CONFESSION: The guy I want to be

Not that I want to be a guy, but I do want to be as smart as my favorite TV blogger, Jaime Weinman. Or should I say, as observant -- Jaime elucidates things in shows, in trends, in tropes, even in shot styles and set design, that I just kick myself for not being able to address as clearly.

(Notice how I said "address." Like I see all the same things, but just can't write as articulately about them. Right.)

Take a look at Jaime's current TV Guidance home page at Macleans.ca (the preeminent Canadian news magazine). Here's what he's been writing about in just the last week alone:

-- The effectiveness of sitcom set design (major reference: NewsRadio).

-- The awesome "nasty" branding of Fox News (major reference: snide press release about LL Cool J objecting to having an earlier unrelated interview inserted into Sarah Palin's show).

-- David Mills, death of the great Homicide/The Corner/NYPD Blue writer (leading to a larger riff on writers' sensibility and one-show-at-a-time exclusivity).

-- Bad sitcoms within a sitcom (video embed of Newhart's late-run plot where Stephanie stars as twins in "Seein' Double").

-- Breaking Bad's brilliant/thrifty use of master shots (digressed into actors who direct themselves, then actors who avoid typecasting, with an admirable shout-out to Ray Romano and Everybody Loves Raymond being seriously underrated).

-- Truth in TV two-parter -- How 24 was canceled as a secret provision of the health care bill, then how Chloe Sevigny is now trying not to have said that Big Love's recent season sucked.

-- Betty White -- Why? Why now? Why not? (digressing into why her post Mary Tyler Moore sitcom didn't work for being too nice and being shot on videotape where earlier MTM studio gems were on film).

-- Bones and escapism, and why viewers actually want shows that confront our real-life problems.

That's one week, people. And I've only scratched the surface of the glued-to-the-tube smarts in these amazing posts.

I am in awe. I am humbled. I am so frickin' jealous, I can't believe I'm even sending you to his site.

But go there. Go now. Read these, and read more.

And then come back here. Please. We really are trying to keep up with him.