think that element kind of rings true for her. Katie didn’t a thing about football going into the show, so she had to do a shit-ton of research. I knew a bit, I’d say a lot from the ’80s and ’90s, but I wasn’t up on the current players. So she and I both went through a massive research period.

Like last week’s selections, our curated Hulu Documentaries this week are also inspired by Halloween — some more loosely, others directly related to the holiday and the dark figures it celebrates. This group of films features both more recent productions as well as some classics, and takes as their subjects fictional and real life vampires, horror movie hosts, Halloween revelers, and underground or just plain out-there filmmakers.

EDITOR’S NOTE: “indieWIRE @ Hulu Docs” is a regular column spotlighting the iW-curated selections on Hulu’s Documentaries page, a unique collaboration between the two sites. iW selections appear in the carousel at the top of the page and under “Featured Content” in the center. Be sure to check out these great non-fiction projects each week. — Basil Tsokios, indieWIRE

A fitting place to start this week’s selections is Chris Blankenship and Michelle Canning’s new documentary, Halloween on 6th Street, which focuses on one of the most entertaining cities in the US: Austin, Texas. While I’ve only been there for South by Southwest, it’s clear that there’s a lot going on on the popular 6th Street, as Halloween fanatics like the profiled Bud Hasert gather for a huge party in their creative and elaborate costumes.

Though not exclusively focused on Halloween, American Scary, by director John E. Hudgens certainly scares up an appropriate subject: the hosts of local TV stations “creature feature” programs, who would vamp or camp it up before commercial breaks during horror/monster B-movie screenings.

Elements of horror, sci-fi, and even social issues popped up in the work of the king of bad movies, Ed Wood Jr. His former production partner, Crawford John Thomas produced Brett Thompson’s Haunted World of Ed Wood, Jr. as a tribute to the creator of the infamous Plan 9 From Outer Space and Glen or Glenda.

Spiritual and kooky kin to Wood, but more self-aware and playful, George and Mike Kuchar are the subjects of Jennifer Kroot’s It Came From Kuchar. The doc reveals how the Bronx-based brothers began making lurid, no-budget, underground 8mm films in the 1950s with titles like The Naked and the Nude and Sins of the Fleshapoids.

Keeping an eye in the past, Calvin Floyd’s 1974 film In Search of Dracula, narrated by the great Christopher Lee, travels to Eastern Europe and elsewhere to investigate the historical and cultural origins of the legends of Dracula and the vampire myth.

Moving to the present day, W Tray White’s The Impaler puts the spotlight on a modern-day self-proclaimed vampire, Jonathon Sharkey, as he runs for the position of Governor of Minnesota in 2006. In addition to his relation to Dracula’s people, Sharkey is also a Satanic dark priest and a hecate witch, which, unsurprisingly draws a firestorm of media attention to his bid for political office.

About the writer: Basil Tsiokos is a Programming Associate, Documentary Features for Sundance, consults with documentary filmmakers and festivals, and recently co-produced Cameron Yates’ feature documentary The Canal Street Madam. Follow him on Twitter @1basil1 and @CanalStMadamDoc and visit his blog.