My PaleyFest 2013: Tuesday Night Live

I'm not in Los Angeles for PaleyFest - an annual television festival with nightly panel discussions featuring the cast and creators of popular shows - this year. So I'm just imagining what I'd do if I was there.

I'm a little behind, so here are recaps of what happened at the panels on two Tuesday night comedies.

Night 5: The New Normal

(I skipped Night 4, and it was a Community panel, and the Internet will never forgive me, even if I make them all necklaces with @ signs on them.)

Sometimes it's fun to go to a panel of a show that you don't really care for, just to get a sense of how other people respond to it. That's what The New Normal is for me. The humour doesn't really resonate with me, but interestingly enough, it's quite reminiscent of a few well-loved classic comedies that didn't resonate with me, either. Regardless, I couldn't pass up an opportunity to see Ryan Murphy in person.

Ryan Murphy has a creative mind like no other - Popular, Nip/Tuck, and Glee are proof of that. (Not the show that you think Glee is. The show that it should be. Yes, there's a difference.) And, from what I had heard, he has this weird, manic, creative energy, which I just had to see for myself. Plus, Andrew Rannells is hilarious on Girls, and I figure he's probably hilarious in real-life, too.

Oh, and did I mention that the panel was moderated by John Stamos?

John Stamos was there. Some people said some stuff. I did not get to meet John Stamos, and I walked away disappointed, like George Michael Bluth.

Night 7: The Mindy Project

Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows that I really, really like Mindy Project star Chris Messina. I didn't think he would do TV, ever, nor did I think that this show would get a second season because not enough people realize how genuinely funny it is. I was wrong on both counts.

Mindy Kaling is sweet and hilarious, the kind of person I wish I could be friends with. (We could go on shopping trips with Emma Stone and Jennifer Lawrence! As long as I don't have to buy a sequined sweater like the one she was wearing, because I do not want one.) She's assembled a great cast. Beth Grant's character doesn't really do it for me, but the actress is hilarious. Ed Weeks is just as charming as he is on the show, but he's nowhere near as smarmy or as strange. Ike Barinholz's sense of humour showed just how much he adds to the show, when I erroneously thought that he wouldn't have been a good addition to the cast.

I basically just stared at Chris Messina the whole time and laughed when I found out that the writer's room is extremely divided on whether his character should get together with Mindy.

I tried to get Mindy's attention after the panel to tell her that I enjoyed her book (more on that in a later post), but I didn't get to, and that made me sad. So I asked myself, what would Mindy do? And made myself feel better by doing a bit of online shopping.